Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

Uri,

As it sounds as though you are somewhat well-read where it comes to the 
DH, can you respond to my earlier post where I wrote:

I've always been puzzled by the identification by JEDP backers of the 
book of Deuteronomy as the "book of the law" found in the temple 
disrepair. It hinges such a tremendously significant portion of an 
already extremely hypothetical theory on an offhand remark in the 
account of Josiah's reforms. And it does so without providing any real 
reason to make that leap. It's as though someone (Wellshausen or 
whomever) saw the verse and theorized that this "book of the law" could 
be the very book I'm reading. Well, yes it could, but let's see how he 
got from hypothesis to conclusion without anything in between.

Can anyone offer any insight?


Thanks,

Brian Roberts


On Thursday, June 3, 2004, at 03:59  PM, Uri Hurwitz wrote:

>   Dear Harold,
>
>   I'm afraid that I may disappoint you, in that my view of the HB is 
> strictly secular, and thus do not consider all historical information 
> contained in it as fully valid as if it were inspired  or dictated by a 
> super-natural source. Which, I hasten to add, does not make me a so 
> called 'minimlist' whose position I reject on various grounds.
>    From that point of viewt the verse you cited does not provide 
> historical but theological information to the reader,  that is it 
> attributes divine authority to the text. Interestingly, already in the 
> eleventh century, in an intellectual and sociological environment that 
> practically excluded secular approach to the HB, the famous commentator 
> Abraham Ibn Ezra hinted that Moses could not have written the book of 
> Deuteronomy; if memory serves he added the words "wehamevin yavin" - 
> let he who understands, understand.
>      I believe that all discussion on the timing of the writing of 
> biblical books, other than diachronic, is speculative.
>   To cite a possibility of  partially  different source to the former 
> prophets:
>   "....J  continues into the narrative that is distributed through the 
> books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and the first two chapters of I 
> Kings. P  also ppears to me clearly to continue into the latter half of 
> the book of Joshua...."
>     (From the recent The Bible with Sources Revealed by Richard Elliot 
> Friedman HarpeSanFransisco, p.6, He has an excellent introduction to 
> the Doumentary Hypothesis and adds a few of his own.)
>   Thus in addition to to his Dt1 and Dt2 (!),   J and  P which are much 
> earlier , in many scholars view, are components of the  DH.
>   Now, I have my own speculation as to when the latter was composed, 
> but there is no need here to overburden  the patient electorns with 
> another speculation.
>
>    Uri
>
>
>
> "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com> wrote:
> Dear Uri,
>
> What would some say may not have been so? Are
> they saying that Deuteronomy was not written at
> one time and place? The Book of Deuteronomy says
> that it was.
>
> Deut. 31:9 ∂ So Moses wrote down this law and
> gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who
> carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and
> to all the elders of Israel.
>
>
>                 
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