Why do We Care?

 

So, why does it matter whether V was written before D or after D?  Of course, there is the narrow question about the historical evolution of the texts if you care about such things but are there any larger implications?  In this post, I want to discuss two:

1. Implications for Broader Evolution of Judaism

How did Judaism evolve?  What came first and what evolved later?  The question of the ordering of the texts has huge importance to this.  Many scholars believe that Judaism originally evolved as a series of rituals and the Biblical narratives evolved as a way to explain preexisting rituals.  This would seem to clash with an early-V hypothesis since V is mostly devoid of any rituals/law but has tons of narrative. 

Indeed, the fact that the Decalogue is the only law in D and that it also dominates the blessings and curses later in the book would seem to elevate the Decalogue in our understanding of the evolution of Judaism.  It would suggest that the religion originally evolved as just the 10-commandments and some narratives/theology and the bulk of the law code came later.  This kind of theory certainly makes sense when thinking about certain laws that aren’t too common in the Torah and seem ancillary such as the law of tzitzis.  But what about other rituals, like the Pascal lamb, which is referred to again and again in the Torah and seems to be a central part of the Exodus Narrative?  Are we to believe that the original Judaism had no Passover holiday and indeed, no holidays at all other than the Sabbath?  If V is the oldest text, that might indeed be the implication.  The fact that the 10-commandemnts are really devoid of ritual and focus purely on theological based commandments (e.g. not worshiping idols) and laws between man (e.g. don’t kill) greatly changes the nature of the religion.  It also helps to explain why the Decalogue is given such importance in the Biblical narrative as the core of revelation.  In our version of the Torah, it is difficult to understand why this is true given the Decalogue is just 10 of many different laws in the Bible

2. Implications for Understanding of Evolution of Biblical Texts

But does the Early-V hypothesis tell us anything more generally about how Biblical texts evolved?  On some level, the answer is no.  V is exactly what we would expect to see from an ancient pre-curser of the Bible: it shares much in common thematically and textually with other Biblical authors but the sentence structure and ordering shows significant editing, with many additions and deletions. 

Nonetheless, there are some important differences between the evolution of V/D on the one hand vs. how scholars generally envision the process of Biblical textual evolution.  So, the question of whether V is early or late has broader implications for whether we need to rethink our understanding of Biblical textual evolution. If V is late, it makes sense that its evolution is different from other examples of textual evolution in the Bible.  If it is early, that might mean we misunderstood the paradigm of Biblical textual Evolution.  How so?

2a. Editing of textual spelling/vocabulary to confirm to author-specific conventions.

DH loves to point out that different authors use different spellings/vocabulary/sentence structure etc. How did this come about?  The simplest explanation (Option 1) is that different authors used different conventions during the original drafting of documents because of their time/place or personal preferences.  When these texts were combined, the different textual conventions became signals of different authors in the combined text.  Option 2 is that at the point of original drafting, the different texts actually started similar to eachother but authors later intentionally edited documents to create these sort of discrepancies intentionally.  There might have been reasons to do such editing such as to make the document conform to certain theological agendas.

When you just look at the Torah, it seems obvious that Option 1 is generally correct (though there may be some exceptions).  First of all, the final editor of the Torah obviously did not edit it to force conformity across authors suggesting Option 2 isn’t correct.  Additionally, it just seems weird to believe that these sorts of editorial corrections were common in the drafting of the Torah and there seems to be no reason to think this was how it generally worked.

However, under the Early-V hypothesis, it seems clear that Option 2 is correct.  V and D differ in how they spell the Hebrew pronoun “I” and the term they use for God. The former appears ~50 times in D and the latter ~200 times in D so these are very common words.  Whichever came second from V/D clearly went through the earlier text and systematically edited the text to change the spelling of the pronoun “I” and to change the name of God as these changes were made systematically.  It can’t be that the later author just used their own preferred spelling in their original drafting since the later document was mostly copied from the earlier one, implying a clear intentional editing to bring the text in-line with the latter author’s drafting conventions. 

