The Yahwist: A Historian of Israelite Origins 9781575068640

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The Yahwist

The Yahwist

A Historian of Israelite Origins

by

John Van Seters

Winona Lake, Indiana E isenbrauns 2013

© 2013 by Eisenbrauns Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van Seters, John. The Yahwist : a historian of Israelite origins / by John Van Seters.   pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57506-286-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  J document (Biblical criticism)  2.  Bible. Pentateuch—History of Biblical events.  3.  Bible. Pentateuch—Criticism, interpretation, etc.  I.  Title. BS1181.4.V37 2013 222′.1066—dc23 2013028164

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ♾™

to Arthur Van Seters in memoriam

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi Part 1 An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel  1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3  2. The Primeval History from Creation to the Tower of Babel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18  3. The History of the Patriarchs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35  4. The Sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus . . . . . . . . . . . . 55  5. From the Red Sea to Sinai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78  6. Israel at Sinai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83  7. The Desert Journey from Sinai to Kadesh . . . . . . . . . . 104  8. The Final Push: From Kadesh to the Jordan River . . . . . 112  9. Observations on J’s Sources, Literary Techniques, and Ideological Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Part 2 Studies in Defense of the Yahwist  10. Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143  11. Author or Redactor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164  12. The Report of the Yahwist’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178  13. The Yahwist Flood Story and the Babylonian Flood Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192  14. The Covenant of Abraham in Genesis 15 . . . . . . . . . . 215  15. The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235  16. The Joseph Story: Some Basic Observations . . . . . . . . 244 vii

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The Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 1–5)

 17. The Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 1–5) within the Larger Context of the Yahwist’s History . . . . . . . . . . . 267  18. The Itinerary from Egypt to the Jordan River: A Study in J’s Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290  19. The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26 in Critical Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303  20. The Tent of Meeting in the Yahwist’s Sinai-Wilderness Story: A Test Case . . . . . . . . 321  21. Deuteronomy between Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Preface This book on the Yahwist comes at the end of a long career of research on the Pentateuch in general and the Yahwist in particular. This interest in the Yahwist was stimulated by the 1964 presidential address of the Society of Biblical Literature, given by Professor Fredrick Winnett, “Rethinking the Foundations,” which focused on the Yahwist in Genesis. This led me to rethink the historical background of the patriarchal stories as well as the dating and literary ordering of the pentateuchal sources, particularly the relationship of the Yahwist to Deuteronomy. These two concerns were reflected in a number of articles culminating in my book Abraham in History and Tradition (1975). The results of the historical concern are well known and need no further comment here. It was primarily the concerns of literary criticism of the Pentateuch that have been my preoccupation from the beginning, as reflected in the two early articles, “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period” (1972) and “The Conquest of Sihon’s Kingdom: A Literary Examination,” (1972), both of which argued that the Yahwist was a literary work that was later than Deuteronomy and was not an independent source but was an extensive addition to D and to the Deuteronomistic History. After giving special attention to the nature of ancient historiography in general and the Deuteronomistic History in particular in In Search of History (1983), I returned to an extensive treatment of the Yahwist’s history, as I understood it, culminating in three volumes, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (1992), The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (1994), and A Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (2003). In contrast to my attempts to argue for the Yahwist as an author and historian, a different response developed, following the lead of Rolf Rendtorff of Heidelberg, which viewed the creation of the Pentateuch not as a collection of authors but as editors or redactors. The result was to divide the Yahwist into countless fragments of tradition, combined by editors in stages over many years or centuries. In response to this challenge, I presented my arguments against the existence of any such editors or redactors in antiquity in The Edited Bible (2006). Over the course of the last few years, however, it has become clear to me that the three volumes on the Yahwist amounting to more than 1,000 pages means that those consulting them easily lose sight of the Yahwist’s work as a whole and the way in which it provides a historical prologue and framework for D and the DtrH. What was needed was a summary sketch of the J history as a whole. It was also important to make clear how the Priestly corpus has

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been composed as a supplement to the Yahwist with a radically different form and perspective that has greatly obscured the Yahwist’s historical narrative and theological perspective. Consequently, the aim of this book in the first part is to lay out in clear and simple terms the basic form, structure, and theological perspective of the Yahwist’s history, where it has been interrupted by the inclusions of P and how it is integrated into DtrH. The broader scholarly discussion is kept to a minimum for the sake of clarity, so that, once one has grasped the basic structure of the Yahwist’s work, then one may consult those earlier volumes for a more detailed discussion of the particular units. The collection of essays in the second part are intended to bring the scholarly discussion of my earlier books on the Yahwist more up to date, and their order corresponds roughly to the order of the narrative in the first part of the book. Some of these articles have been published previously, but others are new and quite recent. It should be noted here that a preliminary study of “The Yahwist as Historian” was translated and published in German as Der Jahwist als Historiker (1987), but it never appeared in print in English, and this present work bears little resemblance to that original study.

Acknowledgments A number of my articles in part two of this volume were originally published in journals and collections of scholarly papers. They are reprinted here by the kind permission of the publishers: “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison.” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 28/2 (2002) 1–25. “The Report of the Yahwist’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated!” Pp. 143– 57 in A Farewell to the Yahwist? ed. T. B. Dozeman and K. Schmid. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. “The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34).” Pp. 239–47 in Jacob: A Plural Commentary of Gen 25–36, ed. J-D. Macchi and T. Römer. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001. “The Joseph Story: Some Basic Observations.” Pp. 361–88 in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford, ed. G. N. Knoppers and A. Hirsch. Leiden: Brill, 2004. “The Altar Law of Ex. 20, 24–26 in Critical Debate.” Pp. 157–74 in Auf dem Weg zur Endgestalt von Genesis bis II Regum: Festschrift Hans-Christoph Schmitt zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. M. Beck and U. Schorn. BZAW 370. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006. “Deuteronomy between Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History.” Harvard Theological Studies 59 (2003) 947–56.

There have been many scholars and friends down through the years who have had an important influence personally on my understanding of the historical development of the Pentateuch, some of whom I wish to acknowledge at this time, and those names also appear later in this volume. They include Fredrick Winnett, Gerhard von Rad, Brevard Childs, Donald Redford, Norman Wagner, Robert Culley, George Coats, John Bartlett, Ernest Nicholson, John Barton, Hans Heinrich Schmid, Maxwell Miller, Thomas Römer, Jean-Louis Ska, Albert de Pury, Rainer Albertz, and Niels-Peter Lemche. Their friendships and hospitality and their contributions to this field of study have put me in their debt, even when we have sometimes differed on some of the hotly contested issues. More recently, I have also enjoyed the stimulation of friendly discussion with colleagues Paul Dion, Michele Daviau, Peter Erb, and Robert Kerr, here in my retirement in Waterloo. As in the past, Jim Eisenbraun, as publisher, and Amy Becker, as editor, have been most helpful in all aspects of the production of this book, for which I am grateful. This book is dedicated to the memory of my brother Arthur Van Seters. He and I were together throughout our early education and went through the same college program, resulting in similar academic careers. While he moved

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on to a life in service of the church and theological seminary education, my focus was within the academic life of the university. Nevertheless, we continued to share our interest in biblical studies and stayed in close touch until the end of his life. Finally, as in the case of my previous publications, my wife, Elizabeth, and my family have given me their support and patient understanding during my seemingly endless obsession with the Yahwist. They all have my heartfelt gratitude and affection.

Prologue The first century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, wrote a history of the Jewish people, The Antiquities of the Jews, using as his primary source the Pentateuch and historical books of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. His contemporary model for this literary project was the work called The Antiquities of Rome, by the noted Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. For Josephus the similarity in genre between the antiquarian history of the Romans and that of the Jews as reflected in the Hebrew Bible was obvious, although it seems very difficult for modern biblical scholars to observe the same thing. Dionysius’s history represented a long tradition in Greek antiquarian historiography that goes back at least to the 6th century b.c.e., a style of history that was very popular throughout the Greco-Roman world and many of these older histories were preserved well into the Roman period. These were the sources used by Dionysius, even though they are mostly lost to us today, so that we have no way of precisely distinguishing exactly what he found in his sources and what is his own “interpretation” of these works. Nevertheless his own perspective becomes quite apparent within the sociohistorical context in which he lived. In the case of Josephus, we have the great advantage of complete familiarity with his major historical source, that of the Hebrew Bible, and we can observe exactly what he did with it. Without such a source at our disposal one would be hard-pressed to reconstruct this source in its present form just from his work alone. Yet what becomes clear is that in spite of the great veneration that Josephus had for the biblical text, he still felt free to modify and harmonize its content and make it reflect the concerns of his own time and place. This activity cannot be regarded as merely “editorial.” It is what the ancient scholars called “history”—they invented the term—and those who engaged in this form of “research” were called historians. The recognition that the basic non-P form of the Pentateuch resembles an early exemplar of such a history seemed obvious to Gerhard von Rad, and he regarded the Yahwist as an early historian of Israel’s origins. Nevertheless, a student of von Rad, Rolf Rendtorff, interpreted the work of von Rad in an entirely different way, leading to the complete fragmentation of this history of the people’s origins into many pieces belonging to many different “redactors” in which the final result can only be described as a remarkable accident, a history without an historian! Ever since I was a student in von Rad’s classes at Princeton Theological Seminary, where von Rad was a visiting professor in 1961, I was inspired

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by his work and made a point of understanding it, especially his essay on the form-critical problem of the Hexateuch, which was basically a protest against precisely this complete fragmentation of the Yahwist by Hermann Gunkel. Von Rad was acutely aware of the fact that J was making use of older traditions, as all historians must do, especially those who deal with the nation’s origins, but he was concerned to understand the work as a whole. My own doctoral work at Yale in ancient Near Eastern history made me all the more concerned to understand the nature of this literary work of J and its appropriate socio-historical context, as well as its literary relationship to that other corpus of historical writing, the Dtr History from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. The study of ancient historiography in general, and the Yahwist’s work in particular, has been the primary focus of my entire career. This vision of the Yahwist as an author and historian has been under attack for some time, and no more so than by the present generation of European scholars, who have bid “farewell to the Yahwist,” and from time to time I have responded to their remarks. However, what gets lost in this giveand-take is the basic form and character of this large non-Priestly corpus. As far as the Priestly corpus is concerned, few seem to have any difficulty in identifying its basic content and its priestly character, although just how it relates to the non-P corpus has long been a matter of contention, even among those who have gotten rid of J. So the question regarding this defense of the Yahwist remains how best to focus on the big picture of J, and its literary form. Was all of this mass of non-P material deliberately brought together as a history, a “research” into the people’s origins and its relevance for understanding their identity? I will not repeat my larger two volume study of the Yahwist, 1 but instead in Part One I will give a basic outline of the scope and content of J, in order to clarify exactly what I mean by the Yahwist as a literary work distinct from, and prior to, the Priestly corpus in which it is now embedded. The second part of this volume will defend my understanding of the Yahwist by means of a number of my more recent articles that deal with “test cases” of particular matters of debate. The test cases that attempt to get rid of the Yahwist do so by means of a complete fragmentation of this non-P source and base their arguments entirely upon comparisons, one fragment at a time. However, it seems to me important that one correctly understand, in Part One, what it means to view the Yahwist as a complete and self-contained literary work distinct from P, in order to grasp the point being made in the more detailed discussions of the essays in Part Two. These essays will begin with three that deal with general principles and assumption regarding 1.  Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox, 1992); The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1994).

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Pentateuchal criticism, followed by those that deal with particular biblical texts, arranged in the order in which they occur in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers.

Abbreviations General CC Covenant Code DH Deuteronomistic History Dtn Deuteronomy Dtr Deuteronomist DtrH Deuteronomistic History DtrN Deuteronomist concerned with Law (nomos) ET English Translation HexR Hexateuchal Redactor KD Deuteronomistic Composition KEX The Pre-Priestly Composition of the Pentateuch KP Priestly Composition nrsv New Revised Standard Version PentRed Pentateuchal Redactor Rp Priestly Redactor REX Exodus Redactor reb Revised English Bible rsv Revised Standard Version SamP Samaritan Pentateuch

Reference Works ÄAT ABD ANET

APAMS BASOR BETL BN BZAW ConBOT CBQMS CJT CTM

Ägypten und Altes Testament Freedman, D. N., editor. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992 Pritchard, J. B., editor. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 American Philological Association Monograph Series Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Biblische Notizen Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Coniectanea Biblica:Old Testament Series Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series Canadian Journal of Theology Calwer Theologische Monographien

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Abbreviations FOTL HKAT ICC JAOS JBL JNES JNSL JSOTSup JTS LCL NTT OBO OTE OtSt PMAPA SKL ST ThR VT VTSup WMANT ZAW ZDPV

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Forms of the Old Testament Literature Handkommentar zum Alten Testament International Critical Commentary Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift Orbis biblicus et orientalis Old Testament Essays Oudtestamentische Studiën Philological Monographs of the American Philological Association Sumerian King List Studia theologica Theologische Revue Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum Supplements Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins

Part 1

An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel

Chapter 1

Introduction A Brief History of Scholarship on the Yahwist The primary concern for any study of the penateuchal source, the “Yahwist,” also known by many other rubrics, is the question of its genre or form. Every effort to understand the limits of the work and how to interpret it must come to terms with this issue. For Julius Wellhausen, the Yahwist ( Jehovist or JE) was a pure “history book” (Geschichtsbuch), in contrast to Deuteronomy, which was primarily a “law book (Gesetzesbuch).” 1 Nevertheless, he recognized that within this history there was a large collection of etiological folktales, particularly in the patriarchal stories, which he regarded as reflecting a long process of accumulation, with their final collection in writing being the work of the Yahwist. This reconstruction of the transmission of traditions from an earlier primitive stage of oral tradition to a later collection preserved in written form was strongly influenced by the 19th-century fascination with folklore and its preservation in large collections, such as those of the brothers Grimm. For Wellhausen, there was nothing incompatible with seeing a collection of folktales within a larger historical work. Hermann Gunkel picked up this form-critical suggestion about the presence of folklore in Genesis, and in a major commentary on this biblical book, he presented a long introductory discussion about the various types of legends (Sagen) and the transmission of these folktales from oral tradition to their written form in the Yahwist. 2 For him, the Yahwist’s work was a Volksbuch, not a Geschichtsbuch, preserved in two versions, J and E, which were later combined by a redactor, RJE. All of this represented a very long process of several centuries, and in none of this discussion does he have any concern for the rest of the JE corpus in Exodus–Numbers, or how one is to characterize the work of J as a whole. Gunkel reflects his general view very well in this summary statement: 1. J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1957) 345. 2. H. Gunkel, Genesis, übersetzt und erklärt (HKAT 1/1; 3rd ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910); ET: Genesis (trans. M. E. Bittle; Mercer Library of Biblical Studies; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997).

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Part 1: An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel The most important observation for this whole picture of the history of collection, however, is the one that introduced this discussion: the whole process had already begun in oral transmission. The first hands that documented legends may have already committed such related stories to writing. Others have added new legends. Thus, the whole material gradually grew. In this way, our collections J and E, along with others, developed. “J” and “E” are, thus, not individual authors, but narrative schools. It is relatively insignificant what the individual hands contributed to the whole because they are very indistinct and can never be identified with certainty. 3

The dating of the myths and legends of Genesis and the process of transmission according to Gunkel is very important for the subsequent discussion of the Pentateuch’s formation. He places the bulk of the patriarchal legends “in a time preceding historical Israel . . . before its entry into Canaan.” After making a comparison with the “more expansive style” of the accounts of the Judges and therefore later than the ancestral legends, he concludes that the formation of the patriarchal legends came to an end ca. 1200 b.c.e. Within this corpus, Gunkel points to many Mesopotamian connections, a study that was greatly expanded in American biblical scholarship. Regarding the Primeval History of Gen 1–11, he notes that these “Babylonian primal narratives were received from Canaanite hands.” Likewise for him, the Joseph story stems from Egypt also in early “Canaanite times” before the monarchy. The redactional transformation period, which led to religious and moral modifications, took place during the early monarchy over a long period of time. However, the major problem with Gunkel’s dating of texts to the late second millennium b.c.e. is that they would have come in the form of written texts in cuneiform, which would not have survived the cultural disruption in the post 1200 period. At the height of the Egyptian empire, the so-called Amarna Age in the 14th century b.c.e., there was active communication between Egypt and the other great powers of Babylon, Assyria, the Mitanni north of the Euphrates, the Hitties, and the major cities of Syria-Palestine and the Levant, with much of this last region under direct Egyptian control. The major language of communication used in this region was cuneiform. However, the drastic decline of all the major powers and the fall of the Egyptian empire in Asia meant that cuneiform fell into complete oblivion in Syria-Palestine to be replaced some centuries later by the radically different alphabetic system with no evidence of literary continuity between the two scribal systems. Furthermore, it is important to understand that Gunkel’s elaborate reconstruction of the genres of oral tradition reflected in the myths and legends of Genesis, and their Sitz-im-Leben, as well as their collections by narrative schools and their ultimate redactional transformation into literary form, 3.  Genesis (ET), lxxiii. The emphasis is in the original German, lxxv.

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corresponds to the understanding of oral tradition and its editorial collection and transformation into written form that was dominant in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This was the age of Romanticism. Of fundamental importance for Gunkel’s scheme is his dating of the various stages of the development, as indicated above, because any serious question about his dates would undermine the entire elaborate structure. Gunkel’s approach to the narratives of Genesis remained the basis for the study of the Pentateuch’s tradition-history (Überlieferungsgeschichte) for many decades, and it is against this background that one must consider all subsequent studies of the Pentateuch. The impact of Gunkel’s work on English-speaking scholarship can best be seen in J. A. Skinner’s important commentary on Genesis. 4 In it, he adopts Gunkel’s basic understanding of the nature and development of Genesis, and the notion that the two sources J and E reflect parallel collections of a body of traditions preserved by guilds of storytellers. However, he goes on to suggest that “the popular tradition has been systematized, and a sort of national epic composed, at a time prior to the composition of J and E.” 5 This notion of a “national epic” was strongly influenced by a long-standing comparison between the Homeric epics and the Pentateuch, and the idea of a primitive national epic became widespread, particularly in America among scholars known as the “school” of W. F. Albright. It was easily coupled with the search for the historicity of the patriarchal and exodus narratives, without giving much attention to the broader Germanic study of pentateuchal criticism. In Germany itself, there was a major reaction to Gunkel’s treatment of Genesis by Gerhard von Rad in his study Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch (1938). 6 While von Rad accepted much that Gunkel had to say about the legends of Genesis, he firmly rejected Gunkel’s characterization of J as a Volksbuch—merely a collection of folktales by a member of a storyteller’s guild. For von Rad, when one takes into consideration the massive amount of very diverse material that has been brought together and “fused into a single whole according to the pattern of one ancient tradition,” he then asks the question: “How could such heterogeneous materials as those embraced by the Yahwist have cast themselves in this form of their own accord?” 7 It is my thesis that this is still the underlying question for pentateuchal studies today. For von Rad, the answer to this question lay in Wellhausen’s 4.  J. A. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (2nd ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930). 5.  Ibid., xxiii. 6. Translated by E. W. Trueman Dicken as “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966) 1–78. 7. Von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch, 52.

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Part 1: An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel

original suggestion that J’s work corresponds to that of a history, Geschichtsbuch, and he sets out to show how every part of the traditional material is made into component parts of just such a work. On the matter of dating J’s history, von Rad still follows the notion of a transition from a pre-literate era in which these legends originated to the age of literacy, which came about with the rise of the monarchy and a time of “Solomonic enlightenment.” For him, the Yahwist was contemporaneous with the other historical works of this period, those of the “Story of David’s Rise” and the “Succession Narrative,” which were also dated to the same period. While von Rad’s dating of J has become problematic for many reasons, his discussion of the work’s form or genre remains a topic of serious consideration in the subsequent debate. Can a strong case be made for J as a historian of Israelite origins? This was a fundamental break with Gunkel, which cannot be so easily dismissed. Martin Noth, in his pentateuchal study, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, 8 stands much closer to the viewpoint of Gunkel on the matter of form, although with one small concession to von Rad, as we shall see. For Noth, the Yahwist is primarily one of two literary fixations, with only minor theological reworking of the received pentateuchal corpus, both of which already go back to a common tradition in which various individual blocks of tradition had already been integrated and interconnected. These tradition blocks, stemming from different tribal origins, reflected a set of confessional themes that make up all the major parts of the Hexateuch, from the patriarchs to the conquest of the land under Joshua. As a sociological context for this sort of integration of tradition blocks with their distinct confessional themes, Noth invented a premonarchical amphictyonic league of tribes, to which these tribes and their various traditions originally belonged. This was meant to account for the integration of so many different blocks of material into a unified whole, in response to von Rad’s question of form, that is, how such diverse material came together if it was not the work of the Yahwist? The one block of stories that could not be made to fit Noth’s scheme was the Primeval History, because it could not be associated with any particular tribal group. This Primeval History Noth was willing to attribute to J, and it was he who put together the various components to create a history of this period. Only to this extent was J a historian, as a modest concession to von Rad. For the rest of the traditional material, the work of ordering the archaic history of Israel was done before J added his Primeval History. In contrast to Noth’s strong emphasis on form criticism and tradition history, there were a number of scholars, 9 who were strong defenders of 8.  Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1948). English trans­ lation by B. W. Anderson, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1972). 9. Such as O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); G. Fohrer, Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968);

Introduction

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Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis and his characterization of JE as a history. However, they did not restrict J and E to the Pentateuch but viewed both sources as each extending their histories into the later period, up to their own times, and traces of these two histories could still be found in the later historical books of the Old Testament. In this way, the characterization of the pentateuchal sources as histories became closely associated with the Documentary Hypothesis in its most elaborate form. The reason for extending the sources J and E into the later historical books was based entirely on the argument that a historian would not wish to end his work so far back in the past but would extend it up to his own time, that is, the early monarchy period. Alongside this discussion was another debate over the existence of E as a distinct source. 10 This criticism, especially by Paul Voltz and Wilhelm Rudolph prompted Noth to emphasize the fact that the distinction between J and E only applied to variant versions within the Abraham stories, leaving open the question of whether it existed in the rest of the Pentateuch. This had considerable implications for how one understood the nature of J and whether or not this source was completely restricted to the use of the divine name Yahweh. In addition to these questions about E, there were some important new questions raised about the dating of J and its relationship to Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History. In 1964, Fredrick Winnett of the University of Toronto presented a Society of Biblical Literature presidential address: “Reexamining the Foundations,” 11 which called for a fresh look at the Documentary Hypothesis, especially in Genesis, which he regarded as originally quite separate from the Mosaic tradition. As indicated above, Winnett had rejected the existence of a distinct E source, but what was new in his approach was the fact that the J corpus in Genesis consisted of a rather modest early J tradition that was greatly augmented by a “late J” source containing the promises to the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and a number of other passages, such as the covenant in Gen 15, some individual episodes in chaps. 24 and 26, a large part of the Joseph story (chaps. 37–50), and numerous other smaller additions. This late Yahwist writer was dated by Winnett to the Exilic Period. Winnett also attributed the Primeval History to this same exilic late J. However, he did not believe that it extended into the rest of the Pentateuch. Instead, in his view, it was P who was responsible G. Hölscher, Geschichtsschreibung in Israel: Untersuchungen zum Jahwisten und Elohisten (Lund: Gleerup 1952); and H. Schulte, Die Entstehung der Geschichtsschreibung im alten Israel (BZAW 128; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972). 10.  This was reflected in the work of Paul Voltz and Wilhelm Rudolph, Der Elohist als Erzähler-ein Irrweg der Pentateuchkritik? (BZAW 63; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1933); Frederick V. Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1949); and Sigmund Mowinckel, Tetrateuch-Pentateuch-Hexateuch (NTT 1; Trondheim: Universitetsforlaget, 1964). 11.  Published in JBL 84 (1965) 1–19.

