Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 6:26 PM, K Randolph wrote:

> Here I’m being careful, neither accepting nor rejecting your input until
> further analysis.

That's great!  I guess I'll have to wait for the further analysis to complete.

> There are certain items that make me pause:

> 1) the lecturer clearly stated that it referred to titles and/or authors,
> the colophon you refer to is very different, in that it can include much
> different material and may actually omit title and author.

My guess is that Wiseman in his original theory claimed that the
ancient use of colophons was at the end as compared to the
modern practice of placing names and titles at the beginning.

See the following which follows a close discussion of Wiseman's
theory:
http://books.google.com/books?id=AQhvp9qtzNEC&pg=PA132
It clearly connects colophons as marking "names and titles"
In the wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis
we find, "Wiseman found that ancient convention was for the
writer of a particular tablet to write his name at the end of the
document, as opposed to modern practices of an author
presenting his name at the beginning of many kinds of articles."
Wiseman also appears to try to relate other information such
as dates as pertaining to the hypothetical colophons in
Genesis.

> 2) The author and/or title use is supported by the text of Genesis itself.

That is entirely up to your interpretation.

> 3) Your “early” counter examples have been pointed out by some historians
> actually to have dated from the early iron age, i.e. around 900 BC, rather
> than the 1800 BC claimed by the majority of academic historians. So there
> are questions about the validity of those counter examples.

Huh?  What historians?

> As for Ruth 4:18, the theory as I was taught rejects it. I personally have
> my doubts because it refers to events long after Ruth lived. The example of
> Ruth may actually be an example of a colophon instead of author and/or title
> use found in Genesis.

Yitzhak Sapir