2b. Evolution as a keenly textual, not theological, narrative, or legal concept

Even under traditional-DH, it’s quite clear that many of these authors copied from eachother, or at least, that the traditions/narratives etc evolved and so there is much influence from one author to the next.  But, did authors literally sit down and copy specific words from prior texts when drafting their own document?  In traditional DH, we always emphasize the divergent literary, textual, grammatical etc styles between authors to demonstrate that the influence was more related to content and not textual drafting.

When it comes to V & D, this is clearly not the case.  The close textual similarity between the texts on its own suggests a strong textual influence but if you look closely, you can see specific examples where authors seem to be copying words from each other specifically, and not copying content.  One example was in the prior post where we talked about the “10 trials” which in our Torah refers to the 10 times the Jews tested God but in V refers to the 10 plagues.  Thus, the text is similar (10 times) but the meaning is totally different.  Another great example is in the Decalogue:

We have in our Bible:

אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֵל קַנָּא--פֹּקֵד עֲוֺן אָבוֹת עַל-בָּנִים וְעַל-שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל-רִבֵּעִים, לְשֹׂנְאָי.  ט וְעֹשֶׂה חֶסֶד, לַאֲלָפִים--לְאֹהֲבַי, וּלְשֹׁמְרֵי מצותו

The parallel verse in V:

לא תשבע · בשמי · לשקר · כי · אנך · אקנא · את

עון · אבת · על · בנם · על · שלשם · ועל

רבעם · לנ

שאי שמי · לשקר

In both texts, God is visiting the sins on the fathers on the sons.  But who are these people deserving of such harsh punishment?  In D, it is the people that hate God “שנאי”.  In V it is those who lift his name “נשאי” in vain.  Note two letters have switched position and the meaning is totally different.  Thus, there is a clear example of copying a text (with a slight modification of letter ordering) that totally changes the meaning.  This isn’t just a matter of a typo since the entire text around this key word in each document pivots to accommodate the spelling in that particular text.  In D, the idea of God visiting punishment against those who hate Him is paralleled with God rewarding those who love Him, a concept missing in V.  In V, this sentence is particularly nestled in the commandment of false swearing (those who lift my name in vain) whereas in D it appears in a different commandment entirely [not worshiping idols].  Thus, whichever author came later copied this text, reversed two of the letters to completely change the meaning and then reworked the text to align to the new meaning, a clear example of copying specifically a text without copying content.  

3. What does this mean for DH?

The above picture paints an evolution of the religion in the form of D/V which is much more textual than the thematic evolution we are familiar with in the DH.  What are the implications?  I think there are three possibility and it largely depends on when you think V was written

3a. Late V

As with the prior posts, if we believe V was much later than the rest of the textual evolution in the Torah, it would explain why the evolution of V is more textual than thematic.  By the time V was written, the Torah was already ossified as a text so when V was drafted, the specific relation of V to the text of the Torah was more important.  This would certainly be true if V was a 19^th century forgery as by that time, most of what we knew of ancient Israelite religion came from the Torah.  But, even if V is 2,000 years old, by that time we have reason to believe the text of the Torah was mostly ossified so V’s close textual relationship to prior texts would make sense

3b. V as an alternative paradigm

The second possibility is that V is indeed ancient and just represents a different paradigm of textual evolution relative to what we’ve seen before.  Why would it be so different?  The obvious answer is that V & D would be two closely related books from the same school so have a different relationship than, for example, P vs. D.  In other words, maybe there were certain schools of thought in ancient Israel, broken down perhaps geographically, temporally, theologically and they produced different documents.  Thus, there might have been 10 different version of the Torah within the P school and another 10 within the D school.  D & V would be two different versions within the D school which explains their close relationship and textual evolution.  Similarly, the same might be true of different texts within the P school but these are no longer transparent to us since all we have is one version of the Torah.  Therefore, when we look at the Torah, we mostly see the starker differences between the schools but that elides more subtle distinctions within the schools that the V/D split allows us to see.