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for making the connection between Genesis and Exodus, thus creating the Pentateuch. Much of Winnett’s position, especially as it had to do with the patriarchal stories in Genesis, is spelled out in a doctoral thesis by his student, Norman Wagner, A Literary Analysis of Genesis 12–36 (1965). 12 The works of both Winnett and Wagner had considerable influence on the development of my own study of the Pentateuch. My relationship to Winnett has often been misunderstood and misrepresented, so I will make a few comments here. Winnett had been one of my undergraduate teachers of Biblical Hebrew at the University of Toronto in the 50s, and later his student Wagner was a colleague of mine for two years (1965–67) in my first academic position after my graduate studies at Yale. It was only in 1965 that I began my research in the Pentateuch, which was primarily focused on the patriarchs and the extent to which these stories reflected a second-­ millennium “patriarchal age.” Contrary to the notion that the stories were very old, my own research confirmed from a different perspective much of Winnett’s and Wagner’s analysis of late J, as it had to do with Genesis. However, I found that I could not accept Winnett’s thesis of a split between Genesis and Exodus prior to P and his making P responsible for the creation of the Pentateuch by joining Genesis to Exodus. In the early 70s, I began to publish articles that tended to show that the J source in Exodus–Numbers was of the same exilic date as the late J of Genesis and with much the same concern for the promises to the patriarchs. 13 Consequently, it was quite unnecessary to view P as the one who had joined Genesis to Exodus. I was a colleague of Winnett during my first year on the faculty of the University of Toronto (1970–77) and his last year before retirement. During that period, we were in close touch and had many discussions about the Pentateuch and my research, and my book Abraham in History and Tradition (1975) was dedicated to him. Also present at Toronto was the Egyptologist Donald Redford, who published A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50) in 1970. 14 I had known Redford personally since undergraduate days. Redford’s Saiteperiod dating of the Joseph Story was also compatible with Winnett’s thesis for late J. Apart from Peter de Boer’s enthusiastic support, as editor of Vetus Testamentum in Leiden, this Toronto “school” was largely ignored, until my

12. See also N. W. Wagner, “Pentateuchal Criticism: No Clear Future,” CJT 13 (1967) 225–32. 13. J. Van Seters, “The Terms ‘Amorite’ and ‘Hittite’ in the Old Testament,” VT 22 (1972) 64–81; idem, “The Conquest of Sihon’s Kingdom: A Literary Examination,” JBL 91 (1972) 182–97; idem, “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” VT 22 (1972) 448–59. These are reprinted in idem, Changing Perspectives, vol. 1: Studies in the History, Literature, and Religion of Biblical Israel (London: Equinox, 2011) 55–71, 209–26, and 137–47, respectively. 14. D. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50) (VTSup 20; Leiden: Brill, 1970).

Introduction

9

Abraham in History and Tradition (1975), together with Thomas Thompson’s The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), made that impossible. 15 The year after my Abraham book appeared, Hans-Heinrich Schmid of Zürich published his work The So-Called Yahwist: Observations and Questions Regarding Pentateuchal Research (1976), and a year later Rolf Rendtorff of Heidelberg produced his study, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (1977), 16 and things were never quite the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Schmid did make note of Winnett’s important 1965 article, and Rendtorff cited a couple of articles by Wagner and me, advocating a late date for J, but a full discussion was begun in 1977, when the British Journal for the Study of the Old Testament published a translation of an earlier 1975 article by Rendtorff, “The ‘Yahwist’ as Theologian? The Dilemma of Pentateuchal Criticism.” A number of scholars were invited to respond, including Wagner, Schmid, and myself, with a reply by Rendtorff. This subsequently led to correspondence and eventually personal contacts between us, especially between Schmid and me, and an important bridge between European and North American pentateuchal studies was established. This becomes evident in the work of Schmid’s student Martin Rose, Deuteronomist and Yahwist (1981), and especially in that of Rendtorff’s student Erhard Blum, The Composition of the Patriarchal History (1984), 17 where the bibliography and citations of North American scholars, including Winnett, Wagner, Redford, and myself, are extensive. While Rendtorff, Schmid and I were often spoken of as a group, the three “revisionists,” or the like, because we had raised serious reservations about the classical Documentary Hypothesis, there was a fundamental difference between Rendtorff’s approach to this issue and mine. Rendtorff began his attack on the Documentary Hypothesis by questioning the whole notion of the Yahwist as a self-contained literary work in the manner of von Rad’s Yahwist as the work of a single author. 18 Instead, he followed Noth’s notion 15.  Thompson’s book was primarily concerned with undermining the notion of a “patriarchal age” in the second millennium b.c.e. and did not discuss the Documentary Hypothesis. 16. H.-H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1976); R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin; de Gruyter, 1977). This appeared in English translation as The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch ( JSOTSup 89; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). 17. M. Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981); E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984). 18. In fact, Rendtorff completely misconstrued von Rad’s 1938 form-critical study as advocating the Yahwist as a theologian and the document he produced as some vague “theological product,” when von Rad does not deal with J’s theology in this piece at all, and Rendtorff completely ignores the form-critical issue of J’s document as a history. For Rendtorff, the Pentateuch is simply the product of a long and complex editorial history, a Redaktionsgeschichte.

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of a history of tradition-blocks, except that for Rendtorff this was no longer confined to the premonarchical age of oral tradition, but a long, primarily literary process, extending through much of the Israelite and Judean monarchy and well into the Exilic and Postexilic Periods. In fact, he remained very vague about ascribing any date to the various stages of this “history of redaction” (Redaktionsgeschichte). At this point, it is necessary to say something about the background to the great confusion regarding the many different notions of what constitutes a “redactor” and “redaction.” The term redactor simply means “editor,” and it was used in the Documentary Hypothesis to refer to persons who combined the documents, J, E, D, and P in succession to each other, without making any addition of their own. However, Wellhausen, together with Abraham Kuenen, introduced another type of redactor alongside the first, whom they characterized as “revisionist.” These redactors were notorious for corrupting the text with their interpolations. However, at what point does minor revision become a major interpolation and a “document” in its own right, and is it appropriate to regard such corruptors and interpolators as editors? Redaction criticism no longer makes any distinction between these two categories of “editing.” In fact, by eliminating the notion of “author” as appropriate to any of the works in the Pentateuch, virtually the whole of the Pentateuch has become the product of revisionist redactors—a reductio ad absurdum. My own critique of the Documentary Hypothesis was diametrically opposite of that of Rendtorff and redaction criticism. I defended von Rad’s view of the Yahwist as an author and historian, against its fragmentation by Noth, and I regarded all the talk of “redactors” and redaction criticism as a big mistake. 19 I was also concerned to place the Yahwist into his correct sociohistorical context and in relation to both Deuteronomy and the DtrH, which were earlier, and the P writer, which was later. The position of Schmid was somewhat ambiguous between Rendtorff and me. There was much in his study of the “so-called Yahwist” regarding the relationship of this corpus to Deuteronomy and the rest of the Old Testament and its dating that are quite compatible with my study, and I made considerable use of it in my later work. On the other hand, Schmid initially expressed considerable sympathy for Rendtorff’s notion of a more complex process in the development of the Pentateuch corresponding to the same complexity in Deuteronomy, the DtrH, and even the prophetic literature. However, at the time that he expressed these views concerning redaction criticism (1977) he had not yet read my book. When I became aware of his book and its content, I wrote to him and sent him a copy of my book. We began to correspond and soon became close personal friends and had many discussions about these issues. In preparation for a special session of the Swiss Society for Near Eastern Studies 19. J. Van Seters, “Recent Studies on Pentateuchal Criticism: A Crisis in Method,” a review article in JAOS 99 (1980) 663–73; see idem, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 244–76.

Introduction

11

in 1986 on “The Yahwist as Historian,” I wrote up a preliminary study on the entire work of the Yahwist, not just on the patriarchs. Schmid requested that he personally be permitted to translate it into German for publication, which he did, and it appeared the following year. 20 He also organized a series of lectures at a number of German and Swiss universities in 1986, also focused on the Yahwist, including a visit to Heidelberg, where I met with Rendtroff for the first time. One of Rendtorff’s students at Heidelberg, Erhard Blum, deserves special mention, with respect to this debate on the compositional character of the Pentateuch. He produced a two-volume study of the Pentateuch, the first of which appeared in 1984 as The Composition of the Patriarchal History and the second in 1990 as Studies Concerning the Composition of the Pentateuch. 21 In many respects, they could be viewed as a compromise between my treatment of the Yahwist and its relationship to the Priestly Writer and that of Rendtorff’s “editorial history” of the pentateuchal tradition. While Blum rejected the use of the term Yahwist, his own designation for largely the same corpus of texts was the Deuteronomistic Composition (KD), alongside of a Priestly Composition (KP). This was equally problematic, because it largely begged the question of KD’s relationship to the larger corpus of D texts from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, which I had tried to clarify. By choosing the term composition instead of redaction, Blum also begged the question about whether one was dealing with an author or an editor. On the other hand, the fact that his KD extended throughout the whole of the Pentateuch (Tetrateuch) from Genesis to Numbers, with the exception of the Primeval History in Gen 1–11, and was responsible for major programmatic pieces, such as Gen 15 and Exod 3–4, meant that this corpus was a unity before the addition of the KP corpus. Blum would back-track on this view at a later date. I will not attempt to trace further all the later developments that took place in pentateuchal criticism, except to comment on two important and closely related tendencies. The first is to follow Rendtorff in the complete disintegration of the Yahwist source into many pieces of widely varying dates, many of which were now placed later that P. Much the same also happened to P, such that it was scarcely possible to place any major part of the Pentateuch within a significant historical context. A suggestion made by Winnett in 1965 that the connection between the traditions of Genesis and Exodus was first made by the Priestly Writer was taken up and his work cited in the 90s in support of this view. Ironically, while I was in correspondence with Winnett in the mid-eighties before his death, I sent him a copy of my preliminary study The Yahwist as Historian, (1986), arguing for a Yahwist as a continuous work throughout the Pentateuch. He accepted that position 20.  Idem, Der Jahwist als Historiker (Theologische Studien 134; Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1987). 21. E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte; idem, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). See also my Edited Bible, 277–83.

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enthusiastically and retracted his earlier position. However, it is now common in European biblical scholarship to speak of the demise of the Yahwist and the lack of any literary continuity between Genesis and Exodus before P, a view point that I strongly reject. One argument that has often been directed against my continued use of the term Yahwist is that, with the demise of the classical Documentary Hypothesis and the source E, the employment of J as a way distinguishing between two non-P sources was no longer necessary. This argument is weak because there must still be a way of distinguishing the texts that make use of the divine name Yahweh from the P texts that only use Elohim until the time of Moses. Nor can it be argued that the term Yahwist loses its validity for the rest of the Pentateuch from Exod 6 onward. This argument can also be turned on its head, because these same scholars use the term Priestly Writer for a particular source in Genesis, when in fact there are no priests and no sacrificial rites in this source in Genesis, and the priesthood and cult do not begin until well into the Book of Leviticus. One of the alternatives used for J is D, but this suggests a literary continuity with Deuteronomy that J does not have and is much more confusing. J is still the most useful designation for understanding this source, and I will continue with this terminology. Consequently, in what follows I will present without argument or detailed discussion my reconstruction of the Yahwist’s history from creation to the death of Moses, prior to conquest of the land under Joshua. I will supplement this account with footnotes that will indicate where I have discussed and defended this understanding of the Yahwist in greater detail for those who wish to pursue the matter more deeply. My primary reason for offering such a presentation in the face of all those who dispute the existence of the Yahwist is that if a consistent narrative can be demonstrated, then it is scarcely possible to imagine that such a narrative could be created by rather arbitrary interpolations made by many different hands over an extended period of time and still result in a coherent and unified narrative document. This is my answer to von Rad’s form-critical question quoted above, which is the same as his. In contrast to J, it is not possible to create any comparable narrative from all of the texts attributed to the P source. These, with few exceptions, are not narrative in nature but are ideological statements and inserts with little regard for the narrative structure in which they are embedded. This is frequently, if not universally, the consequence of such interpolations and “corruptions” and the means by which they can so easily be identified.

The Problem of Literary Genre My thesis is that the Yahwist was an antiquarian historian of the type well known in antiquity, and as such he made use of many sources, both traditional and borrowed from his wider Near Eastern environment. To do this,

Introduction

13

he carefully collected his stories about creation, and the earliest humans, the great flood, the ziggurat of Babylon, the various stories about the patriarchs and the Joseph novella. All these he combined by the use of larger thematic structures. This primeval and patriarchal history he made prologue to his particular version of the exodus from Egypt under Moses and the wilderness journey to the promised land. Sometimes, one can still discern the old stories behind the accounts, which he has modified for his own purposes. At other times the larger narrative is entirely J’s own composition. What makes J’s document a significant literary achievement, is the way he was able to integrate all of this into a story of his people’s origins and destiny that was meaningful for the people of his time; it became their history. At the same time, we have the P writer (or in the view of some, a group of P editors) who was working at cross-purposes with J to disrupt this narrative continuity completely, often superimposing his own chronological scheme on the narrative, whether it fit or not. Now, it is all very well to reconstruct a hypothetical genre of an ancient antiquarian history of Israel, but do we have any compelling evidence that such a form of history ever existed in antiquity? My answer to this is: “Yes we do,” but this position is also disputed by those who reject the notion of J as a historian. The search for a historical tradition that reaches back to distant antiquity, or even to creation, in the two great literate cultures of the Near East, Mesopotamia and Egypt, results in a form that is entirely in the realm of the history of the monarchy and the king-list traditions. The Babylonian king-list tradition (the Sumerian King List, or SKL), in which the succession of kings reaches all the way back to the beginning when kingship first descended from heaven, is just such a genre of archaic history. 22 In fact, it recognizes that there was once a great flood that destroyed all of humankind, such that kingship again descended from heaven a second time. As we will see below, this king-list tradition was taken up by P in his Primeval History. However, in Mesopotamia the myths about primeval times were, for the most part, transmitted as distinct entities, and only occasionally were parts of them included in other compositions, such as the flood narrative within the Epic of Gilgamesh. Likewise, in Egypt the institution of royalty, by means of a king list (the Turin Canon), was used as a means of connecting the primeval past in a very limited way with later historical time. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, therefore, any antiquarian history was entirely bound up with the institution of kingship, and that is obviously not the case for the Yahwist in Genesis. In ancient Greece, this connection between the primeval past and the present was entirely different. With the Greeks, their antiquarian interests 22. This SKL was a classic still known in Hellenistic times in Babylon and used by Berossus.

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were tied to the origins of ancestors, tribes, and peoples by means of elaborate and complex segmented genealogies from the creation of the first pair to all the later social entities, their migrations and settlements, the establishment of their cities, and the origins of their laws and institutions. The earliest examples of the segmented genealogies, as reflected in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, go back to the 8th century b.c.e., 23 and early antiquarian histories making use of these genealogies date from the end of the 6th and 5th centuries b.c.e. 24 While the earliest of these histories are very fragmentary, the tradition of such literary works persisted with great popularity over many centuries. In addition to genealogies, there are two other major characteristics that these Greek antiquarian histories share with the Pentateuch. The first of these is etiologies. Gunkel placed much emphasis on the presence of a wide range of etiologies in Genesis, but they are especially abundant in the Greek antiquarian tradition. The second is geography and the itinerary, especially in the form of the travels and migrations of the ancestors from their place of origin to their ultimate land of destiny. Furthermore, both the genealogy and the itinerary function as important structuring devices by which the many different stories and narrative elements can be combined to create the larger whole. The finest and best preserved example of this genre was Dionysius’s Antiquities of Rome, which begins with the migration of an ancestor from Greece to Italy in the fifth generation of humankind, and carries it down to the beginning of Rome’s Punic wars as a kind of prologue to Polybius’s history of this period. All three of these basic features abound in Dionysius, as they do in the rest of the Greek antiquarian tradition. So similar was this tradition of antiquarian history to that of biblical history that Josephus used Dionysius’s work as a model for writing his own Antiquities of the Jews, with the biblical material from Genesis to 2 Kings as his base. Ernest Nicholson and others have immediately dismissed this genre parallel as irrelevant, because for them there was no known association between Greeks and Hebrews in the time when the biblical books were written, and in the case of the Yahwist I would certainly agree. 25 Nevertheless, this seriously overlooks the Canaanites/Phoenicians, with whom Israel is said to have been in constant contact. There is overwhelming evidence that there had been a long association between the Phoenician cities of the West-Asian coast and Cyprus and the Greek city states from the 8th century onward, with the 23.  See M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). The collection of a number of these regional genealogies into a larger written work West dates to the early 6th century. 24.  Prologue to History, 86–99. 25.  For a full discussion of this debate, see my “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison,” JNSL 28/2 (2002) 1–25. Reprinted in part 2 of this volume, pp. 143–163.

Introduction

15

Greeks heavily indebted to the Phoenicians (including their alphabet), and vice-versa. At the same time, there is certainly equally strong evidence of Canaanite influence on the Israelites, so it is not a great leap to see Israel having as much in common with this eastern Mediterranean region as they did with Mesopotamia. It is purely an accident of history that we have so little of the Canaanite/ Phoenician culture that has survived to make these interconnections more obvious. The fact of the matter is that if one picks up a copy of Dionysius’s history and reads the first few books of this large work, the similarities with Genesis become obvious. Furthermore, the offspring of Deucalion, the Greek hero of the Flood in Pindar, are the heroes of the race of the ancestor, Iapatos, the biblical Japheth. 26 And in the Table of Nations in Gen 10:2–5 the offspring of Japheth, son of Noah, are the Greeks of Asia Minor. In contrast to my suggestion of comparing Genesis with this large body of literature, the exponents of redaction criticism have offered nothing by way of comparison to explain how literary works such as Genesis could coalesce from disparate pieces of literature added together by “redactors” from widely different periods to produce a unified historical work. All the experience of literary criticism points to the contrary. Literary unity constructed out of many different source elements results only from the skill and determination of a single author, and this unity is marred or destroyed by the intrusion of later pieces that have been added for a wide variety of different reasons. It is the intrusion of P into J’s work that is the major difficulty in understanding the true nature and intent of the original. Consequently, in what follows I will try to lay out the basic content and features of J’s antiquarian history and the points at which P has intruded into this work to further his own agenda and perspective. If it is true that the Yahwist should be viewed in terms of the model of antiquarian historiography, based on comparisons with the Greek tradition of antiquarian history, rather than the epic model as reflected in the works of Homer, then we must briefly examine three important features that the biblical history of J shares with this Greek antiquarian tradition. The first of these has to do with the place of myths and legends within these histories. Long before any form of historiography existed, there were numerous myths and legends as explanations of the origin of the world and everything in it, which were related to the activities of gods and heroes or ancestors in a distant primeval age. Only at some later stage, particularly influenced by the rise of literacy and the ability to keep records of past events, were direct continuities made between this heroic and ancestral age and the later history 26.  Pindar, Olympia 9.49ff. Furthermore, the Flood Story was not part of the earlier Deukalion tradition prior to Pindar and only came into the Greek primeval tradition from Mesopotamia by way of Phoenicia. The biblical Flood Story is much closer to the Babylonian original.

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of peoples and nations, and such stories of ancient times were absorbed and incorporated into an antiquarian form of historiography. In Mesopotamia, these continuities were represented in the form of king lists, which began when kingship first descended from heaven and then traced kingship from that time in strict royal succession to historical times. In the west, both western Asia and Greece, the structural model was the genealogical succession of ancestors. Thus, instead of stories of origins and beginnings being told in a vague way, “once upon a time,” these myths and legends were made part of a larger systematically ordered whole. There were no other “historical” sources. 27 Consequently, the basic means of organization for this antiquarian tradition was a genealogical chronology. Everything was now done “in the time of such and such an ancestor or hero.” Even the gods had a genealogy and chronology. It became the task of the antiquarian first to create that great chronological structure and then to find appropriate places within it for all the stories. The earliest age (or ages) was a time when the gods freely mingled and mated with humans, a heroic age, often brought to an end by a great catastrophe, such as the flood or the Trojan War. The primary function of the genealogical structure, however, is to account for the origin of peoples in terms of their ancestry and their relationships to other ancestral peoples in order to create a complex segmented ethnographic association. 28 The third feature of this antiquarian historiography, especially reflected in the Greek tradition, is the emphasis on migration of ancestors and families as an explanation of origins and association with an eventual homeland. Thus, migrations are often combined with quite-elaborate itineraries, which in turn provide the context for numerous etiologies of individual place names. It is into this genealogical and geographical structure of itineraries that the older myths and legends are fitted. It is often the case that some ancestors do not have any stories associated with them, in which case a story associated with another ancestor or hero is simply imitated or modified to fill the vacancy as seems appropriate. Thus, while the author of such a history may have access to many different traditional myths and legends, the historical framework of genealogical chronology and itinerary is his own creation. It is just such a framework that we find in the Yahwist, which allows us to understand the nature and extent of his work. 27.  A good example of this western historiographic tradition may be seen in the “histories” of Sicily and Italy by the early 3rd century b.c.e. historian Timaeus. See L. Pearson, The Greek Historians of the West (PMAPA 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 53–90. This was one of the major sources used by Dionysius. Timaeus, in turn, depended on the earlier Athenian traditions and imitated them to make appropriate myths and legends for the Primeval History of Sicily “as seemed likely” to him. This primeval introduction corresponded to Thucydides’s archaeologia. These prologues to histories, containing migrations, founding of cities, and genealogies, correspond closely in form with that of the Yahwist. 28. See West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.

