Hebrew Voices #233 – The Lost Scroll of Moses (Shapira): Part 2

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Dr. Idan Dershowitz: What does Hashem echad mean? That’s a very difficult phrase, Hashem echad. If I say “Nehemia is one,” what does that mean?

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: What would you be; two?

Nehemia: Well, I mean absolutely, meaning, when it comes to God, to the… Well, I mean, now we’re getting into really dangerous theological areas, dangerous in the sense that we’ll never get out of this topic.

Idan: Anyway…

Nehemia: Like the fact that Elohim has a plural ending…

Idan: Yes. Beautiful! That makes sense in V, but it doesn’t make sense in Deuteronomy.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Dr. Idan Dershowitz. He has earned his PhD in biblical studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. You have a book called The Valediction of Moses. So, talk to me about the contents of The Valediction of Moses. That’s what we’re really excited…

Idan: Okay. All right. So, The Valediction of Moses, as I mentioned, has texts corresponding, in some way or another, to much of the narrative portions of Deuteronomy, but with many, many differences. So, before, we were talking about whether it’s a summary or abridgment of Deuteronomy, or vice versa. So, leaving aside whether it’s authentic or not, right, like if you think it’s a forgery, or if you think it’s authentic, you still want to know whether this is something that is, or is purporting to be, an abridgment, or something that is, or is purporting to be, ancestral. And so, the scholars who suggested that this was another Dead Sea Scroll, people like Mansoor and Allegro and so on, they seem to have thought that this was a relatively late abridgment of Deuteronomy. In other words, Hellenistic or something like that.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: So, a bit more than 2,000 years old, or something of that order. So, let’s look at some specific examples and see whether it looks like… So, for example, we have in this manuscript a version of what in Deuteronomy is the story of the spies.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Scouts.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: So, in the beginning of Book of Deuteronomy, we have a story about how the Israelites sent spies into Canaan. And then they came back, and their report was in some ways anxiety inducing, and the people of Israel said they don’t want to enter the land. And then some people did enter the land afterwards. They said they didn’t want to enter the land, and then God got angry, and then some people changed their minds and did try to enter the land, and all that. And some version of that story appears in this text, but there are no spies.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: The way the story is told is, basically, “We reached the border of the land. You know, God told you to conquer the land, and you said no, and so then God got angry with you.” But nothing…

Nehemia: …where he says, you know, “your children who you said would die,” is that mentioned there?

Idan: Here, let… I can read the English version if you want. It’s so short.

Nehemia: Can you share your screen and show us the text?

Idan: Yeah, yeah. So, one second, let me…

Nehemia: Ah, this is from your book.

Idan: Yeah. So, here’s the translation. It’s really the beginning of the book. So, it starts out, “These are the words that Moses spoke, according to the order of the Lord, to all the children of Israel in the wilderness across the Jordan on the plain. Elohim, our God, spoke to us at Horeb as follows: ‘You have been settled on this mountain for too long. Turn and journey, going to the Amorite highland, as well as into all the neighboring regions on the plain, the highland, the lowland and the seacoast.’ So, we set out from Horeb and traveled this whole great and terrible wilderness that you have seen, and we arrived at Kadesh Barnea. And I said to you, ‘Today you have arrived at the Amorite highland. Go up and take possession of the land as Elohim, God of your fathers, promised you.’ But you did not assent to go up, and you complained, saying, ‘It is because Elohim hates us that he is handing us over to Amorites to demolish us.’ Elohim‘s anger then burned, and He swore as follows: ‘As I live, all the people who perceived…’” yeah, this is the declarations and affirmations. It’s a difficult phrase. It doesn’t matter. “All these people who perceived the otot u’moftim,” so either declarations or wonders, “that I made ten times over and did not have faith or heed My voice, shall not see the good land that I swore to give to their fathers, except My servant Caleb, son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, son of Nun, who stands before you. They will go there, and to them I shall give it. And you turn and journey to the wilderness toward the Sea of Reeds, until the death of the whole generation.” I would maybe say the whole group, actually, is how I translate it now. The people of the conflict from amid the camp. “So, we journeyed from Kadesh-Barnea until the people of conflict had completely died out from the camp.” and that’s the end of the story.

Nehemia: So, doesn’t it say why Caleb and Joshua were to be…

Idan: Correct. Well, it doesn’t say that, actually, in Deuteronomy either.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Deuteronomy…

Nehemia: Interesting.

Idan: …talks about the spies. It does not say anything about… right? Let’s… we can read the version in Deuteronomy now, if… one second…

Nehemia: All right, so, it’s Deuteronomy 1:36.

Idan: Yeah. I’m going to share a different file here.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: And that has both versions… just in Hebrew, though. But I can translate on the fly. How’s that?

Nehemia: That’s great.

Idan: So…

Nehemia: Wait, so there’s a whole lot that’s missing there, meaning it’s… Oh, wow! That’s a lot! All right.

Idan: Yeah. So, you know, all these chunks are absent in the corresponding version, right? So, on the right side we have The Valediction of Moses, on the left side we have Deuteronomy.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Dark gray means that it’s something that’s absent in the other one. Light gray means it’s something that’s different.

Nehemia: That’s really interesting, and it’s a bit of a sidetrack, but it’s a topic very near and dear to my heart. So, what is the treatment of the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in The Valediction of Moses? Like, I see here Elohim in The Valediction of Moses, and in Deuteronomy it’s Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. But then it says, “according to the mouth of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey,” which isn’t in Deuteronomy, right? So, there’s…

Idan: Do you want me to answer that now? Yeah.

Nehemia: And then just some background. The usages of the names of God, let’s call it, is a major part of, let’s say, the critical approach of what’s called the documentary hypothesis. So, that screams…

Idan: So, long story short, The Valediction of Moses uses the name Elohim almost exclusively.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Idan: But there are two exceptions, and the two exceptions are very similar to one another. The two exceptions are the first and last verse of the whole book. The first and last verse of the book say, “Al pi Hashem,” and, like, have the tetragram. The last sentence is almost the same. So, here it says, “Ele ha’dvarim asher diber Moshe al pi Adonai el kol bnei Yisrael ba’midbar b’ever ha’Yarden ba’Arava,” “And these are the words that Moses spoke according to the command [or by the mouth] of the Lord, to all the children of Israel in the wilderness, across the Jordan in the Arava.” And the very last verse says, “Ele ha’dvarim asher tziva Moshe et kol bnei Yisrael al pi Adonai b’arvot moav lifnei moto.”

