Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>]

Shalom Jim

You wrote:

On 9 April 2013 14:34, <b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu, kwrandolph AT gmail.com
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 09:34:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated?

Yigal Levin and Will Parsons: 

 

To Prof. Yigal Levin’s comment that “If they wrote at all, the Patriarchs would have written in Canaanite and the Israelite slaves in Egyptian”, Will Parsons responded:  “Well, I would think that the Patriarchs would have written in Canaanite because that was their language, but I do think that the Israelite slaves would be unlikely to write in Egyptian.”

 

Why are you two gentlemen talking about something that is never attested historically?  Based on what’s attested historically, there were never any “Israelite slaves” in Egypt.  Moreover, there’s no basis for such a supposition linguistically either:

At least one historical document says you are wrong: "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.  And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves..."

and later: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."

Now if you said there were no other historical evidence except for the Tanach that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, you might have a point. But neither is there any other historical evidence for the existence of the patriarchs (except possibly the present-day existence of the Jewish people) except for the Tanach!

As for your contention that "from the dawn of time to 7th century BCE Jerusalem, the only significant amount of writing, as to letters or anything more substantial than that, that is historically attested as coming out of south-central Canaan consists of the Amarna Letters in the mid-14th century BCE. That’s the o-n-l-y time there were scribes in south-central Canaan who would be more than happy to sell their services, even [in hard times] to tent-dwellers like the first Hebrews."

I have side with Karl in that if the Torah was written by Moses (see below), it is more likely to have been written on papyrus than any other writing material, since they were coming from Egypt and was in the desert for most of this period (not in Canaan with scribes available). There are a number of distinctly Egyptian elements in the Torah that makes sense in the context of the Exodus, but not a few centuries later in Canaan. (cf. James K. Hoffmeier, 1997, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Oxford). Moreover, there are evidence that Semitic workers (from Egypt) have been using alphabetic writing for centuries. In addition, it is known that papyrus does not preserve well in the climate of Canaan, and it is therefore to be expected that there will be little evidence of Hebrew/Israelite writing from this early if papyrus was the writing material of choice.

As for the claim that no text before the 4th century BC ascribe Mosaic authorship to the Torah, this is very much dependant on the dating of the other books in the Bible. Torah itself mentions Moses as author:
Exodus 17:14 "Then the Lord instructed Moses, 'Write this down as a permanent record...'"
Exodus 24:4 "Then Moses carefully wrote down all the Lord's instructions."
Exodus 34:27 "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down all these instructions, for they represents the terms of my covenant with you and with Israel.'"
Leviticus 1:1 "The Lord called to Moses from the Tabernacle and said to him, 'Give the following instructions to the Israelites...'"
Leviticus 6:8 "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Give Aaron and his sons the following instructions...'"
Deuteronomy 31:9 "So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests."
Deuteronomy 31:24-26 "When Moses had finished writing down this entire body of law in a book..."
The very next book (if you assume the traditional dating) Joshua, ascribe the authorship of the Torah to Moses (Joshua 1:7-8, Joshua 8:31-34, Joshua 22:5). To ascribe a late tradition for the Mosaic authorship of Torah, you have to assume (without any good reason) a late date for all/most of the other Old Testament books as well. This simply commits the logical fallacy of circular reasoning.

Regards

Chavoux Luyt