Introduction

17

Likewise fundamental to ancient historians in general and the Yahwist in particular is the thematic unity of their works. In spite of the great diversity of traditional material that may be used in such antiquarian histories, the historian nevertheless has a theme or perspective that he wishes to propagate, which is directly related to his own time and space. This was clearly the case of Dionysius, who was concerned to argue for the Greek origins of Rome as support for the large Greek community within the city of Rome in his day, of which he was a part. So if the Yahwist is a historian, then we can expect much the same thematic unity from him. Consequently, we can say without contradiction that there is no other literary model or explanation to account for the literary characteristics of the Yahwist, and the older model of redactors collecting and editing epic traditions as advocated in the Documentary Hypothesis, and more recently in redaction criticism, should be discarded once and for all. In the essay that follows, I will simply present an outline of the Yahwist’s history and indicate in footnotes where I have dealt with the critical discussion of this literary analysis in other places.

Chapter 2

The Primeval History from Creation to the Tower of Babel The Creation Story It is not my intention to retell J’s story of creation and the Garden of Eden, which is so familiar, or to examine every detail in it, or even every possible foreign influence. My primary concern is to understand the nature of this literary work and to fit it into its appropriate sociohistorical context. It is the work of an author familiar with a wide range of diverse materials, drawn from earlier biblical writings and from the traditions of his Near Eastern and Babylonian environments. The Yahwist’s story of creation and the introduction of evil into the world, contained in Gen 2:4b–3:24, is a complex narrative that intertwines two major themes, the one dealing with the creation of humankind and the animals and birds, and the other centered on the wondrous garden in Eden, the special tree with the forbidden fruit, and the violation of the divine command that leads to the expulsion of the couple from Eden. Scholars have tried to explain the combination of these two major themes, as well as other secondary details, in various ways. Following Gunkel’s method of looking for primitive oral myths and legends, efforts were made to isolate two separate narrative accounts, one dealing with creation in chap. 2, and the other dealing with the garden theme in chap. 3. However, there are so many interconnections between the two stories that such efforts were abandoned. Instead, it was suggested that the author of this complex story had at his disposal a number of different stories and traditions from which he selected various elements to construct the present literary work. Accepting such an explanation has the consequence, not always clearly recognized, that the resulting literary composition must be the work of an author and not merely an editor. Another drawback in so much of the earlier discussion was the dating of J so early that it precluded looking at much parallel material, both biblical and extrabiblical, which could be relevant to this discussion. In order to understand more clearly how J put together this story in Gen 2–3, we will survey the possible sources for various elements in his work. For this purpose, I will assume the view, set out in the introduction, that J is exilic in date and belongs to the community of Jewish exiles in Babylon.

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19

It has long been noted that there are similarities between Ezekiel’s oracle against the king of Tyre in Ezek 28:12–19, in which the king’s attributes are praised, especially his great beauty and wisdom “on the day that you were created (‫( ”)ביום הבראך‬v. 13; cf. v. 15). This theme of the king being created and endowed with divine wisdom and beauty and many other such attributes is often associated in the Assyrian and Babylonian royal traditions with either an endowment of these attributes at birth or at his coronation, as suggested in Ezekiel by the bejeweled robes. This is not an ancient Israelite tradition preserved by Ezekiel but a presentation strongly influenced by his exilic environment in Babylonia. Furthermore, within the Babylonian royal tradition there is also the ritual within the New Year festival that involves the renewal of kingship. This is done by the king temporarily laying aside all of his insignia of office and making a negative confession of sin in the presence of the high priest before he can resume his role as king. Ezekiel likewise places this king of Tyre in Eden, a “garden of God,” and this seems to reflect a north Mesopotamian location and the custom of Assyrian kings in building great royal gardens full of exotic plants. All of these features would confirm this Babylonian influence. In addition to these strong Babylonian influences in Ezekiel, there are also allusions to a West Asian tradition, as indicated in the reference to the holy mountain of God as the royal dwelling place. This motif is often used in the west for the dwelling place of the deity, as indicated by the guardian cherubim, which are also associated with royal thrones in the western tradition. How the mountain of God and the garden of God are to be related to each other is not at all clear, because in the latter part of the oracle Ezekiel speaks of the king’s expulsion from the mountain of God, and his humiliation is witnessed by many other kings and peoples. This raises the question of the relationship of “Eden, the garden of God” in Ezek 28:13 and its place in J’s creation story, as well as the references to cherubim in both sources. In the Yahwist’s creation account, the creation of the humans and their place in the garden is the primal focus of the whole account. The first distinctive feature, in comparison with the well-known Mesopotamian accounts, is the initial formation of a single male, rather than a couple or multiple couples. This seems to arise from the fact that J has democratized Ezekiel’s notion of the creation of the king to that of the first human, thereby separating his formation from that of his female counterpart, necessitating an extended explanation for her origin. In the formation of the human there is also a strong emphasis on his being taken from the ground (2:7; 3:19), which may reflect the western tradition in which the first humans in any genealogical presentation of nations are regularly presented as autochthonous, “sprung from earth.” The next remarkable feature about this creation story is that before there is any seasonal rain and the growth of regular vegetation the deity plants

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a garden in a region called Eden containing every kind of tree, and in this garden he places the man to take care of it. This garden did not depend on rainfall but was watered by a river that flowed into it. Presumably the river was fed by the spring coming out of the earth in v. 6. This theme of the garden stems from Ezekiel’s Garden of Eden associated with royalty, but it has been greatly expanded. The details in J stem from the famous royal gardens of Mesopotamia, especially that of Sennacherib in Nineveh, which was built in the vicinity of his palace. This contained many trees imported from distant locations and planted by the king in his garden. These could not survive in the hot dry climate of the summer so he constructed an elaborate water works that diverted water from springs and streams to form a river, which flowed into the city and watered the garden with its trees. When it flowed out of the city, it created a large wetlands region that attracted many birds and animals to the region, a veritable Garden of Eden. Just as the Assyrian king was the keeper of this garden, so Adam is also appointed as the garden’s keeper. Regarding the two special trees in the garden, “the tree of life” and “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” the former is apparently a wellknown mythical concept about a magic fruit or plant that can sustain life indefinitely and is frequently used metaphorically in the book of Proverbs (3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4). However, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” would seem to be J’s own invention. The inspiration for this would seem to come from Ezekiel as well, not from the oracle in 28:12–19, but in the preceding one in 28:1–10, in which the king of Tyre is claiming that his great wisdom and the great wealth and financial success that have flowed from this wisdom have made him the equal of a god. This hubris will bring about his death and destruction. In a similar fashion, the quest for forbidden wisdom is what brings about the divine judgment on Adam and Eve. Finally, at the very end of the account, when the couple is expelled from the garden, they are prevented from returning by means of cherubim who guard any access to the tree of life. This again corresponds to the guardian cherub (Ezek 28:16) who expels the king from the mountain of God. It is hard to escape the fact that these two oracles against Tyre have been used as sources for J in the composition of his story of creation and paradise. Alongside this western tradition, reflected in Ezekiel, there are similar reflections of Babylonian traditions of creation, of which there were a number of different versions. There is a Neo-Babylonian bilingual inscription containing an abbreviation of the story of Marduk’s creation of the world, 1 which recounts the establishment of life on earth. Let me set out a number of features of this text that correspond with the J’s account of creation. 1.  See A. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1951) 61–63.

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Unlike some other longer versions, it does not deal with the creation of the cosmos as a whole or the warfare between the gods but begins with the origins of life on earth. This is also the case for J as compared with P where the whole cosmos is taken into view. 1.  As is typical in Babylonian creation accounts of this sort, it opens by stating what as yet did not exist, as in Gen 2:5. The author of this version lives in Southern Babylonia and he envisions the original state of the earth to be covered with the sea (as in Gen 1:2, P) and the earth was made inhabitable by the successive deposit of silt and by a freshwater spring that came out of the sea. In J, by comparison, the earth was completely dry because it had not yet rained, but a spring that came out of the ground watered the whole region and thus vegetation began. 2. The next step in the Marduk Creation story (MC) is the creation of humankind, for the purpose of serving the gods, and here Marduk calls on the mother goddess Aruru, who “created humankind together with him” (Marduk). Likewise in J, the deity also creates the first man at this point in the story, but instead of there being a mother goddess, the process is described quite differently, as the deity’s shaping the human from the dust of the ground. Nevertheless, there are hints of the Babylonian mother goddess tradition within J’s account. In Gen 3:20 Adam calls his wife Eve (“life”), “because she is the mother of all living,” a title that would otherwise in Babylonia be ascribed only to the mother goddess. Also in Gen 4:1, after Eve gives birth to Cain, she declares: “I have produced humankind with the help of Yahweh,” which parallels the statement above about the mother goddess Aruru producing humankind with the aid of Marduk. 3. In MC, after the first human has been created, then the wild creatures are made. The two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are set in place and named. Then the natural vegetation is set in place, the domestic animals, the orchards and trees, and finally the construction of the cities and temples. There is considerable similarity to this order in J’s account of the creation of animals and vegetation, in which the orchards and trees becomes a Garden of Eden. The two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, in MC are linked by J to the primordial spring, to which he adds two more rivers. 4.  From this survey we may reasonably conclude that these similarities and the order in which they occur in both accounts are significant as indicators of the origin of these elements in J’s creation story within the Babylonian creation tradition. At the same time, J has taken some liberties in keeping with his own religious perspective and the other themes that he endeavors to combine with this creation story. Nor is it necessary to assume that J had access to this particular MC text of the Babylonian creation story, because this particular exemplar was used as an introduction for an incantation text and was likely adapted for that purpose. There may well have been many similar versions in circulation in Babylonia of this period. What I wish

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to emphasize is that the Yahwist, in the opening account of his antiquities, makes creative use of a range of themes and traditions, as he does throughout the rest of his work.

The Genealogy of Adam and Eve For the period from the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to the beginning of the patriarchal age, J creates a genealogical chronology into which he then fits two major narratives, the Cain and Abel story and the Flood Story, as well as some minor narrative units. Let us first examine the genealogical framework. In order to understand the place of genealogical chronology within the biblical Primeval History, one must compare it with the genre of Greek antiquarian historiography. 2 The latter has no counterpart in the eastern tradition of Mesopotamia, which makes use of a quite-different king-list tradition for its Primeval History. The earliest extant example of genealogical chronology is that of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, which was added to Hesiod’s Theogony some time in the 6th century b.c.e. and subsequently ascribed to him, and it became a major resource in the Greek antiquarian tradition. The subject of the Catalogue is the genealogies of heroes and eponymic ancestors, extending from the first autochthonous ancestor to the end of the heroic age and interspersed with narratives about heroic exploits and anecdotes. As M. L. West states: We see that these narratives were often very summary; but they are there, and are an essential ingredient in the poem. A large number of traditional myths, perhaps the greater part of those familiar to the Greeks of the classical age, were at least touched on and set in their place in the genealogical framework. Thus the poem became something approaching a compendious account of the whole story of the nation from the earliest times to the time of the Trojan War or the generation after it. 3

What West’s study of the Catalogue makes clear is that its composition was not the result of a gradual accumulation of materials but reflects a systematic plan and literary construction of a single author, who collected these traditions, reshaped them to suit his pattern, and added bridging blocks to integrate them into the whole. This original archaeologia in the epic tradition gave rise to many later attempts at Primeval History by numerous antiquarian historians from the 6th century b.c.e. down to the Roman period. 4 The critical discussion of this genealogical development and its comparison with biblical antiquarian history is complex and has been treated else2. See my Prologue to History, 89–98. 3.  West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 3. See p. 14 n. 23 above. 4. See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Antiquities of Rome, in the Loeb Classical Library series; also E. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

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where, so it need not be reviewed here. 5 The construction of the genealogical chronology in Genesis is a literary creation by J using pieces from earlier genealogies, which have been modified and adapted to fit the larger literary work. It seems clear that the older genealogical source preferred a pattern in which there was a frequent subdivision of the genealogy into three contemporary sons: the three sons of Adam and Eve, the three sons of Lamech, the three sons of Noah, and the three sons of Terah. There is also in J’s genealogy the strong interest in associating the invention of trades with culture heroes. Similar genealogies of culture heroes are represented in the Phoenician antiquarian tradition, as reflected in the work of Philo Byblius, 6 which presents a history of technology. In the Mesopotamian tradition, it is the gods who are the inventors of the arts and the builders of the primeval cities. In MC, Marduk is the one to build these cities, including Eridu, the first city. 7 In J’s genealogy, it is Enoch, the son of Cain, who builds the first city and calls it after the name of his son Irad (Eridu). The two names that follow Irad, in genealogical sequence, Mehuja-el and Methusha-el, are both likely Babylonian, the second one, meaning “man of god,” almost certainly so. A few observations about J’s treatment of this genealogical structure are in order. The first triad looks like an artificial construction, in imitation of this pattern in the other two. However, Abel dies without progeny and therefore has no place in a segmented genealogy, and the birth of Seth is said to be a replacement for Abel. Furthermore, Abel’s name is given no explanation at birth and its meaning (“futility”) only becomes clear within the following story. In addition, Cain and Abel are presented as representing contrasting occupations, Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd. However, they are not culture heroes because Cain is driven from the land to become a wanderer and Abel is the “father” of nothing. The choice of occupation is dictated entirely by the story of their rivalry in much the same way as that of the rivalry between Esau and Jacob in Gen 25:19–33. 8 The first culture hero to till the soil was in fact Noah, as indicated in Gen 9:20. The genealogy of Seth in Gen 4:25–26 has obviously been greatly abbreviated, and the explanation for this abbreviation at J’s expense is the P genealogy in chap.  5. This can be seen in Gen 5:29 because the naming of Noah by Lamech refers back to “the ground which Yahweh has cursed” in Gen 3:17–19, and the “relief from our work and the toil of our hands” is an 5. J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983) 8–18; idem, Prologue to History, 86–99; idem, “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? 17–23. See this essay below, pp. 153–163, esp. pp. 157–163. 6. Idem, Prologue to History, 83–86; H. W. Attridge and R. A. Oden, Philo of Byblos: The Phoenician History (CBQMS 9; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981). 7. Heidel, Babylonian Genesis, 62–63. 8.  Van Seters, Prologue to History, 137.

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allusion to Noah’s contribution to civilization and his discovery of wine in Gen 9:20–21. Consequently, the figures of both Lamech and Noah belonged to J’s Seth genealogy. Given the strong similarity between many of the names in P’s genealogy and those in J’s Cain genealogy, it would appear that both the Cain and Seth genealogies were the source of the names used by P. 9 Within Seth’s genealogy is the remark concerning his son Enosh: “At that time men began to invoke the name of Yahweh.” In the Mesopotamian tradition, the whole purpose of the creation of humans was to serve the gods, particularly through worship and sacrifices and the construction of their temples. In the west Asian tradition, as reflected in the work of Philo Byblius, Philo speaks of Genos and Genea, the first human pair, as “the first to raise their hands to heaven” in worship of “the Lord of Heaven” (Beelsamen), whom they considered to be the only god. They were also the autochthonous ancestors of the Phoenicians. 10 That suggests that J is using a literary tradition that is very close to the original of this tradition, in which Enosh is the equivalent of Genos but here is transferred to the third generation.

The Story of the Flood The genealogical chronology of Gen 4 (+ 5:29) is interrupted by the curious account of the marriage of the sons of God and mortal women, followed by the flood narrative in Gen 6–8. The genealogy of Noah is continued in Gen 9:18–19, which has been modified to accommodate the Flood Story. Before we can continue with the primeval genealogy from Adam to the Table of Nations, we need to deal with the Flood Story and the preceding account of the union between the divinities and mortal women. This is especially important because there has been a strong tendency in recent biblical scholarship to regard the Primeval History as an independent late addition to the J narrative. The story of the great flood is introduced by a description of conditions on earth in Gen 6:1–4 that lead to the divine judgment, resulting in the deluge. I will not take the time here to discuss the critical limits of the J narrative, except to say that v. 3 is an obvious addition that breaks the continuity of the narrative, so that one reads: When humans began to become abundant and spread over the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the lesser divinities observed the beauty of the daughters of the humans and took as wife whichever they fancied. These were also the days when giants roamed the earth. The divinities would couple with the human women and they would give birth to offspring. These were the heroes of ancient times, men of great renown.

What we have described here is a heroic age of semi-divine warriors, which came to an end with a great catastrophe. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women 9.  For additional remarks about the P genealogy, see pp. 209–210 below. 10.  Van Seters, Prologue to History, 142; Attridge and Oden, Philo of Byblos, 41.

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in the Greek antiquarian tradition follows this same scheme in which the poet introduces the Catalogue, by stating that he will sing of “the women . . . who were the finest in those times . . . and unfastened their waistbands . . . in union with the gods.” 11 This statement is followed by an elaborate genealogy of the women who were the ancestors of the various Greek peoples, with their human husbands merely the putative heads of these families. In the Greek tradition, this primeval age came to a violent end in the Trojan War. After the Catalogue recounts many instances of such coupling of gods and mortals up to the eve of the Trojan War, the texts states: Now all the gods were divided through strife; for at that time Zeus who thunders on high was meditating marvelous deeds, even to mingle storm and tempest over the boundless earth, and already he was hastening to make an utter end of the race of mortal men, declaring that he would destroy the lives of the demigods that the children of the gods (tekna theon) should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes: but that the blessed gods henceforth even as aforetime should have their living and their habitation apart from men. But on those who were born of immortals and of mankind verily Zeus laid toil and sorrow upon sorrow. 12

The similarities between this early Greek tradition and J are obvious. In both cases, we are dealing with the primeval age in which mortal women mate with “sons of God” to produce heroes and that this age of violent warfare would be brought to an end by the father of the gods, with a great catastrophe. And this whole account is integral to an extensive genealogy of this primeval age. Consequently, J has interrupted the primeval genealogy to include this brief description of some of the conditions of this period, which he then interprets as an age of great violence. It is this that leads directly into Gen 6:5–7 and the deity’s remarks about his determination to destroy humankind as a response to their evil ways. However, unlike the Greek tradition, J takes up the Babylonian story of the great flood as the means by which to make the great rupture between the two eras. Before we begin to examine J’s account of the Flood Story, a few brief remarks about the division of the text into its two sources, J and P, are in order. 13 The basic criterion that has been used in the past is the distinction in the terms for deity, the passages containing the divine name Yahweh being assigned to the Yahwist while those using the more generic term God (Elohim) being attributed to P. This criterion does not always work in the case of J, because at times he also used the general term God. For instance, in 11.  West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 2; Van Seters, Prologue to History, 155. 12. Ibid., 156; quoted from H. G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936) 199–200. 13.  A more detailed critical analysis is contained in part two of this volume.

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Gen 4:25, Eve refers to the deity as “God” but in 4:1 as “Yahweh.” And the term God is frequently used in the Garden of Eden story, sometimes coupled with Yahweh and sometimes alone. So each instance where the term God is used must be judged on its own merits. Consequently, my own reconstruction yields a complete Flood Story in J. 14 Once one is able to identify this basic story, one finds that it agrees in all of its essential details with those of the Babylonian Flood Story in the form preserved in the Gilgamesh Epic, whereas none of the P additions and embellishments find any support in the Babylonian version and only obscure the basic form of the story. This confusion in analysis between J and P has occurred at a few important points in the story. The first has to do with the command by “God” to build the ark in 6:13–16, which was formerly assigned to P. However, this command comes immediately after the divine soliloquy in 6:5–8, which is obscured by P’s addition in vv.  9–12. The command to build the ark in vv.  13–16 was then followed by the simple statement in v. 22. “Noah did this,” followed by the next set of instructions regarding the animals, which P has again obscured by his long addition in 6:18–21. The next reference to Elohim comes in 7:9b, “As God commanded Noah.” This was originally followed by the phrase “And Yahweh shut him in,” which was then followed by the announcement of the coming of the rain. P repeats his own version of v.  9 in v.  16 and then moves the phrase “and Yahweh shut him in” to this new location, although it is now entirely out of place as has long been recognized. It is quite clear that vv. 9b and 16b fit much better within the Yahwist context of vv. 7–10, than within P. Likewise, the references to Elohim in 8:1 are also in a context in which the language is otherwise typical of J. The use of Elohim in 8:15 is followed by a command to Noah in v. 16 to “Go forth from the ark, you and your wife, your sons and your sons’ wives with you,” which corresponds with the same language as in J’s description (7:7) of those who entered the ark. P, however, prefers to give the names of the three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and in a quitedifferent order. J does not name the sons until 9:18. This yields the following narrative in J: 6 5When Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every formation of the thoughts of his mind was continually evil, 6then Yahweh regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him deeply. 7So Yahweh declared: “I will wipe out the humans that I have created from the face of the earth, both humans and animals, reptiles and birds of the air, because I regret that I ever made them. Yet Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. 13So God announced to Noah: “I have decided to bring an end to all living persons, for the world 14.  Gen 6:5–8, 13–16, 22*; 7:1–5, 7–9, 16b, 10, 12, 17, 22–23; 8:6a, 1, 2b, 3a, 4*, 6b–12, 13b, 15–16, 18, 20–22.

