Late V

 

Some news to announce before starting today’s post -

I restarted this blog a few weeks ago as a forum to help me evaluate Dershowitz’s claim that the Shapira manuscript (“V”) is an antecedent text to D.  At that time, I hadn’t formed a personal opinion on the topic and I was hoping the blog would help me clarify my thinking. 

I am now somewhat disappointed to announce that after working on this blog for a few weeks, I’ve had a bit of an epiphany and have reached the conclusion that I believe Dershowitz is incorrect and that V is not antecedent to D and, if anything, was likely later than D and derivative of D.  I am somewhat disappointed to have arrived at this conclusion as it would have been pretty cool if we had actually found a text that was a precursor to our Bible.  But, alas, I need to follow the evidence.

I am going to spend this post describing my “epiphany” and why it makes me think that V must be newer than D.  In the next post, I’ll explore a bit more what the implications of this conclusion are for how we think about V and the evolution of the Torah more generally.  After that, I hope to go back to my regularly scheduled programming of going through the Decalogue slowly and meticulously.  But, I’ll also have to consider how much more time I want to devote to this blog.  Now that I am thinking that V is in-fact a later text than our Bible, it makes this entire topic considerably less interesting. 

Anyway, enough with the preamble and on to today’s post-

It dawned on me that one important piece of evidence to consider are specific passages that are either verbatim or close parallels between V and the Torah.  I discussed a few of these in my prior two posts but it dawned on me that it would be better to consider such passages together and more methodically.  Once I started down this path and evaluated these texts collectively, I came to believe that V must be the later text.  I’ll explain how I came to that conclusion below but first I need to list the specific textual parallels between V and the Torah.  

Firstly, the vast majority of such parallels are parallels between D and V.  There are many such passages and too many to list.  But, suffice it to say that the vast, vast, majority of V is comprised of passages that have close parallels in D. What about other verses?  First, let’s list them out.  I would generally bucket them into three categories:   

Example I – The spies:

The text V:

חי אני

כי כל העם הראם את אתתי ואת מפתי אשר עשתי

זה עשר פעמם ולא ה֯א֯מ֯נ֯ו֯ ולא שמעו בקלי

אם יראו את הארץ הטבה אשר נשבעתי לת

ת לאבתהם  

The parallel text in Numbers 14:21 – 14:23

אוּלָם, חַי-אָנִי:  …  יד,כב כִּי כָל-הָאֲנָשִׁים, הָרֹאִים אֶת-כְּבֹדִי וְאֶת-אֹתֹתַי, אֲשֶׁר-עָשִׂיתִי בְמִצְרַיִם, וּבַמִּדְבָּר; וַיְנַסּוּ אֹתִי, זֶה עֶשֶׂר פְּעָמִים, וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ, בְּקוֹלִי.  יד,כג אִם-יִרְאוּ, אֶת-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי, לַאֲבֹתָם; וְכָל-מְנַאֲצַי, לֹא יִרְאוּהָ

Although these texts are not verbatim, the parallels are too numerous for them not to share a common textual history.  Of particular note is the phrase “עשר פעמם”.  The reason this is such an important phrase is that it means something completely different in the two verses.  In V, it refers to the 10 plagues that God did in Egypt and in Numbers it refers to the 10 times that the Jews misbehaved in the desert.  The fact that the two verses have the same phrase verbatim but with a completely different meaning implies that there is a specific textual parallel between them.  This is not just a matter of the same story being repeated in two texts but clearly the texts themselves share a similar evolutionary history– one is a corruption of the other or they are both derivative of a third earlier work.

Another important feature of this verse is that it is found within a paragraph within V which is predominantly verbatim to D.  In other words, we have a passage which is basically the same between V and D with two important differences:

·       V has the above verse, which is also found in Numbers.  D does not have this verse

·       D also has several other verses which aren’t in V.  Those verses, as a general rule, don’t have such close verbal parallels elsewhere in the Bible

Example II Midyan :

The verse in V:

ותקראן לכם  לאכל מחג

הן  ותאלו  מזבחהן ותשתו מנס֯ח֯הן  ותשתחו  לאלה

הן

The parallel from Numbers 25:2

וַתִּקְרֶאןָ לָעָם, לְזִבְחֵי אֱלֹהֵיהֶן; וַיֹּאכַל הָעָם, וַיִּשְׁתַּחֲווּ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶן.

The verse in V continues

 ותזנו את נשי המדינם  ותצמדו לבעל פער

The parallel in Numbers 25:3

וַיִּצָּמֶד יִשְׂרָאֵל, לְבַעַל פְּעוֹר;

And finally, a few sentences later in V:

וַתֵּעָצַר, הַמַּגֵּפָה

Which has a parallel in Numbers 25:8 (also Numbers 17:13)

וַתֵּעָצַר, הַמַּגֵּפָה

Again, these are not verbatim but there is clearly much overlap here as should be obvious from just looking at the text. In fact, the above textual parallels comprise much of the Midyan episode from V which means most of the Midyan story in V is textually similar to the Midyan episode in Numbers.  The midyan episode has no parallel in D.  But, as with the spy example above, the midyan story in V is sandwiched between two other narratives which have close parallels in D.

