firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) (09/23/90)
The story so far... This was my request: ...if somebody could cite several such passages - where the BoM disagrees with the AV and with the scholarship of Smith's time, but agrees with more modern scholarship, I'd regard that as strong evidence against my claim. I respectfully invite such evidence. Mr Smith most kindly responded: May I submit simply the tip of the iceburg, 12 cases: As he admonished, I have given some detailed investigation to these citations, and am prepared to comment on all of them. However, that would be a post of great length indeed, and, before inflicting it on you and our good moderator, and before inflicting upon myself many more hours of travail with "tangled things, and texts, and aching eyes", I'd like to know whether anybody cares. Accordingly, I submit here a detailed analysis of exactly one, the eleventh of the twelve, and will positively not send eleven more long essays unless enough of you ask me to. I have chosen this one because it seems to me the most illuminating; it illustrates just how much detail one must consider. Please believe me that it is neither the weakest nor the strongest of these twelve pieces of evidence. Here is the entire argument from Mr Smith's post: 11 - Isa 14:4 = 2 Ne 24:4 BoM addition at the beginning has version support plus internal evidence of change in MT. This presentation is admirably terse, but let me please set it out in a little more detail, to show how it is constructed. First, there is a difference between the texts of the Authorised Version (AV) and the Book of Mormon (BoM), which I grant. Secondly, the Masoretic Text (MT) agrees with the AV. As we shall see, it doesn't quite, and that small difference will turn out to be important later. Thirdly, there is "version support" for the BoM, and here I'd appreciate a fuller citation, for I haven't found any. As far as I can tell (from LXX, the Vulgate, the Hexapla - which I can read -, and from 1QIsA - where I rely on Burrows and Yadin) the BoM does not have version support. That there is no Hebrew document now in existence with this text is certain. Finally, if we do suppose an earlier Hebrew document with the same text as the BoM, we can explain the current MT as having been derived from it by "change". What change is unspecified. However, since any difference whatsoever between texts can be explained by "change", I shall assume that this means "change by means of well-established causes of transcription error". In which case we can't explain it, as I shall show later. Moreover, we have two other reasons for believing that no such document as the one hypothesized could ever have existed, and I shall come to them. The reader is the judge of the soundness of Mr Smith's argument, as of mine, but there is one comment I would like to make. The argument seems to me not derived from the text as primary; that is, it does not start with the text and try to explain it. Rather, it starts with an external hypothesis - of an independent New World tradition for the BoM - and seeks to reconcile the text with that hypothesis. This is a prevalent feature of biblical scholarship, where most people have strong hypotheses, but it does run the risk that one might end up not explaining the texts but explaining them away. For which reason, I decided (as far as humanly possible) to set aside initially all hypotheses, in the hope that my work would be helpful to the many of you who do not share my opinions. With this said, let me begin again, and this time where I ought to, at the beginning. Let us open the books, and allow the documents to speak for themselves. Here is the Masoretic text of Isaiah xiv, verses 3 and 4. Or, rather, here is the English translation by the Jewish Publication Society of America: [3] And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy travail, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, [4] that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say: How hath the oppressor ceased! The exactress of gold ceased! Note first the structure. The two verses form a single sentence, most of v3 being a subordinate clause, identifying a specific day, and v4 completing the sentence, by telling the reader (Israel) what he shall do on that day. Moreover, the text changes from prose to poetry halfway through v4, and the poem continues to the end of the Chapter. This is a very common - indeed, almost pervasive - stylistic feature of the MT. We have here a poem, accompanied by a prose introduction that leads into it. Other examples run from Genesis iv:23 through Isaiah vi:3, x:27, xxxvii:22, right up to Haggai i:5. I think of this as analogous to the 'blurbs' in a short story magazine - just as we expect a story to be introduced by a blurb, so the hearer will expect a poem, inserted in a prose narrative, to be introduced by a specific prose lead-in, detailing the circumstances of its recital. Moreover, this is a famous poem. It is the "satire against the king of Babylon" - the Hebrew word is 'mashal', usually translated "proverb", but which by this time could mean a much longer poetic text. Let us now compare the text of the BoM [2 Nephi xxiv:3-4]: [3] And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall give thee rest, from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve. [4] And it shall come to pass in that day, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say: How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased! The text has a different structure. It is two sentences, not one. Moreover, the first sentence no longer identifies a day, it talks about a day previously identified (though there is no prior identification of a specific day earlier in the Chapter). The two sentences are independent, but run in parallel. There is another difference in meaning, in the last phrase of v4 - this difference will be addressed, but not for rather a long time. And, of course, the distinction between prose and poetry has gone, which is entirely unexceptional, since the authors of the AV made the same decision, and other translators of, say, Homer and Dante have likewise replaced verse with prose. Could the MT be derived from a Hebrew version of the BoM? I do not think so. Haplography might explain the disappearance of the first part of v4, 'And it shall come to pass in that day', except that not one, but both such passages are changed, and except that haplography typically occurs when the repetitions are adjacent. But there is no reasonable way the two verses could be changed by transcription errors so as to become one complex sentence, with subordination, instead of two simple ones. Indeed, transcription errors are much more likely to simplify the structure of a text than to complicate it, which observation has been dignified by textual analysts into the working rule "lectio difficilior potior". There remains the hypothesis of a deliberate change. This is not impossible - indeed, there are eighteen places in the MT where the tradition recognises a deliberate change - but this one would be unusually large and seemingly without compelling reason. Moreover, we are now hypothesizing not only an unknown text, but an unknown scribe who wilfully changed that text for an unknown reason. For me, that is too close to the argument of the Irish Israelite who claimed that Moses was originally named Mulligan, until some over zealous copyist deleted 'ulligan' and added 'oses'. It seems superfluous to argue against the existence of an absent document. Nevertheless, there are two other things that argue against a Hebrew version of the BoM text. One I defer, the other I give now. If we look at what the MT and the BoM are saying here, it seems rather odd for its historical context. Why is Isaiah talking about release from bondage, when Israel was not in bondage, and moreover when the Lord had promised she would never again go into bondage? [see II Samuel vii:10...] Why is he saying nasty things about the King of Babylon, when the Babylonian Empire was dead these 800 years, smashed by the Hittites, and its former royal line had been extinct for three centuries? We have been here before, I think. The modern consensus is that these verses are post-Exilic, not original Isaiah. The majority view is that the entire chapter is by a later hand. The minority view is that Isaiah wrote the poem, and a later editor put it here and added the blurb (sorry, the prose introduction). (For what it's worth, that's my opinion: the text of the poem reads as though it were written not about Babylon but about Assyria, which was a real menace in Isaiah's time, and not about the future but about the past - the repulse of Sennacherib and his later death.) And, finally, there are some who hold out for a single Isaiah, and seek to explain away this text. But if you accept in principle the idea of two or more Isaiahs, I think you will agree that it is unlikely that verses 3 and 4a existed in 600BC, and without them the argument that the BoM is here older surely must fall. Now, if one probably cannot get from the BoM to the MT, for texual and historical reasons, is the reverse transition possible, from MT to BoM? Again, I think not. If haplography cannot get us one way across the chasm, dittography surely won't get us the other way. Neither text is derived directly from the other. There remains indirect derivation, by way of an unknown number of now vanished copies, each derivable from the previous, the whole completing the chain. Unfortunately, by such means one could explain anything - any change whatsoever, of any degree, give only enough intermediates and enough poor copyists. But our task is to explain not any text but THIS text, the BoM as it is, every word. Is that possible? I believe so. Indeed, here is my own reconstruction of the chain of events that created the BoM version. It relies on an intermediate text; not a vanished one in the New World but a present one in the Old; and the text is this text, which I ask you to read very carefully: [3] And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, [4] That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! Compare this first with the Masoretic text. Apart from the very last phrase (which, yet again, I defer) the meaning is the same. Moreover, the grammatical structure is the same: v3 is mostly a subordinate clause, and v4 continues the