The Primeval History from Creation to the Tower of Babel is filled with violence because of them. I declare, I will destroy them from off the earth. 14Therefore, make for yourself an ark of cypress wood; make compartments in the ark, and seal it inside and out with bitumen. 15This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits and its height thirty cubits. 16Make a roof for the ark and give it a finished slope of one cubit. Put a door in the side of the ark, and also make it with lower, second and third decks. 17aAs for me, I am about to bring the Great Deluge upon the earth.” . . . 22So Noah did just as God commanded him. 7 1Yahweh said to Noah, “You and your entire household are to go into the ark, for I have observed that you alone are righteous in my view in this generation. 2From all of the clean animals you are to take seven, both male and female, and from the unclean animals just a male and female pair, 3as well as seven pairs of birds of the air, both male and female, to sustain life on earth. 4For in seven days time I am going to cause it to rain everywhere on earth for forty days and nights and I shall wipe out every living creature that I have made from off the face of the earth.” 5And again Noah did just as Yahweh commanded him. 7Noah together with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8From all the clean animals and from the unclean animals and from the birds and from all those that creep along the ground, 9by pairs they came to Noah into the ark, both male and female, just as God had commanded Noah, 16b and Yahweh shut him in. 10After seven days the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 12For forty days and nights the rain came down on the earth. 17The flood continued forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark so that it rose above the earth. 22Everything on earth died that had the breath of life. 23Thus he wiped out every living creature from the surface of the earth, humans and animals and reptiles and birds of the air; they were all wiped out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those that were with him in the ark. 8 1But God remembered Noah and all the wild and domestic animals that were with him in the ark, and God sent a wind to blow over the earth and the waters began to diminish, 2band the rain from the heavens was restrained. 3aThe waters gradually receded from the earth, 4*and the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 6It happened at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, 7and sent out a raven which continued to fly about until the waters dried up from the earth. 8[After seven days] he sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided from the surface of the ground, 9but the dove found no resting place to settle down and so returned to him in the ark, for the waters still covered the earth. He stretched out his hand and took hold of her and brought her into the ark with him. 10He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11She came back to him in the evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak. Then Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the surface of the earth. 12So he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, but she did not return again to him. 13bSo Noah removed

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Part 1: An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel the covering of the ark and saw that indeed the surface of the ground was dry. 15God said to Noah, 16“Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives who are with you.” 18So Noah came out of the ark with his wife, his sons and their wives. 20Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took some of all the clean animals and the clean birds and offered them as a whole burnt offering upon it, 21and Yahweh smelled the pleasing odor and Yahweh said to himself, “Never again will I curse the ground because of mankind seeing that human inclination is toward wrongdoing from one’s youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. 22As long as earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

It is easy to see from this reconstruction of the J source that we have a complete story without the elaborations and redundancies of P, and this J story contains all of the essential elements of the Babylonian Flood Story. By comparison, the P additions do not correspond to any of the details that are present in the Babylonian counterpart, so that P does not appear to have been familiar with this Babylonian tradition. 15 Consequently, contrary to a longstanding scholarly opinion, there was only one original Hebrew version of the Flood Story, the one found in the J corpus of texts. Once we identify the true limits of the Yahwist Flood Story, it becomes clear that the P portions of the text do not yield any self-contained narrative but are merely a series of expansions for theological reasons. Thus, P’s repetition of the collection of animals to be brought into the ark is intended to suggest that there was no distinction between clean and unclean animals and therefore no form of sacrifice before the time of Moses. P likewise expands J’s divine promise never to bring another flood by introducing the notion of a divine covenant, in Gen 9:8–17; but P curiously anticipates this divine promise in 6:18a at the very point when God is about to bring such a flood on the earth, which seems completely contradictory to such a promise. 16

The Priestly Composition of the Primeval History While our primary concern in this essay has to do with the nature and limits of the Yahwistic corpus within the Pentateuch, it is nevertheless necessary to understand the basic form of P’s narrative structure, which often competes with the narrative formation of J or is superimposed on it. This can be seen in P’s obsession with chronology throughout the Pentateuch, 15.  What is true of the Flood Story, often cited as the decisive test case of the Documentary Hypothesis, is true of the rest of the Primeval History, and the following patriarchal stories, and indeed of the whole of the Pentateuch. A redactor is not needed to explain the relationship of P to J in the Flood Story or anywhere else. 16.  The attempt by scholars to make this covenant with Noah distinct from the one in Gen 9 is special pleading, because it is completely superfluous to the instruction that follow in vv. 18b–21. See Gunkel, Genesis ET, 145; and Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 422–23; cf. Skinner, Genesis, 162–63.

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which is otherwise of little concern to J. Thus, in P’s presentation of the deity’s creation of the world, he structures his account to fit a chronology of seven days, which culminates in an etiology of the seventh day as the origin of the Sabbath. The creation of the human pair in the image and likeness of deity with the purpose of ruling the rest of creation is of interest, because it explains the form of the chronological structure that is to follow. P appears to draw on a Babylonian myth that describes how the gods created the king, a human distinct from the rest of humankind who was endowed with all of the attributes of the deities in order to rule over the lesser mortals. This was the Babylonian etiology for the institution of kingship. P adopts and modifies this myth in order to make it apply to the humans’ rule over the rest of nature. 17 A second Babylonian tradition that P takes up in combination with the first, and which becomes basic to his narrative framework, is the one reflected in the Sumerian King List. 18 This traces a line of royal succession chronologically from the time when kingship first descended from heaven until it was interrupted by the flood. During this period the kings had very long reigns. After the flood, which is not recounted in any detail, kingship again descended from heaven and the reigns of the kings were greatly reduced, and chronological continuity was set forth down to the time of the Sumerian kings. In a similar fashion, in his genealogy of ancestors in Gen 5, P begins with Adam as the first “king” and traces his linear succession through Seth (ignoring the first two brothers) down to Noah and the time of the Flood, giving the age of the ancestor at the time when the first son is born and his age at the time of his death, while ignoring the names and lineages of the rest of the offspring. The Flood Story with its three sons of Noah and the Table of Nations, taken over from J, causes P to modify this pattern. Nevertheless, P continues this same scheme of chronological genealogy from Noah, through the line of the eldest son Shem, using the same pattern of “succession” and chronology down to Abraham. Even the scheme of the very long lives in the antediluvian period and reduced ages after the flood correspond with the SKL tradition. Throughout the patriarchal stories, P continues to supplement the earlier J account with this same chronological scheme, inserting other chronological markers that he deems appropriate. 17.  In Gen 1:26, the deity declares, “Let us make humans in our image, just like us,” and then proceeds to make the humans, male and female in the divine image in order to rule the rest pf creation. This text has, of course, led to much fanciful speculation, but in the Babylonian counterpart we find the supreme deity also announcing to the rest of the gods, both male and female, that they are each to contribute their distinctive attributes to the creation of this superior royal being in order to rule common humanity. P’s adoption and modification of this Babylonian myth seems obvious. See my “Creation of Man and the Creation of the King,” ZAW 101 (1989) 333–42. 18. The SKL persisted in Mesopotamia as a “classic” down to the time of Berossus. On SKL, see my In Search of History, 70–72.

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The Table of Nations It is important to understand that P has imposed his scheme of a chronological succession, including precise dates, on J’s preexisting Primeval History, often to the point of taking over and modifying J’s narrative. This is the case with the J’s presentation of the offspring of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, which resulted in the elaborate segmented genealogy known as the Table of Nations. J anticipates this Table of Nations with his initial introduction of the names of Noah’s sons: “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth (Ham was the father of Canaan); these three are the children of Noah and from these they were dispersed over whole earth” (Gen 9:18–19). This allows J to accommodate the little episode concerning Noah’s drunkenness and the curse of Canaan (= Ham) in vv. 20–27. The Table of Nations in Gen 10 constitutes a major test of the source division between J and P, because this source analysis has been established for a long time, with scarcely any deviation between Gunkel (1910) and Westermann (1974), and down to the present. However, there are a number of problems with this source division, as noted by S. Tengström, 19 especially as it has to do with the term “genealogies,” (tôlēdôt) in 10:1 and its recapitulation in 10:32. A few brief remarks are in order here. The chief premise of the Documentary Hypothesis, which most literary critics still follow, has been that, because P was the base text used by the redactor in the flood narrative and J was used as a supplement, the same principle should be applied to the mixture of sources in the Table of Nations. My position, argued above in the Flood Story, is that J constitutes the base text, which was then expanded by P. Viewed from this perspective, the whole approach to the Table of Nations becomes entirely different. As indicated above, P employs two major genealogies (tôlēdôt) of the strictly linear type with chronology, from father to eldest son, in quite-­stereotyped terminology, from Adam to Noah and from Shem to Abraham. This is interrupted by the Flood Story, which introduces Noah with three sons, which forces P to make some awkward adjustments. First, he has all three sons born in the same 500th year (5:32) and then announces Noah’s genealogy as consisting of only of these three sons, with the eldest son, Shem, beginning a new linear genealogy. The genealogy of nations in Gen 10, however, belongs to the segmented type that we find in Gen 4:17–26 and 9:18–19, using much the same language, so I see no reason to doubt that the base text of the genealogies in Gen 10 belongs to J. Furthermore, it seems a little arbitrary to characterize v. 1a as P because it contains the term tôlēdôt and the second half as belonging to J on stylistic grounds, when both parts of 19. S. Tengström, Die Toledotformel und die literarische Struktur der priesterlichen Erweiterungsgeschichte im Pentateuch (ConBOT 17; Uppsala: Gleerup, 1982).

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the sentence belong closely to each other. The attempts to use the different styles of expressing the transition from one generation to the next do not work very well because many assigned to P use language that corresponds to that used by J in Gen 4 rather than that used by P in Gen 5. One can only conclude that both J and P used the term tôlēdôt in quite-different ways to express their own understandings of genealogical succession. There is another comparison that can be made between the parallel genealogies of Gen 4–5 and those of Gen 10 and 11. As we observed earlier, the J genealogy of Seth is incomplete in 4:25–26, whereas it is complete in P’s Seth genealogy in chap. 5. Yet the remark about Noah in 5:29 is almost certainly derived from J, suggesting that P has taken over a significant part of J’s Seth genealogy and incorporated it into his own version. In a similar fashion, the genealogy of Shem in 10:21–30 seems to omit the line of Peleg, which is clearly the most important segment of the whole genealogy, since it is completed by P in 11:10–26 and leads to Abraham. All of those who are part of this line from Shem to Peleg are included in J’s segmented genealogy in 10:21–25, but the rest are missing. Wellhausen noted this problem and suggested that J’s genealogy from Peleg onward originally included Reu, Serug, and Terah (but not Nahor, which was a conscious doubling from one of the sons of Terah). He also regarded 11:22–23 as a late expansion of the Shem genealogy, so that in J there were originally seven generations from Shem to Abraham. 20 Furthermore, the whole of the Table of Nations is structured is such a way, with the lists going from the youngest son of Noah first and the oldest son Shem last, precisely so that the genealogy of Shem would lead to Abraham. The arrangement otherwise makes no sense. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that, once again, P has taken the last part of J’s genealogy and used it for his own purposes in Gen 11 down to the point where he encounters Terah’s genealogy of his three sons (v. 26), similar to Noah’s three sons in the Flood Story (Gen 5:32). In both cases, P places the birth of the three sons all in the same year (cf. 11:26). This is a forced accommodation of P’s linear form of genealogical succession to J’s form of segmented genealogy. To sum up, it seems entirely reasonable to me to suggest that the Table of Nations is essentially part of J’s overall historiographic structure, inherited from this eastern Mediterranean tradition, 21 extending and complimenting the earlier one in Gen 4. This scheme has been partly obscured by P’s bowdlerizing activity for his own purposes. One must keep the genres of the linear (royal) genealogical tradition used by P quite separate and distinct from J’s segmented genealogy of the Table of Nations type. The genealogical framework of J’s history is interrupted once again by the story of the Tower of 20. J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963) 7. 21. See West, Catalogue of Women, 13–15.

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Babel in a way that is similar to the Flood Story, but any transition from the J narrative both before and after it has been obscured by P in a way that is similar to the beginning of the Flood Story, as noted above. Yet there seems to be a clear anticipation of the Tower of Babel story by the remarks made in 10:31, 32b: “These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, their languages within their lands and nations, . . . and from these the nations were distributed throughout the earth after the Flood.” These two themes, that of migration and the distribution of different language groups, are taken up in the story of the Tower of Babel, to which we will now turn. 22

Tower of Babel There have been a number of different ways of approaching the story of the Tower of Babel, which cannot all be reviewed here. 23 Prominent among these is the search for old traditions that may be used to explain such stories about towers to the gods and the origins of language, but this approach rests on a history of traditions, as reflected in the work of Westermann. 24 The method adopted here is entirely otherwise and begins with the premise that J is an author living in exile in Babyonia and composes a story appropriate to that context. One of the major building preoccupations of this period, and during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar in particular, was the construction of the ziggurat, Etemenanki, which was associated with the ancient temple of Marduk, Esagila. It was famous as the largest tower of its kind, and contemporary inscriptions indicate that the labor force consisted of a large body of corvée workers drawn from the exiles of many countries, including Judeans, and speaking many languages. A Judean author could have been aware of the Babylonian traditions that related the establishment of the city of Babylon in primeval times and the construction of Esagila, by Marduk himself. All of this is quite enough for J to construct a story about a migration of humanity from the east to the great plain of Babylonia (Shinar) with the intent of establishing a center of civilization here at Babylon, the great city with its ziggurat. By making the construction of this city and its tower in primeval times as an act of hubris, resulting in the origin of the babel of languages and the dispersal of humanity, the writer has created a parody about the famous ziggurat and the city of Babylon, and its origins. This is not a case of misunderstanding Babylonian religious traditions, as some have suggested, but a deliberate effort to lampoon this massive royal construction 22.  The themes of migration and separation are also major themes in the stories of Abraham and Lot (Gen 12–13) and throughout the Jacob story. Migration is also a major theme of the earliest Greek antiquarian history. 23. See my Prologue to History, 180–87. 24. C. Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) 531–57.

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and all that it stood for. Even the etiology of the name Babel is meant as a joke about the cosmopolitan character of the city. This sort of attitude toward the city of Babylon may be seen in J’s contemporary, Second Isaiah, who likewise poked fun at the chief gods of Babylon, Bel (Marduk) and Nebo. The prophet, in Isa 47, has a long diatribe against the city of Babylon in which he predicts its future humiliation for its hubris, vv. 8–9. Similar prophetic enmity was likewise directed at other great capitals of empires, such as Nineveh. 25 When one considers the fact that the Yahwist and Second Isaiah share so much in common, it is not surprising that they should also reflect this same attitude toward the city of Babylon. Consequently, the Tower of Babel story should be understood not as the remnants of a badly confused ancient tradition but as the deliberate composition of an author living in Babylonia at just this particular time in the Neo-Babylonian period. It is also appropriately placed just before the subsequent migration of Abraham’s family out of this region to new lands in the west, to Harran and Palestine. A few remarks on J’s Primeval History as a whole are in order. First, the Primeval History is a combination of eastern and western traditions, which do not always fit so easily together. The basic genealogical chronology that forms much of the structure for J’s antiquarian historiography is western in character, especially in Gen 4:17–26, whereas the initial creation and Garden of Eden story, as we have seen above, is a mixture of east and west. The western tradition of the marriage between mortal women and gods has been made prologue to the eastern tradition of the flood. The account of Noah’s discovery of wine and his drunkenness, is basically part of the western tradition of culture heroes in its earlier form when there were only two brothers, Eber (= Hebrew) and Canaan, but it has been modified to accommodate the three sons of the flood narrative and the Table of Nations. The latter is likewise a mixture of east and west. The Tower of Babel story reflects strong eastern influence primarily due to the location in Babylon and for which J created it, and a caricature of any traditional antiquarian source. By the same token, it is the strongest indicator of the dating of J’s history to the late Babylonian exile period. Much has been made of attempts to define the theological theme of J’s Primeval History as a way of understanding the unity and purpose of the work, such as one finds in Dtr’s history of the period of the Judges. Consequently, the theme of crime and punishment can be made to fit a number of the episodes. However, with the material used by J being quite varied and without a shared formal pattern, such as one finds in Judges, this quest for a common theme cannot be pressed too far. The genre of antiquarian historiography simply does not allow for a single unified theme, and a certain 25.  See the prophecy of Nahum.

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degree of contradiction and unevenness is to be expected. By comparison, P is much more ideologically consistent, even when it does violence to the historiographic features of the work. 26 26.  For example, P places the divine instructions about putting his family and the animals in the ark in Gen 6:18–22, together with J’s instructions about building the ark, followed by the statement that these were entirely carried out. But later, he repeats this process of loading the ark with his family and animals (Gen 7:13–16a) after the flood has already begun.

Chapter 3

The History of the Patriarchs The Story of Abraham The Yahwist’s story of Abraham begins in Gen 11:27–31 with the ancestor Terah and his three sons, Abraham, Nahor and Haran, which represent three branches of descendants, all of which are important in the patriarchal stories that follow in J. 1 As indicated above, one must assume that the J genealogy of the Shem to Peleg line originally continued down to Terah before the interruption with the Tower of Babel story so that Gen 11:27 picks up that important thread with another tripartite segmentation of Terah’s offspring. Haran dies early, in their homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans, but not before he leaves behind a family that includes his son Lot. Terah then takes the remaining members of the family and their wives and migrates from Ur of the Chaldeans, in the region of Babylonia, to the city of Harran. This migration also ties in with the theme of the Tower of Babel when the population of the region were scattered abroad. The city of Harran, their destination, becomes the homeland of Terah’s family, of whom a large component remain in this region, and it is this extended family in Harran who play a significant role in the lives of the later patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob. After Terah dies in Harran, Yahweh commands Abraham to leave his family home and migrate to a new region under divine guidance, and at the same time he receives the promises of nationhood for his offspring, together with a blessing of greatness and fame (12:1–3). This patriarchal promise becomes a major theme within J’s history that ties its various components together. Abraham’s nephew Lot, who will also be the ancestor of the Moabites and the Ammonites, will accompany him to this new region in Palestine. As indicated above, migration from one region to another and the production of offspring, who will be the forefathers of various peoples, constitute the basic structure of the historiographic narrative in the patriarchal stories, into which is fitted various etiological and religious tales. This narrative form and style is typical of the western antiquarian tradition. 1.  On the literary connection between the Primeval History in J and the stories of the Patriarchs, see excursus 1, pp. 133–134 below.

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Furthermore, it is most significant that the migration of Abraham’s family should follow the pattern from Ur of the Chaldeans in Babylonia to Harran, where the larger kin group settled to become the Aramean founders of that region, and then Abraham and Lot migrate from Harran to the region of Palestine. This seems to follow the pattern of another famous migration in the Neo-Babylonian period in which King Nabonidus likewise migrated from Babylonia to Harran, with a large entourage, and from there went through Syria-Palestine south to the oasis of Teima in the north Arabian Desert. It should also be noted that Nabonidus had strong family and religious connections with both Ur and Harran. 2 At that time Harran was the most important political and religious center of the Upper Euphrates basin. Nabonidus’s association with these two cities was in sharp contrast to his rather bad relations with the priests of Marduk in Babylon. Given the fact that there are strong indications of Babylonian influence within the Primeval History and that this remarkable migration of Nabonidus took place at just this time all seem to point quite clearly to this sociohistorical context for both the Primeval History and the story of Abraham that follows. No other period fits so remarkably this particular setting for J’s literary work. This seems to be confirmed in the remarks by Second Isaiah when he has the deity referring to Israel as “the offspring of Abraham, my friend,” and then continues with a clear allusion to Abraham’s migration: “You whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners” (Isa 41:8–9). Following the command of the deity to leave Harran, Abraham and Lot set out with their families on their long migration south to the land of Canaan, and the first stop on the route that is named is that of Shechem, Gen 12:6–7. Here, Abraham receives confirmation that this is indeed the land that the deity had promised him when he first set out, and Abraham responds by building an altar to Yahweh as an acknowledgement of this revelation by the deity. Because Shechem is recognized as the ancient center of the later kingdom of Israel before the building of Samaria, this marks the inclusion of Israel within the scope of the Abrahamic promise of becoming a great nation. Furthermore, this migration is the first stage in an itinerary in which each stage represents an important moment or occasion in the process of the land promise theme. The next stop on this itinerary is the region of Bethel at a particular mountain between Bethel and Ai, at which Abraham builds an altar and calls on the name of Yahweh. This is a curious statement, but it seems intended to establish a link between this visit by Abraham and the later episode by Jacob in Gen 28:10–22. At this point, there is an interruption in this itinerary scheme by a popular tale about Abraham’s trip to Egypt, necessitated by 2.  What is often overlooked is the fact that imperial Aramaic had become the dominant language of Mesopotamia and Babylonian cuneiform represented the “Latin” of the intelligencia.

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a famine, along with his beautiful wife, resulting in the ruse of calling Sarah his sister. In order to accommodate this story, J has Abraham move to the region of the Negev, v. 9, and after his expulsion from Egypt he returns to the Negev and from there back to Bethel and to the very place between Bethel and Ai where he had previously built the altar (13:1–4). It is now that the decisive event of this location takes place, namely, the separation of Abraham from Lot (vv. 5–12), who makes the choice to move to the east, thus leaving the land west of the Jordan valley, the land of Canaan, to Abraham. As in the case of the first stop, we are told about the original inhabitants of the land—the Canaanites and the Perizzites (13:9; cf. 12:6). This distinguishing of the migrating ancestors from the aboriginal population is a regular feature of antiquarian historiography. Lot’s move to Sodom in the Jordan Valley with his family also anticipates the later event in Gen 19, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Once the separation between Abraham and Lot has taken place, the divine promise of the land to Abraham is reaffirmed and expanded, together with the promise of numerous progeny (vv. 14–17). This is the fundamental theme of the Yahwist throughout the patriarchal stories and by which he interprets all of the diverse traditions and stories that he includes in his history. The theme of the divine promises is also tied to the basic structures of the itinerary, in which each of the principal locations in the journey become occasions of reaffirmation of this promise theme. Once again, Abraham migrates from Bethel to Hebron (13:18), which is the direct counterpart for ancient Judah that Shechem serves for Israel, and it is very likely the homeland of the Abrahamic tradition. It also serves as the end point of his migration. As with the previous sites in his migration, Abraham receives yet another revelation from Yahweh (chap. 15), but in this case, the divine promise becomes the subject of an extended narrative. 3 In the first part of the narrative (vv. 1–6), there is a dialogue, which raises the question of doubt in the divine promise of numerous progeny because Abraham has no offspring, and Abraham is assured by God that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. His faith and trust in this promise are reckoned as righteousness. This statement has to be seen in the context of a crisis of faith in which the prior prophetic and Dtr tradition placed the primary emphasis on obedience to the divine statutes as the mark of the righteous, and it was disobedience that led to the disaster of the exile. The new appeal by Second Isaiah in the late Exilic Period is that the period of divine punishment is past, and now what is needed is faith in divine deliverance and the promises made to Abraham, as reflected in J. In the second part of the narrative (15:7–20), the focus is on the gift of the land. The deity recapitulates the migration from Ur of the Chaldeans, 3.  On Gen 15, see “The Covenant of Abraham in Genesis 15,” pp. 215–234.

