Untangling Three Accounts of the Giving of the Law
Baruch Schwartz demonstrates in the accompanying article that the canonical version of the events at Mount Sinai is actually made of four separate accounts merged into one. To help readers pick apart these accounts, we have color-coded the biblical text to highlight major portions of three of the strands: the Priestly account in blue, the Elohisitic account in green and the Yahwistic account in pink. The fourth component, the Deuteronomic account, which can be gathered from various passages in Deuteronomy, is not reprinted here.
This translation is based on that found in Tanakh—A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), with stylistic changes by the author.