main sentence, which reads: "And it shall come to pass (...) that thou shalt take up... the ellipsis in parentheses being the subordinate clause. Apart from those different words - eg "bondage" for "service" and "proverb" for "parable" - that are legitimate differences between two translations, there is only one change. Again, the poetry has been replaced by prose; which, again, is unexceptionable. In the light of which, I conclude that this is very probably an English translation derived directly from the MT, without transcription error. Of course, we knew that anyway, because this is the Authorised Version and we have its provenance. But even if we did not know - if the history and the Epistle Dedicatory had been lost - we could still conclude as much, from the texts themselves. Now compare the AV with the BoM. Ignore please the difference in meaning, and compare only the words - the marks on paper - as if both documents were in Akkadian cuneiform or some such. Clearly, the two texts are very close, so close that one might suspect a relationship. Is the chasm of meaning that could not be crossed in Hebrew crossable in English? Could one be derived from the other? Astonishingly, the answer is yes - it is possible to pass from the AV to the BoM by the misreading of a single word, as I shall now show. In the AV, verse 3 begins: And it shall come to pass on the day that the Lord... The author of the BoM misread this text, thus: And it shall come to pass on that day that the Lord... This is a plausible misreading. First, the two fragments are very close. Secondly, the latter occurs in the AV more often than the former, and it would be natural for a hurried reader to mistake the one for the other. Finally, other evidence in the BoM shows that the second phrase was a favourite one of its author, so he might well see it where it wasn't. But the mistake is a disastrous one, for it alters the meaning of the whole. The grammatical structure of the AV phrase - the parse, if you will - must be this: And it shall come to pass / on the day that the Lord... with which opening, it is clear that the rest of v3 is subordinate to the main sentence, describing the day named, and that the main sentence must therefore continue in v4, as indeed it does. But the BoM fragment parses thus: And it shall come to pass on that day / that the Lord... with which opening, v3 does read as a separate sentence, entire of itself. The BoM author read it so, parsed it so, wrote it so, and duly ended it with a full stop, which you can see right there at the close of v3, in the place where the AV has a comma. And I hope you saw that difference: for such minutiae, piled one atop another like grains of papyrus dust, are the dusty lifeblood of textual criticism. But he now has a problem, for if v3 ends a sentence then v4 must start a new one, and it clearly can't. At which point, many readers would realise they had made a mistake, and would try again - as I'm sure many of us have done, many times, when wrestling with that Jacobean prose. This reader, however, decided otherwise. He decided that the text was in error, and determined to set it right, by making it a complete sentence. And how better than to make it exactly parallel with the previous verse, by adding a second copy of what he had already miscopied once? And there you have it. The argument is almost over. There is one loose end, the difference between the MT How hath the oppressor ceased! The exactress of gold ceased! and the AV ... How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! What does the Hebrew say? That's the problem - it doesn't. The MT here contains a word whose meaning is unknown, and that is found nowhere else. All translations are therefore conjectural, not least the two above. But the ancient translations read differently - LXX, Origen, the Vulgate - even the Syriac, though for that again I rely on authority, since I can't read it for myself. They are close to each other, though not in exact agreement, and go against the MT. It had long been suspected that there was an error in the MT at this point, but it was impossible to say just what the error was, since there was no Hebrew version with which to compare it, and no agreed back-translation of the older translations. The answer to the puzzle was found in the caves of Qumran, for 1QIsA reads thus [JB translation]: What was the end of the tyrant? What was the end of his arrogance? This is now the accepted reading, first because it makes sense, secondly because it is supported by the old translations, and thirdly because it differs from the MT by but a single consonant, a miscopying of the word "arrogance" that made it resemble the Aramaic word for "gold". It is impossible to date the error precisely, but it must have occurred somewhere between about 100BC and 500AD. I note, finally, that the BoM text follows exactly the AVs conjectural translation of a Hebrew original now known to have become corrupted long after 600BC, and again let that text speak for itself. Kind reader, if you're still here, you have my thanks and admiration. Robert Firth
wcsa@cbnewsc.att.com (10/21/90)