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whose purpose was the gift of the land in which he now resides. Again, Abraham asks for some form of confirmation, and this leads to the ritual of covenant making that binds Yahweh to his promise. Within this process, J also includes a prophecy about the future sojourn in Egypt, the oppression there, and the exodus. This will ultimately lead to possession of the land now occupied by the aboriginal Amorites. In this way, Abraham is given a preview of the whole history about which J intends to write. This Abrahamic covenant of promise made by the deity regarding Israel’s destiny is placed alongside the Mosaic covenant of divine law requiring the people’s obedience. It remains to see how the tension between the demands of these two covenants, the one unconditional and the other conditional, is resolved in J’s story of Moses. Again, I would argue that this chapter has all of the characteristics of an antiquarian historian: the migration theme, the ancestral family among large numbers of aboriginal peoples and the future prospect of displacing them. This sequence of events comes about at the direction and unmediated guidance of the deity, prior to the existence of any prophets or religious institutions. Following the episode dealing with the making of a covenant between Yahweh and Abraham, there are two birth stories, one in chap. 16 and one in 18:1–15 and 21:1–3, 6–7. These are two stories from the older corpus of the Abrahamic tradition, which have been slightly modified by J, with additional glosses by P in 16:3a, 16 and 21:4–5. Into this rather typical sequence of birth stories of ancestral offspring, J builds a much more complex narrative that elaborates the theme of the divine promise relating to Abraham’s offspring. He also incorporates the etiological legend about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, combining it with the traditional story of the offspring of Lot. He also uses the destruction of Sodom as the occasion for a theological discussion on the problem of the evil (18:16–33; 19:1–38). The question whether or not the few righteous in society are enough to avert divine judgment on the whole or merely save themselves from destruction is debated by the righteous Abraham and the deity. This seems to be a response to the prophetic deliberation on divine judgment and the righteous, as reflected in Ezek 14:12–20. The story in Gen 20, which is a doublet of the earlier story of Gen 12:1–20 on the theme of Abraham passing off his wife as his sister, interrupts the sequence of the narrative in J, so chap. 20, along with its sequel in 21:22–34, will be set aside and dealt with later. 4 This means that the story of Isaac’s birth in Gen 21:1–3, 6–7 is followed by an account of the childhood of Isaac and his older half-brother Ishmael, and the eventual expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael at Sarah’s insistence, as a threat to the inheritance of Isaac (vv. 8–21). This episode becomes an occasion for the reaffirmation of the divine prom4.  See excursus 2 below, pp. 134–136.

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ises to both of Abraham’s sons (vv. 12–13, 18), as well as the separation of these two lines of national origin. The two expulsion stories are obviously doublets, but the second is not an older independent tradition. It merely imitates the same theme to highlight J’s message, which is an integral part of the larger composition. This story of the separation of the two children, in which the elder of Abraham’s sons leaves his father’s household, is now followed by the dramatic story, in chap. 22, of the test of Abraham’s obedience to the divine command to sacrifice his son Isaac and his faith in the divine promises which rest upon this son. These two seem to contradict each other completely. The practice of child sacrifice was apparently common in Judah in the late monarchy period as it was among the Phoenicians/Canaanites of the Levant, but it was condemned by the contemporary prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Yahwist, using the patriarch as an example, suggests that such an extreme act of piety is not required by the deity, and the use of an animal sacrifice, provided by Yahweh, is an entirely adequate substitute. This story likewise offers an opportunity for J to reaffirm the divine promise of numerous offspring that was in jeopardy through this threatened sacrifice of Isaac. After the incident we are told that Abraham returned, with his son Isaac and the two youths who assisted them, to Beersheba. The reason for this move has to do with the fact that the region of Beersheba is the locus for the Isaac story. There is broad scholarly consensus that Gen 23 belongs to P so that the account of the quest for a bride for Isaac in chap.  24 follows directly on chap. 22 and is a most appropriate compliment to it. In Abraham’s commissioning his senior servant for the task of going back to his former homeland in Mesopotamia to seek a wife for Isaac from his larger family, Abraham recapitulates his divine calling and promise of land to his descendants. Central to the story is the theme of divine guidance, which is seen in the whole chain of events that takes the servant of Abraham to just the right person, Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel. This is interpreted as the unseen activity of the “angel of God,” in answer to the servant’s prayer. In order to anticipate the later Jacob story, we are also introduced to Laban, the brother of Rebekah. The length of the story and the level of its artistry have often suggested to some that it is a later creation, but it fits so well with the whole sequence of the later Isaac stories that I see no reason for doing so. The wedding is duly consummated at a time when both Isaac’s parents are now dead. The concluding statement of the whole episode is probably to be seen in 25:11: “After the death of Abraham God blessed Isaac his son, and Isaac settled down in Beer-lahai-roi.”

The Story of Isaac The transition from the Isaac story to the Jacob story in J appears to continue immediately in 25:21, but this seems to come too soon for the events

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in Isaac’s career in chap. 26. So let me deal first with these events and then return to the two accounts of the Jacob/Esau rivalry. The parallel of the famine in the land with the events in the time of Abraham is very explicitly drawn (26:1–5), but in contrast there is a firm command not to go down to Egypt but to stay in the land that was promised to Abraham. So Isaac takes up residence in Gerar. This negative command is parallel to Abraham’s command to his servant not to take his son to Mesopotamia, as if both were a threat to the divine promise and Jacob would in fact do both of these things. The attempt to heighten the distinction between Isaac and Jacob is noteworthy, especially because, in the Prophesy of Amos (7:9, 16), Isaac seems to be a direct equivalent of the term Israel. Perhaps there were two conflicting traditions about this ancestral tradition, one Israelite and one Judean. The reaffirmation of the divine promises that God gave to Abraham once again at the beginning of the Isaac story (26:3–5) is a typical pattern for J and includes the promises both of land and of numerous progeny, as well as the extended blessing to other nations. However, this summary also includes “the oath sworn to Abraham,” which is a clear reference to the covenant made to Abraham in Gen 15:8–20, as well as the the vast numbers of Abraham’s future descendants compared with the stars in 15:5, both repeated in Gen 22:16–18. Even more remarkable is the reference to Abraham’s obedience in 26:5 (cf. 22:18), which is considered by J to be equivalent to all of the sacred commandments, statutes, and laws. There is no reason to question the fact that all of these references belong to J, and it is completely arbitrary to assign them to one or more “redactors.” The actual account of Isaac’s attempt to pass his wife off as his sister is rather brief (vv. 6–11), giving a summary of the reason for doing so, and when he is discovered by the king by accident, he is duly reprimanded as well as protected from any possible threat. This leads Isaac to settle down in Gerar, the land of the Philistines, and to prosper greatly (vv. 12–14, 16). This unit is parallel to the prosperity that Abraham gains in Egypt in the episode in Gen 12:16, but with some rather significant differences. In Abraham’s case, his wealth is directly related to his deception after Sarah becomes part of Pharaoh’s household, whereas in the case of Isaac, it has nothing to do with his pretending that Rebekah is his sister, and his prosperity is only mentioned after he is discovered. The description of Isaac’s prosperity, however, is quite significant from another perspective—that of a comparison with the Israelites in Egypt. The little credo in Deut 26:5 states: “My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number. There he became a nation, great, powerful and numerous (‫)גדול עצום ורב‬.” In Exod 1:7*, J picks up this same language when he states that “the descendants of Israel multiplied and became powerful (‫)רבו ויעצמו‬.” The Egyptian response to this was to recognize it as a threat, v. 9: “The people of Israel are becoming more numerous

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(‫ )רב‬and more powerful (‫ )עצום‬than us” (cf. v. 20). A comparison with Isaac’s prosperity is somewhat obscured by translation, but Gen 26:13 describes Isaac as becoming very “great,” that is, rich, using ‫ גדל‬three times, and in v. 14 he is said to have acquired a large household of servants, using the adjective ‫ברה‬. This leads to ill feeling on the Philistines’ part so that the king asks Isaac to leave because “you are much mightier than us,” using the verb ‫עצם‬. The parallel created by the Yahwist is deliberate, especially when the warning about going down to Egypt in v. 2 suggests a comparison with what happened to the household of Jacob in Egypt much later. In Isaac’s case, he is free to leave the foreign city but remains in the same general region. The rest of the Isaac story in Gen 26:17–33 is dominated by the theme of digging wells and giving each of them names. It is quite likely that this reflects a tradition of popular etiologies that tie the figure of the patriarch to this region. This tradition is connected to the previous story of Abimelech by the use of the theme of dispute over the wells between Isaac’s servants and the herdsmen of Gerar, vv. 19, 21–22, and the resolution of the dispute by an agreement (covenant) between Abimelech and Isaac, vv. 26–31. Perhaps J is trying to suggest that unlike the Israelites’ subsequent bondage in Egypt, within the land of Palestine there can be a peaceful resolution of disputes over valuable resources, such as water. Separating the two parts of this dispute and its resolution is another divine appearance of the deity at night giving Isaac reassurance once again of the divine promises, and as in the case of Abraham, Isaac builds an altar there as a historical marker and digs another well (vv. 23–25). This time, it becomes the marker for the important southern city of Beersheba, just as altars had formerly marked Shechem, (12:7), Bethel (v. 8), and Hebron (13:18). A later writer, the author of chap. 20, has also greatly elaborated on this theme of the covenant between Abimelech and Abraham in 21:22–34 and then included the references to it in 26:15 and 18, but this is not part of J’s history.

The Story of Jacob The story of Jacob begins in 25:21–34 as a continuation of v.  11, with the birth of twins, Esau and Jacob, and results in a bitter rivalry between them from birth onward.  5 This rivalry is resumed in chap.  27, leading to Jacob’s flight to his uncle Laban in Harran. On the way, Jacob experiences a divine theophany at Bethel (28:10–22) and eventually arrives in the land of the eastern people where he takes up residence with his uncle Laban, and marries his two daughters, Leah and Rachel. They and their maids produce for Jacob 12 sons and a daughter. During this time Jacob serves as a shepherd under Laban, and in the course of time Jacob becomes very prosperous through some deception on his part (chaps. 29–30). Rivalry between the 5. See my Prologue to History, 280–88.

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household of Laban and Jacob leads again to a flight by Jacob, pursued by Laban. The two parties come together again at the future border of Israel and Aram in northern Gilead; they make peace and depart (chap. 31). Jacob proceeds south, crossing the Jabbok, has a nocturnal encounter with the deity, and then goes on to meet Esau and to be reconciled with his brother. They part company and Jacob heads west across the Jordan to Shechem, the land of his inheritance, while Esau continues south to Edom (chaps. 32–33). All this can be said to belong to a self-contained set of stories, and the question arises: what is the prehistory of this story cycle? The tendency in the past, following Gunkel, had been to regard the various parts of the story as corresponding to much more circumscribed traditional tales that were combined by a later literary process of composition or editing. A somewhat different process was advocated by Albert de Pury in his 1975 dissertation, 6 arguing for a self-contained legend of Jacob. An argument in favor of this is the fact that, in Hosea’s prophecy of the late 8th century there are several allusions to the Jacob story in Hos 12: the rivalry in the womb with his brother and the fight with the angel at the Jabbok, the encounter with the deity at Bethel and his flight to Aram, where he served as a shepherd in payment for a wife. These individual items in themselves do not tell us much about the nature of the story as a whole. However, there was a popular legend attested in both early and late Greek sources having to do with twins who are rivals from birth, and a threat from one leads to the other fleeing to a foreign land, only to marry into a royal family and return in triumph and eventually be reconciled to his brother. One or more encounters with the deity in the course of the story would fit the scheme very well. Consequently, there is nothing that speaks against this sort of prehistory of the Jacob story and much to support it. The first episode in the traditional Jacob cycle centers on the birth and rivalry of the twins Jacob and Esau/Edom, who are eponymous ancestors of rival nations (25:21–34). Their early struggle for supremacy in the womb of their mother and the resulting etiology of their names, as well as the episode of Esau selling his birthright for some pottage (vv. 29–34), which gives rise to the fateful falling out between the two brothers, are themes common to the folktale whose purpose is to prefigure the future relations between two neighboring states: Edom and Israel. 7 What one would have expected at the end of the scene of Esau’s selling his birthright is the threat of revenge by Esau and flight by Jacob. Consequently, the concluding comment, “Thus 6.  A. de Pury, Promesse divine et légende culturelle dans le cycle de Jacob: Genèse 28 et les traditions patriarchales (Paris: Gabalda, 1975). 7. Many scholars from Gunkel onward have frequently cited this parallel about the ancestors of two rivaling nations who as twins struggled in the womb as a portent of their future conflict, but they fail to note that this episode regarding their birth is only part of the whole myth in Gen 25, 27–33, as outlined above, and argue for their presence in the pre-J source. See Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 2.2.1ff.

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Esau despised his birthright” (v. 34b), is completely inappropriate and cannot be how the story ends. The ending was deliberately changed in order to allow for the parallel account in chap. 27 where the threat is clearly stated and leads to Jacob’s flight. The fact that J created his own parallel version to this scene in the earlier story of the rivalry between the two brothers (25:29–34) is apparent from a number of observations: 1.  In 27:36a, there is a direct reference to the earlier episode: “Esau said, ‘Is his name not correctly called Supplanter ( Jacob)? He has now supplanted me twice. He took away my birthright and see now he has stolen my blessing.’” This is a secondary interpretation of Jacob’s name and not the original in 25:26. It would appear that Hosea was only aware of the first version of the story and knows nothing of the second version (cf. Hos 12:4[3]). While this remark also suggests a difference between the birthright and the blessing, the patriarchal blessing with its promise of land in Palestine is the only inheritance that the patriarchs can give their offspring, because they are landless nomads. For J, birthright and blessing have become equivalent. 8 2.  The rivalry has also shifted from the two brothers to the parents, and particularly to Rebekah, who is responsible for planning the deception and Jacob’s flight to her brother’s homeland. This is not merely a variant of the traditional legend but a conscious rewrite by J for his own thematic purposes. It is for this reason that J also added the theme of parental rivalry to the first story, in 25:28: “Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob,” in which it has no relevance, in order to make a connection with the version in chap. 27. 3.  J has also placed the Isaac story of chap. 26 between the two rivalry stories, in order to create some space between them, in spite of the fact that, from a chronological point of view, Isaac and Rebekah, as a much younger and obviously childless couple in chap. 26, would be more appropriate before 25:11–28. 4. Putting together the clues from Hosea and the folklore tradition of rivalry between twin brothers who are the ancestors of rival states, one can, I believe, reconstruct the basic outline of the pre-J story of Jacob. The various scenes in 25:21–34 concerning the eponymous ancestors of Israel and Edom are intended to be immediately transparent images of the future relationship between these two nations. As indicated above, this introductory unit was linked to an account of a flight by Jacob to a foreign land. En route, he had a vision of God as Bethel. In the foreign land he served as a shepherd and thereby gained a wife (or two). On his return to his native land, he was reconciled to his brother and became the ancestor of a nation. There is no reason to believe that the original tale went beyond these dimensions. 9 8.  Cf. Gen 21:8–21, where inheritance and divine blessing are obviously equivalent. 9.  Contra de Pury.

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The story in chap. 27 as constructed by J, on the other hand, has in view a much larger plot and continuous set of circumstances and relates to the theme underlying J’s entire narrative of the Jacob story. The account of this deception in an effort to gain the father’s blessing is related to the larger theme of the patriarchal blessing and sets off a chain of events, many of which include deception as a basic motif, 10 that continue to the end of Jacob’s life in Egypt. This larger composition no longer has the character of a popular folk tale but rather that of a skilful literary work, even though it makes use of pieces from the older traditional cycle. Within the unit in chap. 27, the previous rivalry between the two brothers in chap. 25 is presupposed with many allusions to its details, but in this later version the rivalry is as much between the two parents as it is between their offspring. With the father being at the great disadvantage because of his age and blindness, it is the mother Rebekah, rather than Jacob as in the earlier stories in chap. 25, who is completely in charge of events. After Jacob succeeds in stealing the blessing, resulting in the death threat of Esau, Rebekah sends off Jacob to her brother Laban in Harran. This picks up the connections with this branch of the family made in the Isaac story in chap. 24, but now a generation later. Interrupting the narrative flow of the Yahwist’s history at the end of J’s story in chap. 27, before Jacob leaves in flight from his brother, P inserts a statement about Esau’s marriage to wives of the aboriginal population (Hittites), which made him quite unfit for such a blessing, and so P has Isaac admonishing Jacob not to marry a local Canaanite but to go to the family home in Harran. He then passes on to Jacob the blessing given to Abraham and sends him off on his journey as if nothing had happened. Esau is now made to understand that, although he is the eldest, he did not get the blessing because he had married women of the aboriginal population. The whole of P’s narrative 27:46–28:9 is an ideological construction intended as a correction of the prior J account. It is certainly not a continuous independent narrative parallel to J. The story of the revelation at Bethel in Gen 28:10–22 is connected to the preceding J narrative by the itinerary notice in v. 10, giving Jacob’s departure from Beersheba and naming the destination of his journey as Harran. What follows is the account of Jacob’s rest for the night at an unnamed place and his remarkable dream and divine revelation, which leads to his identifying the site as sacred and the “house of God” (Beth-el), followed by a vow. This narrative unit has played a major role in pentateuchal criticism and received the attention of a number of scholars, and was the point of departure for 10.  Laban’s deception of Jacob in his marriage to Leah instead of Rachel, Jacob’s deception of Laban in the matter of his wages as a shepherd, Rachel’s deception of her father regarding the household gods, the sons of Jacob deceiving Shechem and his father, Jacob’s sons deceiving their father regarding the sale of Joseph into slavery, and Joseph deceiving his brothers by withholding his identity and falsely accusing them of theft.

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Blum’s monumental study of the patriarchal traditions, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (1984). 11 In my view, Blum was essentially correct in resisting the view, current at that time, of splitting the works into two sources, J and E, and instead he identified a basic traditional story that was modified by later addition and revision. I accepted this position with the modification that there was only one expansion of the original story, that of the Yahwist, author of the larger history. Consequently, what we have as the earliest form of the story is a cult legend (28:11–12, 16aα, 17–19a), in which the patriarch’s vision of angels accounts for the origin of the name of the place as Bethel, meaning “house of God.” 12 J fits this episode into Jacob’s travels from Beersheba to Harran (v. 10) and expands the vision by means of the appearance of Yahweh as an addition to the angels, and the inclusion of the patriarchal promise once again (vv.  13–15, 16aβb), and by the elaboration of the place etiology with a vow toward the future sanctuary at that site, vv. 20–22. This site plays a significant role in the later J narrative on Jacob’s return to the land and clearly identified this unit with his work. Thus, the Yahwist has again taken up an older source and not only integrates it into his larger history, but uses it as an important theme in the various other pieces of his work. 13 In the next episode of the story, Jacob sets out on his journey again (29:1), but instead of arriving at the city of Harran he comes to the “land of the Easterners (Benē-Qedem),” which reflects a large region east of the Jordan valley extending north to southern Syria. Unlike the kinfolk of Abraham in chap. 24, these inhabitants are not city dwellers but keepers of livestock, including sheep and camels. This reflects much of the background and character of the story and the final scene in which there is negotiation regarding where the boundary should be between the land claimed by Jacob (Israel) and that belonging to Laban, the Aramean (33:43–54). But when Jacob asks the shepherds of the region where they are from (29:4), they say Harran, as though it is only a short distance away, and when Jacob further inquires about his uncle Laban son of Nahor, they know him and his daughter, who has come to water her flocks at the well. These are obvious attempts to make the connection with J’s Abraham story. Most of the story of Jacob’s marriages and his service as payment for his wives is probably based on the original 11.  For a review of this scholarship, see my Prologue to History, 288–95. See also my “Divine Encounter at Bethel (Gen 28,10–22) in Recent Literary-Critical Study of Genesis,” ZAW 110 (1998) 503–13. 12.  A suggestion once made to me by Winnett is that the Bethel in the original story was not about the site in the southern part of Israel near the border of Benjamin, but refers to a sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, which was also the Bethel referred to in the Book of Amos as the royal sanctuary. There was, in fact, a stairway that went up the side of the mountain that is known from Roman coins. J’s Bethel, however, is clearly the southern one in closer proximity to Judah. 13.  See 31:3, 13; 32:10–13; 35:1–7. More on these below.

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pre-J account, although it is perhaps futile to estimate the degree of rewriting it has received by J. Into the adventure tale of Jacob’s sojourn with Laban, J has fitted the genealogy of the tribes of Jacob with the etymological etiologies of their names 29:31–30:24. These etiologies are made to reflect the larger story of the rivalry of the two women for Jacob’s affections. The 12th son of Jacob, Benjamin, is not included because his birth takes place much later in the Jacob story. In addition, the birth of Dinah, who is not the ancestress of any tribe and whose name is given no etiology, is meant to anticipate a later story in Gen 34. This would strongly indicate that the account of the births of all these children and their etiologies was the ingenious addition of J himself. 14 Once Jacob has paid for his wives, he is no longer under obligation to serve Laban and could now return to his homeland. However, the folktale requires that he make his fortune in the foreign land, so he reaches a deal with Laban to serve for wages on his own terms, and as a result he accumulates great wealth at Laban’s expense. When this leads to a falling out with Laban, Jacob decides to take flight with his family to his homeland. When Laban discovers that he has gone, he gives pursuit and eventually there is a showdown between the two parties, which results in a covenantal border agreement, between the two ancestors of the Arameans and the Israelites in northern Gilead. Throughout this part of the story, the deity intervenes in the affairs of Jacob and his family, either under the divine name Yahweh or the general designation Elohim—God—and there is no reason to use these designations to distinguish different sources. Throughout the narrative of the births of the sons of Jacob the deity frequently intervenes or is credited with assisting in the birth. The deity is also credited both by Laban and by Jacob for the latter’s success, first for Laban’s prosperity and later for Jacob’s prosperity at Laban’s expense. However, once Jacob has become rich he decides to leave and this decision is confirmed, first by Yahweh’s initial command for him to return to his homeland (31:3) and then by an “angel of God” who identifies himself as “the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me,” with a repetition of the command to return to his homeland (31:13). This deity is also identified as “the God of my/your father” (vv. 5b, 29), who is also the God of Abraham (v. 42, cf. v. 53), the hallmark of J. After there is a reconciliation between Laban and Jacob and a treaty marking the boundary between their offspring, the Arameans and the Israelites, Jacob moves south for the next stage of his homeward journey, that of his encounter with his brother Esau. Within the larger narrative of the reconciliation between the brothers, J incorporates two etiologies, one at Mahanaim having to do with a vision of angels (32:2[1]), similar to at Bethel, and the 14.  This fascination with etymological explanations of names continues down into Roman times, as evident in Josephus, so there is no reason to assign it to an early oral source.