Nehemia: That’s interesting; tziva doesn’t here mean command, according to what you’re saying, because there are no commands…

Idan: Correct. But tziva also elsewhere… it’s a very interesting topic, but there’s precedent for that. Okay. So, these are the two places where we see the tetragram. Elsewhere, it says Elohim, even in places where…

Nehemia: What about in the Ten Commandments?

Idan: Elohim.

Nehemia: So, He says, “I am Elohim.” Wait, show us the Ten Commandments. That’s cool.

Idan: Yeah. And the first and last verses have several things in common, but one of the things that they have in common is that they’re not spoken by Moses, right? Before, we were talking about who’s speaking, right? So, context here, obviously, apropos the question of whether this text is claiming to have been written by Moses, you know, the Book of Deuteronomy talks about the death of Moses. This verse here also talks about the death of Moses.

Nehemia: Well, the person who said, ele hadvarim, “these are the words,” wasn’t he claiming that he’s quoting Moses?

Idan: Yes! He’s claiming that he’s quoting Moses, but he’s not claiming to be Moses.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: The narrator isn’t Moses. Moses is a character.

Nehemia: But then, am I wrong that Moses… everything except the first and last verse here purports to be by Moses, doesn’t it?

Idan: In The Valediction of Moses…

Nehemia: Yeah, in The Valediction of Moses.

Idan: In The Valediction of Moses, yes, with maybe one other exception, which is comments on who lived where in certain conquered areas. They’re like these parentheticals where you could argue about who’s talking. But in Deuteronomy there are several places, places where it’s not Moses. So, you have… Ve’zot ha’brakha she’birakh Moshe lifnei moto…

Nehemia: That’s Deuteronomy 33, the Blessing of Moses. Okay.

Idan: There are various other places where…

Nehemia: Then Moses died in the last 12 verses, famously, so he must not have written that. Fair enough.

Idan: Yeah. It’s a famous argument in the Talmud. There are several verses in Deuteronomy, or passages, or phrases, where the context is post Moses. Anyway, these two verses are obviously not spoken by Moses. So, why they use a different name is an interesting topic. One possibility is because, say Moses doesn’t use the name, but the narrator does. Maybe Moses is speaking. Maybe there’s a problem with saying the tetragram, but there’s isn’t a problem with writing it, which is actually something that’s familiar to us, right? People, you know, people…

Nehemia: And you’re saying that could have gone back to the First Temple period?

Idan: Maybe. I don’t know. There are various different possibilities. You could also say, maybe these were written by someone else. Or maybe there’s another possibility, which is that it has to do with the time of revelation. Like, when was this name revealed? Maybe it was revealed by the time of the narrator but not by the time of the characters, according to this text. Who knows? It’s an interesting question, but in any case, outside of the first and last verses of the…

Nehemia: Can you show us the Ten Commandments where He says, “I am Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey your God.” And then here it must say something different.

Idan: By the way, the same thing appears in Psalms… what is it, Psalm 50? Which references the Decalogue and uses “Elohim”.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Am I right? I don’t remember now.

Nehemia: But that’s part of the so-called Elohist Psalms. Meaning, there’s a whole block of Psalms that some of them actually repeat verbatim other Psalms, and whenever it has Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, they replace it with Elohim.

Idan: Yeah, although you’re assuming that they replaced it, and that it is not…

Nehemia: Oh, I’m not assuming that. Meaning, there are phrases that don’t make any sense if you put in Elohim. Like, Elohim tzva’ot if I’m not mistaken, or something like that.

Idan: What’s wrong with Elohim tzva’ot?

Nehemia: Well, first of all, it should be Elohei tzva’ot...

Idan: How is Hashem tzva’ot…

Nehemia: It should be Elohei tzva’ot, not Elohim tzva’ot.

Idan: But by the same token, it shouldn’t be Hashem tzva’ot.

Nehemia: Why not?

Idan: Whatever problem that you have with Elohim tzva’ot applies to Hashem tzva’ot.

Nehemia: I don’t see why. I mean, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is a proper name, so…

Idan: Right, but proper names… So, if the problem is that it needs to be in construct, then you can’t put a proper name there. Like, what does it mean to say, like, David, you know, hosts. Nehemiah hosts. Sounds weird. That’s what Hashem tzva’ot is.

Nehemia: I hear you, but all right, let’s not get into that, because… In any event, that’s probably anyway an abbreviation of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Elohei tzva’ot, which is a phrase that we have sometimes. Let’s…

Idan: It’s an interesting topic… but it is Psalm 50 that has…

Nehemia: Wait. So, what is your thinking about…

Idan: …anokhi, apropos…

Nehemia: What is your claim about Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey tzva’ot? That that’s secondary and the original one was Elohei tzva’ot? Is that what your claim is?

Idan: I’m just saying that this is a big topic. I gave a lecture about this a couple, I think, more than a year ago already, at SBL. I’m not the only person to say this, but the idea that the Elohistic Psalter is some sort of “find-replace” from Hashem to Elohim simply does not work. What it exactly is is a complicated question, but it’s not a “find-replace” from Hashem to Elohim, and the claim that it doesn’t make sense to say things like Elohim Eloheikha, that there’s something logically problematic with that, is nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with it… because…

Nehemia: Let’s look at the Ten Commandments, because that’s fascinating.

Idan: Okay, all right. So, the…

Nehemia: So, the whole block of commandments in chapters 12 through 26 isn’t there, right?

Idan: Nothing. Nothing.

Nehemia: And the standard scholarly explanation, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s been a while since I’ve studied this, is that that’s the oldest part of Deuteronomy, 12 through 26.

Idan: Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. And so, you remember it very well all these years later. But one of the consequences of this being authentic, if it is authentic, is that that theory is wrong. In other words, it’s wrong to say that the Book of Deuteronomy evolved, like, started with a kernel, that is the law, and, you know, and the narrative was added secondarily. But that never made any sense anyway.

Nehemia: Or maybe there was the chapters 12 through 26 as one document from, I don’t know, whatever century… and look, I don’t believe this, because I’m a bit of a biblical fundamentalist who believes Moses wrote the whole thing; Moses and Joshua, whatever. But I want to learn about this. I do think this is fascinating, right? I want to hear these perspectives. I think it’s important to hear what scholars are saying. I think we can learn about that. I think we can learn a lot about the text by hearing what scholars are saying. And look, that’s a faith statement, right? Meaning, if this is the conclusion you come to from a humanistic perspective, I want to hear that. I want to see what I can learn from that. So, all right. But maybe there’s chapters 12 through 26 from the 9th century BCE… I’m just making stuff up, and then this was written in the 8th century BCE, and then Josiah…

Idan: That’s correct. That is, that…

Nehemia: Josiah came along and put them together, right? I mean, how do we know that’s not the case?

