Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>No, I did catch all your evidence the first time and answered it. I dealt
>with the list of high priests as well, in a previous posting. You may not
>agree with my answers, but you cannot claim that I was not interested in
>your evidence. Obviously my eye is no more inerrantist than the rest of me.

On the high priestly line, first, you might like to read Sara Japhet's 
commentary on
Chronicles. It does give certain analyses of chapters 6 and 9 in line with 
mine and
you'll get them from a "reputable scholar".

But as you were not prepared to contemplate the Ezra traditions outside the 
one
found in the OT/HB your response on that matter was inadequate. It was 
dealing with
the matter without knowing what there was to talk about. Here it is again, 
with some
extra considerations.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

         1Esdr 8:1    Ezra 7:1-3   2Esdr1:1

         Aaron        Aaron        Aaron
         Eleazar      Eleazar      Eleazar
         Phineas      Phineas      Phineas
         Abishua      Abishua      Abishua
         Bukki        Bukki        <Borith>
         Uzzi         Uzzi         Uzzi
      ----------------------------------------
            |         Zerachiah    <Arna>
            |         Meraioth     Meraimoth
            |         Azariah      Azariah
         Amariah      Amariah      Amariah
            |            |         <Eli>
            |            |         <Phineas>
            |            |         <Ahijah>
         Ahitub       Ahitub       Ahitub
         Zadok        Zadok        Zadok
      ----------------------------------------
         Shallum      Shallum      Shallum
         Hilkiah      Hilkiah      Hilkiah
         Azariah      Azariah      Azariah
         Seraiah      Seraiah      Seraiah

Here again is the growth of the high priestly line in that tradition. You can 
see
that there is only one copy of the sequence "Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok" in each 
list
and that each list appears to be an expansion of the previous one. The 1 
Esdras list
can be either of the two as found in 1 Chr 6. There is not enough evidence 
for one
to choose where it should be placed. However, the expansion as found in Ezra 
7 adds
Azariah before the sequence which precludes the first one in 1 Chr 6 (there 
is no
Azariah before the first sequence). This doesn't mean of course that it was a 
second
Zadok that the redactor of Ezra contemplated. It could just as easily still 
have
been the one Zadok found in the 1 Esdras Vorlage. However, by the expansion 
of the
list found in 2 Esdras 1 adding the sequence "Eli, Phineas, Ahijah" before 
Ahitub,
we have clear evidence that the Ezra tradition saw only one Zadok in the high
priestly lineage, the famous Zadok of Davidic times.

There are in fact two genealogies for Zadok supplied in the OT/HB, one in Chr 
6 and
the other in 1 Sam. The writer of the 2 Esdras list included the 1 Sam data 
into his
genealogy. See 1 Sam 14:3 for each of the names included (giving us the 
fragment
"Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahijah"), as well as 2 Sam 8:17, which gives the 
relation of
Zadok as son of Ahitub. The 2 Esdras redactor has merely reversed the order 
of the
last two names ("Ahitub, Ahijah") so as to rationalise the data. He plainly 
saw that
the Zadok being dealt with in the list he has inherited is the Davidic Zadok. 
There
is no reason to believe that that wasn't so for the earlier lists as well,
especially as we have a strong tradition about the first and nothing about the
second found in the 1 Chr 6 list.

We therefore have a tradition that went through three versions, each without
knowledge of the evidence in 1 Chr 6, yet in a comparison between Ezra and Chr
linguistic analyses indicate that these two works were written in the same 
speech
community (this is the David Talsher analysis contra that of Japhet, and 
Japhet
sidestepped the issue in her commentary). This means we have to explain why 
the Ezra
tradition didn't know about the information in 1Chr 6.

From the data in the various lists one should be able to conclude that the 
writer of
the 1 Chr 6 list has had to rationalise the various lists of high priests 
available
to him, specifically in the context of a deeper chronological analysis of 
their
tradition history in which there are far too few priests to match the data 
about the
kings (as can be seen in other traditions' attempts at expanding it; you'll 
still
find in the biblical tradition that in the 200 years from Jehoshaphat to 
Josiah
there were only three high priests). This involved using the Ezra 8 
information for
the second sequence of "Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok", as noted by the inclusion of
Azariah before it in each of the two lists (and not in the 1 Esdras list).

(This material is copyright, Ian Hutchesson, 2001,
and may only be cited with due reference to the author.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

(I will eventually rework this material and early material posted on this 
list for
publication. It was in draft stage a while back, but more data has come my 
way.)

>Just to show that my eye doesn't skip over much: You have introduced another
>fallacy here. You added to your list of evidence "The fact that Josephus
>knows none of the "special" material in Chronicles." The fallacy here is the
>argument from "A does not quote B" to "the author of A does not know B" to
>"A is earlier than B". This is logically false.

When you leave out such details as the fact that they are from the same speech
community and that scribal institutions were inherently conservative in their
activities, I don't think you are playing with the full deck.

>B could be earlier than A
>but for some reason not available to the author of A. Or the author may have
>known B but a quotation may simply not have suited his or her purposes.

(-: Try and make sense of this one.

>In this particular case, maybe Josephus knew Chronicles but did not consider 
>it
>authoritative and so largely ignored it. Again, there are many possibilities
>other than the one you prefer.

Given the way Josephus worked and the sorts of details he has included -- he 
has
worked a little on the compendious side, including various things that were 
not in
the biblical tradition which were related and/or interesting to the narrative 
-- I
think, before you get creative with your suggestions, you need to rationalise 
them
in the context.

>As for DSS fragments, I don't claim to be an expert, so I will leave this
>matter to those who are. Perhaps you could help them by giving
>bibliographical details for the work on an alleged Chronicles fragment which
>you referred to so negatively.

I did not refer "so negatively" to the fragment at all. The fragment is a 
datum to
be analysed, but I doubt that there will be enough evidence to allow one to 
decide
where it fits into the puzzle, given the description I have already supplied 
here.

Ken Penner has provided the bibliographical note necessary.


Ian