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  • From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah
  • Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:58:47 -0700

On Jul 29, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Brian Roberts wrote:
> I would also want to know which canon is being referred to here? The
> universal elements shared by all canons? Or are talking about LXX versus
> Masoretic again? Or the Christian OT?

Brian,

Of course, I can only speak for myself, but on this particular thread we have been discussing the Torah, which has the same "table of contents" in all of the canons you listed above, plus the Eastern Orthodox, Slavonic, Ethiopic, Samaritan, and any other Judeo- Christian traditions you want to name.

Now, of course, if the Tanakh itself includes references to a five- book Torah, the authors would be presupposing neither the Masoretic Text nor the LXX nor the Samaritan Pentateuch nor a DSS text-type, but a (theoretical, but in my judgment almost unassailably probable) precursor text-type that all of these later text-types would share in common.

Of course, it would be entirely legitimate to question whether the fairly simplistic
"family bush" model I've used above is valid, that is, to interrogate my assumption of *a* single "canonical Torah," be it text or text- type, from which all of the extant text-types descend. But that is a big question to which I have no ready answer.

In any event, if the LXX project was indeed begun c. 385 BCE, that is good evidence that by c. 400 the Torah/Pentateuch was seen and circulating as such, that is, as a collection of five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy. The unresolved question is how much *earlier* that happened, and whether any of the Tanakh references to "the book of the law of Moses" refer to that five-book collection as such.

Chris

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info




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