Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jan-Wim Wesselius" <jww AT xs4all.nl>]

On 21 January 2000, Dave Washburn (dwashbur AT nyx.net) wrote:

> I have yet to see anything that definitively nails down the date of
> the Pentateuch, early or late.

Well, I would say that I solved this old problem (at least for the final
form of the text) in my recent article ‘Discontinuity, Congruence and the
Making of the Hebrew Bible’, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 13
(1999) 24-77: certainly after the composition of Herodotus’ Histories (i.e.
about 440 BCE), from which the general structure of Primary History (Gen – 2
Kings) has clearly been derived (nine books divided in three groups: 1, 2-6
and 7-9 with a Great Campaign as main action, congruence of the genealogy of
the main family and their contacts with the starting point of the Great
Campaign, and much more) and probably before the Passover Letter from
Elephantine (420 BCE), i.e. the period which we usually identify with the
figure of Nehemiah. Of course earlier materials have been incorporated,
though it is quite difficult to go back behind the well-composed final text.
The article is probably difficult and its conclusions are unwelcome to many,
but I have not yet discovered any fault in its arguments.

Jan-Wim Wesselius, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Hoekenes 26A, 1068 MT Amsterdam
Tel. 020 - 619 1535; fax 020 - 619 1636; e-mail jww AT xs4all.nl