Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

On Sep 15, 2005, at 12:53 PM, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Now the Bible claims that Torah, with minor exceptions, was
> written in the 14th century BC, a major literary work during
> the early phase of proto-Canaanite writing: if that claim is
> accurate, that means that the ancient Hebrews had alphabet
> well before the Phoenicians.

Now I realize that I am probably "stepping in it" by opening my big  
mouth on this topic, and ask everyone to realize that I'm quite busy  
at the moment which will probably make this a "drive-by posting,"  
but ...

_The Bible makes no such claim._

The Bible does not definitively place Moses in the 14th century BCE;  
the data are ambiguous and difficult to interpret (assuming one  
thinks that the biblical data can be used to place an historical  
Moses on a timeline at all).

Second, and more to the point, the Bible makes no claims whatsoever  
about the time frame in which the Torah as such was written (down).  
Moses is ascribed a very limited writing activity in the Torah.  
Earlier this year we had an extensive discussion about that here on  
the list, and a search of the archives should provide anyone  
interested with a precise list of the very few places where the Torah  
ascribes to Moses some sort of writing activity (there's about half a  
dozen such passages, none of which address the Torah as a whole, but  
only smaller components thereof).

As I already posted extensively about this a few months back, I'll  
let the archives do the rest of the work of explanation, and get back  
to my regularly scheduled day job.

Chris

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Seaver Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
Professional Web Page: http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
Internet Resource Index: http://www.iTanakh.org
Personal Web Page: http://www.heardworld.com