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other at Peniel on the Jabbok (vv.  25–31 [24–30]), involving his wrestling with the deity and change of name (see also Hos 12:4b, 5). Prior to Jacob’s meeting with Esau, of whom he was very fearful, he offers a prayer for divine protection from “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac” and in the prayer Jacob reiterates the theme of the patriarchal promises (32:10–13[9–12]). The fraternal reunion is a deeply moving scene in which Esau shows no sign of the old hostility, and they part company, Esau to the land of Edom and Jacob (now Israel) to Palestine east of the Jordan and the city of Shechem. This marks the end of the traditional story of Jacob that was taken over by J. The story of the deflowering of Dinah by Shechem, the prince of the city of that name, is, in its present form, a somewhat contradictory combination of the sources J and P. I will not go into a detailed critical analysis of the source division here but will merely indicate my view of the limits of J and its significance within the present J work. 15 The story in the J version is about how Shechem seduced the young virgin Dinah out of love for her and then through his father Hamor, tried to arrange a marriage with her and pay the appropriate bride price to have her as his wife. The brothers, however, were angry and sought to put an obstacle in the way of the marriage by requiring that Shechem be circumcised. Yet he was willing to accept this condition and so the marriage went forward. In spite of this two of the brothers, Simeon and Levi, went under cover of night and killed Shechem and his father and removed Dinah from their home and left. This meant that Jacob’s family would now be under threat and had to leave the region and travel south away from the heartland of what would later become the land of Israel. This move south would eventually lead them to their sojourn in Egypt. What exactly is the point of this story? Most scholars and commentators treat it as a separate, self-contained narrative about the violation of a young virgin and the revenge of the brothers against the perpetrator. This, however, overlooks the fact that it is a narrative created by J within the context of the larger patriarchal history, and as such the story takes on a paradigmatic character, having to do with the relationship of Jews and non-Jews as reflected in J’s own environment in Babylonia during the Exile. Under Mosaic law as reflected in the Covenant Code in Exod 22:15[16], the matter would be settled within the Jewish society by the father simply imposing a bride price on the willing groom, and his daughter would become the man’s wife. However, the situation in this story creates the problem of an aboriginal “Gentile,” anachronistically identified as the “uncircumcised,” marrying a daughter of Jacob—who else was there for her to marry? The violence of the brothers 15.  The J text may be found in 34:1–4, 6–8, 11–13a, 14, 19, 25a*, 26, 30, 31. For a critical analysis of this story, see my “Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34),” in Jacob: A Plural Commentary of Gen. 25–36. Mélanges offerts à Albert de Pury (ed. J.-D. Macchi and T. Römer; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001) 239–47. See “The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34),” 235–243.

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seems totally out of proportion to the actual situation and poses a grave problem for Jacob’s household. Yet the story ends in a question that is posed to the later descendents of Jacob/Israel, who face a comparable situation, the intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews. The return to Bethel, in 35:1–7, is intended to complete the cycle from the prior revelation at Bethel in 28:10–22 and his sojourn in the foreign land. The move from Shechem to Bethel begins with a command by the deity, parallel to the command that Jacob received in the land of his sojourn among the Arameans, in 31:13, with its reference to the God who appeared to him at Bethel. The use of the itinerary by J, with each stage in the movement from the foreign land to Bethel being carefully charted, is a dominant feature of J’s historiographic style, as we have seen in the case of Abraham. Before they leave Shechem, Jacob commands the members of his household to remove all of their foreign gods and to purify themselves. He then buries all of these objects under the oak near Shechem. This is a very curious detail because it raises the question of how all such religious objects had accumulated within Jacob’s household in the first place. Again, as in the previous episode, the reference here to the household of Jacob purifying itself from foreign contamination before they proceed to the sacred site of Bethel to worship the God of Bethel seems to be intended as a paradigm for the Israelites in Babylonia preparing for their return from Exile (cf. Isa 52:11). Another feature about this remark is the reference to the oak near Shechem as the site for the burial of these foreign objects. 16 Jacob sets out from Shechem under divine protection, because of what had happened in Shechem earlier, and when he arrives at Bethel, he builds an altar there, again recalling the earlier revelation, 35:5–7. Jacob again names the site Bethel in reference to the God who had appeared to him. J seems to give sanctity to this site of Bethel in the multiple references to the divine appearance there more that any other in the patriarchal stories. This perhaps suggests that in the Exilic Period J may have regarded this place as a mutually acceptable place of worship for both the northern Israelites and the Judeans, in lieu of the lack of any temple in Jerusalem. Furthermore, it would also appear to be significant that J uses El as a designation for the deity (Gen 31:13; 35:1, 3; 46:3), especially with the article, “the God.” The significance of this designation must be understood within the context of Second Isaiah’s use of the term in Isa 43:12 and 46:9, in which the deity declares: “I am El,” to the exclusion of all other deities. By this is clearly meant that Yahweh is the high god, equivalent to the head of the Phoenician pantheon. This is made absolutely clear when the prophet states in 42:5: Thus says the El (‫)האל‬, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who fashioned the earth and whatever grows on it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk on it. 16.  See Deut 11:30; Gen 12:6; Josh 24:26; Judg 9:37.

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The significance of the article can only mean that the prophet views Yahweh as the one and only El, the supreme creator deity, and this identity is directly taken over from J. Bethel is the sanctuary of this one and only deity and the God of all who worship there. Because Jacob is especially the patriarch of Israel proper, this goes against the vilification of this site by the Deuteronomist in 1 Kgs 12:26–32. The unit in Gen 35:1–7 therefore is not part of an older narrative but J’s own commentary on the patriarchal age addressed to those of his own time. To this are added anecdotes about a burial site at Bethel, the birth of Benjamin at Ephrath, which was obviously intended for the region in the tribe of Benjamin (1 Sam 10:2), and the death of Rachel with a marker for her tomb.

The Story of Joseph The Joseph Story is the largest and in many respects the most complex unit within the Yahwistic history and the most controversial in terms of its critical analysis. It is not my purpose in this overview of J’s work to deal with these issues within this narrative survey. This can be found in an essay included in part 2 of this volume, 17 so I will merely assume the results of my previous analysis here. As we shall see, J’s own contribution to this composition is rather minimal, but his historiography does not rest on the amount of originality he contributes to the narrative, but in his particular use of the inherited tradition in constructing the people’s history, and it is these J texts that will be our primary concern. Nevertheless, a brief summary of the pre-J compositional history is perhaps helpful in order to understand J’s modification and use of this narrative as he received it. A major study of the Joseph story that fundamentally changed the nature of the critical discussion of this narrative was made by Donald B. Redford, A Study of the Joseph Story (1970), which anticipated and contributed to the revision of pentateuchal studies in the mid-70s, as mentioned earlier. Instead of splitting the narrative into two independent sources combined by a redactor, Redford regarded the work as composed of a number of layers, with an original story supplemented by later additions and modifications, the final one being the P additions. The earliest form of the story he dated to the Saite period (7th–6th centuries b.c.e.), using his expertise as an Egyptologist. This study has become the major point of departure for all subsequent studies of the Joseph story. My own approach, therefore, is heavily indebted to his work, with some modifications. The oldest layer of the story told about a young shepherd boy who was taken from the land of the Hebrews down to Egypt and sold as a slave by the Midianites/Ishmaelites to the captain of the guard who was the keeper of the 17. J. Van Seters, “The Joseph Story–Some Basic Observations,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford (ed. G. N. Knoppers and A. Hirsch: Leiden: Brill, 2004) 361–88. See pp. 244–266 below.

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royal prison. 18 Originally, the Hebrew lad was not identified as the patriarch Joseph. This young slave had special powers that enabled him to interpret dreams, which he did for two royal prisoners, and when one of them was released in fulfillment of his dream, he informed Pharaoh, who was likewise troubled by his dreams, about the young man’s powers. This led to his release from captivity and his successful prediction of a forthcoming sevenyear famine, for which he was elevated to the rank of vizier and given the powers to make preparations for this eventuality. Among the many honors bestowed on the young man, he was given an Egyptian name and married to the daughter of the priest of Heliopolis, and thus completely integrated into Egyptian society. The result of his preparations for the famine was not only that the land was saved, but the story also offers an etiological explanation of how it was that Pharaoh gained complete autocratic power over the Egyptian people. The story ends with some remarks about his having lived a long life with many progeny and dying at the ripe old age of 110 years and being embalmed and placed in a coffin in the land of Egypt. 19 This older nucleus was taken up by the Israelite author of the Joseph Story, who identified the Hebrew hero of the earlier story as the patriarch Joseph and used the Joseph Story as the explanation of how it was that the descendants of Jacob ended up in Egypt. The setting of the story in chap. 37 is clearly in the heartland of Israel (Shechem and Dothan), where the brothers are tending their sheep. The dream of Joseph in vv. 5–8 predicts the later events in Egypt as well as the reason for the brothers’ ill will toward him. 20 In this Israelite Joseph Story, it is Reuben who takes charge in the scene where the brothers plot to do away with Joseph, in chap. 37, and in Reuben’s later leadership role in Egypt before Joseph, in chap. 42. However, what greatly complicates the Joseph Story is that a rival to Reuben’s leadership is introduced in the person of Judah. In 37:25–28 it is Judah who proposes to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites while Reuben is not present and does not know of this sale. Again in chap. 43–44, during the brothers’ return trip to Egypt, it is now Judah who is in charge and takes the lead in their dealings with Joseph before Joseph discloses his identity to them. It was these features that originally led scholars to the division of the present story into two parallel sources. In place of this proposal, related to the older Documentary Hypothesis, it now seems preferable to follow the suggestion of Redford and view 18.  This earliest layer may be seen in Gen 39:1; 40–41*; 47:13–26; 50:22, 26. 19.  It is quite possible that parts of the rest of the present story also belong to this story, including elements of how he got down to Egypt in the first place (chap. 37), the famine in Canaan and the brothers’ trips to Egypt to buy grain, leading to the eventual disclosure of their youngest brother as vizier (chaps. 42–45), the father’s reunion with his son in Egypt, the father’s death in Egypt and the restoration of his embalmed body to the family grave in Canaan. These elements have all now been completely reworked by the author of the Israelite Joseph story. 20.  The second dream in vv. 9–11 is a later addition.

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this replacement of Reuben by Judah as a later Judaic revision of the earlier Israelite Joseph Story. 21 To this revision we will return below. The disclosure of Joseph to his brothers in the older version is followed by the brothers’ return to Canaan, the transport of Jacob, their aged father, and his family to Egypt. There is a reunion of Jacob with his son Joseph and their settling in the land of Rameses. 22 This Israelite version of the Joseph Story explains how it was that the Israelites ended up in Egypt. It ends when Israel/ Jacob summons Joseph alone to his deathbed and has him promise to bury him in the burial place of his fathers in his own land (47:29–31). To this original ending, the northern Israelite version adds a second visit by Joseph to Jacob’s bedside in 48:1–2, 8–14, 17–19a, 20–21a, 22. It is clear that the primary focus in this Israelite account is on the heartland of Ephraim and Manasseh, as can also be seen in the birth of Joseph’s two sons in 41:50–52 and their offspring in 50:23. After this final word, Jacob dies, and the appropriate mourning and embalming takes place, followed by Joseph undertaking the burial of his father in Canaan, accompanied by a large Egyptian contingent but without his brothers (50:1–7, 9–11, 14*). The end of this version of the story probably included the death of Joseph at the age of 110 years and with his abundance of offspring. He is embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus in Egypt, for future burial in Canaan (50:22–23, 26). In addition to this North Israelite version in which the eldest brother Reuben takes the lead, Redford identified a Judean revision, in which Judah supplants Reuben in this leadership role. 23 It is this version of the story that I have identified with the revision of the Yahwist. This connection is not immediately apparent where there is a mention of the figure of Judah, whose role comes to an end in chap. 44, with the exception of a single reference in 46:28. However, before we deal with this issue of the role of Judah in the Joseph Story, some comment should be made about the story of Judah in Gen 38. This story begins with the remark that Judah parted from his brothers and moved south into the region that would later belong to the tribe of Judah. What follows in the rest of the story clearly indicates that this author did not regard Judah and his family as having any part in the migration to Egypt. This would be entirely compatible with the Israelite version of the Joseph Story, but not with the Judean revision that was concerned to have Judah play a major role in the presentation of that tradition. All of the earlier prophetic references to the Exodus Story from Amos and Hosea down to Ezekiel associate this tradition with the northern Israelites and not Judah. 21.  It is clear from the story about the ancestor Judah in Gen 38 that Judah was not originally among the sons of Jacob that went down to Egypt, and therefore Gen 38 was not part of the J history but a later addition. It does not reflect any of the basic features of J’s work. 22. 45:1–6, 12–28; 46:5, 29–30 (without “in Goshen”); 47:5 (LXX)–6a, 11–12. 23. 37:25–27, 28aβb; 43–44*; 45:1–15*; 46:28, 31–34; 47:1–6.

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Consequently, without Judah’s explicit presence among the sons of Jacob who went to Egypt, the whole of the Exodus tradition would have been quite irrelevant to Judean religious identity. Thus, it was important for the Yahwist to establish at the outset of the story that Judah played an important role and indeed replaced Reuben as the real leader of the sons of Jacob. This leadership role of Judah is reflected in the way in which he is able to persuade his father to put Benjamin in his care on their return trip to Egypt, but above all in the poignant speech in 44:18–34 that he makes to Joseph at the turning point in the story. The way this speech of Judah is constructed as a past review of events leading up to the present moment is strikingly similar to that of the long speech given by the servant of Abraham in Gen 24:34–49 to the family of Rebekah, which persuades them to send Rebekah to become Isaac’s wife. In both, the artistry of J is manifest. There is no need to doubt that both speeches are by the same hand, so that in what follows I will refer to this Judah version as the work of the Yahwist. As a consequence of Judah’s moving speech, Joseph breaks down and reveals his identity: “I am Joseph,” (45:3), to which he also adds the question “Is my father still alive?” This question is curious, given the fact that he has been told repeatedly in the previous speech of Judah all about their aged father. However, earlier in 43:27–28 when Joseph confronts the brothers in his role as the high Egyptian official, he inquires of the brothers’ father, “Is your father well, the old man of which you spoke, is he still alive?” to which they reply, “Your servant our father is well, and he is still alive.” The irony of that earlier question becomes apparent with this second question: “Is my father still alive?” which leaves the brothers speechless. Perhaps this disclosure of Joseph in 45:1–3 was originally much more closely associated with the appearance of the brothers in 43:26–34 in the older version of the story. The response by Joseph to his brothers in 45:4–6, which likewise belongs to the older Israelite version of the story, concludes with the summary statement in vv. 5b–6: “For it was in order to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For the famine has been in the land for two years now, and for another five years there will be no plowing or harvest.” This statement has been expanded by J in a deliberate way in vv. 7–11. In v. 7, the divine purpose is no longer a matter of just saving lives in general, but more specifically “to preserve a remnant for you and to keep alive for you many survivors.” This places the emphasis on the destiny of the people of Israel and anticipates the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus. This becomes evident with the reference to the Land of Goshen as their dwelling place in Egypt (v. 10), not just to the end of the famine in five years but for successive generations with all of their livestock. What is also significant is the fact that there is frequent reference in J’s addition to the “Land of Goshen” as the place in which the family of Jacob and their offspring should reside apart from the general population of the Egyptians. This choice of the Land of Goshen by Joseph appears to be in

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deliberate contradiction to the older version of the remarks of Pharaoh that he will give to the brothers the best of the land of Egypt, which means the rich agricultural land (vv. 17–20), in which they will have no need of their livestock. For this purpose, Pharaoh provides them with all of the provisions and means by which to bring Jacob and his family to Egypt (45:21–28; 46:5). This choice is confirmed in 47:5–6a, 11–12, as the Land of Rameses. In contrast to this, J includes all their livestock that they acquired in Canaan (46:6) and then Jacob sends Judah ahead to meet Joseph in the Land of Goshen, and after Joseph’s reunion with his father it is arranged how they will persuade Pharaoh to let them settle in Goshen 46:28–47:4, 6b. 24 The whole point of the future descendents of Jacob dwelling separately from the rest of the Egyptians becomes apparent in the account of the plagues in Exod 8:18[22] and 9:26, where the Israelites in Goshen do not suffer from the plagues that afflict the rest of Egypt. Thus, the plague episodes presuppose this explanation for the Israelites’ location in Goshen as a region apart from the rest of Egypt. Fundamental to the way in which the Yahwist integrates the Joseph Story into his history is to use it as the means of making the transition between the patriarchal age and the Egyptian sojourn and exodus tradition. The first explicit attempt to make this connection of the Joseph Story with the wider historical context is 46:1–4, which is inserted between Jacob’s decision to go to Egypt in 45:28 and his departure in 46:5. 25 J introduces this account of the deity’s appearance to Jacob with an itinerary notice; “So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba,” but it does not give his point of departure, which is unusual. In the earlier J portion of his history, his last place of residence appears to have been in the region of Benjamin where Rachel died, but the Joseph Story as J received it no longer makes that location certain. After the vision J inserts “from Beersheba” in v. 5 to continue the itinerary structure. This pause at Beersheba is significant because it makes a direct connection back to the Isaac story and the theme of the divine promises to the patriarchs. This is the very site at which Isaac built an altar and likewise received the promise that God had previously given to Abraham (chap. 26). Here too, the deity appears to Jacob as the god of his father (46:3), as well as employing the divine title associated with Jacob’s prior experiences at Bethel, “I am The El (‫)האל‬.” Now the promise moves one step further, with the assurance of the future exodus: “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up 24.  It may be noted that the Land of Goshen lies along the eastern border of the Nile Delta, with the fertile land close to the eastern branch of the Nile giving way to the desert beyond the reaches of irrigation. The city of Rameses is on the northern edge of the Land of Goshen (see fig. 1 on p. 294). 25.  In fact, it is placed before the last line of Jacob’s speech in 45:28, which originally read, “and Joseph’s hand shall close my eyes” to the last line of the divine speech in 46:4: “and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”

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again.” This statement refers not merely to Jacob as an individual, who returns in a coffin, but to his offspring as a “great nation.” As god of his father, the deity’s promise also refers back to the covenant with Abraham in Gen 15:13–16. To assign these different passages containing the promise theme to different “editors” is arbitrary and without warrant. They all belong to J. In the death bed blessing of the sons of Joseph by Jacob in 48:1–2, 8–22, 26 J inserts a blessing of Joseph in vv. 15–16, which recapitulates in poetic form the patriarchal promises of numerous progeny, and again in his final remarks in vv. 21–22, J again repeats the promise of their return to the land of their fathers in v. 21b. In the original account of Jacob’s burial in Gen 50:1–11, 14, as indicated earlier, v. 8 is an addition that includes all of the brothers and their households along with Joseph in the entourage to Canaan; only the children and animals are left behind in the “Land of Goshen.” After the death and burial of Jacob, the brothers are fearful that Joseph may now take revenge on them for what they did to him when they sold him into slavery, and they make their plea for his forgiveness (50:15–21). This harks back to the earlier speech of Judah in 44:18–34 and Joseph’s response in 45:4–11, and there is no reason to deny it to a common author, J. Again in 50:24–25, there is another speech by Joseph to his older brothers, even though one would assume that they would all be dead by this time, with a further mention about their eventual return to the land sworn by God to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At the same time, the “sons of Israel” make an oath to take Joseph’s remains with them back to the promised land. All of this is picked up again in the subsequent exodus narrative. What we have in the Joseph story as composed by an author from the heartland of Israel, is a story that was based on a folktale about a Hebrew boy who was sold into slavery in Egypt but rose to the highest rank and fame under Pharaoh. It may also have included how he was reunited with his aged father. This folktale was made into a self-contained story about the patriarch Jacob and his family. The Israelite author knew the older Jacob traditions as reflected in Hosea, and the separate tradition about Israel’s origin from the land of Egypt, and composed a story to explain how it was that Jacob (Israel) and his family ended up in Egypt, from which they migrated to Palestine. It clearly assumes a general knowledge of both traditions. The Yahwist’s Judean version takes up this original Joseph Story and makes it into a source for his larger history by building into it the major themes of his larger work and by giving more prominence to Judah, where he was able to do so. The fact that we have such an elaborate tale embedded within a larger historical work should not come as any surprise to a reader of antiquarian histories, which are largely made up of such traditional stories. 26.  Gen 48:3–7 is an addition that is made by P. It is obviously dependent of the J story of Jacob, restated in his own terminology.

