Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Just my penny's worth on Walter's posts attempting to find a dating for the
documents of the OT/HB.

Contrary to some opinions stated on the list, I'm strongly of the belief
that without efforts to date the texts one has little hope of getting below
the surface of the text, ie one will never get past the literal
significance of the strongs of words put together to form sentences.

Images will change according to context, significances will change,
metaphors...

If, as I might argue, the books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah arrived in
its present form after the time of Josephus, will that not mean important
differences in reading those texts? If Deuteronomy is older than Exodus
with that not change understandings of the text? If the people called
"Aramaeans" didn't leave the steppes around Jebel Bishri until the twelfth
century BCE won't that cause a difference in reading Genesis? If the table
of nations reflects Greek influence won't that change our reading of
Genesis? Further, if the table of nations as we have it is not the earliest
form of the tradition -- it's necessary to contemplate Josephus's and
GenApocryphon's simpler forms -- then won't that change our readings more?

Every text has a context (or more than one, if it has been reworked, for
the reworking will probably not remove all the impact of the earlier
version) and without a context you cannot deal with the text fully. Without
a context, we are left with only a literal reading and no way of knowing
how that reading relates to the author's intentions.


Cheers,


Ian