There are a number of basic problems I see in Robert Firth's recent analysis of Isaiah in the BoM beginning with his promise to "allow the documents to speak for themselves." I feel that he demonstrates very vividly that documents, especially when they're in conflict, cannot speak for themselves. Stylistic Considerations ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Firth's analysis of the passages in question is limited by his inability to read Hebrew, and, in the case of LXX support, Greek. He relys on English translations. Even though I studied Hebrew to fulfil my undergraduate requirements, my skills are unquestionably rusty and I would not presume to press my knowledge on Robert. However, I do know enough to follow closely the arguments of several Mormon scholars (Vest, Bishop, and Tvedtnes) as they examined the Isaiah variants of the BoM. Basically these Mormons approached the problem by putting the English of the BoM back into Hebrew. They were able to take style differences into account because they were able to compare the AV with the MT. In this respect the insistence of JS adhereing to the style of the AV, even when he altered the text, was God sent. The final result is that the "great chaisms" seen by Firth in the English translation are not so great in Hebrew. But this also introduces another problem, which Firth has not considered. Since the BoM adheres so closely to the style of the AV, the possibility that the creater, if it is a modern forgery, could have screwed up the Hebrew Grammer is rather high. For example, when Firth offers a conjective series of events that would have transformed the material of the AV into the tradition followed by the BoM, he doesn't recognize the series of grammerical land mines that he is stepping on. Although Firth senses that changing a *the* into a *that* will impact the grammerical structure of the text in English, he doesn't grasp how that would impact the Hebrew, neither does he consider the reverse process (a *that* to a *the*), and whether or not the reverse makes more sense. Although I do not care for the style of the AV, I can appreciate the challanges facing a person who would not only attempt to create a different tradition of Isaiah, but then lay that new tradition over an existing translation. To successfully carry that off is going to require not only a good knowledge of Hebrew and Grammer, but the ability to recognize the portions of the text where such alterations can be reasonably made. The task is hardly trivial. The Relationship of the BoM and MT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Firth also makes an assumption that I am not sure that I agree with. >Finally, if we do suppose an earlier Hebrew document with the same text >as the BoM, we can explain the current MT as having been derived from >it by "change". What change is unspecified. However, since any >difference whatsoever between texts can be explained by "change", I >shall assume that this means "change by means of well-established >causes of transcription error". While other mormons might agree with Firth, that the BoM tradition is an "original" tradition from which the MT descended, I haven't accepted that position for many years. The reason I haven't accepted this position is based on the study undertaken by Bishop in 1974. Bishop examined the tradition variations of Isaiah, not only between the BoM and other texts, but also between just the other texts. Bishop argued that there were several different "branches" of Isaiah traditions, ie. LXX and MT, for example the 1QIsA Qumran Scroll seems to generally fall within the LXX tradition rather than the MT tradition. It was Bishop's opinion that the BoM Isaiah followed yet another tradition. Deutro-Isaiah and BoM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When Firth started this line of discussion, he argued that the BoM was a modern forgery because it quoted from portions of Isaiah that have been labeled as deutro-Isaiah, therefore, would not have been included in a tradition of Isaiah available in 600 BC. I responded that accepting deutro-Isaiah did not necessarily mean that deutro-Isaiah lived after 600 BC. In support of this, I pointed out that there were many instances of captivity tradition (used by critics to date deutro-Isaiah to a time period after the Exile) that are found in writings that pre-date 600 BC. Our moderator pointed out that dating the tradition would involve applying some textual criticism to each Isaiah passage found in the BoM. When I offered 12 examples of textual variation, Robert responded by attempting to apply some textual criticism to one example. In the process, Firth appealed to his original argument by automatically dating all deutro-Isaiah to after 600 BC. He based his position on two points: rejection of the captivity tradition and the specific references to the King of Babylon. Firth Asks: >Why is Isaiah talking about release from bondage, when Israel was not >in bondage, and moreover when the Lord had promised she would never >again go into bondage? [see II Samuel vii:10...] Two points need to be made: 1) There is strong evidence that a captivity tradition existed long before 600 BC. Evidence can shown by citing 1 Kings 8:46-51; Lev 26:33-45; Deut 28:64-8; and Deut 50:1-5, 2) A revival of this tradition by Isaiah would have naturally occurred in light of contemporary events, ie. the deportation of the Northern Kingdom. Firth also asks why Isaiah would have singled out Babylon when the Babylonian dynasty was gone and it was Assyria that was kicking everyone in the behind. Even if one rejects prophecy, as Firth evidently has, there are other alternatives that make equally good sense. 