Chapter 4

The Sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus Introductory Remarks One of the common approaches in the mid-20th century to the study of the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt and the exodus was the attempt to associate the events portrayed in the biblical story with Egyptian history of the late second millennium b.c.e. While the ruler of Egypt in the biblical account simply goes by the title of Pharaoh, much was made of the name of one of the cities in Exod 1:11 as Rameses, which was understood as referring to the famous capital city Pi-Ramesses, built by Ramses II at the beginning of the 13th century. The modern town of Qantir is located on the site of this ancient city, located in exactly the region in the Northeastern Delta where the Israelites are represented as living. Even though the Bible speaks of it as a “store-city,” the name was enough for many to place the tradition of the Egyptian sojourn in the time of Ramses II and his successor Merneptah. Efforts were also made to date the other “store-city” of Pithom to this period as well, but that was more controversial. Nevertheless, it was common to view the account of the Egyptian sojourn in the early chapters of Exodus as reflecting a “collective memory” of this period and of Moses, who appears to have an Egyptian name. This historicizing of the biblical tradition came under critical scrutiny in the 1970s and gradually fell into disrepute, with Donald Redford, an Egyptologist and archaeologist in the forefront of this attack. There is no need to go into all the details of this discussion, but one notable example will illustrate the fallacy of this earlier position. In the early days of Egyptian archaeology in the late 19th century, the site of Tell el-Maskhuta at the eastern end of the Wadi Tumeilat, not far from Lake Timsah and the modern city of Ismailia, had been explored and identified from inscriptional evidence as Pithom/Succoth. Based on a few Ramesside-period monuments found there, the site was dated to the time of Ramses II and was always at the center of the discussion about the date of the exodus. However, the dating of the ceramic and architectural remains was at that time very precarious. 1 1.  The same could be said for the city of Tanis, also identified by some as Pi-Ramesses.

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Many years after the first dig by Edouard Naville for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1883, the University of Toronto carried out an archaeological excavation of several seasons from 1977–85 at the site of Tell el-Maskhuta. This expedition was led by John S. Holladay, with planning support from Redford and me, who were at that time his colleagues, and I also spent two seasons with Holladay in the field. What this excavation would convincingly prove is that the city of Pithom/Succoth was built for the first time by Necho  II about 600 b.c.e., as noted in Herodotus. The city was constructed in connection with digging a fresh water canal from the eastern branch of the Nile to the Red Sea (which at that time reached as far north as Lake Timsah). This was a large city with massive fortification walls ca. 9.5 meters thick made of mud brick and was clearly intended both as a commercial center (yielding a large quantity of foreign wares) and a defensive outpost to guard the eastern access to the Wadi Tumeilat. At this time, Egypt was under threat from its major enemy, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Furthermore, in the Saite period in Egypt a large foreign population from Palestine had settled as refugees in the northeastern Delta. Herodotus suggests that these building projects in the Wadi Tumeilat, the canal and Pithom, took a very heavy toll in lives, suggesting the use of corvée labor drawn from the population of this northeastern region. As I have argued above, the Yahwist lived and wrote his work in Babylonia in the mid-6th century b.c.e. This date would appear to be a more appropriate background for understanding the author’s portrayal of the oppression in Egypt than the time of Ramesses II. Although European scholarship was much more skeptical than their North American counterpart in their approach to the historicity of the exodus tradition, there was nevertheless a strong impulse among German scholars to find some evidence of Israel’s historical origins in these biblical stories. Hugo Gressmann, a contemporary of Gunkel, made an attempt of this sort in his very influential work, Mose und seine Zeit (1918). In it, he classified various poetic and prose units within the J corpus as remnants of ancient songs and legends (Sagen). These had been preserved and passed down from the time of Moses by means of oral tradition to the time that they were eventually incorporated into a written form. As in the case of detailed historical criticism of the American position presented above, this European approach also could not stand up to scrutiny, and few European scholars today would support this sort of form-critical quest for the “time of Moses.” Nevertheless, there is still a stubborn scholarly habit that continues to look for an older stratum of popular tales within the non-P ( J) corpus and thereby to fragment the work of J into many bits and pieces. As with my treatment of Genesis, I will not take the time to respond to this approach here but will leave it up to the essays in part 2, where I have entered into critical discussion with some examples of these views. Quite unlike the traditions of the patriarchs, there is in fact no evidence of older folk-traditions about Moses and the Israelites in Egypt. The stories in J are all his own creation.

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The subject of how the story of the patriarchs in Genesis fits together with that of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the exodus or migration to the new land in Palestine is just one such subject of controversy. 2 In my discussion of J within Exodus–Numbers, I will support the view, which I have defended for several decades, that it was the major achievement of the Yahwistic history to combine these two traditions into a single historical work on Israelite origins. Extensive additions were made to this corpus by P, even more than is the case in Genesis, so that it will be necessary to delineate just what belongs to the pre-P Yahwist and what are P’s additions. Where the delineation is particularly complex, I will include a translation of those texts. This part of J’s history, contained in the books of Exodus and Numbers, differs in character from that of the history in Genesis in certain important ways. Genesis narrates the origins of the people in terms of the traditions about the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their offspring. The genealogical structure encompasses the traditions of both the northern nation of Israel and the southern nation of Judah, as well as the neighboring peoples. The itinerary structure relates these peoples to their supposed origins in Mesopotamia and northern Syria, their residence in Palestine and Transjordan, and for Jacob and his family, their removal to Egypt. The latter sets the stage for the continuation of the story in Exodus. The patriarchal age is viewed as the time of promise, repeated to each generation, of which the multiplication in Egypt, the exodus, and the conquest of Canaan is the fulfillment. Genesis is prologue to the history of a nation that begins in Exodus. The historiography of J in Exodus–Numbers also reflects the theme of migration from a realm of high culture to a new homeland. But in the case of the patriarch, it is a single family that comes to live peacefully among the aboriginals, whereas in Exodus it is the nation that moves to another region with the objective of conquest. It is not at all uncommon for the one form of migration to precede the other, as it does in Livy and Dionysius. In the case of Genesis, it is the patriarch who receives the divine imperative and instructions directly from the deity, whereas in Exodus the revelation comes to Moses, whom it thereby commissioned to lead the people and to act as intermediary between the people and Yahweh. In this regard, his role is prophetic. At the same time, as the people’s leader, this prophetic role is combined with a position akin to that of king, who must take personal responsibility for the welfare and ultimate fate of his people. It is this role as leader that he initially resists but ultimately takes up and it shapes his leadership role as advocate and intercessor on the people’s behalf. Throughout the J narrative, there is a constant interplay between the roles of prophetic and royal behavior that are applied to Moses’ leadership. 2.  See below, “The Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 1–5) within the Larger Context of the Yahwist’s History,” pp. 267–289.

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In terms of narrative structure, there are both similarity and difference in the way in which J uses genealogy and itinerary in Genesis and Exodus– Numbers. As we saw with the patriarchs, the genealogy that moves from one generation to another ties all of the diverse traditions associated with each ancestor in chronological sequence to each other, and the itinerary is a useful device for combining the various episodes within the lives of each together. In the case of the exodus story, the genealogy is reduced to the lifetime of a single person, which becomes a biography of Moses, and his life from birth to death covers the whole scope of J’s story from beginning to end. This pseudobiography is presented entirely in terms of the concerns and destiny of the people and their divine deliverance. His birth and early manhood are related to the people’s sojourn in Egypt and their oppression by the Egyptians; his calling and confrontations with Pharaoh have to do with the people’s rescue; his leadership in the wilderness is tied to the constant mundane concerns of the people for food and water; his mediating of the law and covenant has to do with good governance and true devotion to God; his initiatives in the invasions from the south and later the initial conquest of the land beyond the Jordan relate to the people’s final goal. In stark contrast to the stories of the patriarchs, Moses’ personal and family life are of little consequence. What is significant about J’s presentation of the role of Moses is the fact that all of the previous prophetic references to the Israelites’ Egyptian origins and migration to Palestine make no mention of him. 3 But in J, the figure of Moses is absolutely indispensable. The earlier book of Deuteronomy does make Moses a central figure, primarily as the mediator of divine law and covenant at Horeb and during the wilderness wanderings, and their leader during their conquest of the lands east of the Jordan, and all of this becomes a major source for the Yahwist. But D does not make any mention of the role of Moses in the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. The reconstruction of this period from very meager hints in earlier sources is left up to the skill and ingenuity of the Yahwist. There are those who have attempted to extract from various episodes in the Yahwist’s presentation of events some older folk traditions, but such efforts are not very convincing and there is much that argues against them. Nevertheless, the Yahwist was not above using various models and parallels from other stories, as antiquarian historians often did, in order to flesh out his account of events. These I will point out from time to time. Finally, as in the case of J’s treatment of the patriarchs, he also uses the itinerary as an important structuring devise for his narrative in the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the land of Canaan. This itinerary is done in 3. The reference in Hos 12:14[13] that Yahweh brought Israel up from Egypt “by a prophet” may be an allusion to Moses, but it is very vague and it does not fit well in its context.

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four stages, from Goshen to the Red Sea, from the Red Sea to Sinai, from Sinai to Kadesh, and from Kadesh to the Jordan River, with a number of stopping places listed between them. By comparison, prior to J’s itinerary, Deuteronomy only mentions a move from Horeb (Sinai) through a great desert to Kadesh, where they spend virtually the whole of their wilderness sojourn after an aborted attempt to enter Canaan from the south, and then they move in stages as an army through Edom and Moab until they attack and destroy Heshbon, the capital city of Sihon’s kingdom, and similarly the kingdom of Og and his city, Edre’i. This is part of the DtrH that continues the military campaign under Joshua, using the model of Assyrian inscriptions of military campaigns. J’s itinerary greatly expands on these few notices in Dtn, allowing for a detailed treatment of the Israelites departure from Egypt, the rescue at the Red Sea, with numerous stops between the Red Sea and Sinai and between Sinai and Kadesh. The final push to the Jordan River modifies and expands the military campaign of Dtn. This itinerary structure in J allows him to include a great many episodes that are not found in the earlier traditions and merely hinted at in Dtn. What I want to emphasize at this point by calling attention to these structural features of J’s narrative is the fact that these are not accidental or haphazard, the accumulation of stories in bits and pieces by “redactors” over a long period of time. On the contrary, they are compositional devices well attested in ancient literary texts in general and historiography in particular. Whenever additions are made, as in the case of the Priestly Writer’s interpolations, they seriously disrupt and obscure these exact literary structures. This is because P’s work is not a self-contained literary composition, nor is its concern historiographic. My focus therefore in Exodus–Numbers is to understand the historiography of the Yahwist to the exclusion of the later P additions, to which only minimal attention will be given in this essay.

The Transition from the Patriarchs to the Story of the Exodus The debate over the literary continuity between the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis and the Israelite sojourn and oppression in Egypt has a long history, and yet it has never been more intense than at the present time. 4 My outline in what follows will reflect my view that it is the Yahwist who was primarily responsible for establishing the continuity between these two bodies of tradition, and I have already pointed to those texts that have anticipated this continuity, first in the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 15 and especially in the Joseph Story, which, in its present J form, was meant to explain how Jacob and his descendants came to be in Egypt. What leads to some confusion on this matter is the fact that the P writer has interpolated 4.  See below, pp. 267–289.

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some remarks of his own at the beginning of Exodus, which has seriously interrupted the J narrative. Thus, I would reconstruct the J narrative as follows (Gen 50:26; Exod 1:6–9): Then Joseph died, being 110 years old; and they embalmed him, and put him in a coffin in Egypt. Thus Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation, but the Israelites increased and grew strong. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. So he said to his own people, “See, the Israelites have become too numerous and too strong for us.”

What is significant to note is that J has constructed this transition from one era to another by imitating a similar transition formula that was used by Dtr in signifying the transition from the time of Joshua to the time of the Judges in Judg 2:8–10, which states: Thus Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Yahweh, died, being 110 years old. They buried him in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which was in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. The whole of that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, who did not know Yahweh or the work that he had done for Israel.

The parallels between these two passages are obvious and can only lead to the conclusion that J has adopted the older transition formula from Judg 2:8–10 in an abbreviated form. Thus, the brief statement in Exod 1:8 that the new king did “not know about Joseph” implies all that Joseph had done for Egypt as related in the Joseph Story and makes the transition between the two stories firm. Into this transition, J has ingeniously built the theme of the Israelites great population increase that now becomes a threat and the central concern of what follows. Following his remarks about the increasing number and strength of the Israelites, the Pharaoh puts forth a proposal that appears to be somewhat contradictory. He first observes that if Egypt is threatened by an enemy, the Israelites (living in Goshen as they did in the northeastern part of the Delta) would side with the enemy and assist them and then migrate from the land of Egypt. Therefore, as if to keep them from leaving Egypt, as well as reduce the threat of their numbers, the Egyptians would make them serve with heavy labor, building store-cities, Pithom and Ramesses. This reflects the situation in both Egypt and Babylonia in the Exilic Period. In Egypt, as indicated above, there was a serious threat of foreign invasion from the Babylonians into the northeast Delta and through the Wadi Tumeilat, and there was also massive construction, especially in canal building and the fortification of Succoth as well as the northeast frontier, almost certainly using foreign corvée labor. Similarly, Babylon in the mid-6th century was under threat from invasion by the Persians, with the Judean exiles sympa-

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thetic to the enemy and hoping to be able to return to their homeland. 5 It was also the case that the Babylonian kings used their foreign exiles for large construction projects. Similarly, DtrH states in 1 Kgs 9:15–21 that Solomon enslaved the aboriginal peoples of the region to use as corvée labor (mas), for all of his construction projects, including the construction of “store-cities.” Consequently, it is not hard to see how the Yahwist, using the Solomonic precedent in Dtr, a knowledge of conditions in the Judean community in Egypt in his own day and awareness of his own situation in Babylonia, could create a corresponding situation that reflected the conditions of the Israelite oppression before the exodus.

The Birth of Moses and Life as a Shepherd In spite of the fact that the practice of corvée labor often resulted in great loss of life, the Israelites still increased in numbers. The Pharaoh therefore instructs the midwives who assist the Hebrew women in giving birth to kill all of the male offspring. This policy is a failure when the midwives do not comply but secretly allow them to live, because they “feared God.” Pharaoh responds to this by issuing a general order that every male Hebrew child should be thrown into the Nile River. This then serves as the necessary background and introduction to the story of the birth of Moses and his escape from this fate by his mother. She does this by placing him in the Nile in a waterproof container, from which he is rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter, who places him in the charge of his mother as wet nurse. He is subsequently adopted by the Egyptian princess as her son and given an Egyptian name, Moses. Thus, Moses grows up as a prince of the court (2:1–10). The author J is making use of a popular folklore motif well known in antiquity with a close parallel in the Legend of Sargon’s Birth. In this version of the story, Sargon is also placed in a box and put in the Euphrates River by his mother, from which he is rescued and later becomes the king of a great nation. However, it would be wrong to regard this story about Moses as a folktale that was originally separate from its larger context, just as the parallel in the Sargon story cannot be viewed separately from the rest of the Sargon legend, which traces his rise to power. 6 Consequently, the story of Moses continues in vv. 11–22, but in contrast to the Sargon legend, it takes an unexpected turn. One would expect Moses, as a prince, to reveal his nobility by immediately demonstrating his prowess as leader and begin to rescue his people from their Egyptian bondage. And indeed, he does make an initial attempt by surreptitiously killing a single Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, 5.  See Isa 44:28; 45:1–7. 6.  For a convenient summary of the Sargon Legend with relevant literature see K. L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005) 279–81.

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but the effect of the action is a complete failure and he has to flee for his life. What follows in vv. 15b–22 is a radical change of life style from that of an Egyptian prince to a shepherd in Midian. The juxtaposition of these two life-styles cannot be haphazard, because even the David story combines the two roles in the portrayal of his leadership. But David goes from being a shepherd to a military leader and king, and Moses moves from royalty to a mere shepherd in the Midian desert. There is here a critique of Near Eastern notions of royalty. It remains to see how this is done throughout J’s work. A few comments are in order here about Moses’ sojourn in the land of Midian. This episode in the Moses story is often regarded as based on an older folktale about Moses’ origins in Midian, primarily because of its similarity with the Jacob story in Gen 29, about Jacob’s meeting Rachel at the well. While the similarities may suggest that J made some use of the motif of meeting the daughter(s) of his future father-in-law at the well and helping to water their livestock, there are also some significant differences. Moses’ marriage to Zipporah, who is just one of seven daughters of the priest of Midian, reflects his relationship with the father of the girls, whereas Jacob’s marriage reflects a love story. A much closer parallel to this aspect of the story may be seen in 1 Kgs 11:14–22, in which Hadad, a member of the royal house of Edom, escapes a massacre of the male population of Edom and is taken as a child by some servants from Midian to Egypt. There he is brought up by Pharaoh and is given a member of the royal family as his wife, and she produces a son for him. Later, after the death of David, Hadad requests that he be allowed to return to his own country of Edom, where he becomes an opponent of Solomon. The numerous parallels with the Moses story are obvious, although in the case of this particular episode the direction of the action is reversed: Moses is a fugitive from the household of Pharaoh to Midian, he is accepted into the household of the priest of Midian and receives one of his daughters as a wife, who bears him a son or sons. However, equally significant are the parallels with the Moses story both before and after this particular episode. Thus, as in the case of Hadad, Moses also survives a massacre of the male population of his own people and is brought up in the household of Pharaoh; and just as Hadad seeks to return to his own country after the death of David, so Moses requests of Jethro, his father-in-law that he be allowed to return to his own kinsmen in Egypt (Exod 4:18). What all of this suggests about the compositional character of J is that his familiarity with the accumulated literary corpus of his time, both the prophetic texts and the DtrH, allowed him to make use of a wide range of literary elements and motifs in the construction of his own “historical” narrative. Contrary to a long scholarly tradition from Gressmann to the present, with its attempts to reconstruct old independent folktales about Moses, J had nothing at all to go by, as he did with the patriarchal stories, and therefore he had to invent the period of the oppression from scratch.

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The Revelation at Sinai and the Call of Moses The divine appearance to Moses at Horeb and his commissioning by Yahweh to become the leader who will rescue his people from their slavery in Egypt as set out in Exod 3:1–4:17 is perhaps the most important pericope in the J history for understanding J’s theological interpretation of Israel’s origins in general and the exodus tradition in particular. At the same time, it is also one of the most controversial in the literary criticism of the Pentateuch. For the Documentary Hypothesis it was the basis for the division of the nonP texts into two sources, the Yahwist ( J) and the Elohist (E), depending on how one understood the dialogue about the divine name in 3:13–15. Yet even after the general demise of this basis for the critical division of the text, the unity of this pericope was disputed with numerous counter proposals. It is not our purpose here to review this critical discussion, which I have dealt with elsewhere. 7 My position is that this presentation of the call of Moses is a unified composition by J, and I will set forth my understanding of his work on this basis. Let me begin by giving a brief outline of the whole unit. Because his arrival in Midian and his becoming part of the family of Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses is now a shepherd of his father-in-law’s sheep and has led them to pasture in the vicinity of Horeb (Sinai), the sacred mountain (3:1). There he experiences a remarkable sight of a bush that is on fire but is not burned up, and as he draws closer for a better look a voice addresses him by name from the bush and tells him to come no closer, but to remove his sandals for he is standing on holy ground. The voice then reveals that he is the god of his father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (vv. 2–6). The deity then announces that he has witnessed the grave plight of his people and has come to deliver them, and for this purpose he is commissioning Moses to undertake the task of demanding their release from Pharaoh. The deity assures Moses of his support and when he brings them out of Egypt they are to come to worship him on this mountain (vv. 7–12). Following this initial call, Moses raises a series of questions and objections in order to be released from this obligation, but the deity replies to each objection and finally wins him over to the task. The last concession is to have Aaron his brother accompany him for support (3:13–4:17). The critical debate over this call narrative is not the story line, which seems clear enough but is over how one must understand the divine speeches of the individual units, and especially how they relate to the prior J narrative. We begin with the first unit in Exod 3:1–6. The fact that Moses is a shepherd when he receives this vision and call to lead his people is significant, because this imagery is associated with royalty and especially with David. At 7. See Life of Moses, 35–63.

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the time when David is made king over Israel, the leaders say to David: “It was you who led out and brought in Israel; and Yahweh said to you. ‘You shall be shepherd to my people Israel and you shall be prince over them’” (2 Sam 5:2). The mountain of God is identified as Horeb, which is the name used in Deuteronomy, but throughout the visionary experience the focus in on the bush (sĕneh), which is intended as an obvious etiology for the name of the mountain as Sinai, and hence the identity as the “Mountain of the Burning Bush.” Now in J’s account of this episode on the mountain, Moses sees a bush on fire, but it is not burned up, so he becomes curious and moves closer to see why this is the case. There is nothing frightening about it until he suddenly hears a voice from the bush commanding him to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. It is only when the voice identifies itself as God that he becomes afraid. Of course the narrator has already informed us that this very unusual event is the theophany of the “angel of Yahweh,” because the form it takes is quite exceptional to any other biblical or Near Eastern example of a theophany. Nevertheless, there is one other instance to which the incident should be compared, and that is the figure with a drawn sword who appears to Joshua at Jericho ( Josh 5:13–15), and only after Joshua demands his identity is it revealed that he is “the commander of the army of Yahweh.” Joshua immediately responds by prostrating before him and is told to remove his sandals from his feet for he is standing on holy ground. This is followed by detailed instructions from Yahweh about the conquest of Jericho. The parallels with the theophany to Moses have often been noted, which suggests some dependence of one version on the other. It would appear that the account in Joshua is the original from which the account in Exodus is copied, for the following reasons. First, it is common in Assyrian accounts of military campaigns to have a vision of the goddess Ishtar appear to the king, with the goddess dressed in full armament, in a nocturnal vision or through a seer, and announce that the deity will lead the king to victory in the forthcoming battle. Second, the theophany is intended to be awe-inspiring as an indication of how the deity will form the vanguard in defeating the enemy. It is clear that both in terms of the form of the theophany and in the divine instructions that follow, J has modified these elements in the form much more radically than in Joshua. Why then does J choose a unique form such as the burning bush to represent a theophany? What bush is it that can burn and yet not be burned up? In fact, it is the seven-branch menorah, a vital part of the temple furnishings. 8 In the absence of a temple, it is this simple object that could serve 8.  For an elaborate description of this sort of seven-branched menorah, see P’s description in Exod 25:31–39. What made P shift from the 10 individual menorahs of the first

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as an important symbol for the deity and for sacred space, as it did in the synagogues of the Greco-Roman period. 9 There was always a deliberate effort to maintain the identity between the menorah and the burning bush of Sinai. Given J’s likely place within the community of the Babylonian exile, just such a symbolism would be very important. As we shall see below, this is not the only example of such symbolism in J. After the deity commands Moses to remove his sandals, he then identifies himself as “your father’s God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” that is to say, “I am the God of your ancestors whom your father worshiped.” Some scholars want to delete the reference to the ancestors as a late addition in order to deny any connection with Genesis, but this makes the statement meaningless. Moses, who was brought up in the Egyptian court, did not even know his father, much less the God whom he might have worshiped. While Moses knows that the Hebrews are his kin, there has been no mention of their deity. The deity does not yet give his name but merely identifies himself as the ancestral God of his kinfolk. We know from the narrator’s perspective that this is Yahweh, even when Moses does not yet know this. Now in vv. 7–9, Yahweh as the God of the people of Israel tells Moses that he has observed the suffering of his people at the hand of the Egyptians and he is about to deliver them and bring them to a “land flowing with milk and honey.” In order to do this Moses must be part of God’s plan, in contrast to what he attempted to do on his own previously. Moses begins to object that he is inadequate to confront Pharaoh and rescue the Israelites, but the deity assures him that he will be with him and that when it is all over and he has finally brought them back with him to this holy mountain, it will be a sign or proof that it was this deity who sent him (vv. 10–12). This does not immediately inspire Moses with confidence, and he continues to raise questions and objections. The next question that Moses raises has often been badly misunderstood because too little attention has been paid to the whole story. He asks: “If I were to go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘Your ancestral God has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘Well, what is his name?’ how will I answer them?” Most scholars assume that the ignorance of the divine name lies with the people, to whom the name must now be revealed, and that in this tradition or source it is Moses who reveals the divine name for the first time. However, this line of argument has never been satisfactory. Of course the people know the name of their own god. The problem is with Moses. There is no reason for Moses up to this point to have known the name of the Israelite god. He temple in 1 Kgs 7:49? There can be little doubt that between the time of the first temple and the second temple the single menorah has become an object and symbol of great honor. 9.  See E. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (13 vols.; New York: Pantheon, 1954–68) 4:71–98, 167–94.

