Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian M. M. Brady [mailto:cbrady AT tulane.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 11:19 PM
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: singular and plural for Isaiah's servant
>
[I said]

> >> Redactors don't subtract, they just add.


Dan said:

> > Who imposed that rule upon them? How can we know that? Are we
> at liberty to
> > make them do whatever we want? Why wouldn't they want to subtract to
> > accomplish their subtle agenda? What could prevent them?

C. M. Brady said
> I guess this is a bit late in the thread and I hope I haven't missed it
> already being addressed, but I would have to agree with Dan here.
>
> Liz, how can we, objectively and concretely demonstrate that redactors
> always add and never subtract? There are all sorts of problems with this
> (common) assertion, not the least of which is that not everyone can agree
> upon which portions of a given biblical text belong to which "layer" of
> redaction.
>
> So, please elaborate/defend this assertion.

I don't have much to contribute to this discussion.
It's based on the assumption that texts are holy.
They get added to, commented upon, the comments,
the glosses, the additions get added to the text by the
next copiest. Stuff is lost through haplography,
but stuff is not usually considered omitted purposefully.
This is suggestive when you consider the relationship between
Kings and Chronicles. It's usually assumed that the Chronicler
deleted stuff in Kings. This to me doesn't seem likely. More
likely to me is Auld's hypothesis whereby each added to a common
source, the common source being that which is common among them.

I think the same reasoning is used in the NT. Isn't this why Mark is
assumed to have preceeded Luke and Matt? Otherwise you'd have to
argue that Mark deleted stuff. People get uncomfortable with that idea.

Liz Fried
Ann Arbor

>
> > (Obviously i don't accept RC, at least not on this kind of a theological
> > agenda-based level.)
>
> FWIW, I value redactional criticism, but we need to be careful about
> artificially imposing boundaries upon the redactors.
>
> Cb
> cbrady @ tulane.edu
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