Judaism: culture, customs, traditions, rituals and festivals

Qnts2

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The book of Deuteronomy is not a book of Moses. Study that before you reply.

Then you disagree with Judaism?

I do consider the book of Deuteronomy a book of Moses, and there are 5 books of Moses.

I am simply giving the standard. And as I believe and call it.
 
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mishkan

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The book of Deuteronomy is not a book of Moses. Study that before you reply.
Such cryptic statements don't make you sound clever--they make you sound foolish. The Torah is a single unit, which has been maintained for thousands of years. They are the "Five Books of Moses", whether you think there should be a distinction, or not.

Why don't you share your reasoning, since you are the one challenging a standard statement of all scholarship, everywhere?
 
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GuardianShua

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Such cryptic statements don't make you sound clever--they make you sound foolish. The Torah is a single unit, which has been maintained for thousands of years. They are the "Five Books of Moses", whether you think there should be a distinction, or not.

Why don't you share your reasoning, since you are the one challenging a standard statement of all scholarship, everywhere?

Then you disagree with Judaism?

I do consider the book of Deuteronomy a book of Moses, and there are 5 books of Moses.

I am simply giving the standard. And as I believe and call it.

I was hoping you would study the issue before sending a reply. Study the history of the book of Deuteronomy first.
 
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Qnts2

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I was hoping you would study the issue before sending a reply. Study the history of the book of Deuteronomy first.


It is simple, God gave the Torah to Moses (the five books of Moses).

There are all kinds of nay sayers to anything and everything taught in Judaism and Christianity, who claim to have the backing of historical evidence, scientific evidence etc.

But, let's make this simple. Scripture is the highest authority. The five books of Moses, the Torah, was already canonized when Jesus walked on this earth. Jesus refers to the Torah by the names of 'Moses', the law of Moses, the law. These are standard references to the five books of Moses, the Torah. Jesus never disputed with anyone that Deuteronomy was to be excluded. Or say, there are really only 4 books of Moses. Yeshua accepted the division of the various books/scrolls as Judaism divided out the scripture.
 
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yedida

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It is quite evident that Moses didn't write the ending of Deuteronomy as it records his death and burial, but that doesn't mean to imply that he was not the author of it up to the last chapter or two. Yeshua referred to him as the author and that's good enough for me.
 
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GuardianShua

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It is quite evident that Moses didn't write the ending of Deuteronomy as it records his death and burial, but that doesn't mean to imply that he was not the author of it up to the last chapter or two. Yeshua referred to him as the author and that's good enough for me.

Some of the book of Deuteronomy may be the words of Moses. There are numerous contradictions in that book. I will study the issues more this evening. It looks as if someone has added to the words of Moses.:wave:
 
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GuardianShua

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ROTFLMAO! I hope you can have this issue licked in an evening:D

This is just the tip of the iceburg. Do you see the problem. I also found a bunch of contradictions.

Deuteronomy 1:1
These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah—opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab.

Deuteronomy 1:3
In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the LORD had commanded him concerning them.

Deuteronomy 1:5
East of the Jordan in the territory of Moab, Moses began to expound this law, saying:

Deuteronomy 4:41
Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan,

Deuteronomy 4:44
This is the law Moses set before the Israelites.

Deuteronomy 4:45
These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt

Deuteronomy 4:46
and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 5:1
Moses summoned all Israel and said: Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them.

Deuteronomy 27:1
Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Keep all these commands that I give you today.

Deuteronomy 27:9
Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 27:11
On the same day Moses commanded the people:

Deuteronomy 29:1
These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

Deuteronomy 29:2
Moses summoned all the Israelites and said to them: Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land.

Deuteronomy 31:1
Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel:

Deuteronomy 31:7
Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the LORD swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance.

Deuteronomy 31:9
So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel.

Deuteronomy 31:10
Then Moses commanded them: “At the end of every seven years, in the year for canceling debts, during the Festival of Tabernacles,

Deuteronomy 31:14
The LORD said to Moses, “Now the day of your death is near. Call Joshua and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, where I will commission him.” So Moses and Joshua came and presented themselves at the tent of meeting.

