The cities of refuge are mentioned for the first time this week. It brings up a question of what to do with the extraneous sentence in Yoshua which is borrowed from divrei hayamim.
וּמִמַּטֵּה רְאוּבֵן, אֶת־בֶּצֶר וְאֶת־מִגְרָשֶׁהָ; וְאֶת־יַהְצָה
וְאֶת־מִגְרָשֶׁהָ׃ אֶת־קְדֵמוֹת וְאֶת־מִגְרָשֶׁהָ, וְאֶת־מֵיפָעַת וְאֶת־מִגְרָשֶׁהָ; עָרִים אַרְבַּע׃

Someone apparantly felt very strongly that the narrative in yehoshua is missing the cities given by Reuvain. Both the Radak and Saadia Gaon say the the sentence is an implant.
So two questions:
1. Why aren't the cities mentioned.
a. because of Reuvains love for Yoseph. I don't understand this one.
b. Reuvain felt that since their tribes had sacrificed everything (their torah learning time)to be the front line force in conquering Israel, that the Leviim didn't deserve to get anything from them.

2. How do you decide where to put this sentence. Some editions put it in parenthesis, some put in on the bottom of the page, some just put it in and some just skip it.

quote:

It brings up a question of what to do with the extraneous sentence in Yoshua which is borrowed from divrei hayamim.

Where is it? I can't find it on my Bar Ilan CD.

Laurence,
As we all know, the Sages have had a tradition of gematria. So we know that Torah is written in a code which we may not unravel for centuries to come. Could it be possible that the sentence is not extrenous at all but that it is accommodating some yet unknown underlying code?
Avi

That would Joshua 21:36 if it existed. Bar Ilan probably just threw it out completely. But the sentence I wrote is the form in Divrei Hayamim, so a search for kidamot for example should have brought it up.

On the other hand Mechon Memre just records it like it exists.

There are hundreds of variants in the Bible as the Minchas Shai recorded in his monumental work. The major objection to the bible codes is how do the code operators know which of the hundreds of variants are correct??

Laurence,

About the code; I'm talking about a code which we don't yet know. The codes that have been popularized in recent years have nothing to do with what I talking about. There are codes, probably multidimensional, associated with each letter. As the Sages teach, Torah is the blueprint of the universe, so the impact of the variants you mention is subject to further investigation. In the cosmic order, what's the difference between using a door handle and a door knob? I don't know. But simply pulling out a sentence because it appears to be out of place could introduce a major reprogramming of the universe whose implication we would not know. In any case, differences currently known in Torah variants are minute, but as we eventually understand the code we will be able to discern which is the original form of Torah of Moshe.

Avi

Well since Saadia and Hai Goan state they never saw a manuscript with such a sentence, it would indicate that someone put it in somewhere around the 8th century which would be after the time of the Talmud, let alone the time of redaction in Yavneh.

There are several halachot based on those minute changes and the Talmud bring about 16 sentences which will do not have in the present Tanach. That isn't counting Ben Sirah, which the Talmud quotes as if it was tanach.