John Kesler

What do you think the relationship is? Perhaps you can use 2 Samuel 21:19/1 Chronicles 20:5 as an example to show that something other than dependence is at work.

Since Jubilees covers the period from Genesis 1 to Exodus 20, how does your point invalidate the possibility that Jubilees exegeted the biblical text?

spin

It's long since I've looked into the issue. I was working with Josephus trying to understand his source materials and I found that sometimes Josephus agreed with Sam/Kgs and others with Chron, though I don't think there was any of the special Chron material in Josephus. I don't believe Josephus cunningly threaded the two together, choosing from one sometimes and then from the other. That suggests that adependence one on the other may not cover reality.

If it did there must have been an intermediate stage such as a source shared by Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon. At the same time, Genesis at times suggests that it contains material which is too sparse to represent the original telling, ie that it has been reduced, such as the stuff leading up, and giving cause, to the flood. Longer is not necessarily later. Then again, the Melkizedek scene in Gen 14 is missing in Jubilees yet it is quite at home in the Genesis Apocryphon which frequently uses the term "most high god", el elyon, (=Qeos hypsistos), a najme for god which appears surprisingly in Genesis only in Gen 14. Not in Jubilees, at home in Gen Apoc., out of place in Genesis. How do you make sense of the data? I don't see that the relationship between the documents is simple.


spin

John Kesler

Short of one author identifying his or her source, it is difficult to say with certainty what the relationship between texts is. Speaking of the Genesis Apocryphon, I know that the DSS are something that you've studied quite a bit. Do you have plans to bring back your old site?

spin

That should mean that identifying the relationship between Sam/Kings and Chronicles or between Jubilees and Genesis cannot be determined by status quo assumptions, especially when other documents question those status quo assumptions.

I don't have an old site.


spin

spin

I meant to post to the substantive question much earlier, but left it unposted for some reason. This is just an effort to see the problem that I find in relating Sam/Kings and Chronicles.

Here they are as parallel texts:
First note: Gob which is preserved in #a Sam is a repetition from the previous verse in Sam and may be a scribal insertion rather than original to the verse. (Chr has Gezer [GZR] in the previous verse rather than Gob [GWB] and the Hebrew letters are so similar that, though it's difficult to know which was the original, one is derived from the other. However, Gob being a more obscure reference suggests itself as better.)

Second note: )RGYM in #b Sam seems like a scribal error repeating the word which occurs at the end of the verse. But why was it repeated? If you note, it is preceded by the letters -WR which are found preserved in the #b Chr context with the name Yair transcribed as Y(WR, so one can account for the error in Sam if you consider the Chr version here closer to the original.

Third note: It's difficult to give a reason for the Sam form BYT LHMY, "Bethlehemite", whereas the the Chr form )T LHMY, "Lahmi (as object to the previous verb)", can be seen to have ideological reasons for the form, ie to supply a different person to be slayed by Elhanan, leaving Goliath to David. Chr supplies Goliath as an explanation as to who this Y(WR was, ie the brother of Goliath, but as I have pointed out elsewhere, brother relationships are relatively rare in the Hebrew bible, so it helps to undermine the text here adding a tad to the preferability of Sam as to who was slain.

The result of an examination of this verse suggests that neither version represents the original. One (Sam) features a scribal error not seen in the other, ie the repetition of )RGYM, while the other seems secondary regarding who was slain. This is the sort of thing which points me to look for a different relationship between Sam/Kings and Chronicles, not one of dependence one on the other, but of dependence on an earlier form.


spin

Apikorus

It seems to me that 1 Chr 20:5 is very clearly dependent upon 2 Sam 21:19. The name Yair = "he will light/shine" derives from )WR, the word for "light", and is spelled with an alef and not an ayin. In other instances of Yair, both in Chronicles (1 Chr 2:22-23) and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Judg 10:3-4), the name appears as Y)YR.

It seems clear to me that the Chronicler invented the name Y(WR (ketiv) --> Y(YR (qere) in an attempt to "fix" the verse in 2 Sam 21:19.

I presume that the awkward name Y(RY )RGYM in 2 Sam 21:19 may itself derive from an earlier corruption. It means "forests of weavers'" and the second appearance of )RGYM in describing the attributes of Goliath's spear adds to one's suspicion.