Deuteronomy 31:16
And the LORD said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.

Deuteronomy 31:22
So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.

Deuteronomy 31:24
After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end,

Deuteronomy 31:30
And Moses recited the words of this song from beginning to end in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel:

Deuteronomy 32:44
Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people.

Deuteronomy 32:45
When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel,

Deuteronomy 32:48
On that same day the LORD told Moses,

Deuteronomy 33:1
This is the blessing that Moses the man of God pronounced on the Israelites before his death.

Deuteronomy 33:4
the law that Moses gave us, the possession of the assembly of Jacob.

Deuteronomy 34:1
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan,

Deuteronomy 34:5
And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.

Deuteronomy 34:7
Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.

Deuteronomy 34:8
The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over.

Deuteronomy 34:9
Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the LORD had commanded Moses.

Deuteronomy 34:10
Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,

Deuteronomy 34:12
For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.


If Deuteronomy is a book Moses wrote, then where is the "I" in the sentence? So who wrote Deuteronomy? No one seems to know! There is a great deal of speculation on the Internet, but no archaeological proof.
 
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mishkan

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This is just the tip of the iceburg. Do you see the problem. I also found a bunch of contradictions.
...
If Deuteronomy is a book Moses wrote, then where is the "I" in the sentence? So who wrote Deuteronomy? No one seems to know! There is a great deal of speculation on the Internet, but no archaeological proof.
I think you may be on to something. In fact, what if we look at all five books this way??? Just take a look at Exodus 3... "And Moses said"... "And God said to Moses"... Why, there's not a first person pronoun to be found!

The whole Torah is written in the third person, not just Deuteronomy. Holy conspiracy theories, Batman! If lack of first person pronouns is going to be accepted as evidence for non-Mosaic authorship, then you just discovered the key to taking down all five books! We might as well suppose that no such person as Moshe ever existed!

<end of satire>

The fact is, one needs to apply a great deal of discernment when engaging speculation from anonymous and/or dubious sources. This is a great illustration of that fact. Moses didn't have the same third grade English teachers you and I did, and is very likely to use styles of address that differ from our preferred correspondence standards.
 
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GuardianShua

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I think you may be on to something. In fact, what if we look at all five books this way??? Just take a look at Exodus 3... "And Moses said"... "And God said to Moses"... Why, there's not a first person pronoun to be found!

The whole Torah is written in the third person, not just Deuteronomy. Holy conspiracy theories, Batman! If lack of first person pronouns is going to be accepted as evidence for non-Mosaic authorship, then you just discovered the key to taking down all five books! We might as well suppose that no such person as Moshe ever existed!

<end of satire>

The fact is, one needs to apply a great deal of discernment when engaging speculation from anonymous and/or dubious sources. This is a great illustration of that fact. Moses didn't have the same third grade English teachers you and I did, and is very likely to use styles of address that differ from our preferred correspondence standards.

It would have been thoughtful for the scholars to have mentioned that the books of Moses are narrated by an unknown author. The next question would be, what other liberties were taken?
 
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jcpro

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I think you may be on to something. In fact, what if we look at all five books this way??? Just take a look at Exodus 3... "And Moses said"... "And God said to Moses"... Why, there's not a first person pronoun to be found!

The whole Torah is written in the third person, not just Deuteronomy. Holy conspiracy theories, Batman! If lack of first person pronouns is going to be accepted as evidence for non-Mosaic authorship, then you just discovered the key to taking down all five books! We might as well suppose that no such person as Moshe ever existed!

