Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>]

George wrote:
I can't speak for Karl, though I suspect he would join with me on this. 
I think you've read a little too much into my (and probably Karl's) 
comments. I'm not going to comment upon the inspiration of the text on 
this forum (though feel free to contact me offlist). However, the text 
uses words, phrase, and concepts which were commonplace throughout the 
region for a very long time. And Deuteronomy is not alone in this.
If I have misunderstood you, then please let me know.


My last post was mostly addressed to Karl's characterization of Deut.28. 
He wanted to explain what I see as a worked-over text as the result of 
the "informal" or "off-the cuff" nature of the speech. What I tried to 
do was show that the text is messed up in some way, even if you believe 
that Moses spoke those words.
Part of my argument is that the section matching curses in sequence from 
Esarhaddon interrupts a more coherent set of blessings and curses. So it 
isn't just a question of "words, phrases and concepts", but of a whole 
series of complete sentences, sometimes as close as an 
Akkadian-to-Hebrew translation as could be expected. The coherence of 
that series betrays a separate source, even if the editor who 
incorporated it was Moses himself.

Here's something else to consider. Another piece of "sloppiness" on the 
part of someone is that verse 18, which is the partner of verse 4, 
leaves out the reference to cattle found there. You could attribute it 
to Moses, but a Qumran version of the text has the "cattle" phrase in 
verse 18, just as in verse 4. I assume everyone will accept the simplest 
hypothesis here, namely that the phrase was lost by scribal error in the 
MT. But here again we are on a slippery slope to the hypothesis that 
there were originally more coherent subtexts than what we have now.


Gabe Eisenstein