1- The entire passage addresses each of the surrounding nations in turn, not just Babylon, but also Assyria, Egypt, Moab, Philistia, etc. 2- The King of Assyria was also the King of Babylon (At least my NIV study Bible points that out), so mocking the King of Babylon is the same as mocking the King of Assyria. 3- As goes Babylon's King, so goes Babylon, meaning that the passage is predicting the fall of the worldly, cosmopolitian life that was certainly the Babylon of Isaiah's day. 4- Even if we accept Firth's proposal that part of this passage was composed by deutro-Isaiah, it could have been prepared before 600 BC. There is yet another possiblity, that Robert has overlooked. The passage in BoM Isaiah 14:3-4 is changed to "in that day." Certainly, if Firth is familiar with Isaiah chap 14-23, he should be aware of Isaiah 19:16-24, wherein a series of five "in that day" statements are made which clearly point to some time in the *far* distant future. Under that interpretation, BoM passage of Isaiah is not directly attacking the Babylonian dynasty, which Robert points out was long gone, instead he is predicting the long distant fall of the degenerate world which the Babylon of Isaiah's day certainly embodied. Opinion of BoM Creation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Firth also presented an interesting theory, of which he offerred not the slightest hint of evidence, concerning the creation of the BoM variations. For all of this "minutiae, piled one atop another like grains of papyrus dust" have we seen anything that could not also be a characteristic of a legitimate tradition? If "the dusty life blood of textual criticism" involves the ferretting out of illegitimate traditions then what has Robert accomplished? With all the possiblities of screwing up the grammer, or adding a phrase that would have made no sense anciently, what has Firth's little exercise in textual criticism accomplished? Nothing! Think for a moment, we are looking at what appears to be a minor change in phrasing, but its impact on interpreting the text is major. It pushes the interpretation to the distant future. In fact, ALL changes in the BoM version of Isaiah, that drastically affect the interpretation, push the time period forward to the "last days." Is this consistent with Firth's speculation of one fumbling around in English? I maintain, and will offer *evidence* through version support, that it is much easier to go from the BoM version to the MT version then the other way around. Question of Corrupted Text ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Firth also attempts to "prove" modern forgery by pointing to a passage of Isaiah 14:4 that is controversal and ambigious. He makes the following points 1- some ancient translations read differently and are not supportative of the MT, 2- The controversy was settled by the discovery of 1QIsA, 3- 1QIsA differs from the MT by a single consonant suggesting a transcription error in the MT, 4- The error involved miscopying the word "arrogance" so that it resembled an Aramaic word for "gold." The BoM did not "correct" this passage, therefore it is a modern forgery. There are several ways to respond. If we accept without question Firth's analysis, at least one school of thought among Mormons, B.H. Robert's School, is going to respond, "What's the big deal? We certainly do not accept inerrancy, which for some reason seems to be the basic assumption of Robert Firth." At the heart of the matter is whether BoM Isaiah passages not altered have the same significance as altered passages. Firth assumes that they do, and the B.H. Robert's School does not. The *other* school of thought would respond much differently showing that although 1QIsaA does support the notion of *mraba* being incorrectly rendered as *mdaba*, to make *mraba* "fit" the correct gender, tense, etc. one must change the structure and meaning of the passage in such a way as to put it at odds with other traditions such as LXX and other ancient translations. The other school will also point out that *mdaba* was long thought to have been a Hebrew word borrowed from the Chaldean language and referred to the ingots received as tribute money making the passage consistent and fully parallel to the preceeding phrase (in Hebrew). Moreover, they would point out that the root to *mdaba*, does appear in the Old Testament within the correct context of Chaldean gold, while *mraba* has no supporting form in the Old Testament. My opinion is close to the B.H. Robert's school, in that ALL significant changes made in the BoM text of Isaiah appear to push the changed passages in only one direction, that is toward a "last days" interpretation, which is consistent with how most Mormons view the BoM (as a text prepared for people of the last