<end of satire>

The fact is, one needs to apply a great deal of discernment when engaging speculation from anonymous and/or dubious sources. This is a great illustration of that fact. Moses didn't have the same third grade English teachers you and I did, and is very likely to use styles of address that differ from our preferred correspondence standards.
There's nothing unusual about third person narrative. Probably the most influencial work by a Roman- Commentarii de Bello Gallico- written by Julius Ceasar is a first hand account written in the third person. Third person narratives are pretty common. Xenophon's Anabassis is another example. Nothing to see here;)
 
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mishkan

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It would have been thoughtful for the scholars to have mentioned that the books of Moses are narrated by an unknown author. The next question would be, what other liberties were taken?
As you say, they are "the five books of Moses". I regard it as completely irrelevent whether he personally penned them, or had a scribe write things as he said them. The point is, they are direct revelation from Hashem, as given to "his servant, Moshe".

More than that is simply making "a tempest in a teapot".

I would even be quite content to discover (if it were true) that most of what is in the Torah was initiated orally, and only written down later. That is quite compatible with the facts we have, as well. It would still be "the books of Moshe", containing, "the Word of Hashem, as given to Moshe".

Every week in the synagogue liturgy we proclaim,
V'zot ha torah,
Asher sam Moshe lifnei B'nai Yisrael
Al-pi Adonai, b-yad Moshe

This is the Torah,
Which Moses placed before the children of Israel,
From the mouth of the Lord by the hand of Moses.

It has never changed.
The fact that the transmission occurred is more important than exactly how it happened, I think.
 
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GuardianShua

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As you say, they are "the five books of Moses". I regard it as completely irrelevent whether he personally penned them, or had a scribe write things as he said them. The point is, they are direct revelation from Hashem, as given to "his servant, Moshe".

More than that is simply making "a tempest in a teapot".

I would even be quite content to discover (if it were true) that most of what is in the Torah was initiated orally, and only written down later. That is quite compatible with the facts we have, as well. It would still be "the books of Moshe", containing, "the Word of Hashem, as given to Moshe".

Every week in the synagogue liturgy we proclaim,
V'zot ha torah,
Asher sam Moshe lifnei B'nai Yisrael
Al-pi Adonai, b-yad Moshe

This is the Torah,
Which Moses placed before the children of Israel,
From the mouth of the Lord by the hand of Moses.

It has never changed.
The fact that the transmission occurred is more important than exactly how it happened, I think.

The scholars should have at least segregated the comments from Moses actual words.
 
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mishkan

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The scholars should have at least segregated the comments from Moses actual words.
I understand. However, the ancients did not have the same concepts of "scholarly objectivity" that we employ today.
 
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GuardianShua

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I understand. However, the ancients did not have the same concepts of "scholarly objectivity" that we employ today.

For certain Moses did not put in those additions, nor did a scribe in his time. The narrated parts were added sometime between, after the death of Joshua, and the start of the Hellenistic period in Israel. The Hellenist had the most reckless disregard for scriptures, so I highly suspect them.
 
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Avodat

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One way of looking at this situation is:

The Bible only says that Moses wrote down everything that G_d said to him - that is not the same as saying that Moses wrote the Pentateuch ie the two are the same thing. Yeshua spoke of Moses' words - but he doesn't actually say Moses wrote the Pentateuch - this would allow integrity in Yeshua's words because was quoting from the words Moses had personally written down, but may not have been the Pentateuch as we have it.

I wonder whether people have heard of the redactors JDEP, said to have worked on the books much later than the reckoned date of completion - it is this that I think GS is referring to. It is a view that has some considerable scholarly support among liberals. That would account, in part, for the record of Moses' 'death' and, for example, the fact that 'Moses' appears to mention the land of Dan - the land not named until we get to Joshua 19:47 where it was named after their forefathers (or was Joshua wrong?).
 
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GuardianShua

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Wikipedia Link to subject below. Documentary hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Below is parts also at the link.
Documentary hypothesis


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The documentary hypothesis, (DH) (sometimes called the Wellhausen hypothesis), holds that the Pentateuch (the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors (editors). The number of these is usually set at four, but this is not an essential part of the hypothesis.

