A Bleek view of The Moses Scroll – Ross Nichols
Sometime in early spring of 1883, Moses Shapira came upon a book that made him reconsider the objections of Schlottmann and Delitzsch. As he put it in a letter to Hermann Strack dated 9 May 1883, “A short time ago a book called Einleitung in das Alte Testament [Introduction to the Old Testament] von [by] Friedrich Bleek in Berlin 1860 came into my hands & what a change came over my mind after studying the above book. I see now that the most of the variations between our MSS & the Bible are of such a character as are already used by many eminent scholars as a proof that our Deuteronomy was not written by Moses or about his time; all such passages are not to be found in our MSS.” – The Moses Scroll – Ross Nichols
Thank you Jono & Ross, so many great things learned here! And thank you for your work also, I myself have thought about going thru the book and taking out all the paragraphs that just seem to be ‘plopped’ out of sequence! One thing that bothers me now that I’m NOT a Christian, personally I wish more people would call it like it is/was… D’varim, but I know you do so most people will KNOW what you’re talking about. 🙂 One other fascinating point was the use of “Elohim”. I did a word search (horizontally reading) and noticed that “Elohei” (or Eloheinu) was used in (I’m going to use English terms here too) Genesis, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos & Psalms. Just wow, I love this study! I just recently said to a friend “How do you KNOW God said let US make man in OUR image?” It seems that making Elohim plural makes people believe that way too. The ‘shema’ makes so much more sense WITHOUT using (the plural) Elohim!