CHAIM RABIN

The date of composition of the book of Deuteronomy is one of the most widely discussed questions in the history of the Pentateuch.

There is no point in recapitulating here the various views, which can be found in convenient summaries in introductions to Deuteronomy and to the Hebrew Bible. The various datings proposed are based on two types of argumentation. The one is drawn from known or as- sumed historical facts with which the book could be connected, mainly the discovery of a Torah in the time of Josiah, the increasing concentration of the cult in Jerusalem, or the development of proph- etism and of

(zokmii

and the influence of the one or the other school of thought upon teaching that had initially been the prerogative of the priests. The other collects words and phrases typical of Deu- teronomy and measures the degree of occurrence of the same linguistic elements in other biblical books, either on the assumption that these expressions were used during a certain period only and their co-occurrence can be taken as evidence of approximate con- temporaneity, or with the intention of showing either that Deu- teronomy had influenced the other work or works or that the latter had influenced the writer(s) of Deuteronomy.

As a linguist, I do not pretend to any competence in weighing

historical evidence, except perhaps in pointing out that historians

have not reached any agreement in the case under discussion. With

regard to the conclusions drawn from words and phrases, however,

these appear to me to be founded on misconceptions about the

nature of language and linguistic usage. It is of course legitimate to

collect words and phrases from the work of a single author in order

to determine what denotations and connotations they had for him -

though even there experience shows that speakers and writers are

apt to vary the meanings of the words they use. But when it comes to

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comparing the usage of different writers, especially in literary texts, we must always keep in mind that the linguistic elements they use are drawn from a large reservoir characterized by built-in re- dundancy, i.e. the availability of different ways to say the same thing, ranging from full synonyms to the semantic equivalence of single words and combinations of words, whether this equivalence is dependent on certain contexts or universal. The number of words listed in a Biblical Hebrew dictionary is between 7000 and 8000, depending on the way one counts. Obviously this is only a small sample of the words that at any time were actually in use. Statistical Linguistics assumes that the average person has a working vocabu- lary of 25000 words, and languages of which the vocabulary is sufficiently well known seem to range from some 80 000 words up- wards. Since Biblical Hebrew is so rich in synonyms, it is probable that it had a rather large vocabulary. Moreover, the Hebrew we encounter in the Bible was a literary language and, as such, marked both by a large store of equivalent ways of expression and by a tradition that retained such semantic material rather longer than a purely colloquial language might do. As the users of a literary language learn it from existing literary works, words and phrases can also reappear after having lain dormant for a time. Since it is also certain that the works included in the Hebrew Bible represent only a fraction of the literature available in writing at the time (not to mention the immense body of oral literary expression), we have no means of assessing the variety of equivalent ways to say the same thing which were at the disposal of a Hebrew writer at any given point in the biblical period. For the same reasons we can never be sure whether a certain phrase was created by the writer in whose text we find it. Even if the context strongly suggests that the phrase or word was used for a situation not previously encountered, we cannot know whether it was put together by the author for that purpose, or existed in the literary or spoken language of his time in another meaning and was merely adapted by him to the new need.

The evidential value of any particular linguistic expression for dating the segment of text in which it occurs, leave alone a whole text, is thus rather small.

Apparent exceptions are so-called ‘fashion words ‘, i.e. words or phrases that, for various reasons, more or less suddenly spread widely in a society, and words of known date of introduction, which are either fashion words or denote new concepts, objects or institu- tions (this includes borrowing from another language). However,

Discourse Analysis and the Dating of Deuteronomy 173 such cases can be ascertained only in our own contemporary language, where we (or the person who noticed the item) have actu- ally witnessed the innovation, or at most, though with less certainty, when we have large bodies of written documents in almost continu- ous sequence. In a situation like that of biblical literature we cannot recognize fashion words or innovations, as is amply demonstrated by some discussions in which borrowings from other languages are with equal force used to prove early and late dating of the same text.

This does not mean that linguistic material is useless for dating.

