[Avodah] Parshat Ki Tavo: What Was Written on the Stones?

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Tue Sep 5 11:20:44 PDT 2017


On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 12:17:10PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: 3. Why do you think the stones, with the plaster on them and the
: writing on the plaster, still existed after 1000 years of exposure
: to the elements?  Does any 1000-year-old writing (not engraving)
: exist today?

Rishonim on Yehoshua also argue how many such monuments there were. For
example Rashi (at least as explained in Gur Aryeih) has three copies:
one in the Yaedrin, one on the mizbeiach on Har Eivel (which is named
in Devarim) and one at Gilgal.

AND there is a machloqes tanna'im (Sotah 35b) about how they were
written. But I think both shitos hold they were engraced. R' Shimon
says that the stones were plastered, and then the words were engraved
into the plaster. R' Yehudah held the stones were engraved, and then
plastered on top of them.

R' Yehudah's position sounds like it's describing more permanent writing,
but how would you get to see it? You would not only need to peel off
the plaster, the plaster could well get into the engraved letters.

To address the original question:
Ezra haSofer used majority to produce the mesoretic text, leaving us
with a sefer that didn't match any of the copies found. Why didn't he
check the Hebrew copy/ies from the monunemnt(s)? Wouldn't a text
engraved by people who met MRAH be more authoritative than any of them?

(All this assuming, as is the post I'm replying to, that they contained
the whole Torah. That is the shitah we're trying to understand, no?)

So it would seem to me that just as we have no idea how to find this
monument / these monuments, even if the writing is still legible, they
were already unavailable in Ezra's day. Unsurprising, given how much
more pragmatic and used knowledge was lost.

And even if they did know where to find it, either the writing wore off
the plaster, or perhaps the plaster was too embedded after all those
centuries to be picked off to read the stone.

Regardless of the shift in Greek, the stones weren't even usable when
the target was the original Hebrew.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
micha at aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter



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