3c. V as a paradigm shift

The final possibility is that our prior understanding of the Torah’s evolution was just wrong.  After all, we don’t have specific examples of original Biblical texts so our understanding of the textual evolution is based on conjecture and piecing together the fragments from within the Torah.  It’s possible that our attempts to do this have been misguided and V is showing us the way texts actually evolved which just wasn’t apparent to us until now without the specific examples of the original texts.  This is the most interesting possibility as it potentially upends our entire thinking about Biblical evolution.  While tantalizing, this possibility rests on an assumption that V is indeed an original text and, per my last post, I am somewhat skeptical of this.

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.

I am the Lord

In the last post, I talked about the most important difference between the Decalogues in D and V.  In this post, I will circle around and start at the beginning of the Decalogue. 

I. An Overview of the Text

As with the past post, we note the opening verse of three versions of the Decalogue (1) the traditional one in our Bible in Ex 20 and Deut 5, (2) the version in V and (3) the text of Lev 19.

Each of the three texts open with a similar but slightly different line:

In Ex 20/Deut 5:

אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

In V:

אנך אלהם אלהך

And in Lev 19:

אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

One obvious thing to note is that each sources uses its own language for the phrase: 

·       -For the pronoun I:

o   D uses Anoki and Lev 19 uses Ani, which are consistent with the usages in D and P/H respectively.  For more detail on this, see my post on this topic: http://littlefoxling.blogspot.com/2006/12/anianoki.html

o   V uses “אנך” which is the term for “I” throughout V

·       For the name of God:

o   D uses “Hashem Elokechu” as he almost always does for God.  See my post on that for more details: http://littlefoxling.blogspot.com/2007/03/blog-post_8872.html

o   V uses “אלהם אלהך “ which is the way he describes God

Of course, none of this is surprising and we would expect each author to follow his own linguistic patterns.  What is more interesting is the way this initial introduction fits into the larger story of the Decalogue:

·       In Ex 20/Deut 5, it is an introductory phrase and that’s it.  The Decalogue starts out “I am the Lord” and them moves on to other topics

·       In V, this is both an introduction and a refrain.  The Decalogue starts out “I am the Lord” and then repeats this same phrase “אנך אלהם אלהך” again and again at the end of each Commandment, to signify the end of the commandment

·       In Lev 19, the pattern is similar to V but slightly different.  The phrase is both the opening and also a common refrain.  However, unlike in V, in Lev 19 this phrase is repeated occasionally and not methodically after each commandment

II. Dershowitz’s Theory

So, what does all this mean?  As in the prior post, Dershowitz argues that the commonality between Lev 19 and V implies that Lev 19 was based on V which implies V is very old.  The argument here is that if Deut 5 is the original and both Lev 19 and V were based on Deut, it would be very odd for both authors to coincidentally adopt a convention whereby the opening sentence “I am the Lord” is turned into a refrain.  Therefore, it is more likely that V is older and D dropped the refrain from V but Lev 19 opted to keep it.

III. I am the Lord – Usage in the Bible

Before analyzing Dershowitz’s theory, I want to take a brief detour to consider how the phrase, “I am the Lord” is used in the Bible.  This is a very popular phrase in the Bible and is used in different ways.  I would categorize them into four categories as follows:

1.Revelation

(14 times in the Torah): This is a common theme for all authors of the Torah.  In particular, this phrase seems to be used when God first speaks to someone as a way of revealing who he is - “I am God.”  We find this in all authors though it is used slightly differently for each:

1a. 6 times in P (Gen 17:1 35:11 Ex 6:2; 6:6 6:29; Lev 18:2).  Note according to P, the crescendo of revelation: we have initially (for Gen 1 – 16) God being referred to as Elohim.  Then, he comes to the fathers and reveals his name as “El Shadai” with the phrase “Ani El Shedai.”  The he reveals himself to Moses as “Ani YHWH.”