Even words and phrases can successfully be used in cases where we can show more or less systematic replacement of elements in re- working an earlier text (e.g. Chronicles, and the Qumran reworkings of Deuteronomy and Isaiah). The systematic character is inherent in spelling and in morphology, and these are of course widely em- ployed for dating inscriptions. But they also happen to be the as- pects of a text most often changed by copyists, and thus can be adduced only with the greatest caution in a literature, the oldest manuscripts of which represent the result of a large number of recopyings. Syntax, which is a good deal more difficult to alter, provides a better possibility for recognizing and utilizing gradual changes in usage, and there certainly might accrue considerable benefit to biblical studies if this neglected branch of Hebrew gram- mar were pursued more energetically and with the application of suitable modern techniques.

In recent years, linguists have begun to extend their systematic analysis of structures beyond the limits of the sentence, ranging from a paragraph to the integrated study of entire works (especially the German Textologie). The ‘ texts’ investigated are not only writ- ten ones; in fact Conversation Analysis, in which the entire inter- change between the different participants is treated like a continu- ous text, has produced some most interesting results. The new branch of linguistics, called Discourse Analysis, investigates such features as reference between different parts of the text (Cohesion), distribution of the information into sentences and paragraphs, den- sity of information and quantity of non-informational features, such as emphasis, modality (expression of the speaker’s feeling) and rhet- oric, choice of words and grammatical constructions, as well as the ways in which the words are strung together (Collocation). One of its important results is the awareness that texts are of different kinds (Textsorten), largely corresponding to social conventions dictating different varieties of one and the same language to be employed in

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circumscribed social situations (Registers). The differences, which are culture-bound and thus transcend individual choice, include all the features enumerated, asp well as prosodic features (rhythm, rhyme, parallelism, speed) and, in speech, pronunciation - in written texts, punctuation.

The concept of culturally and socially conditioned text-forms partly covers the same ground as the theory of literary genres on the one hand and that of biblical Forms or Gattungen, with their Sitz im Leben, on the other. It differs from them by integrating their do- mains within a theory that can deal with non-literary, and indeed with non-contrived, texts. It is also in most of its manifestations closely linked to Socio-linguistics and to a general study of human behaviour.

The important feature of the phenomena studied by Discourse Analysis for our problem of dating texts is that they are distributed over the text in such a way that they are practically secure against alteration by scribes. A scribe may alter a feature here and there, but the statistical differences between text-types are in most cases so large that this does not obliterate them. Moreover, being culture- bound, they persist for longer times, and changes consisting in re- nouncing one text-type for another as being appropriate to a given social purpose are clearly identifiable. And of course, in former periods, more governed by tradition and social convention than ours, we can be certain that the use of a text-type was socially meaningful and not a matter of individual whim.

The book of Deuteronomy is stylistically the most integrated of the Pentateuch and therefore, no doubt, a text in the Discourse Analysis sense. It also clearly defines its social purpose: a speech by a leader to his people. Most discussions of the book mention its rhetorical character and, where we can compare its paragraphs with corresponding ones found in other pentateuchal books, we can clearly see the rhetorical amplifications. Its choice of words and phrases, too, brings it somewhat closer to what is called in the study of the Bible poetical language. All this is well known, and has played a role in the arguments for a late, approximately Josianic dating.

This is of course by no means an isolated example of rhetoric in the Hebrew Bible. We find it in speeches, some long and some short, by Joshua, Jotham, David and Solomon. A great number of the short utterances of kings and heroes have rhetorical form, and it is of some interest that in his analysis of the syntax of pre-exilic poetry R. Sappan has found parallels to some specific poetical features in

Discourse Analysis and the Dating of Deuteronomy 175 the direct speech of exalted personalities in the books of Samuel and Kings.’ But the largest body of speeches is to be found in the books of the Latter Prophets. The most outstanding pre-exilic prophets were more or less contemporary with the Josianic Reform, the most widely accepted date for the composition of Deuteronomy. That these speeches had a distinctive text-type or register, we can ascer- tain by comparing them with narrative material interwoven with them in the same book: the speeches are marked by parallelism and poetic vocabulary, whereas the narrative has neither.

