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  • From: Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Cc: mccunes AT gmail.com
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Updating & Archaizing
  • Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:17:04 -0400

Here's my question: Can someone give me one or two strong, clear,
undisputed examples of this in the biblical text?

Yours,

Keith McCune


Keith, it is obviously difficult to determine where scribes may have updated the text since we do not possess copies reflecting the textual history. The argument can also become circular since we do not have a large amount of extra-biblical sources giving a baseline for what constitutes a late versus early feature.

That scribes did modernize texts is shown by the Isaiah scroll from Qumran (see my summary of Kutscher http://tinyurl.com/ca858a)though this may have been a popular text and therefore not entirely relevant for an "official" text. See Tov's _Textual Criticism_ Chapter 4 for discussion as well (available with limited preview on Google Books).

A good place where we get a glimpse into scribal practice is 2 Sam 22 = Psalm 18 where the poem occurs twice, though both poems seem to show the effects of the scribes so it is not so easy as to posit one being the earlier version and the other the later version.

One place that I think may reflect updating is verse 24. Notice that the Samuel text has W)HYH in the first clause followed by W)$TMRH while the Psalm text has W)HY followed by W)$TMR. In the later language the short preterite form is only preserved in the so-called 'waw-consecutive' wayyiqtol form. Because the short preterite has fallen together with the jussive, eventually it seems that scribes assumed that the 'waw-consecutive' uses the volative verbal form. In the 1st person this is the cohortative with the long -a ending written with H. Thus in later texts (including the Isaiah scroll) the waw + cohortative form is often substituted where we would expect a 1st person waw-consecutive. The Psalm text has preserved the waw- consecutive, the Samuel text has probably been updated with a cohortative form following later scribal practice.

Pete Bekins






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