Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il>]

Niels Peter Lemche wrote:

>
>
> The basic text about centralization is Deut 12. Nowhere do you here find an
> indication that the place should be Jerusalem. There is an enormous amount
> of Deuteronomistic phrasing and ideology in this chapter but not a word
> about Jerusalem. Quite astonishing if the Pentateuch was really the product
> of people living in Jerusalem. People might want to say that it was too
> early to think of Jerusalem, but we know from other indications that the
> people who got this literature together had no problems indicating the
> course of the future (the ex eventu business, of course). So the historical
> problem is not a problem at all, except to people who might think of a
> Mosaic authorship to a text like Deut 12, but that is their problem.

Dear Nils Peter,
There are other places in the Pentateuch mentioning the future where we might 
have
expected specific mention of peoples, places and events, such as the 
descriptions of
conquest and exile in Lev. 26 and Deut. 28 and 32. Yet the writers are silent,
apparently purposefully, not wanting to disclose the true dates of authorship 
of the
passages mentioned.
--
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
44905 Beit Berl Post Office
Israel