Korah and the Documentary Hypothesis
Published: June 19, 2014
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
These words do not appear in the LXX.
These words do not appear in the LXX.
This phrase appears to be redactional. Another possibility, suggested by Richard Elliott Friedman (The Bible with Sources Revealed, ad loc.), is that the phrase “all the people which were Korah’s and all their possessions” is part of P and goes together with the phrase “so they withdrew from the abode of Korah.” This suggestion, however, is grammatically problematic.
This assumes that a perfect tense verb was changed to an imperfect tense in the editing. Another possibility is to assume that the verb was originally imperfect tense, as it is in the final form, but that it originally came at the beginning of the sentence. If this is correct, then the original opening to the account in the J source would have read: וַיָּקֻ֙מוּ֙ דָתָ֨ן וַאֲבִירָ֜ם בְּנֵ֧י אֱלִיאָ֛ב….
These words do not appear in the LXX.
These words do not appear in the LXX.
For more on this approach, see Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Source Revealed, (ad loc.) and ibid, Who Wrote the Bible?, 192-196.