Idan: That’s hypothetically completely possible. But, again, so, we keep on saying that we should look at the text. We haven’t done so much of…

Nehemia: Let’s do it.

Idan: But I’m just going to flag that one thing that we can look at is whether the narrative looks like it knows the law, and vice versa.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Spoiler alert: in my opinion, the law very consistently makes it clear that it’s from the context of, you know, Moses’s speech. It’s like, you know, “When you enter the land, then, you know, this will happen and that will happen,” and the law doesn’t sound like something that’s just plopped in there from somewhere else, it references the narrative in its context. Whereas the extent to which the narrative is familiar with the law is a more complicated question which we should look at specifically. But if you wanted to see the Decalogue, here it is. So…

Nehemia: So, in number 49 there. Oh, you’re….

Idan: In The Valediction of Moses, the Shema appears as a preface to…

Nehemia: Wow! So, “Shema Yisrael Elohim Eloheinu Elohim echad.” Instead of, “Hear O Israel, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is our God, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is one,” it’s “Hear O Israel…”

Idan: I would translate it differently, but yes.

Nehemia: Oh, how would you translate it to… Oh, you mean… okay, how you would translate the Shema, you’re saying. All right.

Idan: Yeah. The syntax… I mean, it’s a difficult verse, but…

Nehemia: How do you translate this the way it’s written? “Elohim is our God, Elohim is one” or “Elohim our God is one God”? How do you translate that?

Idan: I think Elohim Eloheinu is probably… I don’t think that Eloheinu is the predicate, I think it’s probably “the Lord our God”, or sorry, “Elohim, our God”. I would translate this as, “Hear, O Israel, Elohim, our God is a single God.”

Nehemia: Okay. All right, fair enough. You can translate the Shema that way. Meaning, even with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey you can translate it…

Idan: Not really. Because what is… what does “Hashem echad” mean? That’s a very difficult phrase. Hashem echad. If I say “Nehemia is one”, what does that mean?

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: What would you be; two?

Nehemia: Well, I mean, absolutely. Meaning, when it comes to God… Well, I mean, now we’re getting into really dangerous theological areas, dangerous in the sense that we’ll never get out of this topic.

Idan: Anyway…

Nehemia: Like, the fact that Elohim has a plural ending…

Idan: Yes, beautiful! That makes sense in V, but it doesn’t make sense in Deuteronomy.

Nehemia: No, it does, because it’s Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Eloheinu with a plural ending. There’s a Yud there. Here there’s no Yud. So, it could be…

Idan: The subject of the sentence in Deuteronomy is Hashem, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Here, the subject is Elohim. So, here it could be talking about the plurality of Elohim. In Deuteronomy, the only thing that’s Eloheinu is something that modifies the subject Hashem.

Nehemia: Okay. So, how would you translate the…

Idan: Like, what you’re talking about is Hashem.

Nehemia: How would you translate the Deuteronomy version of the Shema?

Idan: I think it’s arguably untranslatable.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: I mean, it doesn’t make sense to say, “is one” because, to use the Talmudic term, there’s no hava amina, like, there’s no reason to…

Nehemia: No, there is, because he just said “Eloheinu, our Elohim, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is our Elohim,” and then…

Idan: But you don’t need the word Eloheinu, right? Like, we know who Hashem is, right? So, the sentence would make logical sense if it didn’t have it…

Nehemia: No, but…

Idan: Hashem echad.

Nehemia: No, but if you’re a Moabite, Kmosh is your… meaning the Moabite would say Kmosh Eloheinu.

Idan: Sure.

Nehemia: The, you know, the Sidonian would say Ashtoreth Eloheinu. And, you know, maybe some other gods along with her, right?

Idan: Yeah.

Nehemia: So… all right, tov. “And you will love Elohim…” Well, I’ll let you translate verse, or section, 47 here. Can you keep going?

Idan: Okay. So, here, because it’s a preface to the Decalogue, better known as the Ten Commandments, but erroneously known as the Ten Commandments… so, it’s referring to Devarim. Devarim is the same term that’s used for the ten proclamations, right? The ten utterances. So, these devarim are presumably the ones that we’re about to hear in a few moments.

So, “Hear, O Israel, Elohim our God is a single God, and you shall love Elohim your God with all your heart and all your soul very much.” It’s not bekhol meodekha, but bi’me’od me’od. “Ve’hayu ha’dvarim ha’ele asher anokhi metzavkha hayom,” “and these words that I am commanding you today shall be,” “al levavekha,” “upon your heart,” “ve’shinantam lekhol baneikha,” “and you shall repeat them,” or “all your sons shall memorize them,” ve’dibarta otam,” “and you shall speak them,” “be’shivtekha be’veitekha,” “when you sit at home,” “u’velekhtekha ba’derekh,” “and as you walk on the path,” “be’shokhbekha u’vekomekha,” “when you lie down and get up,” “u’kshartem otam le’ot al yadeikha,” “and you shall tie them as a,” I think, something like, proclamation. But that’s… you’ll have to look at…

Nehemia: So, ot, which is normally translated “sign”, you say means proclamation. Okay.

Idan: I just published an article together with the linguist Naama Patel about the semantics of ot. So, if anyone’s interested, it’s in…

Nehemia: We’ll put a link on the website, nehemiaswall.com. You’ll have to send me the link.

Idan: So, the meaning of ot is complex, “u’kshartem otam…” in any case, this isn’t really different to what we have in Deuteronomy. “U’kshartem otam le’ot al yadeikha,” “You shall tie them as an ot upon your arm,” “ve’hayu le’tet mofet” is probably what it says here, although part of it is reconstructed. “But they shall give a…” and that’s counterpart to ot, so whatever you think ot is.

Nehemia: Whatever ot means, like a sign.

Idan: …means something similar. “Bein einekha,” “Between your eyes,” “u’khtavta otam,” “and you shall write them,” “al mezuzot” or “mezuzat beitekha u’she’areikha,” “and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and gate.” “Ki Elohim karat imkha brit be’chorev,” “For Elohim made a pact with you at Horeb,” “be’yom ha’kahal,” “on the day of the assembly,” “Ve’anokhi amadti bein Elohim u’veinekhem ba’et hazot,” “and I stood between Elohim and you at that time” or “at this time,” “ki pachadta mipnei ha’esh,” “for you were afraid of the fire,” “ve’lo alitem” or “lo alita ahar,” “and you didn’t go up the mountain,” “lehagid lakhem d’var Eloheikhem,” “to give you the word of your God,” “le’emor,” “as follows.”

