Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 27/06/2006 08:40, Yigal Levin wrote:
> ...
> Of course, to those who believe that the Torah was written by Moses, who was 
> a prophet, this is no problem. God, who wanted the text to be relevant to 
> people living in future generations, had Moses use a term that they would 
> understand. Most of Moses' contemporaries didn't know the Land that well 
> anyway. To those who do not use "prophecy" as part of their scholarly 
> discourse, the ONLY probable solution is that these passages (at the very 
> least!) were written many generations after Moses and refect the geography 
> of the writer's day (or his concept of HIS past).
>
>   
This is the position not only of those who deny prophecy in principle. 
Indeed if I remember correctly one traditional Jewish explanation for 
this mention of Dan in Abraham's time is the same as for Deuteronomy 34, 
that these are additions from after Moses' time. I don't deny that there 
is real predictive prophecy in the Tanakh. But Genesis 14:14 looks to me 
not like an isolated (not in a prophetic context and unnecessary) 
instance of prophecy, but rather as an editorial addition or correction 
of an obsolescent place name.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/