I have designedly called the words of the prophets ‘ speeches ’ and not ‘ rhetoric ‘, for in introductions to the Bible and in works on Form Criticism this text-type is called poetry.2 Since parallelism and poetical language are generally considered the only sure marks by which to recognize and describe biblical poetry (the question of metre still being a matter of debate), and these features are shared by undoubtedly poetical texts, such as the Psalms, the pentateuchal Jir6t, the Song of Deborah and the Prayer of Hannah on the one hand, and the main creations of Wisdom literature and the speeches of the Prophets on the other, all these are described as poetry. I think that it is possible to show significant discourse differences between the texts socially identifiable as poetry or songs (and some- times called s’ir, mizmor etc.) and those identifiable socially as speeches, and suggest that we talk of parallelism and poetical language as features of literary texts, which can then be classified by other linguistic features into poetry, Wisdom and rhetoric. Proofs for this are not, however, necessary for my argument, which is that the speeches of prophets at work in the last stage of the Monarchy were characterized by extensive and systematic use of parallelism and poetical language, while these are absent from Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy, as well as from the speeches of Joshua and Jotham, and the Prayer of Solomon in 1 Kings viii.

It seems to me most unlikely that, at a time when prophets deliv- ered political speeches in parallelism before the people, high officials or the king, someone should have put in the mouth of the venerated ancient leader a speech lacking this essential feature of rhetoric and thus inferior to those of contemporary representatives of his teach- ing. There can be no doubt that the author of Deuteronomy was I The Typical Features of the Syntax of Biblical Poetry (Jerusalem, 1981).

2 Cp. K. Koch, Was ist Formgeschichte? (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1964), p. 106 = Eng.

edn The Growth of the Biblical Tradition (London, 1969). p. 91.

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familiar with parallelism, since he incorporated into his book two long poems in this form. Even if he did not incorporate them him- self, he could hardly have been ignorant of poems contained in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, on which he drew for his legal ma- terials and historical details. To say that the author of the book was unable to write in parallelism would be incongruous in view of his proven virtuosity in his own style of rhetoric. Nor is it believable that he should have avoided parallelism because he knew that in the time of Moses speeches were given in straight prose and, moreover, expected his audience to be conscious of this archaeological detail.

And if we were prepared to attribute to an eighth-century writer such a feat of mystification and pastiche, we would only involve ourselves in a further problem: from where did the author of Deu- teronomy take the model for his pastiche of rhetoric without par- allelism? If we assume that he had access to the text of ancient speeches, how could he expect his readers to identify the style as rhetoric, unless they were likely to have read the same book or books, in which case they would know that this was a style used by people who lived a century or two earlier, and might not believe that it was used by Moses.

There is another apparent way to get out of the dilemma. We might assume that use of a style connected with poetry was thought in the eighth century B.C. to be suitable for prophets who were

‘ seized by the spirit ‘, for one who was ‘is’ hiirikz(~ and m&?uggtic,3 but not for an ‘ii hZ&him (Deut. xxxiii.1) such as Moses, ‘like whom no other prophet ever arose in Israel’ (Deut. xxxiv.10). This would still fail to explain the source of the rhetorical style of the author of Deuteronomy. But it fails on another ground: Nathan, Elijah and Elisha were prophets of the spirit, and yet the things they say are not in parallelism. There was thus a change in the style in which prophets spoke in

ancient Israel.

Thus there are a number of examples of speeches without the feature of parallelism, all of which belong to an older period, and may be called the Old Rhetoric, and a larger group of speeches, all belonging to a later period, beginning with Hosea and Amos, which exhibit parallelism, and may be called the New Rhetoric. The speeches in the book of Job (where again the narrative is in a differ- ent register), as well as Proverbs chs. i-ix, might also be included in 3 Cp. the Arabic /din, ‘soothsayer’, who spoke in suj’ ‘rhymed prose’. It is

probable that sqj‘ is cognate with Hebrew mes’uggti’.

