Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

See below.

Peter Kirk

-----Original Message-----
From: Raymond de Hoop [mailto:rdehoop AT keyaccess.nl]
Sent: 09 February 2001 12:02
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: Re: Goliath


Peter,

A few remarks in answer to your posting.

> Firstly, you assume a single copyist. Rather more likely is two
generations
> of copyists who damaged the 2 Samuel text: the first who copied hurriedly,
> added a second )RGYM (that word starts with aleph, not ayin), and perhaps
> wrote BYT and )T unclearly; and a second who tried to make sense of the
text
> he saw, which may have been damaged as well as written unclearly.

Isn't this hypothesis upon hypothesis?

PK: No, it is one hypopthesis, that one scribe totally messed up copying
this part of the text. It is not a separate hypothesis that a later copyist
tidied it up because the text we now have is tidy. Not two lightning
strikes, as Ian suggests, but one strike and the necessary repair work.

<snip>

Nevertheless, I just wondered what's wrong with assuming that one scribe or
the other (and very likely the Chronicler) _deliberately_ changed the text
by changing some letters from the text he used as a source inorder to get a
correct version?

PK: We still have to explain the existence of the 2 Samuel text of this
verse as we have it now. This is clearly corrupt. Do you have any other
hypothesis for how this occurred except for copyists' errors? I accept that
the Chronicles text may be a separate tidying up of a corrupt text rather
than a witness to the pre-corruption original. But I very much doubt that
the 2 Samuel text can be what the author originally intended.

Greetings,

Raymond

--

*************************************************************

Dr Raymond de Hoop          Tel.: ++31 50 553 0115
Boeiersingel 11
NL-9745 CA Groningen
The Netherlands             E-mail: rdehoop AT keyaccess.nl


*************************************************************