And then we have the Decalogue. “Anokhi Elohim Eloheikha asher hechartikha me’eretz Mitzrayim mi’beit avadim,” “I am Elohim, your God, who freed you from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage,” a house of slaves, the slave house. But you’ll notice that there’s a different verb here, so it’s freed you, as opposed to…

Nehemia: So, the word cherut, which is certainly a word every Israeli is familiar with, freedom, is that a word… and I don’t know, off the top of my head; is that a word that we find in Biblical Hebrew other than here?

Idan: We have the root in various contexts, but we don’t have this exact verb. We do have this verb in Aramaic, shikhrer. Leshakhrer is the cognate in Aramaic, but…

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Idan: But this form is…

Nehemia: That’s a shafel form, and this is…

Idan: Right. Which is the same, right? That’s the Aramaic counterpart to hifil…

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: In those dialects. So, we have, “Lo ta’asu lachem pesel u’khol tmuna she’bashamayim mi’ma’al,” “Don’t make a statue or image of anything that…” “beshamayim mi’ma’al,” “that’s in the heavens above,” “ve’asher ba’aretz mitachat,” “that’s on the land below,” “ve’asher ba’mayim mitachat la’aretz,” “or in the water beneath the land.” “Lo tishtachu lahem velo ta’avdem,” “Don’t bow to them and don’t worship them,” let’s say. “Anokhi Elohim Eloheikha.” And then we have this refrain, “I am Elohim, your God.” Then, next…

Nehemia: What’s the significance of “I am Elohim, your God?” And I’m genuinely asking. I mean, maybe this is a modern question, right? Meaning, whoever you believe is Elohim is going to be Elohim, right? Whereas “I am Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey your God,” be like, “I am Kmosh your god,” “I am…”

Idan: Well, it depends how Elohim is being used, right? So, in Genesis 1, Elohim is used as a name, right? It says “Va’yomer Elohim: va’yehi or,” “And Elohim said: let there be light.” So, it’s being used in the same way here, as the name of a god.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: That’s something that’s familiar from the Bible, right? Elohim can be used in different ways. It can be used to mean lowercase god, it can be used to mean gods plural, but it can also be used as Mr. Elohim, God. Capital G – God.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: So, Muslims say, “There is no God but God.”

Nehemia: No, but they also say that Allah is a proper name. And I’ve had this conversation…

Idan: The English version of that is, “There is no God but God.”

Nehemia: Well, yes and no. That’s a complicated question that we should save for a conversation with a Muslim.

Idan: The actual text, “There is no God but God,” in versions that I’ve seen. Second, God is often capitalized, because there it’s a proper noun. “There’s no God but [capital G] God.” So, this would be very similar. In any case, it’s exactly what we have in Psalm 50, right? Elohim Eloheikha anokhi. Same thing. So, whatever is going on here is also going on in…

Nehemia: Unless that’s a search-and-replace, meaning, like, based on your hypothesis…

Idan: Okay, well, whatever this is… so, you could say that this is a search-and-replace.

Nehemia: Okay. Meaning, your explanation…

Idan: Like I said, I mean, if this is an uncle, if this is an uncle, then you could say that the original version was… and that…

Nehemia: Ah. But that’s not your argument here is it? Am I right? Well, tell me; what’s your argument here about? The use of Elohim.

Idan: I initially assumed everything that you’re saying when I dealt with this text. I took for granted that Hashem is original and Elohim was some sort of find/replace, for the same reasons that you’re citing…

Nehemia: Right. Okay.

Idan: …and I came to think otherwise. I’m not going to, you know, I’m not a hundred percent sure about it, but I think that the preponderance of evidence supports Elohim being original, not only here, but also in other places. We’re going all over the map, but I’m happy to say, just in brackets, just briefly, I think that there’s good evidence elsewhere in the Bible, that places that we have Hashem sometimes originally said, Elohim.

I’ll give you one such example now, quickly. In the story of Jacob in Beit El, he says something that is grammatically problematic and contextually problematic. He says, “Akhen yesh Adonai ba’makom ha’zeh, ve’anochi lo yadati.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: There is Hashem, there is the Tetragrammaton…

Nehemia: It says Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Idan: It says Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Grammatically, it’s very strange to say…

Nehemia: Genesis 28:16, okay. So, you’re saying originally it says…

Idan: “Akhen yesh Hashem ba’makom ha’zeh ve’lo yadati,” is very strange, both grammatically… because it would be like for me to say, “akhen yesh Nechemia ba’makom hazeh,” would sound weird. It’s no problem for me to say “akhen yesh shulkhan ba’makom hazeh, because there’s a set of shulkhanot, of tables, and so, I can say, “Behold, there is a table.” That’s fine. But for me to say, “Behold, there is a Nehemia,” is weird because we don’t normally think of a set of Nehemia’s. By a similar token, to say akhen yesh Hashem…

Nehemia: So, the way it reads now in our Masoretic Text, is Genesis 28:16, you’re… I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Would you translate something like, “And he said, surely there is a Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in this place,” and therefore it should say a…

Idan: I think we’d be forced to say something like that, right?

Nehemia: I mean, I wouldn’t read it that way, but okay.

Idan: Is there any other example for how yesh is used? I can give you an answer to that; no.

Nehemia: So, the word makom here is extremely important because makom isn’t just a place, it’s a place where a deity dwells. Even up until relatively recently, you would go around the Land of Israel, and the locals would worship at a makom, which has more of a meaning than just a place, right? And whenever it talks in Deuteronomy, at least in our version of Deuteronomy, the place that Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey will place His name… Right? Well, what does that even mean, right?

So, there’s some kind of concept there where there’s a presence of the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey that’s dwelling in a certain geographical location called a makom. That’s my understanding.

Idan: All that’s fine. No, I have no problem with any of that. But I’m making two different points. One is a grammatical one, and one is a contextual one. And so, the grammatical one is that we would expect yesh to be followed by something that is indefinite.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Idan: So, let me share… can you see this screen where I’m typing yesh?

Nehemia: Yeah. And which software is this?

Idan: This is Accordance.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s what I use. All right, you have a different layout, but it’s the same basic program. Okay. I think you…

Idan: I just searched for the word yesh in the entire Hebrew Bible, followed by a proper noun.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Idan: Look how many results there are.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: Sorry, let me change this to words… there. Three results. What are those three results?

Nehemia: I mean, I see them.

Idan: Yesh Hashem in Genesis 28, that we’re talking about. Hayesh Hashem in Exodus 17.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: And va’yesh Hashem in Judges 6. So, yesh is never used with a proper noun, either person or place or God, any place in the Bible except for in the phrase yesh Hashem.

