Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I fail to see how this helps you at all.

Fails to help me at all against what? A theory no one cares about? I'm shaking. I'm shaking. The way 99.9999999% of the world reads Deuteronomy. The way the Samaritans read Deuteronomy 32 is that whoever wrote this knew Genesis 1 - 2.8. There are parallels in Babylonian writings. So what? The Babylonians had an influence over the people who wrote the Torah. This would follow from the Captivity. I don't see what this has to do with the Torah being written in the third century. Berossos didn't invent what he wrote. He copied it from older sources. The same sources that influenced the Pentateuch.

I would even add to the links between Genesis 1-11 and Deut 32. The most important perhaps is this:


What's important here is the fact that Qumran confirms "sons of El", while the Samaritan Pentateuch reads, as the Jewish one, "sons of Israel".

So, stop thinking that the Samaritan Pentateuch is some pure original thing, it's not. It has been edited too. The Samaritan edition developed later than you think. It may well be that the LXX is the most original version we have.

So I will fully concede that Deut 32, or even 31-34, was written by the same people who wrote Gen 1-11. So what?

All this means is that the beginning and end of the Pentateuch were modified at a late date. There is nothing problematic here to Gmrikin's thesis.

Just think about this: "sons of God" are mentioned in only 2 places in the Pentateuch. Genesis 6 and Deuteronomy 32. Genesis 1-5 essentially implies the existence of "sons of God", while 6 confirms it.

These "sons of God" are not acknowledged anywhere else in the Torah, Jewish or Samaritan.

But yet the Torah is bookended with the "sons of God".

I mean come on, how obvious does it have to get? Yes, the writers of Gen 1-11 also wrote/revised Deut ~31-34ish. This even more strongly supports Gmirkin's thesis.

The fact that there are unique similarities at the beginning and end, but not throughout, strongly indicates that those parts are later additions.

What's important here is the fact that Qumran confirms "sons of El", while the Samaritan Pentateuch reads, as the Jewish one, "sons of Israel".

And?

I will give you this much. You aren't hyper attached to your presuppositions. That's commendable.

Yes, the writers of Gen 1-11 also wrote/revised Deut ~31-34ish

Wrong again. The Hebrew of Deuteronomy is not the same as Genesis.

There is no doubt that the books of Genesis and of Deuteronomy have their own stylistic and theological profiles.8 This idea can get some support if one looks at how the books of the Pentateuch have been transmitted at Qumran; Genesis is in most cases a separate scroll, once combined with Exodus; there is a manuscript attesting the combination of Exodus and Leviticus, and another of Leviticus and Numbers. Deuteronomy however (of which about 30 manuscripts exist) apparently always existed separately.9 This may confirm the specific literary status of the book, as underlined for instance by Martin Noth, who spoke of a Tetrateuch and considered Deuteronomy as the opening of the Dtr History.10 The fact that the different books of the Torah were transmitted in different scrolls and often independently also has consequences for redactional theories. If one takes into account the fact that Genesis was transmitted on a different scroll than Deuteronomy, for instance, this could mean that the scribes (and redactors) who were in charge of Genesis were not identical with those of Deuteronomy. We should therefore envisage redactional interventions for the Pentateuch that were limited to one or two scrolls. This idea could also explain the fact that stylistic, and even theological, differences may be detected within the "deuteronomistic" and "priestly" redactors, in charge of different scrolls of the (future) Torah, they may have used different expressions or combinations of the vocabulary of their “school. (Romer)

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 12:41 pm

Yes, the writers of Gen 1-11 also wrote/revised Deut ~31-34ish

Wrong again. The Hebrew of Deuteronomy is not the same as Genesis.

That's not something I've studied, so I'll have to look into it. But without even assessing the validity of that claim, it still isn't a big deal. The writers of the end of Deuteronomy knew Genesis 1-11. Maybe they were the same people, maybe they weren't. Whatever. It doesn't pose any real challenge to the thesis that Gen 1-11 is dependent on Berossus. All it means is the ending of Deuteronomy is also late.

In other words, if Deuteronomy knew Genesis it knew Genesis as a pre-existent composition likely together with the rest of the Tetrateuch. Deuteronomy, was an after thought or after creation.

Deuteronomy was kind of like Matthew when compared with Mark (albeit with less direct explicit citations). But I've always thought of Deuteronomy as a kind of 'sanction' for the creation of Matthew and Luke (even though Irenaeus uses the LXX as his preferred justification).