Sunday, July 02, 2017

Rahab's sisters in parallel timelines?

DR. SHIRA GOLANI: Were Rahab’s Sisters Saved? Making sense of small differences between biblical lists: a look at the merit of different reading strategies (TheTorah.com).

We find potential parallel universes in the story of Rahab the prostitute in Joshua 2 and 6. The Hebrew Masoretic Test (MT) and the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and the Greek Septuagint (LXX) tell the story somewhat differently.

Did the spies refuse to spare them? Did they not make it to the house in time? Did she not have sisters in the first place? Or are we just dealing with different ways of saying that her whole family was saved?

For a similar, but less ambiguous, case in which King Zedekiah finds himself in two parallel timelines in the MT and LXX of Jeremiah, see here.

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