Nehemia: And so, is your argument that in all three places it was originally yesh Elohim?

Idan: Yes, that is my argument. But let me tell you why that makes so much sense in Genesis 28. So, not only does it resolve this grammatical problem of having something definite like a proper noun, following yesh, “there is…”

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: …but also, what is this the story of? This is the story of, like, this etiology about a certain place that is called, what?

Nehemia: Beit El.

Idan: Beit El!

Nehemia: Yeah, “the house of El”. Yeah?

Idan: Yeah. So, when we hear the story of Pniel, it’s like I’ve seen Elohim, “panim el panim…”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: “…hatinatzel nafshi?” And it was called pniel. So, Elohim called it pniel.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Idan: Here, he’s yesh…

Nehemia: …yesh el ba’makom hazeh? That’s what you…

Idan: No, Elohim, Elohim.

Nehemia: Okay, right.

Idan: Just like pniel is ki ra’iti Elohim panim el panim, ha’tinatzel nafshi?

Nehemia: “Saw God like face to face, and it was called pnei el, the face of God.” Okay, so you’re saying Beit El, it has to say there is…

Idan: It resolves both a grammatical problem and a contextual problem in the story, and the fact that the only other places that we have yesh followed by a proper noun in the entire Bible are also Hashem is something that should give us pause.

Nehemia: So, can we look at a different…

Idan: …a search-and-replace went the other way.

Nehemia: So, let’s look at something completely… can we… I mean, this is off the topic, but this is fascinating. I don’t agree with this, but this is fascinating to hear these perspectives. It definitely is challenging, and I really appreciate this.

So, there’s a passage that I absolutely love because it has some very shocking implications, and I don’t know what your view is. I’m putting you on the spot, which isn’t fair. But 2 Samuel 5:20, it’s the story of Ba’al Pratzim.

Idan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And so, we have here, “And David came to Ba’al Pratzim, and David smote there. And he said, ‘Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey has burst forth upon my enemies…’” That’s… maybe you disagree with the translation; it’s fine, whatever. “‘Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey has burst forth upon my enemies,” or “has burst my enemies before me as the water burst forth.’ Therefore, he called the name of the place Ba’al Pratzim.” Which, the way it reads in the Masoretic Text would imply that David identified Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey as Baal. Which has other evidence to suggest as well.

And I didn’t come up with this. This is, I think, a pretty standard explanation of the passage, right? In other words, we have a really early core here of syncretism or, or maybe, let’s say, pre-Josianic, from a critical perspective, right? Meaning, exactly what Hosea talks about, where he says, you know, “You’ll no longer call me ba’ali, you’ll call me ishi,” right? Same kind of thing, right? So, they were calling Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Ba’al. That’s kind of, I think undisputed.

Would you argue here, “Va’yomer paratz Elohim et oivai?” Right? I mean… or maybe David, or maybe the original… I’m putting words in your mouth. Could you do something with this in the same vein as Beit El? Meaning, you’d say there’s a theological problem or a contextual problem here. Who’s he talking about, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey or ba’al?

Idan: I mean, I think there are really only two options here. One is… maybe there are more, but the two options that come to mind. One is that Ba’al can be used as an honorific also for Hashem in a similar way to Adonai, you know. And there’s someone who wrote an article, I think, very recently, about the use of Ba’al, as like in reference to different deities. So, that’s one possibility.

Nehemia: Because Ba’al means master.

Idan: Huh?

Nehemia: I’m just telling the audience who may not know that ba’al means master.

Idan: Ba’al means master, in a similar way to adonai.

Nehemia: It means lord…

Idan: Adonai, which also means something along the lines of master. That being said, throughout the Bible, usually you have contrast between Ba’al and Adonai, and so it is not far-fetched to say that David said “paratz Ba’al et oivai, al ken kara le’shem ha’makom ha’hu Ba’al Pratzim”. Or you could say that, like, maybe like ba’al doesn’t really matter; they’re thinking about it in some totally different meaning that has nothing to do with any deity. All these things sound problematic. I think the simplest explanation is that this was originally understood to be about Ba’al, and that… Yeah, so, it’s possible…

Nehemia: But if they weren’t…

Idan: …find-replace here from Ba’al to Hashem, just like we see… seems to be a find-replace…

Nehemia: Okay, there you go. So, you’re saying something that’s different than what I had always heard and understood.

Idan: What had you heard?

Nehemia: Meaning, the standard explanation I had read, that I was taught at Hebrew University, was that this idea that Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey and Ba’al are… Meaning, when Hosea says, Hosea chapter 2, “They will no longer call me Ba’ali, they’ll call me Ishi,” there was a tendency to identify Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey and Ba’al as the same deity. And, you know, later prophets… or Hosea would call that syncretism, but whoever worshiped that way thought… No, whatever. I mean, it’s the same, you know, the Ba’al is, you know, is the master of the, you know… Ba’al, who is probably Hadad or something, right, is the god who rules over the earth, and Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey does, and that’s, you know, the same thing, right? Meaning, like, in the same way that I think the average Jew certainly would say that Allah and Hashem are the same God, right? Just, they attribute different things to Him than we do, but it’s the same thing, right? And certainly, Jews coming from Muslim countries use the term Allah. And, you know, whether they are or not is way beyond the scope of this discussion, right? But certainly, if you ask the average Christian, they’ll say, “No, Allah is a completely different deity and has nothing to do with the God of the Old Testament.” Right?

Idan: Right.

Nehemia: Meaning…

Idan: So, yeah. And there are various options here. I don’t know…

Nehemia: And I’m putting you on the spot, which isn’t fair. Don’t feel like you have to answer. But I think it’s intriguing to say… like certainly there’s a greater problem here than there is in Genesis 28.

Idan: I mean, yeah, it’s definitely problematic here, and it does seem like… If you’re going to read this in a sort of synchronic way, just take the text as it is without considering how it might have evolved, then we would say that Ba’al is being equated with Hashem. But an alternative is to say that this text has changed, and we already think some very similar things, right? So, you have characters like here, Mefiboshet, Mefiba’al, Ishboshet, Ishba’al…

Nehemia: Right.

Idan: Which, in Chronicles…

Nehemia: There was a king of Israel who had the name Ba’al in his name, which is really surprising.

Idan: All right, one second. Words here… If mefiboshet here in Samuel, and then…

Nehemia: … in Chronicles has the word Ba’al, from the mouth of Ba’al. And then…

Idan: Looks like this…

Nehemia: You have to make it two words for that to work there…

Idan: Is that what’s happening? Or did they just put… Okay.

