Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneInDaMembrane
I forgot to touch on something here that you mentioned and I will try to explain it here but I am sure Whoppers and Daniel can do a far better job than I. You said:
Quote:
"So the Septuagint and Qumran has "El" but the Hebrew has "sons of Israel" in 37:8."
Actually, I don't think this is correct. YES, the 10th century CE Hebrew Masoretic Text does say "children of Israel" and the King James Version, in line with that text says the same thing. However, the OLDER HEBREW Dead Sea Scrolls says "Sons of God" while the Greek Septuagint (older than the Masoretic Text also) says "angels of God." Neither of the older texts says anything about "children of" or "sons of Israel" and this makes sense. Israel was NOT a nation when the nations were divided as per Genesis 10 (or is it 11 or 12) They could not be used as the standard when they, as a people, were not even in existence as yet. And what sense would it make to divide the nations by another nation? What would have been the purpose? Dividing them up amongst royal sons is a much likely scenario, don't you think?
Now, by the time the Masoretic Text was completed (some 900 years or so AFTER the time of Jesus), the Jews were an already established monotheistic people compared to their ancient forefathers who were far from such a thing. It would make sense that uncomfortable passages such as Deuteronomy 32:8 would be "cleaned up" to say otherwise and to reflect the Jewish theology of that day, in the same way Christians retroject their current beliefs and biases back into the Old Testament. I hope you can understand this. |
Thanks for the complement, by the way, but Daniel has much more scholary training under his belt than I do at this point. I just try my best heh heh!
As for the quotation you replied to: That's correct - he was close with the "El" part, though.
When the Highest [Elyon] gave nations [goyim] legacies,
when He dispersed humankind [bene adam - lit. "sons of mankind"],
He set the people's [ammim] borders
to the number of the children of Israel [bene Yisrael].
(Deuteronomy 32:8, CoT, Friedman)
The MT, which is reflected above and has been the normative text used to translate from for many years, has
bene Yisrael ( lit. "sons of Israel"), the LXX has "angels of God", and the Dead Sea Scrolls' 4QDeutj has
bene elohim ("sons of the gods" - I would say the context precludes "God"). Now, if you run those in reverse you can see the evolution from "the gods" to "the angels of God" to "the sons of Israel". So the standard scholarly conclusion is that the oldest form of the text was probably the one found in 4QDeutj ("sons of gods") and this makes the most contextual sense, in my opinion. Daniel - in his article - comments on this to some degree and points out some very interesting details, as well as pointing to another verse in Deuteronomy that tries to prepare the reader for the section.
This is a prime example of how things changed, and why they were changed, and by whom. Heck - we have been living with this particular change of the Biblical text for thousands of years. Slowly, though, it appears we are becoming increasingly able to peer through the mists of time to start getting an even clearer view of the world of the Ancient Israelites and what they believed.
Nice post, by the way, Insane - very informative!
P.S. - the usage of
bene adam in the verse has a bearing for those who still wish to deny that adam can mean "mankind" or "humankind", or even "groundlings" if one likes the etymology provided in Genesis.
