Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rodney K. Duke" <dukerk AT appstate.edu>]

Dear Colleagues,

A few years ago, I raised the following question before the group and 
did not receive much of a response.  Since the topic of the Samaritan 
Pentateuch has come up again, I would like to pose the question again:

In various list discussions on the dating of the composition of the Hebrew 
Pentateuch
(HP), it is clear that there is a trend to date the HP later and later,
even into the period of Hellenization.  In the arguments posted for and
against late dating I don't remember any being advanced from the
perspective of text criticism.  As I understand it--again in my limited
way--text criticism (see Waltke, _ABD_) shows that BEFORE the time of
the Chronicler the SP, in comparison to the text type found in the MT,
was modernizing the text.  It would seem to me that the presence of a SP
would certainly give us a terminus ad quem for the HP and that a
modernized SP would push the date of the HP back even further.  Are
there any text critics who can shed some light on the evidence for
dating the origins of the SP?  Any insight into how such evidence
influences our understanding of the date of the HP?

Thanks!
--

Dr. Rodney K. Duke
Dept. of Phil. & Rel., Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC 28608  
(O) 828-262-3091, (FAX) 828-262-6619, dukerk AT appstate.edu