Deut 32:8. This verse of
the Song of Moses contains a particularly interesting intervention to
demythologise a poetic description of Israel's coming into being as the LORD's
special people. The verse speaks of "the Most High" (עליון) as
organising the division of peoples within their various territories, fixing
their boundaries "according to the number of the sons of Israel"
(MT). Verse 9 then indicates that 1'the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his
allotted heritage". If one remains with the MT and within a strict
monotheistic perspective, the Most High is the LORD, who after having appointed
the territories to the various peoples, reserves Jacob as his own special
people.
However, the Qumran discoveries
have brought renewed attention to a different form of v.8b, "according to
the number of the sons of God", which is also the rendering, more or less, of
the LXX. The reading "angels of God" is also presupposed in the
Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan. If one were
to have retained the original form of Deut 32:8, it would have caused
considerable embarrassment to a mentality that was particularly sensitive to
suitable theological expression. For it was open to a very definite
polytheistic interpretation, namely, that when the Most High apportioned the
territories according to the number of the "sons of God”, the LORD
was merely one of these bne Elohim, who received Jacob as bis allotted
heritage, in the same way that the gods of the other nations received their
heritage. Since such a possible interpretation was contrary to the most
elementary principles of monotheism, it is understandable that some form of
theological surgery had to be operated.
That the MT "sons of
Israel" is a deliberate theological correction°2 is beyond doubt, and
understandable in the context. Even more interesting from the point of view of
the methodology of such corrections, is the series of subsequent corrections to
which the MT was subjected, as a consequence of Deut 32:8. These are identified
and described in detail by D. Barthelemy. The first consisted of the omission
in the MT of half a verse in Gen 46:20, whereby the progeny of Manasseh by his
Aramean concubine (Machir, and grandson, Gilead) and that of his brother
Ephraim (Shuthelah, Tahan and grandson, Ephraim), five in all, were
conveniently omitted. In Gen 46:21, the MT presents the progeny of Benjamin as
belonging to the same generation, whereas the LXX enumerates them in three
generations. In Gen 46:22 the original "nineteen" attested by the LXX
has been emended to "fourteen" in the MT, and in Gen 46:27 and Ex
1:5, the total "seventy-five" of the LXX for both, and of Qumran for
the latter, is rendered in the MT as "seventy". As Barthélemy
remarks, this was a "costly" manner of unifying the different
passages, so that if this more complicated manner of correcting the texts was
adopted, it must have been for a serious motive. Barthélemy suggests that:
Cette raison n'est autre que le parallèlisme que l'on entendait creer
d'autre part avec l'hebdomécontade de la liste des peuples, et cela aux depens
du parallèlisme traditionnel qui reliait celle-ci à la vieille hebdomécontade
cananeenne des "Fils de Dieu". [RB :
This reason is nothing other than the parallelism that one sought, on the one
hand, to establish with the hebdomécontade of the list of peoples—and that to
the detriment of the traditional parallelism which had linked it to the ancient
Canaanite hebdomécontade of the “Sons of God.”]
This examination of the
emendation at Deut 32:8 and of the repercussions it had on five other texts
shows that, for some cases at least, the
phenomenon of theological corrections was not something which happened in a
half-hearted way. To have succeeded in effecting these six inter-related
corrections was hardly the work of an individual scribe, who, on his own
initiative, felt that the polytheistic overtones to Deut 32:8 should be
suppressed. Rather, these cases show that this activity of monitoring the text
and intervening where necessary, must have ranked high among the priorities of
those concerned with the protection and faithful transmission of the sacred
text. (Carmel McCarthy, The Tiqqune Sopherim and Other Theological
Corrections in the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament [Orbis Biblicus Et
Orientalis; Fribourg: Biblical Institute of the University of Fribourg, 1981],
211-14)