days). If the changes were suppose to reflect an original tradition, as the other Mormon school of thought supposes, then we should also see changes that push portions of the text back to Isaiah's specific time. You don't see that. I personally do not believe that the BoM text is suppose to take you back to some early inerrant "original tradition," but that it reflects only the significant material in that original tradition which pertains to the last days. In support of this view (at least to other Mormons), I might point out that the Isaiah passages are quoted at length to lend support to Nephi's second telling of his Tree of Life Vision (which is the major repeating theme of 2nd Nephi), and that Nephi's Tree of Life vision mainly concentrated on the Last Days and the Restoration of all things. As a result of this view, Firth's problem is rather meaningless to me. Version Support ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After all is said, the bottom line comes back to the question, what do the documents say, or in other words, is there support for the Isaiah tradition in the BoM for Isaiah 14:3-4. Firth asserts that there is no support: >That there is no Hebrew document now in existence with this >text is certain. Firth is only partially correct, but in several different texts each difference is supported in whole or part! If Firth expects one text to have all the differences I submit that he expects far too much and once again demonstrates his willingness to go for the easy simplistic approach to textual criticism. One response ago, I submitted 12 cases each with an abstract, Firth and Siemon both objected. I see my error, I should have typed in Tvedtnes' entire Summary for each case instead. Only in this way can Firth's objections be evaluated and perhaps (in a limited way) we can *finally* see what the documents say: **Begin Tvedtnes's Summary of Isaiah 14:3-4** 14:3 = 2 Ne. 24:3 KJV "the day" is BM "that day". The difference would indicate that BM had the additional word h-hw ("that") which, while it is not in MT, is found in some Hebrew mss. KJV's wording makes vs 3 the protasis of vs 4, which begins with "that". This is possible, for the inital word of vs 4 is the Hebrew conjunction w- (normally translated "and"), which may show just such a syntactic relationship. In fact, it may show such a relationship even when the following apodosis begins with w-hyh ("and it shall come to pass") as in BM vs 4. However, this possiblility disappears by the addition of the demonstrative "that" in BM. The original probably read as follows: w-hyh b-ywm h-hw' w-hnyh Yhwh lk, "And it shall come to pass in that day that (w-) the Lord shall give thee rest..." We assume that the first change was the deletion of w- (here meaning "that" in the temporal sense of "when" rather than a relative market "in which" - the latter would be ky). It would be a simple deletion since the letter would already been written by the scribe in the preceding word (h-hw'), with just one letter intervening (and perhaps without word-divisions). This would produce a sentence which could read in one of two ways, either "And it shall come to pass in that day, the Lord shall give thee rest..." or, "And it shall come to pass in that day, the Lord's giving of rest (lit., "making rest") to you..." Neither sentence is without its problems. But without the demonstrative h-hw' (easily dropped by haplography, since it begins with the same letters as the two words between which it is situated), it becomes, "And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's giving you rest" (or, as in KJV's more idiomatic English, "when the Lord shall give you rest"). This leaves us without a complete sentence unless we continue on to vs 4, which then dropped its beginning as redundant (see below). BM is supported in this respect by LXX also, which read "en te hemera ekeine", "in that day". In prophecy, "that day" (see also vs 4) often refers to the "day of the Lord" and is so read throughout much of the Bible. 14:4 = 2 Ne 24:4 BM adds at the beginning, "And it shall come to pass in that day ..." this is a repeat from the preceding verse. If the changes took place in vs 3 as we have speculated, then this would of necessity have been dropped from vs. 4 of MT to make it the apodosis of vs 3. MT begins with the conjunction w- (=LXX kai), but the rest is missing. Some LXX-mss. support the BM version by adding here "en te hemera ekeine", "in that day". **End of Quote** My only addition to this is to point out that the other LXX-mss support in verse 4 is the Alexandrine Text, "And thou shalt say in that day ..." (see note for Isaiah xiv:4 in _Septuagint With Apocrypha_, (Hendrickson, 1990), p.849. The bottom line is that there *is* reasonable support, from an examination of the text, grammer, and other versions of Isaiah, for the BoM tradition. Unlike Firth's nice speculative approach that dealt with mistakes and associated fumblings in English, this approach shows that the text could very easily be altered in Hebrew without resorting to a cynical "hypothesis of deliberate change." -- Willard C. Smith att!cbnewsc!iwsgw!wcsa wcsa@iwsgw.att.com "It's life, Captain, but not as we know it."