As I posted in another thread, Michael Fishbane's 1985 book, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, amasses a good deal of evidence for inner biblical exegesis.

spin

I realise that Y(WR is a difficult name, but then so is the alternative. You can happily shift it to make it a little more acceptible, but it is in itself a problem. What's worse is that the opposite of your procedure is more convincing. Y(WR, while a problem, needs to be explained better than what I think you have done, but Y(YR can easily be seen as a scribal improvement towards a known name. The benefit of the lectio difficilior Y(WR is that it supplies the hook with the letter combination -WR for why )RGYM was duplicated in Sam.

One usually doesn't go from better to worse forms, and I can't see how Y(WR is an improvement on Y(YR.

My copy of Fishbane is in a box somewhere far, far away, so I don't have the benefit of it.

In the dark, I've posed what I consider as two good reasons why Chronicles isn't derived from Sam in this verse as we have it and Fishbane doesn't consider the possibility that the two texts share a Vorlage rather than one being dependent on the other, so he isn't playing with a full deck. I have argued that "(object) Lahmi brother of Goliath" is secondary, dependent on "Bethlehemite, (object) Goliath". I've even argued that Gezer in the preceding verse seems dependent on the letter forms of Gob, though the repetition of Gob in this verse (v19) seems unnecessary, which supports Chronicles here.


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Ben C Smith

To my mind there is a clear literary connection of some kind between Samuel/Kings and Chronicles. Are you merely saying that both derive from a common source, rather than the latter depending on the former directly?

(Just asking.)

Ben.

Apikorus

The "shifting" ( --> ) is masoretic, not from me. I was indicating that the worY(WR in 1 Chr 20:5 is an instance of ketiv/qere.

spin

That seems to be the best fit to me and yes there is to my mind a clear literary connection of some kind.

In trying to understand the relationship between these two texts, I tried to work out when and by whom they were written. Kings at least had part written after the "exile" was imposed, which means all of it could have been. As material about Davidic kings very little of it is flattering for them, so it would seem unlikely that it was the sort of propagandistic work that 1 Macc was, therefore, as we have it, not written by the kings themselves, yet they would have been the ones in control of the scribal apparatus at the time and one will note that Kings is ambivalent about, and even disinterested in the worth of, the priesthood. So, who had the resources to produce this relatively large work? I cannot see the priesthood in the theocratic state having any interest in such an effort, either the subject matter or the lack of priestly interest. The group that seems most likely to me is the Hasmonean dynasty,which would obviously have been interested in having a royal tradition behind it and had the resources to do so. One of the few positive figures besides David himself was Josiah who seems to have a reflection in John Hyrcanus, both of whom were active in stabilizing the kingdom and were responsible for activities against the non-Yahwistic cults such as that on Gerizzim.

Chronicles poses just as serious problems in trying to locate it in time and authorship. It is just as non-priestly as Kings, is clearly much later than the exile and I have a long list of reasons for thinking so (eg the David line supplied in 1 C 5 goes 15 generations after the exile), but the most interesting fact for me is that while it is also disinterested in the priesthood (the priests get equal mention as in Kings), it certainly isn't disinterested in the Levites who get mentioned at every opportunity, often doing things attributable to priests. This makes sourcing the writing very difficult. No kings would want it, nor would the priesthood, but these groups would have been those in control of the scribal process at least until the scribal process developed an organization that made it more independent, which I see in the mention of the scribes in a socio-political context with the Pharisees, this latter group having a strong representation among the Levites.

I therefore put the writing of these two works very late and find this strengthened by their poor showing at Qumran. I don't even think that the fragment now attributed to Chronicles was in fact from the book we have today. However, at least some of the information they both share is very much older. The material about Hezekiah and Josiah can be to some extent verified and reflects the sort of knowledge that Ben Sira had of those times.

Chronicles is more reliable about certain names than the Sam/Kings tradition (eg Ishbaal and Meribaal), which shouldn't be the case if Chronicles were dependent on the other. Why does Sam/Kings feature a priestly David whereas Chronicles doesn't? It's too simplistic to say that Chronicles excised that material, as Chronicles is no more priestly than Sam/Kings.

It is here that I envisaged a tradition about the kings of Israel and Judah which could provide the flavours of both Sam/Kings and Chronicles, an unstable text which for a relatively long period was not given sacred status and was therefore fluid. And that's why I looked at Josephus and any other work touching on the same period as possibly able to contribute to the issue.

The question that I cannot get around is who had the resources and interest to produce Sam/Kings and Chronicles. I haven't really got passed the the ballpark stage.


spin