I'd like to suggest another possibility for explaining the range of impossibly large
numbers not only in the Exodus and Numbers texts, but throughout the Hebrew Bible. I
think it more likely that late in the Persian period or early in the Hellenistic
period, and editor or editors consistently altered the numbers included in the
historical texts by factors of either 10 or 100. The idea was suggested by what appear
to be a few "misses" and by the similarly motivated alteration of numbers in
earlier Assyrian texts as described in Marco De Odorico's _The Use of Numbers and
Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions_ (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus
Project, 1995). I've put my notes on this idea online here:
http://www.bombaxo.com/numbmult.html
Another option is that it suggests that the Multiplier, without understanding of the factors of population and econcomic growth in the region, could not believe the smaller, original numbers to be correct, and set about to remedy the perceived errors.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.