Biblical Hebrew Forum

[FPutnam AT biblical.edu]

There is no direct biblical basis for the claim that Moses wrote Genesis. 
Nor can Christians appeal to the New Testament, since Moses is never 
referred to as the source or author of Genesis, although he is associated 
with the rest of the Torah (Ex - Dt) by Jesus, the Evangelists, and Paul.

We cannot infer Mosaic authorship from such passages as the people's 
request to hear the "document of the teaching of Moses" (Ne 8.1; later 
called "the teaching of God" (Ne 8.8)), since the response of the Levites 
and people suggests that they were reading Lv 23, and since it is unlikely 
that they would have had or used scrolls as large as the entire Torah 
(*if* modern Torah-scrolls are any guide to size).

It seems that Genesis, like Joshua - 2 Kings and other works, is thus 
anonymous, connected to Moses due (at least in part) to the rabbinic 
requirement that biblical books be written by prophets, an ascription that 
was then accepted by the early Church.

Peace.

Fred

Frederic Clarke Putnam, Ph.D.
Professor of Old Testament
Biblical Theological Seminary
Hatfield, Pennsylvania
215.368.5000x150
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] logograms--an ode to Hebrew
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> >Why would anyone be concerned in 2nd millennium BCE to conform the
existing
> >roots to triliteral pattern? There is no evidence for such concern
> >whatsoever in any language.
>
> What? Have you studied all 6500 languages?

Quite obviously, There is no evidence for such concern whatsoever in any
language "I heard of."

> It is a regular part of
> acquiring loan words that their structure is adjusted to conform to that
> of the borrowing language. For example, in Russian the suffix -ovat' and
> -irovat' is used to make Russian verbs from English, German etc verbs.

What this has to do with conforming the words to fixed-length roots? Do you
know of any language exhibiting tendency to adopt the loand words into
fixed-length root mould?

> But not that they came from any committee or centralised
> authority, rather that they emerged in the same way as new words emerged
> today, from idiosyncratic usage

And why would naturally emerging words
a. conform to fixed-length roots
b. have regular patterns in root construction (such as, again, further in
alphabet is the third radical, lighter is the meaning: not for all roots,
but beyond coincidence)

How could the concept of three-letter roots predate the concept of letter?

> are you not aware that there are quite a number of quadriliteral
> roots in Hebrew? They are very ancient because many of them e.g. TRGM
> are shared with Arabic, Aramaic etc.

Uh, I argue for long time now that four-letter nouns with initial taw are
frozen hifil verbs, t+rgm.

Vadim Cherny