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  • From: "Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: The Case Against a Hellenistic Primary History
  • Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 06:40:27 +0200


Ian wrote :

> Walter, you wouldn't expect specifically Greek founded
> cities to have been knowingly included would you? --
> for that's what many of the cities you list are.

Dear Ian,

In the Primary History we have several instances of places being noted as
possessing later names, for example, Laish is explained as being later
called Dan. Why wouldn't an author creating this composition "allegedly" in
the Hellenistic era, NOT update site names for his reading audience with the
current names of his era ? For example, Josephus, writing in a Hellenistic
world, explains to his readers that Ezion-geber is now called Berenice. We
see none of this Hellenistic "updating" in the Primary History with current
Hellenistic names- WHY ?

Authors are human, they make mistakes, these mistakes or errors provide us
with valuable clues to date compositions by (we call these errors
"anachronisms"). Tradition tells us Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but a
careful reading of Genesis reveals the presence of places and sites that
came into being only in 8th-7th centuries times, so we know he didn't write
this. Now if the Primary History is allegedly a Hellenistic or Hasmonean
creation, we should expect at least a few errors in regards to some sites
being mentioned that can be dated to Hellenistic times through an authors's
"slip", yet there are none.

I have documented "one slip" in 2 Chronicles, Tadmor not being in existence
as a city before the 1st century BCE. No such anachronistic "slip" exists in
the Primary History- WHY?

I realize that when anachronisms are identified in a text that there are two
schools of thought to account for them. One school posits that the
anachronism betrays that the composition is later than it claims to be. The

other school of thought claims that the anachronism is only an
interpolation, a later redaction of an ancient text.

All the best, Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany
www.bibleorigins.net









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