Nehemia: The mysteries of Accordance.

Idan: I don’t know what it wants from me anymore. But I promise that…

Nehemia: The better one is the king of Israel. I mean, I find it as… I mean, they’re both good, right? So, if you look in 1 Chronicles 8:33, one of the sons of… it’s without the Yud. So, one of the sons of Saul is Eshbaal, and then he’s called Ishboshet, “man of shame” in Samuel, right? So, here’s really the question: assuming there was such a figure named Eshbaal… which I believe… I don’t know if you do… who names their kid Eshbaal? Right? That’s the question.

Idan: Someone who doesn’t find that problematic. So, the point is, there’s no question that whoever… I mean, I’m open to someone suggesting otherwise, but to me, it seems like the names Mefiboshet and Mefiba’al and Ishboshet show us that someone found it very upsetting or problematic for these guys to be called Eshba’al and Mefiba’al, right? So, they had a problem with it.

Nehemia: No doubt. And then Jeremiah says…

Idan: So… someone else didn’t have a problem with it. So, maybe the reason they didn’t have a problem with it is because they thought that Baal could mean Hashem, and they didn’t have any problem with that. Or they didn’t have a problem with it because they didn’t have a problem talking about Ba’al, like Hadad or whatever, a god who isn’t Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey being referenced.

Nehemia: The irony here is that Chronicles, which is obviously a later book, seems to preserve something that’s…

Idan: That’s not unusual at all, not unusual at all. That’s why I was saying that this issue of, like, dating a book, is really problematic because each one of these things evolves over such a long period of time. They have independent histories, right? So, they have some common core, Chronicles and Samuel and Kings, but they had separate histories. And so, maybe the source that had Ba’al, that was never changed in Chronicles. Meanwhile, it was changed in Samuel, Kings, and…

Nehemia: I’m going to ask you a question, which is… you can say, “I need to think about it,” and you don’t have to answer.

Idan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And it’s just me kind of thinking out loud, spit balling ideas. So, the Samaritans have the Book of Deuteronomy, obviously with some changes. Do you have some thoughts about the relationship between the Samaritan Deuteronomy, maybe the Samaritan Pentateuch in general, the Jewish Deuteronomy, and The Valediction of Moses?

Idan: Yeah. I’m conscious that we were looking at the Decalogue before, and at the spy story before that, so I’m just trying to remember to get back to it. Look, if you look at… I’ll share my book again now…

Nehemia: Meaning, I think the standard thought is that the Samaritans took the Jewish Torah and tweaked it…

Idan: But it’s trickier than that, and the Samaritan text clearly includes some more original readings than what we have in the Masoretic Text, right? For example, in Genesis 22, in this Binding of Isaac, the Akeda, you have “ayil achar ne’echaz ba’svach,” a very problematic phrase, that in the Hebrew it’s very hard to parse that; achar, or acher. And in many other textual witnesses, including ancient translations, you have “ayil echad”. He saw…

Nehemia: So, in other words, a ram, something like another ram or ram behind the thicket…

Idan: Not another, right, but you just saw a ram. And that…

Nehemia: Oh, he saw a certain ram, or he saw one ram or something. Yeah. No, I’m saying the Masoretic Text…

Idan: This is just one random example, but it seems highly likely that that is the more original reading.

Nehemia: Yeah, but that’s on one particular…

Idan: …Dalet and Reish are very similar both in Paleo-Hebrew and in later Hebrew, and also even in pronunciation in some dialects. There are many, many cases of Dalet and Reish being confused.

Nehemia: So, if you’re right about that, that would be something that happened in transmission. Meaning, the Masoretic Text would have descended from a text that had echad, if you’re right. And it was that text, or some text like that, that the Samaritans took and tweaked, meaning… You’re not saying that… well, maybe you are. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Idan: I don’t think that the Masoretic Text is based on the Samaritan text.

Nehemia: That’s my question. Okay.

Idan: I don’t think so. But I also don’t think that the Samaritan text is based exactly on the Masoretic Text, but…

Nehemia: No, it’s based on some Jewish text that the Masoretic Text is a representative of, or is one version…

Idan: Maybe, yeah. It’s a big question, the Samaritan…

Nehemia: But certainly, when it comes to The Valediction of Moses, you wouldn’t say that the Samaritan text used The Valediction of Moses as a source, and the Jews also used it as a source?

Idan: No, but, if you look at the text of The Valediction of Moses… and so, let me… here…

Nehemia: Let’s get back to the text.

Idan: We’ve been looking at the English here, but I have this section here, I call it “Annotated Critical Edition.” So, you see the text in Hebrew with tons of…

Nehemia: Guys, we’ll put a link to this book on nehemiaswall.com.

Idan: Great, yeah, it’s an open access book.

Nehemia: Oh! Wonderful!

Idan: Yeah, you can print the PDF if you want. So, here’s the Hebrew text, and here are all these notes.

Nehemia: Just on a technical… if you want to tell me; how did you make this an open access book? Like, how did the publisher give you permission to do that?

Idan: It cost money, and…

Nehemia: So, guys, I want to stop here for a second. You know, somebody might say, “Well, this is very sensationalistic. He’s doing this to make money.” He actually paid money to give people access to this! That’s unbelievable!

Idan: A generous donor paid some money to make this available open access. But I make a big effort for the things I publish to be open access in general, and, in fact, choose journals based on whether they are either open access or have some agreement with the university that means that it will be open access. So, the article I mentioned before, that I coauthored with Naama Patel, is available also open access.

Nehemia: Oh, wonderful, wow. That’s great.

Idan: So, to answer your question about the connection to the Samaritan Pentateuch, if you go through my notes here in this critical edition, you’ll see all sorts of discussions of like, you know, “This phrase is slightly different…”

Nehemia: We have this text. I see there’s places where you wrote, “Shapira wrote” or “Shapira transcription”. So, this is not Shapira’s transcription, this is Ginsburg’s transcription… Or, what is this?

Idan: This is my transcription, that’s…

Nehemia: No, but you don’t have the scrolls or the manuscripts… where do you get it?

Idan: I used everything that’s available, including something that we started talking about, which was the things that I found in Berlin in the Staatsbibliothek, just to finish that thread.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: Interspersed among the catalogs of the manuscripts that he sold, there were three sheets. They weren’t connected to one another, but all three of those sheets were transcriptions of parts of the text by Shapira. And those sheets we should talk about, for a different reason. Because besides helping us get better access to the text, it also gives us a window into Shapira’s mind. And it suggests that Shapira was not the forger, because in these notes you can see him struggling to transcribe sections that weren’t, you know, weren’t visible. And making some mistakes when he does that.

