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1. In my reading today of Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner (on pages 174-175) quotes Irving Mendelbaum on Mishnah Tractate Kilayim. Mendelbaum contends that there are differences between Deuteronomy and the priestly source:
“While, for example, P prohibits the sowing of different kinds of seeds with one another, D forbids only the sowing of seeds (e.g., of grains and vegetables) in a vineyard. Similarly, according to P it is forbidden to mate different kinds of animals with one another, while D prohibits only the yoking together of such animals to pull a plow. Finally, P maintains that one may not wear a garment composed of any two kinds of fibers which have been commingled, a rule which D applies only to garments composed of wool (an animal product) and linen (a plant product)…In fact, D’s prohibition against yoking together animals of different kinds refers only to the ox and the ass (Deut. 22:10), and so may be interpreted as forbidding the yoking together of these two animals alone.”
If I wanted to demonstrate to a conservative Christian that the Bible has contradictions, I wouldn’t refer to these, to be honest. These are differences, not necessarily contradictions. I guess you can see them as contradictions by interpreting one set of prohibitions as broad and comprehensive, and the other set as extremely limited in application. (Does God forbid us to mix all fabrics, or only wool and linen?) But conservatives could easily ask why we should do that. We can easily conclude that there are general rules in the Torah, and applications of those rules to specific situations.
The Mishnah, according to Mendelbaum, says that D is “defining the fibers to which P’s prohibition applies”. (This means P and D as Mendelbaum understands them; I doubt that the Documentary Hypothesis was on the Mishnah’s radar!) So, for the Mishnah, P establishes a rule, but it is not specific about where that rule applies. Consequently, D spells that out.
But why couldn’t God have spelled it out the first time? Was it so people would study the Torah and actually look for the answer?
2. In A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel, Avi Hurvitz continues to argue that P uses older Hebrew than Ezekiel. He looks at passages of P and Ezekiel that are similar: they talk about washing animal sacrifices. But P uses the term rachatz for “wash”, whereas Ezekiel uses hediach for that. For Hurvitz, P doesn’t use the term hediach because he didn’t know about it, for ”the language of P reflects an age prior to the absorption of the technical term into” biblical Hebrew (65). Consequently, Ezekiel draws from P, rather than vice-versa.
In my reading of Tremper Longman’s commentary on Ecclesiastes, Longman argues that Ecclesiastes can be dated much earlier than many scholars propose. Many scholars argue that Ecclesiastes uses late biblical Hebrew and thus dates to the Hellenistic Period. But Longman’s argument appears to be that Ecclesiastes may very well be a pre-exilic work. Maybe its Hebrew is not late, but reflects a particular pre-exilic vernacular, Longman proposes (page 15).
That may be a reason for scholars to treat with caution the “chronologies of the Hebrew language” supported by Hurvitz and others (e.g., Frank Moore Cross). At the same time, if P was drawing from Ezekiel, why didn’t P use hediach, as Ezekiel does? Was he using another term that his audience was more familiar with (rachatz)? I’m hesitant to say, though, that P and Ezekiel represent different dialects, for they do overlap in a number of areas. And yet, can’t dialects overlap?
3. In my reading today of Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch, Jean-Louis Ska says, “If the Pentateuch was composed for Israel after the Exile, the book of Numbers explains under what conditions they may regain the Promised Land” (39). The condition is obedience to God.