Discourse Analysis and the Dating of Deuteronomy 177 the latter class.4 It is not known how it came about that discourse features that had formerly been reserved for poetry came to be extended to speeches, and whether this was a local development in Judah, or one in Israel (cf. Hosea and Amos) that spread to Judah, or perhaps an importation from outside. There is a parallel in Arabic, from a much later time, when the use of rhymed prose, at first restricted to soothsayers and prophetic utterances, became a feature of Wisdom literature and history.’

It may, however, be assumed that when the new fashion of speeches in parallelism came into Israelite society, there was a period of transition during which both types of rhetoric were em- e ployed according to personal preference. This period may be re- sponsible for the prose accounts of the utterances of Elijah and Elisha and, on the other hand, for putting a prayer in strict paral- lelism into the mouth of Samuel’s mother (1 Sam. ii. 1-1O).6

The book of Deuteronomy, except for its last chapters, would then belong either to the period of the Old Rhetoric or to the hypo- thetical transition period, but not to the period when the New Rhet- oric had won general acceptance. This, in my view, would exclude a Josianic date, but would allow for the early Monarchy, until the time when the Elijah stories were written up, i.e. during or some- what after the time of Jehu and Jehoash. At the time of the transi- tion period, people would still identify speeches with parallelism as a novelty, and thus an author presenting Moses would choose the traditional manner rather than the new one. Be the actual date of Deuteronomy as it may, there can be no doubt that its style rep- resents an elaboration and refinement of the Old Rhetoric to which we have no parallel in the samples of that genre. preserved in the Hebrew Bible.

But not the rest of Proverbs, since in many languages proverbs are cast into poetic forms, such as rhyme in English.

I may mention as a parallel closer in time the use of poetic language (close to the

‘ Hymnic-Epic Dialect ‘) in the inscriptions of the later kings of Assyria. On the other hand the use of metres in Sanskrit and Arabic for scientific text-books is not a matter of register, but a utilitarian device for assisting memorization.

Unless Hannah’s prayer is a royal psalm, as argued by some modern scholars, or, as I believe, a piece from an ancient epic.

A Midrashic Anthology from the Genizah

S T E F A N C . R E I F

Introduction

It was in the course of the academical year 1973-4, not many months after I had been appointed to be responsible for the Taylor- Schechter (Genizah) Collection at Cambridge University Library, that a few fragments in one of the many boxes comprising that rich source of scholarly discoveries first caught my eye. The fact that notes on three of the folders’ attributed the contents to Rashi almost discouraged me, as it had no doubt discouraged many more distinguished scholars before me, from embarking on a thorough investigation, but the study of a whole leaf provided a clear re- futation of the attribution and excited a strong curiosity to replace it with more accurate information. I identified five separate leaves, at various numbers through the box, as belonging to the same original manuscript, ordered and transcribed the Hebrew text and reached a tentative conclusion that the material was part of an as yet unidenti- fied medieval Bible commentary, or late midrashic anthology. Un- fortunately, however, although I briefly discussed the fragments with some other scholars² I was unable at that time to devote to them the substantial degree of attention that they seemed to deserve and my intense involvement over the subsequent five years in build-

2

T-S C6.55,56 and 95.

I am particularly grateful to my distinguished teacher, Professor N. Wieder and to Dr S.A. Birnbaum, that pioneer in Hebrew palaeography, for their responses to my written enquiries, and to Professors J. Sussmann, M. Benayahu and M.

Beit-Arie, for their interesting comments on photocopies of the manuscript. I also benefited from a discussion of this article with Professors D. Weiss-Halivni and H. Soloveitchik and Drs M. Assis and J. Tabori at a seminar that I led while a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew Univer- sity. Needless to say, responsibility for the conclusions here reached remains entirely my own. -