For example, he’s not sure about the order of the fragments. At first, he says it goes this way, and then he’s like, “Oh, no, I think this fragment actually goes over there.” Stuff like that. And so, it seems, before even getting into the question of whether it was authentic, just on the basis of those notes of Shapira’s in this transcription and the transcription itself, we can say that Shapira himself did not think that it was a forgery and could not have reasonably been involved in the forgery. Or couldn’t have done it himself, or else he wouldn’t be struggling to figure out what goes where and making mistakes in the transcription. In, you know, in places where we can see why he made that mistake, and it makes total sense that he made that mistake, but it doesn’t make sense if he…

Nehemia: If he’s a forger, he knows the order, right? And he knows what it says, right. Okay, fair enough.

Idan: Now, just to answer your question about the Samaritan text. So, here, what you see in this particular case here, cheshbon ha’emori. So, I’m saying that both the Septuagint translation in Greek and the Samaritan Pentateuch in the original Hebrew have the same thing that we have here, Zikhron melekh cheshbon ha’emori, whereas the Masoretic Text doesn’t have that. So, like, there’s something here, a place here where the text of The Validation of Moses corresponds to the Samaritan Pentateuch but not to the Masoretic Text. And it also corresponds to the Septuagint, which is translated into Greek, but was translated from Hebrew, and it seems was translated from a Hebrew that matches this. There are many…

Nehemia: Are there many instances like that? Are there many instances like that where the Samaritan and/or Septuagint agree with The Valediction of Moses against the Masoretic Text?

Idan: Yeah. Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: There are many such cases.

Nehemia: So, at least if you’re going to say it’s a forgery, it was done by a scholar. You have to say that.

Idan: Correct.

Nehemia: Who at the very least would have known what was in… Which isn’t impossible, right? Kennicott was available there; you could have easily known what was in the Samaritan text.

Idan: Yeah, but we haven’t gotten to the things that they couldn’t have really done, but yes.

Nehemia: What is something they couldn’t have done?

Idan: The differences are just endless, endless differences. And those differences, you know, like a word here, a word there, or like where the Vav conjunction appears, and all sorts of things like that, where you see, like, these tiny differences between the different manuscripts, and this corresponds to this, or even to different Masoretic manuscripts, but not, you know, what we have in the Leningrad Codex. He wouldn’t have had the Leningrad Codex. But the point is that there are all these differences that are variants among different Masoretic manuscripts. All these sorts of things, countless, countless tiny little differences like that, in addition to the bigger differences that we should discuss. So, maybe we should go back to the story of the spies, because…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Idan: We had this question; does it make sense to say that this is an abridgment, whether authentic or inauthentic, an abridgment of Deuteronomy or not? So, here’s a good example of something to discuss. So, that’s what we were looking at before we got into the Decalogue, but here you can…

Nehemia: Can we continue with the Ten Commandments? Because they’re so interesting.

Idan: All right. So, we’ll do the Decalogue, then spies.

Nehemia: Then the spies.

Idan: And then we should talk about sichon too…

Nehemia: Okay. And then we’ll call it a day! And I appreciate you spending all this time. This is really generous of you. We’re going to break it into a number of episodes, because I think people probably don’t have the bandwidth for more than like about an hour. So, this will be like two or three or four episodes, I don’t know.

Idan: Maybe you can reorder it, also, when we jump around…

Nehemia: Probably won’t do that. We’ll probably just, you know, break it, and… Look, people are used to me, like, it’s kind of like Joe Rogan-esque where he just goes on for three hours talking about all kinds of things. People are used to me doing that, so…

Idan: All right, sounds good. All right, so, in the Decalogue, unlike in the Masoretic Text and all other versions of the Decalogue, where it’s actually surprisingly difficult to figure out what the ten are, here there’s no question what the ten are. We know exactly what the ten are, for several reasons. It’s over-determined.

Nehemia: And it’s so difficult that different traditions break them up differently. Like, famously…

Idan: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Catholics and Protestants will argue over this, and then, you know, Jews… Well, even within the Hebrew you have, or let’s say the Masoretic Text, you have different accents that break it up sort of differently… alright. Or the verses.

Idan: Yes. Big, big, big, big mess. Which is sort of ironic that the Ten Commandments… like, how do you get to ten? You wouldn’t expect it to be so difficult. But here it’s not difficult. Here, we know exactly what the ten are. And one of the reasons that I object to calling it the Ten Commandments, and I’m not alone in this, is that the Bible doesn’t call it the Ten Commandments. It refers to it as devarim, utterances or proclamations, and if you’re counting commandments, you’re going to end up tying yourself in knots because that’s not what the Bible’s counting. So, I mean, you’re going to have trouble anyway, because there’s no way to really get to ten in the Masoretic Text no matter what you do. I think it’s not so difficult and a mess in the Samaritan Pentateuch to get to ten; much easier. But here, we have ten, but they’re not ten commandments, they’re ten proclamations. The first proclamation is “I am Elohim, your God who freed you. You shall not make any statues or images,” and…

Nehemia: So, each one ends with the phrase… So, what people normally call commandments, right? Each item here ends with “I am Elohim, your Elohim.”

Idan: “Your God.” Right. So, you have this refrain…

Nehemia: Your God.

Idan: …which tells you where it ends. That’s one thing that it tells you. There’s also line breaks in the manuscript. You don’t have line breaks elsewhere.

Nehemia: So, this brings me back to a question I asked before. So, what is the source of your text here? Meaning, one of your sources is the transcription of Shapira, but there must be another source.

Idan: There’s a transcription, the partial transcript transcription that I found of Shapira’s, there’s the transcription of Christian David Ginsburg…

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: There’s the transcription of Hermann Guthe and Eduard Meyer, German scholars who published a little booklet. And there’s various drawings, different drafts of different drawings, different discussions, notes, all sorts. I use….

Nehemia: Well, although the scrolls are lost, we have a pretty good idea of what the contents were.

Idan: Yes, correct.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s important. All right. We didn’t say…

Idan: We don’t. But you know, everyone talks about two manuscripts, and we rarely have both. So, it seems like basically we have a transcription of one manuscript for the first half and the other manuscript for the other half.

Nehemia: Are there any overlaps between the two manuscripts?

Idan: Yes, there were overlaps.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Almost complete overlap, but we don’t have separate copies. In a couple of places, people say, “Ah, the other version says something else there.”

Nehemia: Oh, really? Hmm.

