Biblical Hebrew Forum

[soren AT enteract.com]

I don't know if Liz has confused Daniel Werlin but she has certainly confused 
me.  The story of Yiftah is not a random story, it is one of several stores 
brought together by a D narrator weho wished to show (the editor does explain 
his/her motives in the text) that when the Israelites abandoned Yahweah, this 
had ill consequences (foreign rule) but that Yahweh did not fully abandon His 
people but raised up great leaders to redeem them spiritually and physically. 
 
I don't know, and I doubt if it will ever be known, which, if any, of these 
stories were in written form before our editor or what thosew written forms 
were.

I suspect what is bothering Liz is the assumption that sacrificing a child is 
against Biblical Israaelite religion.  The trouble is that while that 
assumption may be comforting to us (how many of us woule sacrifice our only 
child even at his/her worst?), there is no particular support for it.  THere 
is 
one child sacrifice story in Genesis, there is another in Kings (which gets 
mentioned in Joshua) and there is Ezekial's comment (I think chapter 22 but I 
don't have any texts before me) quoting Yahwah as saying that he gave bad 
laws 
to Israel by commanding them to sacrifice their first-born.  THe editor 
includes this story because it shows Yiftah's relgious virtue (and thus his 
fitness to lead Israel) as he keep his vow even when it led in a direction he 
had not suspected.

                                                    Steve Oren

Quoting "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>:

> If you argue that this describes an histoical event, then
> you must have some theory in mind describing how the
> event happened to be written down and received into
> the biblical corpus.
> What is that theory that you have?
> Liz Fried
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Daniel Walin [mailto:danserve4x AT yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Mon, June 03, 2002 4:31 PM
> > To: Biblical Hebrew
> > Subject: RE: The daughter of Jeftah died?
> >
> >
> > --- "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu> wrote:
> > > If this is historical, what transmission
> > > theory do you propose to account for it's inclusion
> > > in the biblical corpus?
> > > Liz Fried
> >
> > What do you mean by the term "transmission theory?"
> >
> > Daniel Walin
> >
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