Source: https://www.bsw.org/biblica/vol-90-2009/the-vocabulary-of-the-septuagint-and-literary-criticism-the-case-of-numbers-27-15-23/7/article-p66.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 19:06:59+00:00

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66 Itamar Kislev v. 19 was added first, and at a later stage the description of the implementation in vv. 22b-23 was inserted. This conclusion is further substantiated by a comparison of the order of the actions in the command section (vv. 18-20) and the implementation section (vv. 22-23). In the instructions given in v. 19, Moses is commanded to stand Joshua before Eleazar and the community and to appoint him, the instructions to carry out these two tasks being juxtaposed next to one another. In the description of the implementation in vv. 22-23, however, the two actions are separated by the description of Mosesâ€™ leaning his hands on Joshua. If these two additions were carried out by one pen, how is the divergence in order to be explained? It is reasonable to assume that the scribe who added the description of the implementation process in vv. 22b-23 reordered the actions according to a more rational sequence. He realized that the order of the actions in the section detailing the instructions is illogical. It is not clear why the instructions to stand Joshua before Eleazar and the entire community are only given in v. 19, following rather than preceding Godâ€™s instructions to Moses to lean his hands upon Joshua. The scribe who added vv. 22b-23 placed the act of standing Joshua publicly before Eleazar and the entire community earlier, prior to Godâ€™s instruction to Moses to lean his hands upon Joshua. It would appear that the difficulty raised by the order of the instructions regarding Joshuaâ€™s investiture in vv. 18-20 lay, amongst other reasons, behind the addition of vv. 22b-23 (30). Thus v. 19 was already part of the text in front of the second interpolator when he added vv. 22b-23. In summary, a change in vocabulary occurs between the instructions in v. 19 and the formulation in v. 22a, on the one hand, and the description of the implementation of the command in vv. 22b-23 on the other. Moreover, the translation of the verb hwx in v. 23 demonstrates that the translator accurately understood the unusual signification of this root in its particular context. In contrast, the stereotypical translation of this verb in v. 19 indicates that the translator of this verse did not comprehend the specific meaning of the root hwx carries in this verse. These findings, combined with additional literary-critical considerations, suggest that different translators were involved in the translation of these two sections and that it is unlikely that the first translator had vv. 22b-23 before him. Only once this section (30) I hypothesized that v. 19 in its entirety was meant to be inserted before v. 18b, prior to the instructions to Moses to lean his hands upon Joshua. It was initially written in the margins of the text and subsequently mistakenly incorporated after v. 18b. It is not feasible to argue that the instruction to stand Joshua before Eleazar the priest and the entire community alone was intended to be placed before v. 18b and that in the Hebrew text which lay before the second interpolator the order of instructions in vv. 18-19 (before the second interpolator began his work) was in fact: Joshuaâ€™s standing before Eleazar and the community, Mosesâ€™ leaning of his hands, and Joshuaâ€™s appointing as recorded in the description of the implementation process in vv. 22b-23. The formulation of the instructions regarding the commands to Joshua in v. 19 witnesses against such an assumption. V. 19 states Î¼hyny[l wta htywxw. The antecedents of the pronominal suffix of Î¼hyny[l are Eleazar and the entire community, who are referred to at the beginning of the verse. The instructions regarding the appointing thus originally followed immediately upon the instructions to stand Joshua before Eleazar the priest and the entire community, and cannot be separated from one another.

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