Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

I would say happy new year, we are by now three hours within the official
3rd millennium here.

Remeber something called form-criticism? And what kind of text are we
talking about-formcriticallty speaking. I am not inconsistent as I never
said that the text need to be contemporary with the earliest manuscripts but
ther earliest manuscripts are the starting point, if you want to dig
bagwards, and there is in the case of the Hinnom inscriptions plenty of
indications that their text was already accepted as a formulaic text. It is
matter of genre and context.

NPL


> -----Original Message-----
> From: kdlitwak [SMTP:kdlitwak AT concentric.net]
> Sent: Friday, 31 December, 1999 21:54
> To:   Biblical Hebrew
> Cc:   Biblical Hebrew
> Subject:      Re: historiography
> 
> 
> 
> Niels Peter Lemche wrote:
> 
> > Why the Siloam inscription? And the Hinnom amulets, one 50% of the
> Blessing
> > of Aaron. the second 75%, but this is a religious formulaic text that
> can
> > have existed for centuries before it was included in the narrative in
> > Numbers. Who can say?
> 
> Isn't it a gratuitous assumption to suggest this may have existed for
> centuries?
> Would it not be fairer to the hard evidence to say that it popped into
> existence at
> the moment the extant text was written?  After all, if the biblical texts
> were first
> composed, as some like Davies assert, in the Persian or Seleucid period,
> then
> Israelite religion was invented de novo at the exact same time.  That
> would fit the
> hard evidence, n'est pas?   I'm not saying you are right or wrong, but
> asking for
> consistency.  If we are going to do absolute obeisance at the altar of
> hard evidence
> (written texts and artifacts), we should never leave that post.
> 
> Ken Litwak
> 
> 
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