1b. Six times in JE:

Gen 15:7; 26:24; 28:13; 31:13; 46:3; Ex 3:6

1c. Twice in D

Ex 20 Deut 5:6

Elsewhere in the Bible as well:

Ezekiel 20:5; Psalms 81:11

2: You will know I am God

(9 times in the Torah).  This is a particular usage of the phrase that is pretty much unique to P although the author for some of these texts is unclear:

Ex 6:7; 7:5; 8:18; 10:2 (authorship unclear); 14:4; 14:18: 16:12; 29:46 Deut 29:5 (authorship unclear)

Note in the Torah we only find this in P but we have this elsewhere in the Bible

I Kings 20:13; 20:28 Isiah 45:3; 49:23; 49:26; 60:16 Jer 24:7 Ezekiel 5:13 6:7; 6:10; 6:13; 6:14; 7:4; 7:9; 7:27; 11:10; 11:12; 12:15; 12:16; 12:20; 13:9; 13:14; 13:21; 13:23; 14:8; 15:7; 16:62; 17:21; 20:12 (this is also category 4); 20:20 (this is also category 4); 20:26; 20:38; 20:42; 20:44; 21:10; 22:16; 22:22: 24:24; 24:26; 25:5; 25:7; 25:10; 25:17; 26:6; 28:22; 28:23; 28:24; 28:26; 29:6; 29:9; 29:16; 29:21; 30:8; 30:19; 30:25; 30:26; 32:15; 33:29; 34:27; 34:30; 35:4; 35:9; 35:12; 35:15; 36:11; 36:23; 36:38; 37:6; 37:13; 37:14; 37:28; 38:23; 39:6; 39:7; 39:22; 39:28; Joel 2:27 (though note different syntax); 4:17; Psalms 46:11

The plethora of instances in Ezekiel is especially noteworthy, both for their sheer number and also because of the general commonality between P and Ezekiel, thus the usage of this phrase particularly in P and Ezekiel is noteworthy.         

3. God’s power /dependability

(8 times in the Torah).  This usually appears ending or beginning a sentence in a narrative, prophecy, blessing, or curse, as a statement of God’s power or dependability.  The idea here seems to be a signal of God’s power– you can count on me and you should be afraid of me - I am God and I am dependable.  Again, this is mostly a P phrase.  We find it

3a. 7 times in P

Ex 6:8; 12:12; 29:46 Lev 26:13; 26:44; 26:45 Nu 14:35

3b. -Once in JE in Ex 15:26 though note the different syntax relative to P

3d. Elsewhere in the Bible as well: Judges 6:10 Isaiah 27:3 41:4 41:10 41:13 41:17 42:6 42:8 43:3 43:11; 43:12 43:15 (though not parallel with category 4 below); 44:24 45:5; 45:6; 45:7; 45:8; 45:18; 45:19; 45:21; 45:22; 46:9; 48:17; 51:15; 60:22; 61:8 Jerimiah 9:23; 17:10; 32:27 Ezekiel 5:15; 5:17; 12:25; 14:4; 14:7; 14:9; 17:24 (x2); 21:4; 21:22; 21:36; 22:14; 23:49: 24:14; 26:14; 30:12; 34:24 (x2) (though categorization unclear)  34:31; 36:36 (x2); Zechariah 10:6 Malachi 3:6; Hoshea 12:10; 13:4               

4. The law code refrain

(56 times in the Torah) This phrase is used as a rationale for why the Jews should keep the law.  These usages are often ending a law code section and often with a particular focus on holiness.  This usage is ubiquitous in P but rare elsewhere.  We find it:

4a. 54 times in P / H.  These, in-turn, can be broken into two categories:

-Usages relating to the holiness of God, in-effect, saying God is Holy, so too Israel should be holy.  These appear 17 times including:  Ex 31:13; Lev 11:44; 11:45; 19:2; 20:7; 20:8; 20:26; 21:8; 21:15; 21:23; 22:2; 22:9; 22:16; 22:32; Nu 3:13; 15:41 (x2, linkage to holiness debatable)

