10 Commandments

I noted before that the boundaries of D are more or less equal to the boundaries of Moshe’s speech to Israel. Hencoop continues to harp on this point and argue that it is for this reason that the language of D differs from that of the rest of Chumash. But, the boundaries of D are not exactly equal to the boundaries of Moshe’s speech. Hencoop already noted the problem of Nach, but even in Chumash exceptions to the rule exist, though they are rare. The rareness of such exceptions makes it hard to accept the cherry picking argument. Their existence makes it hard to accept the Moshe’s style argument.

The first such exception I’d like to consider is the aseres hadibros. In many ways, these resemble D. For those who are keeping score, these verses are consistent with the D we’ve met in the last two posts. Anoki comes up twice and korban not at all. Of course, that’s not enough to assign it to D. But there are other reasons as well. For example, consider the following. The concept of love between God and man comes up 19 times in Chumash (Ex 20:5 Deut 4:37 5:9 6:5 7:8 7:9 7:13 10:12 10:15 10:18 11:1 11:13 11:22 13:4 19:9 23:6 30:6 30:16 30:20) all of them in D and one of them in the commandments in Exodus. I realize that that is not enough to assign a passage to D, but I will give other reasons in coming posts.

Of course, this is a prime example where the pep talk/law book example might help. But, I’m not using this to argue for a distinction between P & D generally, but to note the connection between D and the dibros. Moreover, 19 to 0 is pretty hard to buy, even with the pep talk argument.

In a way, the dibros are a problem for the DH. Firstly, the fact that even D passages find there way into the first 4 books suggests that the cry of “cherry picking” might be right after all. Moreover, as we shall see in coming posts, the commandments in Ex are sort of a half way point, having some similarities to D and others to E.

But, at the same time, this example is also a thorn in the side of those who claim that the D style is Moshe’s style. Why would God ,all of a sudden, adopt Moshe’s style in the middle of the Torah.