--- title: "Diachronic Study of the Hebrew Bible — Berman 2014" description: "A short lecture (Copenhagen 2013) on source criticism of the Pentateuch. Starting from a Jerusalem study group that admitted no progress on its questions…" authors: ["Joshua Berman"] year: 2014 venue: "HIPHIL Novum 1" source: "https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929" doi: "10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929" licence: "HIPHIL Novum vols 1–8: free to read, no CC licence (all rights reserved to the authors) — read only" licence_url: "https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/about" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2014-berman-diachronic-study-hebrew-bible-field/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2014-berman-diachronic-study-hebrew-bible-field/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2014](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2014/) / Diachronic Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Field in Crisis # Diachronic Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Field in Crisis **Authors:** Joshua Berman · **Year:** 2014 · **Venue:** HIPHIL Novum 1 (1), 59–65 **Link:** [tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/view/142929](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/view/142929) · **Licence:** copyrighted — summary only (free to read, all rights reserved to the author) [**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2184802721) OpenAlex · 2026-10-14 · [HIPHIL Novum 1](https://openalex.org/S5406958382) · [licence](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/about) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929) - [PDF](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/download/142929/186633) - [DOI 10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2184802721) **Authors (1)** 1. [Joshua Berman](https://openalex.org/A5048136817) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2446-0522) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/13750694) · h 6 · 200 citations · 85 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about A short lecture (Copenhagen 2013) on source criticism of the Pentateuch. Starting from a Jerusalem study group that admitted no progress on its questions (what is a source, a redactor, a layer), Berman argues the root problem is the lack of any agreed procedure for knocking out wrong hypotheses: theories are built from the final text alone, with no external control. He proposes a test: take documented cases of textual growth (Chronicles from Samuel–Kings, the Temple Scroll from the Pentateuch, Gilgamesh versions, Tatian's Diatessaron), learn the reworking "algorithm" on one half, and see whether it reconstructs the source of the other half; Kaufman's attempt suggests it cannot. He endorses Carr's findings from such documented cases (supplementation, not interleaved sources; at most two or three layers; additions rarely over a quarter of the base) and linguistic dating checked against inscriptions and Qumran as the two controlled ways forward. ## Ideas - I1. The paper's proposed experiment is a held-out test in Mova's own sense: fit a rule on one half of a known source/derived pair, judge it only on the other half. Any future tool that claims to detect sources or layers in the Torah should be gated this way, with a negative control (shuffled verse assignment) that must fail. - I2. Otherwise: none for the grammar or the parser; the paper is about method in literary history, not about language. ## For Mova I1 is a principle for any stylometric or source-critical measure that [languages/hbo/12-biblical-mishnaic-modern.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/12-biblical-mishnaic-modern/) (the dating debate) might report; it also supports writing there that dating by the received text alone has no external control. No tool change follows. ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929) ```bibtex @inproceedings{berman2014diachronic, title = {{Diachronic Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Field in Crisis}}, author = {Berman, Joshua}, booktitle = {HIPHIL Novum 1}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929}, url = {https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142929} } ``` - [← previous Diachronic proximity vs. data sparsity in cross-lingual parser projection. A case study on Germanic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sukhareva-2014-diachronic-proximity-vs-data-sparsity/) - [next → Discovering Implicit Discourse Relations Through Brown Cluster Pair Representation and Coreference Patterns](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rutherford-2014-discovering-implicit-discourse-relations-through/) - [↑ back to papers of 2014](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2014/) ## References 4 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Carr, David M. The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Carr%2C+David+M%2E+The+Formation+of+the+Hebrew+Bible%3A+A+New+Reconstruction%2E+Oxford%2C+New+York%3A+Oxford+University+Press%2C+2010%2E) 2. Kaufman, Steven A. “Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” HUCA 53 (1982) 29-52. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kaufman%2C+Steven+A%2E+%E2%80%9CTemple+Scroll+and+Higher+Criticism%2C%E2%80%9D+HUCA+53+%281982%29+29%2D52%2E) 3. Krugman, Paul. “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?,” New York Times Magazine, September 6, 2009. Available at http//www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html. Accessed November 24, 2013. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Krugman%2C+Paul%2E+%E2%80%9CHow+Did+Economists+Get+It+So+Wrong%3F%2C%E2%80%9D+New+York+Times+Magazine%2C+September+6%2C+2009%2E+Available+at+http%2F%2Fwww%2Enytimes%2Ecom%2F2009%2F09%2F06%2Fmagazine%2F06Economic%2Dt%2Ehtml%2E+Accessed+November+24%2C+2013%2E) 4. Robinson, Joan. Economic Philosophy. London: Penguin, 1962. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Robinson%2C+Joan%2E+Economic+Philosophy%2E+London%3A+Penguin%2C+1962%2E)