Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Yes that was the gist of my friends monograph. The Jews and Samaritan made modifications to a lost ur-text.

It is odd to imagine a four book Torah ending without the description of Moses's final days.

Off the top of my head though, according to the Documentary Hypothesis there was a final redactor in the Persian period (Ezra?). Maybe Moses' last days were edited out of the first four books when Deuteronomy was added to them. However, there are other instances of doublets in the Torah so it does seem odd that there isn't a second account of Moses' death somewhere when there are two accounts of other things (like the creation or the flood).

I need to refresh my memory, but I recall that there are consistent themes running through Deuteronomy to Kings (with the place God chose to put his name being but one). Friedman also convinced me (last time I thought about it) that this was all written by Jeremiah, who uses similar language and themes, to such an extent that even the rabbis thought he wrote Kings. As the wiki page for Jeremiah notes, "Jeremiah is traditionally credited with authoring the Book of Jeremiah, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and the Book of Lamentations, with the assistance and under the editorship of Baruch ben Neriah, his scribe and disciple."

"Jeremiah wrote the book which bears his name, the Book of Kings, and Lamentations."

http://www.come-and-hear.com/bababathra ... ra_15.html

"Since the second half of the 20th century most scholars have agreed with Martin Noth's thesis that the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings form parts of a single work. Noth maintained that the history was written in the early Exilic period (6th century BCE) in order to demonstrate how Israel's history was worked out in accordance with the theology expressed in the book of Deuteronomy (which thus provides the name "Deuteronomistic"). Noth believed that this history was the work of a single author, living in the mid-6th century BCE, selecting, editing and composing from his sources to produce a coherent work."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Judges

According to Friedman this proposed single author was Jeremiah (and his scribe Baruch), but I'll have to re-read him to give any of his specific reasons for thinking this.

This book, which offers a reassessment of Noth, outlines some common elements between Deuteronomy and Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (pg. 4):

"As for the dtr material itself, Noth argued that it exhibited a high degree of linguistic uniformity, and its distribution reached from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. He found no such dtr redaction in Genesis to Numbers."

https://books.google.com/books?id=nYPQi ... ry&f=false

While I'm still poking around at work I notice that Richter also notes the similarity in language between Deuteronomy and Jeremiah regarding YHWH's name (pg. 7-9):

"Unique to Dtr's treatment of the temple project is the fact that throughout the DH, the narrator repeatedly speaks not of YHWH's presence in the temple, but of the temple as that place in which YHWH's name might be found ... 'the place in which YHWH your God will choose to cause his name to dwell' ... This formula is found six (I will argue seven) times in Deuteronomy and is quoted in Jer 7:12, Ezra 6:12, and Neh 1:9."

https://books.google.com/books?id=WY_Of ... ry&f=false

Jer. 7:11-12:

"Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, declares the LORD. But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I made My name dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel."

iskander wrote: Perhaps it is as you suggest, but...

The lost book of the patriarchs?

I have given you one shechem more than your brothers, which I took with my sword and my bow.
Modern scholarship has struggled with this problem in various ways.41 Erhard Blum and Nahum Sarna both suggested that the verse reflects a tradition about Jacob making war on Shechem which was not preserved in the biblical corpus.42 A more radical hypothesis was offered years earlier by John Skinner:

http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_192.pdf

Manifest Destiny?

Yet the hints to a warlike Jacob saga noted by Skinner point to the probability that the early patriarchal accounts may very well have been military in character. Skinner’s insight demonstrates just how hard the editors of Genesis worked to erase most traces of military spirit from its account, creating the relatively passive and peaceful character of that book.

48:22 And now, I assign to you one shechem more than to your brothers, which I wrested from the Amorites with my sword and bow.

I could have sworn I'd seen that translation in a semi-respectable place but now I can't find it.

http://biblehub.com/genesis/48-22.htm not even in gentile versions.

And now, I assign to you one portion more than to your brothers, which I wrested from the Amorites with my sword and bow."

(Gen 48:22 TNK)

shkem (shek-em')
the neck (between the shoulders) as the place of burdens; figuratively, the spur of a hill -- back, consent, portion, shoulder.

There are some passages that have Jacob being strong, like the rock at the well and maybe his gay wrestling match. Then he seems to have dressed Joseph effeminately to remind himself of his late wife. But the military shit was offensive and it's based on a dubious translation of 48:22. Sure, why not?

It is the non-gentile passion for expanding the Torah and drawing mystical conclusions from unintelligible verses and obscure meaning of words that sometimes offend the respectful.


There is one theory that says the original forms of the books of Genesis and Exodus are in fact representatives of two distinct origin traditions:

" Genesis – God promises the patriarchs the land and their descendants take it over (never having left).[1]
Exodus – God frees a small tribe of Egyptian slaves and brings them to the land.[2]

[1] The origin of this myth is very likely from Northern Israel considering that most of the Jacob stories, for example, take place in the North.

[2] See, for example, Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (trans. J. Nogalski; Sifrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, 3; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010). One piece of evidence for this discontinuity between Genesis and Exodus is the abrupt transition between the end of Genesis and Exodus 1, which moves abruptly between the idea that Israelites are a family to the idea that the Israelites are a nation; indeed, this is what spawns the midrashic tradition that each Israelite woman gave birth to sextuplets (Exodus Rabbah 1:8)."


The Northern Tribal tradition of Settling the Land
Dr. Rabbi Tzemah Yoreh
http://thetorah.com/the-northern-tribal ... -the-land/

there was a final redactor in the Persian period (Ezra?).

But let's keep it real. The book (even Deuteronomy) was written in the Persian period. There are just too many Farsisms. Ezra was the likely author. Why exactly Deuteronomy has different language than the rest is probably attributable to a secondary author. Why exactly the ten utterances appear twice and in different forms is one of the biggest mysteries. I can't come up with a plausible explanation.