Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

At 09:17 PM 2/26/2003 -0500, Lisbeth S. Fried wrote:
>Thanks Yigal,
>These are all (except for Levine) 20 years old!

True, Liz, but the same people are still arguing them! I, at least, have
not seen anything that is both new and convincing.

>Have the arguments held up?
>What do the linguists on the list think of the linguistic
>arguments?
>I'm really beginning to think that the whole endeavor
>of dating the texts is a waste of time. Is there any fixed
>point that everyone agrees on?

Personally (as a historian, not a linguist), I agree that we have to take
in to consideration that in the ancient world, in the absence of
mass-production of copies on one hand and of "copy writes" on the other,
"texts" were ever-changing. So that "late" language does not rule out
"early" composition, which was then "updated" by a later copyist (just look
at Bible translations today - what would WE gather from comparing the NRSV
with the Good News Bible?).

HOWEVER, that said, SOMEONE actually DID write the books, at some definite
time and place. So I would prefer to look at the document's content, rather
than the language of the recention that happened to come down to us.

Yigal



>Liz
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
>> [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Yigal Levin
>> Sent: Wed, February 26, 2003 9:01 PM
>> To: b-hebrew
>> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Priestly Stratum
>>
>>
>> At 06:23 PM 2/25/2003 -0500, Lisbeth S. Fried wrote:
>> >
>> >Dear All,
>> >Is P (g) still considered to be post-exilic?
>> >and if so, what is that based on?
>>
>> Hi Liz,
>>
>> Just some references on the problem:
>> B.A. Levine, Numbers 1-20 (The Anchor Bible, New York, 1993),
>> 101-109, who
>> insists on post-exilic.
>> A. Hurvitz, "The Evidence of Language in Dating the Priestly
>> Code", RB 81
>> (1974), 24-56; idem, "Dating the Priestly Source in Light of
>> the Historical
>> Study of Biblical Hebrew A Century after Wellhausen", ZAW 100 (1988),
>> 88-100 and G.J. Wenham,  Numbers - An Introduction and Commentary (The
>> Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Leicester-Downers Grove,
>> 1981), 22-23
>> who place P before D, that is, pre-exilic.
>> See also R.E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative -
>> The Formation of
>> the Deuteronomistic and Priestly Works (Harvard Semitic Monographs 22,
>> Chico, 1981), who posits a pre-exilic D1 followed by a pre-exilic P1
>> followed by an exilic D2 followed by an exilic or post-exilic P2.
>>
>> Yigal
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr. Yigal Levin
>> Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
>> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>> 615 McCallie Avenue
>> Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
>> U.S.A.
>> _______________________________________________
>> b-hebrew mailing list
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>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.
>From lizfried AT umich.edu  Wed Feb 26 23:03:22 2003
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From: "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] The Priestly Stratum
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 23:09:46 -0500
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Dear All,
Perhaps Ezekiel is a fixed point:
1) According to Ezekiel only the descendants of Zadok
are allowed to approach the altar.
2) Ergo (?) the priests who approached the altar in
the post-exilic period were the descendants of Zadok.
3) We all know who Zadok was, right? He was the one
who kicked out Abiathar in the time of Solomon.
4) Ergo (?) they had the priesthood all along, the entire
pre-exilic period.
5) Ergo (?) Ezekiel was not creating anything new.
6) Ergo (?) they were the ones who wrote the P stratum,
whenever it was written.

If so, why is there not one word about Zadok in
the entire Pentateuch? Why suppose that they are
pretending to be descendants of Aaron?
Why would they have created a fiction about Aaron,
when they could have created any fiction they wanted?
Why didn't they just have one of Aaron's sons be named Zadok???
Why doesn't P refer to the sons of Zadok instead of to the sons of
Aaron?

I am definitely missing something here.

Liz