Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 6:57 PM, K Randolph wrote:

> Ps: to Yitzhak:
>
> I have specifically avoided the use of the term “colophon” because it is my
> understanding  that a colophon is a statement added later, sometimes much,
> much later, by a publisher or other writer, that it is not part of the
> original document. In contrast, the title and even author can be chosen by
> the author himself for the document.
>
> I admit that the lecturer that I heard could have been mistaken, but he
> specifically stated that the author and title were what was at the end of a
> narration, not a colophon.

I think your lecturer was mistaken.  The Babylonian colophons were added by
the scribes at the time of composition of the document or copy.  Consider
the following example:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VLyUd1hau1IC&pg=PA534
Here the scribe's name appears at the end of a list of witnesses (and at the
end of the document).  But it is clear that the authorship of the document is
happening in that very same period.  He serves as a scribe and clerk of the
proceeding.

In letters from the Old Babylonian period, the name comes up first:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_oTh51M5XF4C&pg=PA30
http://books.google.com/books?id=_oTh51M5XF4C&pg=PA33
http://books.google.com/books?id=tiHwDe7JmCEC&pg=PA210
These are all from the 19th-early 18th centuries BCE.

Perhaps we could suggest that originally someone said that colophons
were used by copyists of manuscripts to convey information about their
name, the date or title of the text, and other relevant information for the
text.  This ended with the disappearance of manual copying of
manuscripts when the printing press appeared around 1500 CE.  Along
the line, somewhere, something got lost in the transmission and it changed
from 1500 CE to 1500 BCE.

You can't deny that the theory adduced by Dave Washburn, which
makes explicit mention of colophons and compares them to the Biblical
toladot formula bears a very striking resemblance to what you have
been suggesting based on lectures related to studies of otherwise
unknown scholars.  It is only a little step to conclude that the unknown
scholars are Donald Wiseman and his father.

Definitely, you can't rule out the relevance of Ruth 4:18 on the basis of
what you remember your lecturer having said, when all kind of evidence
has been adduced suggesting that the original theory spoke about
colophons, rather than "names and titles" as you state it, and that the
date 1500 BCE is simply wrong.  You are regarding Ruth 4:18 as
irrelevant and making substantive conclusions on the basis of hearsay
which is likely to be mistaken or wrong.

We even have the example of Psalm 72, where at the end of the first
two books of Psalms we have a line telling us that these were the
prayers of David son of Yishai.  The word kɔllu is especially significant
because it tells us that we are at the end of something -- and in
tradition, Psalms is subdivided into "book" and this is indeed the end
of one of the books of Psalms.  (It even uses the word kɔllu to show us
it is a "colo"-phone).  In this case, we have the line at the middle of
the document just like the "elleh toldot" formula in genesis and our
choice whether to conclude that this is someone much later writing
about the named individual or himself writing this line is entirely due
to our interpretation of the line, and our own personal conclusions if
to ascribe the previous text to that named person.

Yitzhak Sapir