The hypothesis was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries from the attempt to reconcile inconsistencies in the biblical text. Biblical scholars, using source criticism, eventually arrived at the theory that the Torah was composed of selections woven together from separate, at times inconsistent, sources, each originally a complete and independent document. By the end of the 19th century it was generally agreed that there were four main sources, combined into their final form by a series of redactors, R. These four sources came to be known as the Yahwist, or Jahwist, J (J being the German equivalent of the English letter Y); the Elohist, E; the Deuteronomist, D, (the name comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, D's contribution to the Torah); and the Priestly Writer, P.[1]

Julius Wellhausen's contribution was to order these sources chronologically as JEDP, giving them a coherent setting in the evolving religious history of Israel, which he saw as one of ever-increasing priestly power.

The traditional view that Moses was the author of the Torah came under increasing and detailed scrutiny in the 17th century. In 1651 Thomas Hobbes, in chapter 33 of Leviathan, marshaled a battery of passages, such as Deut 34:6 ("no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day", implying an author living long after Moses' death); Gen 12:6 ("and the Canaanite was then in the land", implying an author living in a time when the Canaanite was no longer in the land); and Num 21:14 (referring to a previous book of Moses' deeds); and concluded that none of these could be by Moses. Others, including Isaac de la Peyrère, Baruch Spinoza, Richard Simon, and John Hampden came to the same conclusion, but their works were condemned, several of them were imprisoned and forced to recant, and an attempt was made on Spinoza's life.[31]

In 1753 Jean Astruc printed (anonymously) Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux, dont il paraît que Moïse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse ("Conjectures on the original accounts of which it appears Moses availed himself in composing the Book of Genesis"). Astruc's motive was to refute Hobbes and Spinoza – "the sickness of the last century", as he called their work. To do this, he applied to Genesis the tools of literary analysis which scholars were already using with Classical texts such as the Iliad to sift variant traditions and arrive at the most authentic text. He began by identifying two markers which seemed to identify consistent variations, the use of "Elohim" or "YHWH" (Yahweh) as the name for God, and the appearance of duplicated stories, or doublets, such as the two accounts of the creation in the first and second chapters of Genesis and the two accounts of Sarah and a foreign king (Gen.12 and Gen.20). He assigned verses to ruled columns, the "Elohim" verses in one column, the "YHWH" verses in another, and the members of the doublets in their own columns beside these. The parallel columns thus constructed contained two long narratives, each dealing with the same incidents. Astruc suggested that these were the original documents used by Moses, and that Genesis as written by Moses had looked just like this, parallel accounts meant to be read separately. According to Astruc, a later editor had combined the columns into a single narrative, creating the confusions and repetitions noted by Hobbes and Spinoza.[32]

The tools adapted by Astruc for biblical source criticism were developed much further by subsequent scholars, most of them German. From 1780 onwards Johann Gottfried Eichhorn extended Astruc's analysis beyond Genesis to the entire Pentateuch, and by 1823 he had concluded that Moses had had no part in writing any of it. In 1805 Wilhelm de Wette concluded that Deuteronomy represented a third independent source. About 1822 Friedrich Bleek identified Joshua as a continuation of the Pentateuch via Deuteronomy, while others identified signs of the Deuteronomist in Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In 1853 Hermann Hupfeld suggested that the Elohist was really two sources and should be split, thus isolating the Priestly source; Hupfeld also emphasized the importance of the Redactor, or final editor, in producing the Torah from the four sources. Not all the Pentateuch was traced to these four sources: numerous smaller sections were identified, such as the Holiness Code contained in Leviticus 17 to 26.[33]

Scholars also attempted to identify the sequence and dates of the four sources, and to propose who might have produced them, and why. De Wette had concluded in 1805 that none of the Pentateuch was composed before the time of David; since Spinoza, D was connected with the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Josiah in 621 BC; beyond this, scholars argued variously for composition in the order PEJD, or EJDP, or JEDP: the subject was far from settled.

