לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ

I will follow Dershowitz’s convention of referring to the Shapira text as V. 

 I am going to begin my analysis with the 10 Commandments because it is the centerpiece of V. The 10 commandments in V are quite similar to the 10 Commandments in D and Exodus 20. The most notable difference is the addition of one more commandment in V which has no parallel in D or Exodus 20 which is the following:

 לא תשנא · את אחך · ב֯ ל֯ ב֯ בך 

I will post on some of the other commandments in coming posts but for this post, I want to focus on this commandment. This is the most important difference between V and D in the Decalogue and the key question is to understand the relationship between the texts -is V older than D in which case D deleted this commandment from his Decalogue or is D older than V and this is something that V added?

 I. Dershowitz’s argument 

Dershowitz argues that V must be older. In a nutshell, his argument is that this verse is an obvious parallel to Lev 19:17: 

לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ 

In general, Lev 19 has much overlap with the Decalogue so we have three texts (A) the decalogue in D, (B) the decalogue in V and (C) Lev 19. The question is what is the chronological order of these texts. Dershowitz argues as follows: 

-If D is the oldest and both Lev 19 and V are derivative of D, it would be odd that two separate authors who are derivative of D both coincidently added the same commandment that was not in the original D. Since these would be separate authors, that would be an amazing coincidence and highly unlikely. 

-However, if V is the oldest, it would make sense. The initial document, V contained this commandment which explains why it is in Lev 19, since Lev 19 was based on V, not D 

 II. Support for Dershowitz 

What do I think about this argument from Dershowitz? I am somewhat skeptical of it but before I explain why, let me share four reasons why I am sympathetic to his point of view: 

1. The text of Lev 19 does share close correspondence to the Decalogue so it is a bit odd that Lev 19:17 sits in Lev 19 with no analog in D. Dershowitz’s theory would answer this question 

2. The language of Lev 19:17 is a bit odd in context. First, consider the word לבב. Outside of D, it is not too common appearing only in Gen 20:5, 20:6, 31:26 Ex 14:5, Lev 19:17, 26:36, 26:41, Nu 15:39 for a total of 8 times. Moreover, most of the above are part of narratives and being used to describe the state of mind of a specific individual in a specific story. Only Nu 15:39 is similar to Lev 19:17 in using the word in the context of a command for what a generic person should do with their heart. In contrast, in D we find the term much more frequently in 1:28, 2:30, 4:9, 4:29, 4:39, 5:25, 6:5, 6:5, 7:17, 8:2, 8:5, 8:13, 8:17, 9:4, 9:5, 10:12, 10:16, 11:13, 11:16, 11:18, 13:4, 15:7, 15:9, 15:10, 17:17, 17:20, 18:20, 19:6, 20:3, 20:8 (x2), 26:16, 28:28, 28:47,28:66, 29:17, 29:18, 30:1, 30:2, 30:6 (x3), 30:10, 30:14, 30:17, 32:46. And, many of these usages are similar to Lev 19:17 of being a general statement of what should be done with the heart. Thus, Dershowitz’s hypothesis that Lev 19:17 was originally written in a document that was related to D is appealing. Of course, many of the references above have no analog in V but D and V are closely related so if the term לבב was common the V/D school, it would explain its abundance in V, D, and also in Lev 19:17, according to Dershowitz’s theory. 

3. A similar comment could be made about the word “אחך.” אחך is quite common throughout the Torah but again, usually in a narrative talking about an actual brother (e.g. Gen 4:9 but see many others as well). The use of the term in the sense of Lev 19:17 of “your fellow Jew” is more rare, appearing only in Lev 10:5, 19:17 (our verse), 25:25, 25:35, 25:36, 25:39, 25:46, 25:47, Nu 32:6, Deut 1:16. 3:18, 3:20, 15:3, 15:7 (X2), 15:9, 15:11, 15:12, 17:15 (X2), 18:15, 22:1 (x2) 22:2 (x2) 22:3, 22:4, 23:20, 23:21, 24:14, 25:3. So, the usage is 9 times outside of D and 22 times in D. In other words, it isn’t impossible for this usage to appear in Leviticus but it certainly would seem more at home in D than in Leviticus 

4. The root שנא is also slightly more common in D. By my count, it appears 5 times in Genesis, 4 in Exodus, twice in Leviticus, twice in Numbers and 18 times in Deuteronomy. Again, not unheard of in Leviticus but slightly more at home in Duet All of the above is to say that the verse in question “ לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ” is somewhat more at home in D than in Leviticus so the idea that it might have originated in a text from the same school of D is attractive 

III. Problems with Dershowitz 

In spite of the above, I see one major issue with Dershowitz’s theory. Before explaining the problem, I want to say a brief word about Lev 19. The text of Lev has many parallels to the 10 commandments but the actual language used is quite distinct. Take for example the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. In Deuteronomy 5 we have: 

כַּבֵּד אֶת-אָבִיךָ וְאֶת-אִמֶּךָ, כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ--לְמַעַן יַאֲרִיכֻן יָמֶיךָ, וּלְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, עַל הָאֲדָמָה, אֲשֶׁר-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ

Compared to Lev 19

 אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ 

 Of course, the theme is similar between the two versus, honoring one’s parents – but the lexicon, syntax, and verbiage is totally different. In fact, if we compare Lev 19 to Deut 5, we find that exactly 0 of the commandments are repeated verbatim between the two chapters.

