Language:
English
Year of publication:
2019
Titel der Quelle:
Hebrew Union College Annual
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2019) 209-226
Keywords:
Moses In rabbinical literature
;
Bible. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
;
Midrash rabbah. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Abstract:
In modern scholarship, Deuteronomy 34:10 is often imagined as the source of a rabbinic theory of biblical authorship in which each successive stage in Israelite history was marked by a decline in the level of prophetic guidance available to the people so that each new cohort of religious leaders was compelled to meticulously preserve and minutely study the written records of a prophetic experience to which they no longer had access. The early rabbinic materials analyzed in this essay, however, reveal that Deuteronomy 34:10 was closely tied in some early rabbinic traditions to a very different theory of biblical compilation. For these early rabbinic thinkers, Deuteronomy 34:10 was not a statement of prophetic decline but of prophetic change. If Moses was destined to bequeath the raw sacred materials of revelation to the world, other inspired figures would arise who would shape (and reshape) these materials into the biblical tradition as we know it. For as t. Sanhedrin 4:7, Song of Songs Rabbah 1.1.8 and b. Eruvin 21b each explain in different ways, the Mosaic revelation was all but incomprehensible to the people in its original form. Only with the additions and refinements of later wise men and scribes did the Mosaic revelation acquire a shape in which “everyone began to discern its meaning” (Song of Songs Rabbah 1.1.8).
DOI:
10.15650/hebruniocollannu.90.2019.0209
URL:
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