In 1876/77 Julius Wellhausen published Die Composition des Hexateuch und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments ("The Composition of the Hexateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament", i.e. the Pentateuch plus the book of Joshua), in which he set out the four-source hypothesis of Pentateuchal origins; this was followed in 1878 by Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel"), a work which traced the development of the religion of the ancient Israelites from an entirely secular, non-supernatural standpoint. Wellhausen contributed little that was new, but sifted and combined the previous century of scholarship into a coherent, comprehensive theory on the origins of the Torah and of Judaism, one so persuasive that it dominated scholarly debate on the subject for the next hundred years.[1]

[edit] Distinguishing the sources

Wellhausen's criteria for distinguishing between sources were those developed by his predecessors over the previous century: style (including but not exclusively the choice of vocabulary); divine names; doublets and occasionally triplets. J was identified with a rich narrative style, E was somewhat less eloquent, P's language was dry and legalistic. Vocabulary items such as the names of God, or the use of Horeb (E and D) or Sinai (J and P) for God's mountain; ritual objects such as the ark, mentioned frequently in J but never in E; the status of judges (never mentioned in P) and prophets (mentioned only in E and D); the means of communication between God and humanity (J's God meets in person with Adam and Abraham, E's God communicates through dreams, P's can only be approached through the priesthood): all these and more formed the toolkit for discriminating between sources and allocating verses to them.[35]

[edit] Dating the sources

Wellhausen's starting point for dating the sources was the event described in 2 Kings 22:8–20: a "scroll of Torah" (which can be translated "instruction" or "law") is discovered in the Temple in Jerusalem by the High Priest Hilkiah in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, who had ascended the throne as a child of eight. What Josiah reads there causes him to embark on a campaign of religious reform, destroying all altars except that in the Temple, prohibiting all sacrifice except at the Temple, and insisting on the exclusive worship of Yahweh. In the 4th century Jerome had speculated that the scroll may have been Deuteronomy; de Wette in 1805 suggested that it might have been only the law-code at Deuteronomy 12–26 that Hilkiah found, and that he might have written it himself, alone or in collaboration with Josiah. The Deuteronomistic historian certainly held Josiah in high regard: 1 Kings 13 names him as one who will be sent by Yahweh to slaughter the apostate priests of Beth-el, in a prophecy allegedly made 300 years before his birth.[36]

With D anchored in history, Wellhausen proceeded to place the remaining sources around it. He accepted Karl Heinrich Graf's conclusion that the sources were written in the order J-E-D-P. This was contrary to the general opinion of scholars at the time, who saw P as the earliest of the sources, "the official guide to approved divine worship", and Wellhausen's sustained argument for a late P was the great innovation of the Prolegomena.[37] J and E he ascribed to the early monarchy, approximately 950 BC for J and 850 BC for E; P he placed in the early Persian post-Exilic period, around 500 BC. His argument for these dates was based on what was seen in his day as the natural evolution of religious practice: in the pre-and early monarchic society described in Genesis and Judges and Samuel, altars were erected wherever the Patriarchs or heroes such as Joshua chose, anyone could offer the sacrifice, and portions were offered to priests as the one offering the sacrifice chose; by the late monarchy sacrifice was beginning to be centralized and controlled by the priesthood, while pan-Israelite festivals such as Passover were instituted to tie the people to the monarch in a joint celebration of national history; in post-Exilic times the temple in Jerusalem was firmly established as the only sanctuary, only the descendants of Aaron could offer sacrifices, festivals were linked to the calendar instead of to the seasons, and the schedule of priestly entitlements was strictly mandated.[38]

The four sources were combined by a series of Redactors (editors), first J with E to form a combined JE, then JE with D to form a JED text, and finally JED with P to form JEDP, the final Torah. Taking up a scholarly tradition stretching back to Spinoza and Hobbes, Wellhausen named Ezra, the post-Exilic leader who re-established the Jewish community in Jerusalem at the behest of the Persian emperor Artaxerxes I in 458 BC, as the final redactor.
 
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