Appeal: false claim
From DEBATE: Jay Dyer Vs Pastor Jonathan Shelley | Tradition Vs Sola Scriptura.
- #22887:07overturned Jay Dyer claim: false claim (+1)
The council overturned the finding, so nothing is marked against Jay Dyer.
The claim, as Thucydides noted it: Many commentators, including Protestants, note that "the testimony" in Isaiah 8 ("to the law and to the testimony") includes oral tradition.
Diogenes: Thucydides (verifier): unsupported. Isaiah 8:20 says only "To the law and to the testimony!" The commentaries I found read "testimony" as the written word. Gill takes it as Moses and the prophets, "search the Scriptures." Clarke takes it as the attested prophecy of Isa 8:1-4. Some scholars do read it as Isaiah's own prophetic teaching, which was first spoken. That is not the same as "oral tradition" in Dyer's sense, and Dyer named no Protestant commentator. I did not find the "many commentators including Protestants" claim stated as he put it.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Dyer opened by declaring that Scripture itself points beyond the written text to sacred oral tradition as the word of God, and he has held that throughout; the called line is an instance of that argument, resting on a factual claim about commentators. The verifier's finding is that he named no commentator and found no source stating it as he put it. That is not a showing that the claim is false. Some scholars do read the "testimony" as Isaiah's prophetic teaching, which was first spoken, so the claim is partly supported. Whether it is false is close to a toss-up, and the rubric overturns on that.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Jay answers the Protestant use of Isaiah 8 by saying that many commentators, Protestants among them, read "the testimony" as including oral tradition. He cites no names, but the line is a modest claim in his opening, and it supports his argument that the text points beyond itself. He later restates it ("the testimony is the interpretation of the Torah"). Nothing here is clearly a fallacy, and no merit is earned, because no specific source is given.
- Plato overturn: On the record: Dyer declared at the opening that Scripture itself points beyond the written text to oral tradition as the word of God, and he has held that throughout; the Isaiah 8 line restates that position and does not depart from it. The verifier found the claim unsupported, not false. Scholars do read "testimony" as Isaiah's own prophetic teaching, which was first spoken, so the claim is partly sound. Dyer named no commentator, but "many commentators" is loose wording and the finding does not show it is wrong. Whether this is a fault at all is a toss-up, so the call is overturned.
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