Hello,
I've read an article by Damien Mackey some of whose conclusions seem very
interesting at first sight, but I'd love to know your opinion.He quotes John
Wenham, `The Large Numbers of the Old Testament', Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967):
19-23, and it tries to explain some perplexing numbers in the Hebrew Bible.The
key paragraph is this:
"In the modern Hebrew Bible all numbers are written out in full, but for a long
time the text was written without vowels [which] made it possible to confuse
two words which are crucial to this problem: 'eleph and 'alluph. Without vowel
points these words look identical: 'lp. 'Eleph' is the ordinary word for
'thousand', but it can also be used in a variety of other senses: e.g. 'family'
(Judges 6:15, Revised Version.) or 'clan' (Zechariah 9:7; 12:5,6, RSV) or
perhaps a military unit. 'Alluph' is used for the 'chieftains' of Edom (Genesis
36:15-43); probably for a commander of a military 'thousand'; and almost
certainly for the professional, fully-armed soldier."
I think the most obvious problem here is when we can conclude there has been a
confusion by a copist. But in some cases this explanation makes a lot of sense.
For instance:
"David's feast in Hebron in 1 Chronicles 12 appears to be attended by enormous
numbers, not of ordinary men, but of distinguished leaders - some 340,800 of
them. In this case it looks as though in fact there were 'captains of
thousands' and 'captains of hundreds', and that by metonomy or by abbrevation
'thousand' has been used for 'captains of thousands' and 'hundreds' for
'captains of hundreds'. 'Thousand' and 'hundred' have been treated as numerals
and added together. When these figures are unscrambled, we get a total of
roughly 2,000 'famous men', which seems eminently reasonable...."In 1 Kings
20:27-30, the little Israelite army killed 100 (not 100,000) foot-soldiers, and
the wall of Aphek [when it fell] killed 27 (not 27,000) more."The Ethiopian
invasion had a thousand, not a million, warriors (2 Chronicles 14: 9).
"10 (not 10,000) were cast down from the top of the rock (2 Chronicles
25:12).""...The total fighting force [of the Exodus Israelites] is some 18,000
which would probably mean a figure of about 72,000 for the whole migration".
Do you think this is a plausible explanation?
This is the link: http://www.specialtyinterests.net/hebrew_numbers.html
Best,Sergio Saavedra (Spain)
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