Idan: There was some small, small textual differences between them. But…

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: …which is another interesting detail, right? It’s not the Shapira Scroll, that’s because it’s not a scroll. It’s in the singular, and it’s not a scroll at all because it wasn’t rolled up. It’s two separate manuscripts.

Nehemia: It was folded, right?

Idan: Yeah. Two folded separate manuscripts…

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: …that looked different from one another. They were both folded but looked quite different.

Nehemia: Are there other examples from…

Idan: They had different formats, different heights, widths, and…

Nehemia: I’m asking because I don’t know. Are there other examples of folded manuscripts from… and I can’t say from this period because we don’t know what period is from, but…

Idan: Good question. I recently submitted an article where I… The answer is yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Things that weren’t letters.

Idan: Dead Sea… Things that are not only letters, but yes, letters, absolutely. But yeah, Dead Sea Scrolls… An overlooked fact about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they include folded manuscripts, or at least, even some of the scrolls used to be folded manuscripts and then were turned into scrolls in antiquity.

Nehemia: Wow! I can’t wait to see that article. That’s very fascinating. Wow. All right.

Idan: So… Right. We have line breaks. We have this refrain, “anokhi Adoni Eloheikha”, which is very similar to something that we see, not in the Decalogue, but in Leviticus 19, which is this passage that corresponds very closely to the Decalogue. And this is a well-known fact that was known also to rabbis in antiquity. But there, we have this refrain, anokhi Adonai Eloheikha.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Idan: But we don’t see it in… I mean, the phrase appears twice in the Decalogue, but it doesn’t appear as a refrain after every…

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: So, that’s one thing that tells us. So, we’ve now covered two things that tell us what’s what. And then the last thing, that we also have blessings and curses in The Valediction of Moses. In Deuteronomy we only have curses; we don’t have the corresponding blessings. So, like in Deuteronomy, we have “Arur ha’ish asher…” whatever, “Cursed is the man who…” blah blah blah, many of which correspond to the Decalogue, but not all of which in Deuteronomy. But here, every single one corresponds, in order, to one of the proclamations. And we have a corresponding version, “baruch ha’ish asher”, et cetera…

Nehemia: “Blessed man.” Oh, cool. All right.

Idan: And there they also correspond in order. So, it’s extremely clear what the ten are.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: And what we see is that the…

Nehemia: I’m noticing here that taking the name in vain is not here, which is interesting because it doesn’t have the name.

Idan: Right. But it has something similar, but in a different place. “Lo tishava be’shmi la’shaker.”

Nehemia: “Don’t swear falsely in My name.” Okay. Or maybe you translate it differently, sorry.

Idan: Yeah, no, that’s good, yeah. And that is almost exactly what we see in Leviticus 19. Also, various references to the Decalogue in the Bible, including in Jeremiah, have this form rather than “Lo tisa et shem Eloheikha la’shav,” or whatever. “Lo tishava be’shmi la’shaker.” So…

Nehemia: Instead of “Don’t take the name of … in vain,” it’s “Don’t swear falsely in My name.” Interesting. Okay. Which is how “the name in vain” was certainly interpreted later by Jews. And you’re saying maybe even in the time of Jeremiah or… Okay.

Idan: Right. And in various places where we see allusions to the Decalogue, we find that form, and not…

Nehemia: Interesting. Do you have an article about that?

Idan: I mentioned it in chapter 4 of my book.

Nehemia: All right, let me make a note. I’m going to look at that in Psalms, in Jeremiah. All right. Interesting, very interesting. Okay, beautiful. All right, so, what are our commandments? So, let’s go back to… Shabbat wasn’t really that different.

Idan: Shabbat, it’s a little bit different. It starts with “kadesh” instead of “sh’mor” or “z’khor”.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: It’s “Kadesh et yom hashvi’i ve’shabat’ta bo.” Also, all ten are spoken in the first person, by God to the people.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Idan: Right? So, it’s “ki sheshet yamim asiti”.

Nehemia: Wow!

Idan: … asa hashem.

Nehemia: Wow!

Idan: Which fits with, you know, this refrain…

Nehemia: In other words, in the Masoretic Text is, as you know, “For six days…” let’s see, “He created,” and here it’s “I created” or “I made,” whatever.

Idan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah. Okay.

Idan: And then the whole business of punishing children and children’s children doesn’t appear in the context of the proper worship of God, but in the context of this false…

Nehemia: Oath?

Idan: Oath, right. So, “Lo tishaba be’shmi la’shaker,” “You shall not swear falsely in My name,” “ki anokhi akane et avon avot al banim al shileshim al rebe’im benos’ei shmi la’shaker. Anokhi Elohim Eloheikha.”

Nehemia: Wow. Can you translate that?

Idan: And then… So… That’s interesting. And here’s…

Nehemia: Can you translate that one that you just read?

Idan: “I will avenge,” maybe.

Nehemia: “I’m zealous,” or something?

Idan: Yeah, it’s difficult to translate.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: Like, you have things like “Hem kin’uni be’lo el ve’ani akni’em…”

Nehemia: Uh-huh. Okay.

Idan: It’s a tricky… “But I will do [something] with the sin of fathers upon sons, and upon the third generation and the fourth generation for those who take My name falsely. I’m Elohim, your God.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: And then, here’s the kicker. So, we talked about how difficult it is to count to ten in the Masoretic Text. So, the implication here is that the Masoretic Text actually only has nine, and that’s why… because the tenth one is “Lo tisna et achikha bi’lvavekha.” “Thou shall not hate thy brother in thy heart. I am Elohim your God.”

Nehemia: Which we have in Leviticus 19.

Idan: Exactly, in Leviticus 19, which we already talked about it being a parallel to the Decalogue. So, that is one of very many ways in which Leviticus 19 corresponds more closely to the Decalogue as it appears here than the Decalogue as it appears in the Masoretic Text.

Nehemia: Okay.

Idan: All this is discussed in chapter 4 of my book.

Nehemia: All right. Guys, you heard it here. Go do more research, Chapter 4 of his book. Fascinating stuff. “Don’t hate your brother in your heart,” in the Ten Commandments, or ten things, or whatever. Wow! What does it mean when you have something in brackets here? Meaning, normally that’s a reconstruction.

Idan: It means that it’s a reconstruction.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Idan: Yeah, yeah, the brackets are reconstructions.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Idan: So, you can see, for example, re’ekha here, lo tachmod eshet… and then it could be achikha for example, I don’t know. But I reconstructed re’ekha on the basis of the parallels. I didn’t, you know… I default to what we have elsewhere, unless I have reason to say otherwise.

Nehemia: Okay. All right, wow. All right, let’s go back to the spies.

Idan: Okay. Spies. So…

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