Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

There is of course an alternative interpretation that these places, events
etc are not given in detail because the "true dates of authorship" are not
the ones you so confidently assert but are before those events or those
places were known in more than outline e.g. in the time of Moses. These
things read more like forecasts and instructions before the event, without
detail, than as reports after the event. Surely that is a simpler
hypothesis, by Occam's razor, than the one that the authors wrote later but
deliberately concealed the "true dates of authorship".

Peter Kirk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il>
To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Cc: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2000 3:19 PM
Subject: Re: Genesis JEDP ???


>
>
> 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
>