Fact-Checking the Torah -- where does it go?

In his lectures, R. Bechhofer explains to his students that Talmud is not linear in structure. He specifically uses the word “association” to describe the leaps in subject: one concept brings in another. It’s hard for our literate minds to follow the leaps but you have to remember that they occurred in an oral environment, the same as where Torah took the shape it has now.

Association is one of the principles behind the sequence of material in Exodus through Numbers. It affects both the sequence of the drill-down segments, and the material within them. One example is between Passover and the firstborn. Exodus 12 gives the laws for Passover. Exodus 13 has the laws of firstborns.

This association shows up again in Numbers 8, where the Levites are assigned to depute for the firstborn Israelites in servicing the tabernacle. Numbers 9 has the narrative of the “Little” Passover instituted for people who for some reason can’t observe it at the normal time.

Another association is where Exodus puts information about the incense altar, which is different in Jewish Torah and Samaritan Pentateuch. The building of the altar is in Exodus 30:1-10; it includes the timing for lighting incense on it, which is in the morning when he cleans the menorah, and at night right before he lights the menorah.

Samaritan Pentateuch moves the making of the incense altar from Exodus 30 to put it after Exodus 26:26. Which is “right”?

The association in Jewish Torah has to do with the sequence of actions in rituals in the tabernacle. This is also the reason that the whole offering is first discussed in Exodus 29, as part of the instructions for making the tabernacle (it also relates to the frequency principle as you know), instead of in Leviticus 1.

Samaritan Pentateuch is inconsistent about ritual procedures. It has the whole offering in Exodus 29, except that it moves verse 21 after verse 28. There’s a very simple problem with that. If the ritual proceeds according to Jewish Torah, pouring the blood is possible, but if it proceeds according to Samaritan Pentateuch, the blood has congealed and can’t be poured. The issue of congealed blood is discussed in Mishnah Yoma 4:2 and a couple of other places.

Samaritan Pentateuch associates the two pieces of hardware, and it associates the two instructions about the blood. The inconsistencies in SP are signs of the split in the tradition.

If that’s all I had, it would be debatable which one was “right”. But it’s not all I have, as I showed in previous posts. Samaritan Pentateuch is a record of a languishing oral tradition, the evidence including the homogenization of wording, and the disappearance of geographic data. We even know why it languished: Kings I 12 tells us that as soon as he split the kingdom, Yeravam also split worship by building two cult centers in the north. Political as well as religious chaos ensued, followed by the Assyrian Conquest.

The difference in order in Samaritan Pentateuch of these two issues are examples in legal material of Olrik’s principle that when narratives languish, episodes fall out of order. So although I said that Olrik has nothing to do with legal material, it turns out that this material is just narrative enough to follow his principles.

Another case of association involves slander, which is only discussed in narratives. That relates to another principle, and I’ll save it for next week.