Example III – the Decalogue and Lev 19 

I’ve referenced some of these texts in prior posts but will include here for completion

V:

לא תשבע בשמי

לשקר

Also, V:

ברך האיש

אשר לא ישבע בשמי לשקר

Also V:

ארר האיש אשר ישבע

בשמי לשקר

Parallel text in Lev 19:12

וְלֹא-תִשָּׁבְעוּ בִשְׁמִי, לַשָּׁקֶר

V:

לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ

Parallel text in Lev 19:17

לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ

V:

ברך האיש אשר לא יקם ולא יטר את נפש אחו ו

Parallel text in Lev 19:18

לֹא-תִקֹּם וְלֹא-תִטֹּר אֶת-בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ

V:

ברך האיש אשר לא

יכחש ולא יש֯קר ברעהו

Parallel text in Lev 19:11

וְלֹא-תְכַחֲשׁוּ וְלֹא-תְשַׁקְּרוּ, אִישׁ בַּעֲמִיתוֹ

V:

ברך] האיש אשר יאה

ב את רעהו

Parallel text in Lev 19:18

וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ

As discussed at length in the prior few posts, these examples all stick out like soar thumbs in the Decalogue. Most of the Decalogue is close textually to D but these verses seem to have overlap with Lev 19, and, importantly, don’t have much in common with the Decalogue in D.

Implications of the textual parallels

The above examples show close textual overlaps between V and various different authors of the Torah. Leviticus 19 is generally thought to be part of P or the Priestly school.  Sometimes it is singled out as a different text known as the Holiness Code or H but it is nonetheless at least a close relative to P.

The spies text is parallel to Numbers 14:21 -14:23 which is from JE.  The example above regarding Midyan is mostly from JE as well with the exception of Numbers 25:8 which is P. 

So, we have many parallel texts and there must be some evolutionary relationship between them.  The question though is – what is that relationship?  We can consider several theories:

Option 1 – Dershowitz’s Theory – Old V 

Under this theory, V is extremely old which explains why it has so much overlap with many different Biblical texts.  Because V is so old, it influenced many different Biblical texts. Upon reflection, I found this to be extremely unlikely, for the following reasons:

·       As shown above, the V texts are close parallels to texts from D, JE, P, H.  Thus, if this theory is correct, V would need to be a truly unparalleled text in its importance, influencing a very wide range of Biblical authors.  And, not just influencing them generally about theological concepts but influencing the very textual composition and linguistic formulations.  As shown above, these parallel texts are specifically textual parallels and in some cases, the words even mean completely different things in V than they mean in the rest of the Torah.  Thus, we would be claiming that a wide range of very different Biblical authors copied specific words and texts from V    

·       More importantly, the above texts are unique in two ways (1) unlike most of V, they have no parallel in D and (2) unlike most of V, they do have close parallels in the rest of the Torah.  In other words, if V was truly old and other authors were copying from V, then P, JE, H would be just as likely to copy a verse from V that is found in D as they would be likely to copy a verse  from V that is not found in D.   The fact that nearly all of the places that other authors happened to copy V were coincidently the same places that D didn’t copy V would be extremely bizarre.  If we believe this theory, we almost need to believe that there was some kind of coordinated effort, as though P, JE, D all got into a room and divided up the text of V between them.  Verses from V that were given to P to copy were therefore omitted from D because they had already been used by P.  Likewise, verses from V that were in JE were also omitted from D and D only took the remaining verses from V that were not found in P and JE.  Such a conspiracy is obviously extremely bizarre and unlikely, but if we reject it, we really have no way of explaining how D knew to exclude all of the verses from V that were also found elsewhere in the Torah. 

Option 2 – Late V  

The second possibility is that V is the late document and is derivative of the other sources.  This fits the evidence much more nicely.  V sat down to write his book and he had at his disposal, essentially, our Bible.  He decided to mostly copy texts from our D but he occasionally ventured into copying from other texts.  For this reason, it is precisely the times that V deviates from D that he also tends to copy from other Biblical authors.  Of course, there are other instances where V’s text is unique with no parallels in the Bible.  That isn’t a problem for this theory as V could have chosen occasionally to write novel texts or copy from other texts we don’t have.  But the point is that the times V strays from D, he generally ends up with a text that is close to other texts in the Bible because he was a late author copying from other Biblical texts. 

By late, I don’t necessarily mean a 19^th century forgery.  The text could still be 2,000 years old but the point is that it is later than the rest of the Bible and was based on the rest of the Bible.  In particular, Example II above (midyan) supports this theory as the text in V seem to be based on a combination of both JE and P texts, implying the author was already working off of a text where JE and P had been combined.

Option 3 – Other More Complicated Possibilities

As discussed in some of my prior posts, there are other possibilities.  For example, it is possible that the original D contained these verses as well and a later editor of the Torah removed these texts from D and moved them into other sections of the Torah.  I was willing to entertain this possibility when I was discussing the admonition against hating one’s fellow because that was just one example, and, as discussed in that post, the verse is textually more similar to D than P.  However, now that I am thinking about these many examples, I think it would be forced to try and argue for such a convenient editing process that resolves all of these difficulties.

There are of course many other more complicated possibilities.  Perhaps JE is the oldest which influenced V, the second oldest, and then V influenced P and D.  Perhaps all these texts are based on another even older text we don’t have.  Perhaps the various texts evolved in parallel and influenced one another.  There are infinite possibilities.  But, the fact remains that there is a very simple possibility which is that V is the latest which neatly explains the textual evidence we presented above.  V was the latest document and was basically based on D although V did have access to all of the other Biblical authors.  Occasionally, V decided to deviate from D and in those instances, he often mirrored language from other texts which he had available.  This simple explanation fits the evidence and one needs to get quite creative to explain this fact pattern any other way.

Conclusion       

In conclusion, I don’t think Dershowitz is correct that V was an extremely old text that influenced the other Biblical authors.  That doesn’t mean it’s a 19^th century forgery but just that it was later than the other texts and influenced by them.  This has important implications for how we think about the text which I will elaborate on in the next post.