3 ms·

Have you considered maybe a few people looked into the ark and the whole nation was punished as a result? or at least 50,070 of the nation? you are assuming eve

by terabit 10y ago

Have you considered maybe a few people looked into the ark and the whole nation was punished as a result? or at least 50,070 of the nation? you are assuming everyone that was killed looked into the ark. Have you considered that maybe the fact that the ark symbolized the covenant between God and the Israelites meant that any disrespect or mistreatment of this ark by any Israeli would cause disaster on all of Israel?

furyg3 10y ago
The point of the grandparent wasn't to outline all possible things that may have happened (Hell, the whole thing could have been made up). The point is that original texts may have differed, omitting certain aspects for logistical or other reasons, that newer versions try to rectify.
drewcrawford 10y ago
50,000 people is the order of magnitude of the Israelites alive at this time. So if 50,070 people died, Israel would cease to exist as a geopolitical entity, whereas this text has them going on to win a war against Philistia merely 10 verses later. But leaving that aside, a reading of 50,070 has a number of other problems. First, it does not explain how such an exact figure was calculated, which would have been a major statistical undertaking at this time. Compare to a similar situation in Numbers 1, where nearly 60 verses are devoted to explaining the procedure used to arrive at figures much less exact than these. (Those figures are difficult too, but not because of their exactness.) But leaving that aside also, it doesn't account for the glaring error in the number itself: שִׁבְעִ֣ים אִ֔ישׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים אֶ֖לֶף אִ֑ישׁ is a bizarre way to write a number. It's like saying my software has "70 lines 50KLOC". Everything is wrong: the place order (fifty-thousand seventy, not seventy fifty-thousand), the conjunction (fifty-thousand and seventy), the noun ("lines") is redundant and even interrupts the number. If somebody said "70 lines 50KLOC" you would not assume they meant 50,070, you would assume they made an error. All lines of evidence point to some problem with the figure, but there is really no agreement as to how it is resolved. The modern style is to assume that "70 men" and "50,000 men" are two different figures, one of them is spurious, and choosing 70 is better than choosing 50,000. The style falling out of favor is to assume two figures for two distinct things, one of which is lost, which is how you wind up with the "70 men and 50 oxen" readings. Finding a new manuscript could very well blow the lid off this debate, but it would have to be quite old, as both the problem and the debate around it are positively ancient. I believe we have the 50,070 reading all the way back to 50BCE, and we certainly have rabbinical sources arguing about it by c. 300. The book itself only dates to 550 BCE, so it is a very narrow window to stumble onto a manuscript. There is an outside chance this particular section may be lifted from an older, lost work all the way back to the time of David, so this problem may even pre-date the book in which it appears. Unfortunately we have only tens of lines of manuscripts from that whole period, so recovering that work – if there even is an earlier work, which is not at all clear – is terribly unlikely.

by terabit 10y ago

furyg3 10y ago

The point of the grandparent wasn't to outline all possible things that may have happened (Hell, the whole thing could have been made up). The point is that original texts may have differed, omitting certain aspects for logistical or other reasons, that newer versions try to rectify.

drewcrawford 10y ago

50,000 people is the order of magnitude of the Israelites alive at this time. So if 50,070 people died, Israel would cease to exist as a geopolitical entity, whereas this text has them going on to win a war against Philistia merely 10 verses later. But leaving that aside, a reading of 50,070 has a number of other problems. First, it does not explain how such an exact figure was calculated, which would have been a major statistical undertaking at this time. Compare to a similar situation in Numbers 1, where nearly 60 verses are devoted to explaining the procedure used to arrive at figures much less exact than these. (Those figures are difficult too, but not because of their exactness.) But leaving that aside also, it doesn't account for the glaring error in the number itself: שִׁבְעִ֣ים אִ֔ישׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים אֶ֖לֶף אִ֑ישׁ is a bizarre way to write a number. It's like saying my software has "70 lines 50KLOC". Everything is wrong: the place order (fifty-thousand seventy, not seventy fifty-thousand), the conjunction (fifty-thousand and seventy), the noun ("lines") is redundant and even interrupts the number. If somebody said "70 lines 50KLOC" you would not assume they meant 50,070, you would assume they made an error. All lines of evidence point to some problem with the figure, but there is really no agreement as to how it is resolved. The modern style is to assume that "70 men" and "50,000 men" are two different figures, one of them is spurious, and choosing 70 is better than choosing 50,000. The style falling out of favor is to assume two figures for two distinct things, one of which is lost, which is how you wind up with the "70 men and 50 oxen" readings. Finding a new manuscript could very well blow the lid off this debate, but it would have to be quite old, as both the problem and the debate around it are positively ancient. I believe we have the 50,070 reading all the way back to 50BCE, and we certainly have rabbinical sources arguing about it by c. 300. The book itself only dates to 550 BCE, so it is a very narrow window to stumble onto a manuscript. There is an outside chance this particular section may be lifted from an older, lost work all the way back to the time of David, so this problem may even pre-date the book in which it appears. Unfortunately we have only tens of lines of manuscripts from that whole period, so recovering that work – if there even is an earlier work, which is not at all clear – is terribly unlikely.