Examples without the holiness theme appearing 37 times including Lev 18:4, 18:5, 18:6, 18:20, 18:30; 19:3; 19:4; 19:10; 19:12; 19:14; 19:16; 19:18; 19:24; 19:28; 19:30; 19:31; 19:32; 19:33; 19:36; 19:37; 20:24 22:3; 22:8; 22:30; 22:31; 22:33; 23:22 23:42 24:31; 25:38; 25:35; 26:1; 26:2 Nu 3:41; 3:45 10:10 35:34   

Twice in D:

Ex 20:4; Deut 5:8

Elsewhere in the Bible Ezekiel 20:7; 20:12 (this is also category 2); 20:19; 20:20 (this is also category 2)

Again, it is noteworthy that this usage is common in Ezekiel and not elsewhere.

So, what should we make of all of the above?  A few things jump out:

A. The phrase is obviously very common and used by many many Biblical authors.  This might indicate it is a very old phrase from an earlier text that influenced many different others or it might just mean that it is the conjunction of two supper-common words “I” and “God” so is of course common

B. While a very common phrase, its use in P and related texts is quite distinct from the use elsewhere in the Bible. 

Elsewhere in the Bible, it is mainly used as a kind of revelation “Behold, I am God.”  The one additional notable usage is in Isaiah where it is a kind of boast, signaling God’s power.

However, in P/H, the phrase fits into the broader theology in a broader way.  What is the broader theological story?  A few of the above verses spell-it out explicitly so it is worth quoting a few of them in full:

There are two sub-themes here:

Theme 1 – God is Holy so too, you shall be Holy and the keep the law:

Lev 11:44:

 כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה, אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, וְהִתְקַדִּשְׁתֶּם וִהְיִיתֶם קְדֹשִׁים, כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אָנִי

Lev 19:2

דַּבֵּר אֶל-כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם--קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ:  כִּי קָדוֹשׁ, אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

Lev 20:26

וִהְיִיתֶם לִי קְדֹשִׁים, כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה

Theme 2: I took you out of Egypt so you should know I am God

Exodus 6:7

לָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם, וְהָיִיתִי לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים; וִידַעְתֶּם, כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, הַמּוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם, מִתַּחַת סִבְלוֹת מִצְרָיִם

Exodus 29:45-46

וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם, לֵאלֹהִים.  מו וְיָדְעוּ, כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, לְשָׁכְנִי בְתוֹכָם:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם.

Some versus actually link the two themes together:

Lev 11:45

כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה, הַמַּעֲלֶה אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, לִהְיֹת לָכֶם, לֵאלֹהִים; וִהְיִיתֶם קְדֹשִׁים, כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אָנִי.

Lev 22:32

 וְלֹא תְחַלְּלוּ, אֶת-שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי, וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי, בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:  אֲנִי יְהוָה, מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם.  לג הַמּוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, לִהְיוֹת לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה

These verses explain why in P the phrase “I am God” is used in these different contexts.  The text is using the same phrase “I am God” both to signify God’s revelation and also as a law code refrain. This is not accidental but intentional and meant to signify that there is a direct link between the revelation and the law code.  The law creates a link between God and man and the usage of the phrase “I am God” signifies that link.  God revealed himself via the Exodus so that we might know him and know his Holiness and follow the code so we too might be holy. 

 

IV. Implications of Dershowitz’s Theory

Dershowitz’s theory potentially explains a mystery about the above story:

Why is this phrase, “I am God” so common in the Bible and why is it used by virtually all Biblical authors? Dershowitz’s theory upgrades the importance of the phrase “I am God” in the evolution of the Biblical texts in several important ways which might explain why the phrase is so important:

1. According to Dershowitz, V is ancient and served as a basis for much of the rest of the Bible so the extra importance of the phrase “I am God” in V might explain its importance in other texts as well

2. In all texts of the Bible, “I am God” is the initial revelation of God in the 10 commandments but it has extra importance in V because it is also used as the refrain of the 10 commandments.  The fact that the phrase is so important in V might explain its importance in other texts

3. The 10 commandments itself is more important in V than any other text.  There are two reasons for that: (1) unlike in other texts, in V, the Decalogue is the only law code which imbues it with extra importance and (2) in Decalogue, the 10 commandments is also the basis for other texts such as the blessings and the curses.  The fact that the profile of the 10 commandments is raised would explain why the opening line of the document would be so important

More importantly though is the implication of Dershowitz’s theory to the theological narrative for P above. 