OK. Back to Dershowitz. When we compare the Decalogue in V to Lev 19, we find exactly 2 commandments that are basically verbatim to Lev 19, (1) the commandment in question לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ And (2) the commandment וְלֹא-תִשָּׁבְעוּ בִשְׁמִי, לַשָּׁקֶר Which appears in Lev 19:12 and is also in V in place of the commandment לֹא תִשָּׂא from D. I say basically verbatim because the second verse does differ by two “וְ”s. A possible third parallel is לֹא, תִּגְנֹבוּ which appear sin Lev 19:11 and is a close cousin (though not exact) to one of the 10 commandments. However, that is just a two-word phrase so much less impressive than our verse which is several words long and verbatim between V and Lev 19. 

 So, why is all of this a problem for Dershowitz? The Decalogue in D and V are quite close. These two verses of לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ and וְלֹא-תִשָּׁבְעוּ בִשְׁמִי, לַשָּׁקֶר Are two of the largest differences. For most of the commandments, V follows D either mostly or partly verbatim. So, if Dershowitz is correct, we are to believe the following: 

• The original document, V included 10 commandments 

• D copied V, generally verbatim but the two places where D decided to deviate from V the most were these two commandments of לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ and וְלֹא-תִשָּׁבְעוּ בִשְׁמִי, לַשָּׁקֶר. The first of those two, D decided to completely drop and the latter, D changed dramatically, much more so than he changed most of the other commandments 

• In contrast, the author of Lev 19 based his work loosely on V but generally used very different language from V. The two times when Lev 19 decided to copy V verbatim were, coincidently the two times when D decided not to copy V verbatim 

 The above “coincidence” according to Dershowitz is a bit too far-fetched for me. Of course, it is possible that all of the above is due to chance but I find the whole thing odd. Consider the following: 

• Lev 19 is generally very distant verbally from Deut 5. But, for some reason, he decades to copy two several word verses verbatim. This, of its own right, would be odd

• Deut copies V verbatim but makes one massive notable change of omitting one of the commandments, coincidently the same commandment that Lev 19 copied verbatim? 

Perhaps this is due to coincidence but I find that to be a bit of a stretch. 

 IV. Alternative Hypotheses 

Is there another interpretation here? I’d like to offer two: 

Iv(a) Late V 

One possibility is that Dershowitz is wrong and V is just late. In that case, Dershowitz asks us to explain how V and Lev 19 could have coincidently both added the same verse not included in D. However, that question assumes that V didn’t have access to Lev 19. If he did, he might have copied the verse from Lev 19. If V was a 19th century forgery, he certainly would have had access to Lev 19 but even if V is several thousand years old, is still might post-date Lev 19 and so perhaps he copied that verse from Lev 19 into V. Why would he have done such a thing? Well, perhaps he was bothered by the fact that the Decalogue only has 9 commandments so needed to come up with a 10th and picked a verse from another chapter of the Bible which includes the 10 commandments. Perhaps there was another reason – who knows? The point is that Dershowitz sees the close parallel between V and Lev 19 as evidence that Lev was based on V. I see it differently. We know from the reset of the Chapter that the relationship between Lev 19 and the Decalogue is one of loose correspondence, not verbatim repetition. What we are seeing in our verse is therefore something different and its literary history must therefore be explained by another mechanism. If that is the case, the evolution of this particular verse doesn’t tell us anything about the evolution of the rest of the chapter. 

 This explanation has the benefit of explaining the exact duplication of this verse between Lev 19 and V although it doesn’t explain the linguistic evidence offered earlier that the verse itself seems more at home in D than Lev 19 

Iv(a) Cut and Paste 

Under this hypothesis, we concur with Dershowitz that both V and D were extant earlier texts that predated our Bible (though the chronological ordering between them is unclear). However, we depart from Dershowitz’s assertion that Lev 19 was based on V. How then do we explain the duplication of our verse in both texts? Perhaps the original Lev 19 didn’t include this verse at all but was a later addition. The editor of the Bible drafted Deut 5 by combining two earlier texts, one which included the verse (V) and one which did not (something closer to our Deut 5, called proto-D here). The editor was faced with a dilemma about what to do with this verse. On the one hand, he couldn’t include this verse in the 10 commandments because it is not one of the 10 according to the counting scheme of proto-D which is the one he ultimately adopted. On the other hand, the editor didn’t want to just delete a commandment that was a crucial commandment in V. So, what to do? Perhaps the editor just displaced the sentence in our Bible and stuck it in Lev 19 although it was not there originally. That might explain why it sits in Lev 19 with language that feels so out of place.