As we noted, P uses the phrase “I am God” both for revelation and as a law code refrain.  Furthermore, P himself in-effect seems to explain that double usage on theological grounds: there is a link between the revelation and the law.

In contrast, V also uses the phrase “I am God” both for revelation and as a law code refrain. However, nowhere does V develop the aforementioned theological explanation of this double usage.  Moreover, in V, the double usage seems to have another purpose which is as a refrain signaling the end of each commandment. 

Since, according to Dershowitz, V preceded P, that would imply that the double use of the phrase “I am God” as revelation and law code refrain preceded the theological explanation of that double usage.  Above, we gave the impression that P has some broader theological narrative about linking revelation with the law code and he chose to mirror that narrative with the textual usage of the phrase I am God.  According to Dershowitz, it is just the opposite, the textual linking preceded the theological narrative and actually came from a different source and the entire theology must have been developed by P/H to explain the already existing textual formula.  

V. Plausibility of Dershowitz’s Theory

This story is quite thought-provoking and turns our understanding of the evolution of the concept of “I am God” on its head.    

An obvious oddity of this theory (similar to what we outlined in the prior post) is that it has us believe that this concept of revelation as a basis for the law code, which is so central in P, actually originated in V.  Of course, Biblical authors copy ideas from eachother all the time but what is odd here is that D is much more closely based on V than P but yet D does not seem impressed with this concept.  In other words, according to Dershowitz, V originally developed the theology linking together revelation with the law code but his concept was then completely deleted by D (despite its close relationship with V) and yet become a central pillar of P entire theology, despite the great distance between V and P.

Furthermore, to me, it feels a bit too-cute to argue that this whole major theological theory in P is an outgrowth of a specific textual choice in the Decalogue.  But, given the chronology according to Dershowitz and the close parallels between Lev 19 and V’s Decalogue, I don’t see how you can argue it any other way according to Dershowitz.

On the other hand, the theory does help to explain some of the oddities of the use of the phrase in the Bible noted above.  It explains why the phrase is so ubiquities (because it is a central linchpin in an ancient text V) and how it developed into being both a way of expressing revelation and a refrain for law codes.  

Of somewhat interest here is Ezekiel 20 which is the only place of the Bible including the law-code refrain meaning of “I am God” outside of P.  What is interesting is that this chapter also has some parallels to the 10-commandements in terms of emphasizing the Exodus and including the law of the Sabbath, but it is otherwise quite distinct.

  

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.

Welcome back

It's been a long time. As readers of this blog will know, this bog was mainly active back in 2006 - 2007 when I was studying the documentary hypothesis and it was a forum for me to post ideas and debate them with friends and readers. At some point in time, I moved on with my life and stopped studying biblical criticism and so stopped posting. 

 I am sure many of the blog's readers will also know that there has been some news in the field of Biblical Criticism. An academic by the name of Idan Dershowitz has claimed to have found the text of an ancient Hebrew scripture which he claims predates Deuteronomy. If true, that would force us to rethink what we believe we know about the evolution of the scripture and the Documentary Hypothesis. I was intrigued by this hypothesis so plan to spend the next few months reading his monograph on the topic and reflecting carefully on his arguments. I am going to revive the blog for the next few months so I can post thoughts and reflections as I go. 

 I understand that nobody blogs anymore and now everyone just screams at eachother on facebook so perhaps nobody will read what I write. But, at least I’ll have a forum to articulate my thoughts.