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only knows the deity as his ancestral god, but if the people ask for a name, he cannot tell them and then all credibility of his encounter will be lost. By having the deity inform Moses concerning his name gives J the chance to explain what he believes the meaning of the name Yahweh to be. After this philosophical interlude, God then proceeds to give the full name and title as “Yahweh, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” It is this full name and title that is new because it was created for the first time by the Yahwist through all the successive revelations of Yahweh to the three patriarchs. For the Yahwist, this divine name Yahweh associated with the three ancestors will become the full liturgically confessed name henceforth, and in fact it was from the Yahwist’s time onward. It cannot be found in any of the prophets earlier than J and appears for the first time in Second Isaiah. This carefully crafted narrative was probably fashioned in response to the prophet Ezekiel, near contemporary of J in the exile, who was quite dismissive of the patriarchal traditions and held the view that Yahweh first made himself known to the house of Jacob in the land of Egypt, promising to liberate them and to bring them into “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Prior to this, they worshiped only the idols of Egypt (Ezek 20:2–8). The Yahwist clearly contradicts this view and takes great pains to emphasize the continuity between the God of the three patriarchs and Yahweh and the God who delivered them from the bondage of Egypt. Once Yahweh has revealed his full name to Moses, he is then prepared to send him to the elders of Israel with the message of their deliverance, who will then be prepared to accept him, and then they together will confront Pharaoh with their demands. However, to the foreign king the patriarchs are meaningless, so Yahweh simply becomes the God of the Hebrews. The general plan of what will happen anticipates that the Pharaoh will refuse to let them go, the plagues will follow, and then the final expulsion from the land (vv. 16–22). Moses still expresses doubt that the people will believe him and so he is given three “magic” signs that he can perform to help convince them. In response to this, Moses complains that he is not eloquent and cannot speak well and further suggests that the deity send someone else in his place. In the end God assigns Aaron his brother, the “Levite,” to accompany him and speak for him, while Moses tells him what to say. With this, Moses’ resistance to the task ends. There is no doubt that this “call” of Moses is based on a prophetic model, particularly that of Jeremiah as can be seen in Jeremiah’s role as a reluctant prophet and his difficulty with being able to speak. While Moses’ calling is primarily focused on his delivering the divine command to Pharaoh, there is another prophetic role that likewise parallels that of Jeremiah, that of one who intercedes with the deity on behalf of his people. This will be taken up later in the work in Moses’ relationship to the people. At the conclusion of the call narrative, the unit that tells of Moses’ carrying out the first phase of his assignment in 4:18–31 has been expanded by

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some later additions that add considerable confusion to the narrative. 10 The original J ending is found in vv. 18, 27–31, in which Moses returns to Jethro, his father-in-law, to inform him that he is about to return to his kinfolk in Egypt, and he receives Jethro’s blessing (v.  18). At the same time Yahweh gives Aaron a command to meet Moses in the desert at the mountain of God, where the two brothers rendezvous. Moses tells Aaron what has happened at the mountain in his encounter with the deity and they then proceed to Egypt, meet with the elders of the people and tell them, through the mediation of Aaron, what the deity has said and perform all the signs. The people accept this good news of impending deliverance and bow in worship to Yahweh.

The First Audience before Pharaoh After Moses and Aaron have won the support of their own people, they move to the next task of their assignment with confidence, an audience with Pharaoh (5:1), and state their demand: “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: ‘Let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the desert.’” This demand is flatly rejected by Pharaoh, for the simple reason that he knows nothing about this deity. Moses now realizes that he has overplayed his hand and so makes his demand into a plea (v. 3), which corresponds much more closely to that originally suggested by Yahweh in the call narrative (3:18): “The God of the Hebrews has appeared to us; please let us go just a three-days’ journey into the desert in order to sacrifice to Yahweh our God, or else he will kill us with disease or the sword.” Again, Moses exaggerates, because the threat that the deity suggested when he met with Moses is that he would do this to the Egyptians if they did not let them go, not to his own people. The response of Pharaoh was predictable as Yahweh had also suggested. However, instead of merely refusing to release the people from their forced labor, their workload was considerably increased, which now turned the people against Moses and Aaron. At this point a comment is in order concerning the work in which the Israelites are portrayed as engaged, which is the construction of cities such as Pithom as fortifications against possible invasion from the northeast. The massive wall around this city (ca. 200 m × 250 m) was about 9.5 m thick and was constructed entirely of bricks, which had to be made from the clay soil, mixed with straw as a binding agent and then sun-dried in the hot desert sun. The Yahwist is quite consistent in identifying their forced labor with just this kind of activity. When the foremen of the workers complained to Moses and Aaron about their having provoked Pharaoh into making the workers’ lives more miserable and dangerous, Moses takes his complaint to Yahweh as the one 10.  For a detailed analysis of Exod 4:19–26 see “The Israelites in Egypt,” pp. 278–283; also, Life of Moses, 64–70.

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responsible for this result (5:22–23). In response, the deity asserts that he will act decisively against Pharaoh, just as he promised to do in the call narrative in 3:19–20, and this new action will result in Pharaoh’s complete capitulation and release of the people (6:1). This immediately provides an introduction to the plague accounts. This unit presents us with two basic characteristic of Moses’ prophetic role. The first of these has to do with delivering a message from the deity to the king, usually of divine judgment, and it is this feature that will dominate the rest of the plague narrative. The second prophetic role that is introduced here is that of intercessor to the deity on behalf of the people, and it is this role that will become dominant after the people depart from Egypt. While the first of these features, that of the prophet as the messenger of judgment oracles to kings predominates in the prophecy up to the time of Ezekiel, it is the second form of prophet as intercessor that comes to the fore so clearly in the work of J, and becomes a hallmark of this author.

The Plagues of Egypt In the mid-20th century, along with the many attempts to fit the exodus story into Egyptian history of the mid-second millennium b.c.e., the plague narratives in Exod 7–12 were also regarded as a dim reflection of events of that era. Even when this approach was discredited, there still persisted the notion of the account of the plagues as reflecting in a vague way some prepentateuchal traditions. I have consistently resisted any such suggestion, because there is no hint of this sort of tradition in any preexilic reference to the sojourn or Yahweh’s deliverance from Egypt. On the contrary, Deut 7:15 and 28:60 make it quite clear that it was the Israelites who experienced the “diseases of Egypt” during their sojourn there, from which they were delivered, not the Egyptians. It was, in fact, entirely due to the ingenuity of the Yahwist, that he transformed these “diseases of Egypt” into plagues suffered by the Egyptians and to which the Israelites in Goshen were actually immune. The account of the series of seven plagues by J begins immediately after the first encounter between Moses and Pharaoh in chap. 5, which seemed to Moses to end in such complete frustration and failure and his desperate appeal to the deity. Yahweh’s response, which introduces the plague series as a whole, makes the declaration in 6:1, “Now you are about to see what I am going to do to Pharaoh, when Pharaoh with all his might finally drives you out of Egypt.” This account is interrupted with a long addition by P but is picked up again in 7:14: “Yahweh continued speaking to Moses: ‘Pharaoh is stubborn, and refuses to let the people go.” And so begins the first plague with the Nile turned to blood, then the frogs, the flies, the pestilence, the hail, the locust, and finally, the death of the firstborn. 11 11.  P has embellished some of these plague accounts and added a few of his own. The original J plagues are as follows: 1. The Nile turned to blood: 7:14–18, 20, 21a, 23–24; 2. the

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The structure of the Yahwist’s plague narrative is easily recognized and quite distinct from the later P additions. It begins with Yahweh’s commission to Moses to go to Pharaoh and deliver an oracle: “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Let my people go so that they may serve me.’ ” This is followed by the threat: “If you refuse to let them go,” followed by the announcement of the plague. This is also combined with a recognition formula: “By this you shall know that I am Yahweh” which may also include certain divine attributes. These answer Pharaoh’s dismissive question in 5:2: “Who is Yahweh that I should obey him and let the people go?” The Yahwist skillfully uses the various plagues to provide an extended theological response to this question. After Pharaoh’s dismissal of Moses, the plague takes place and Pharaoh has a sudden change of heart; he summons Moses and requests that Moses intercede with the deity on his behalf, and the plague comes to an end. But instead of releasing the people, Pharaoh becomes obstinate and will not let the people go. In addition to these stereotyped elements, there is also some variation in the introductory formula in which, in plagues 1, 3, and 5, Moses is told to go early in the morning and confront Pharaoh by the river bank. There is also a progression in Pharaoh’s willingness to negotiate a settlement of the people’s release for the purpose of worshiping their deity without losing their service, which is rejected, and then his complete capitulation as predicted by Yahweh in his assurance to Moses in 6:1 (cf. 11:30–32). Another element in the story that suggests a progression has to do with the theme of obstinacy. In the first five instances, Pharaoh is said to have “hardened his heart,” that is, become obstinate and not let the people go. However, in the case of the sixth plague it specifically states that it was the deity who “hardened the heart of Pharaoh and his servants” in order to destroy them. To understand this shift in the source of Pharaoh’s obstinacy we must make a few remarks about J’s sources. Unlike some of the earlier episodes in the Exodus story, which are constructed on the basis of a particular folktale model, this one is built up from a variety of elements from the Deuteronomistic and prophetic traditions. There is first of all the basic form consisting of several disasters over a period of time that are perceived as acts of divine judgment. This belongs to the classical prophetic tradition, as reflected in Amos 6–7, where such events should have been understood as divine judgment, leading to repentance. By contrast, in prophetic legends the single prophetic act of judgment or salvation is intended to vindicate his own role and power as a prophet. In the deuteronomic tradition of curses in Deut 28:15–68, such disastrous events are projected into the future as threats that will take place if the people frogs: 7:25–29; 8:2b, 4–11a (ET 7:25; 8:1–4, 6b, 8–15a); 3. flies: 8:16–28 (ET 8:20–32); 4. pestilence: 9:1–7; 5. hail: 9:13–21, 23b–34; 6. locust: 10:1–11, 13b–19, 24–27; 7. death of the firstborn: 11:1–8a; 10:28–29; 11:8b; 12:29–32. For more detailed analysis, see Life of Moses, 77–112.

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disobey the deity’s commandments. In this case, there is no room for a change of heart. However, in the later Dtr tradition in Deut 4:30–31 and 1 Kgs 8:33–53, there is the possibility of a change of heart, leading to a better future. In the legal tradition of the Holiness Code in Lev 26, obedience to the divine commandments brings success, but disobedience will lead to disaster. The curse series in 26:14–33 is presented in five clusters, each of which is introduced by the statement: “if you do not listen to me,” followed by some terrible disaster which will be a sevenfold judgment. It is not difficult to see how J could have constructed his scheme of seven individual plagues out of such a series of threats. Combined with this legal threat of disobedience to a divine command, there is also the prophetic role of Moses as a “living oracle,” which is best exemplified in the prose oracles of Isa 7–8 and it the numerous prose oracles of Jeremiah. 12 They have the same general form of introduction, often addressed to the king, with a threat if their words are not heeded, and in Jeremiah the deity also tells the prophet not to intercede for the people because he will not heed them. What is, of course, quite remarkable and new is the role of Moses as intercessor for the Pharaoh and his people. It should be noted that all of these prophetic features are completely absent from the P plagues. The role of Moses and Aaron in P is primarily that of wonder workers in competition with the magicians of the Egyptian court. This brings us to the element of Pharaoh’s obstinacy that was mentioned earlier. While this theme of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart has received much attention from scholars, which we do not need to be concerned with here, for the J account of the plagues the matter may be simplified by noting an important distinction within this theme. On the one hand, it is said that Pharaoh “hardened his heart” or “became stubborn” and would not let the people go; on the other hand it is stated that it was Yahweh who hardened Pharaoh’s heart. How can these two contradictory viewpoints be reconciled or understood? The sources of this theme are quite clear and may answer this question. First, as with the prophetic role of Moses discussed above, the classical prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel make frequent mention of this theme of stubbornness, and here they make quite clear that it is the people of Judah/Israel who harden their own hearts so that they do not heed the words of the prophets, to their own destruction. This corresponds with J’s use of the obstinacy theme in the first five plagues in which Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Second, a quite different tradition of the obstinacy theme occurs in the case of the Dtr tradition of holy war in which the deity deliberately makes the king of the opposing force obstinate, to his own destruction: “But Sihon 12.  Isa 7:3–9, 10–17; 8:1–4, 5–8; Jer 7:1–15; 11:1–17; 17:19–27; 18:5–12; 19:1–15; 26:1–6; 35:12–17.

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the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for Yahweh your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, so that you might overpower him, as is still the case” (Deut 2:30; cf. Josh 11:20). This corresponds directly with the statement at the beginning of the sixth plague where the deity declares to Moses: “Go in to Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform my signs in their presence, and that you may recount to your children and grandchildren how I made the Egyptians look foolish and the wonders I performed among them; that you may know that I am Yahweh” (10:1, cf. v. 20; 11:9). This theme is also carried over after the release of the Israelites, when Pharaoh has a change of heart about what has happened and orders a pursuit of their massive work force, which they have now lost. This sets the stage for the decisive military encounter. All this comes about because Yahweh had hardened Pharaoh’s heart (14:8) to bring about the Egyptians’ complete destruction. Consequently, it becomes clear that J has skillfully combined two traditions containing the obstinacy theme, the one from prophecy accounting for resistance to the word of the deity and the other from the holy war context in which the deity hardens the heart, leading to the destruction of the enemy. Another important theme within the plague narratives is the function of the divine sign. This theme is also derived from prophecy, and in order to understand the basic and contrasting uses of the “sign” we might take the example of the prophecy in Isa 7:10–17. Ahaz the king is invited by the prophet to ask for a “sign,” in the sense of a “wonder,” which may be as difficult as he wishes. The king interprets this meaning of sign as a dramatic proof that God will then do what the prophet promises or predicts, and so the king piously refuses to put God to the test. This leads the prophet to offer a different kind of sign, which is no wonder at all but a simple event, that of a young woman—his wife—who will soon bear a son. This event may be understood symbolically at some future time as evidence of divine activity in human affairs (cf. also 8:1–4). This form of sign in prophecy is also characteristic of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which the prediction of a set of events is combined with acknowledgement of the deity: “that you may know that I am Yahweh” (Ezek 14:8; cf. Jer 44:29). This use of sign is viewed as “epistemic” in the sense that it leads to the knowledge of God as the real agent in the affairs of men and nations. It is clear that J understands and makes use of both meanings of the term sign, but in different ways. In the call narrative, Moses insists that when he comes to the Israelites in Egypt he will need proof that the deity has indeed appeared to him, so Yahweh gives him three “magic tricks,” as it were, and these are characterized as signs or proofs (4:1–9), and they work quite well (4:30–31). However, for J it is clear that of much greater significance is the epistemic sign, whose fulfillment and meaning only becomes clear at a future date. Thus the meaning of the burning bush episode reaches its full

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significance when Moses has finally led the people out of Egypt to Sinai. And in the same way the whole set of plagues will become epistemic signs to the future generations of Israelites concerning their knowledge of Yahweh. At the same time, the plagues serve as a means by which Pharaoh, who declares his complete ignorance of Yahweh, comes to understand just who this deity is. A few remarks are in order here about the additions made to J’s account of the plagues by P. If one were to treat Exod 7–11 as a single narrative by one author, one might easily become quite confused by the muddled and somewhat contradictory account of the narrative. The presentations of the plagues by J and P could not be more different. P’s plagues consist of the following: 1. Aaron’s rod changed into a snake: 7:8–13 2. All the water in Egypt is turned into blood 7:19–20aα*, 21b, 22 3. The frogs: 8:1–3*, 11aβb (ET 8:5–7*, 15 aβb) 4. The gnats: 8:12–15 (ET 8:16–19) 5. The boils: 9:8–12

There are some small P additions made to some of the other plague episodes in J, but I will restrict my remarks to these. Of these five plagues, 1, 4, and 5 are the work of P alone, whereas 2 and 3 are merely additions made to J’s accounts. After a long interruption of J’s narrative by P’s addition in 6:2–27, P presents his own introduction to the plagues in 6:28–7:7, including the role of Aaron as speaker for Moses, in imitation of J in 4:14–16 (cf. 6:30–7:2). P then has the deity outline what Moses might anticipate during the course of the impending plagues: “You shall say everything that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. However, I am going to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that although I increase my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt Pharaoh will not listen to you” (7:2–4a). What is remarkable about this introductory statement is that it does not describe what actually happens in the P plague narratives. Thus, in none of P’s plague accounts do Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh and make the demand that the people be permitted to leave his land. This also means that the subsequent concluding statement in P’s narratives, that Pharaoh would not listen to them, is also meaningless and just part of a concluding cliché. Nor can the hardening of the heart theme as used in each of the plagues in P be derived from the prophetic tradition, as in the case of J. The statement must have in view the larger context of the J plagues narrative. Furthermore, the three additional plagues of P are suggested by the references to the “increase” in number, from seven to ten, and these are all intended to be “signs and wonders,” which are to be understood as proofs of their skill as wonder workers. In P’s plagues 1, 4, and 5, the “sign” appears as a contest of magicians, with no epistemic value. The power to perform all of these wonders is transferred from Moses to Aaron, so that it is his magical staff that produces the wonders. Regarding the P additions to J’s plagues, in

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place of the single act of Moses striking the Nile and turning it to blood in plague 1, P has Aaron waving his wand over every possible source of water throughout the whole of Egypt, even over water containers. He also does the same thing with the frogs in his plague no. 3, and even has the Egyptian magicians producing their share of frogs and making matters worse. The resulting effect is quite ludicrous. From these observations it is safe to conclude that P’s plague stories are all late crude additions to the carefully crafted J narrative.

The Departure from Egypt The literary presentation of the departure from Egypt in J within Exod 12– 13 is greatly confused by the large additions of P that have little regard for the temporal and dramatic story line of the basic J narrative. The lengthy and detailed description of the Passover by P with its long period of preparation and execution and the institution of all of its regulations (12:1–28) does violence to the drama of the deaths of the firstborn and the need for the people’s hasty departure in the middle of the night, as described in 12:29–36. This rapid departure of all the Israelites and all their animals at the urgent insistence by the Pharaoh and his servants, along with their “despoiling” of the Egyptians, was anticipated in the call narrative in Exod 3:19–22. The despoiling theme in 11:2–3 and 12:35–36 is often viewed as the Israelites’ surreptitious borrowing prior to the event of fleeing the country, but the terminology used of “despoiling” has to do with holy war, in which booty plays a dominant role. It was in fact the deity who induced that act of generosity as part of his victory over the Egyptians. In this way the despoiling takes place before the final battle rather than after it. In J’s account of the departure from Egypt and their journey to the Red Sea (12:33–39; 13:3–22), there are two additional themes that are intertwined with each other. The first has to do with their hasty departure, which resulted in their not being able to leaven their dough properly, and so they had to eat their bread unleavened in the course of their travels. This experience then becomes an etiological explanation for the annual commemoration of the festival of unleavened bread when they take up residence in the promised land. Thus, it serves as a memorial of Yahweh’s great deliverance from the bondage of Egypt (12:34, 39; 13:3–10). Appended to this is a second etiology, linking the redemption of the firstborn by means of a sacrifice with the divine deliverance of all the Israelite firstborn during the final plague. 13 Nothing in J is said about the festival of the Passover being linked in any 13.  For more detailed treatment of the redemption of the first born, see my “From Child Sacrifice to Pascal Lamb: A Remarkable Transformation in Israelite Religion,” OTE 16 (2003) 453–63; repr., Changing Perspectives, vol. 1: Studies in the History, Literature and Religion of Biblical Israel (London: Equinox, 2011) 399–408.

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way to these events, probably because this feast required a pilgrimage to the temple, and the temple no longer existed in J’s time and was not relevant to J’s audience. 14 The other theme in 12:37 and 13:17–22 has to do with divine guidance and protection and is structured by means of an itinerary. This genre of itinerary extends throughout the rest of J’s narrative, from their departure from Goshen to their arrival at the Jordan River, and is divided into four parts, with each part signifying an important event or turning point in the journey, that is, the Red Sea, Sinai, Kadesh, the region east of the Jordan. The various staging points between these major destinations are marked by minor episodes and place-names, which often include etymological etiologies related to the event that occurred there. This is a very deliberate literary structure imposed by J on his narrative and is a common feature of antiquarian historiography. The first leg of the itinerary is given as a journey “from Rameses to Succoth” (12:37). As indicated earlier, Rameses, located at the site of the modern town of Qantir on the eastern branch of the Nile, is an appropriate starting point for the itinerary because it was situated at the northern end of the region of Goshen, which extended along the eastern side of the eastern branch of the Nile as far as the entrance into the Wadi Tumilat, with Succoth (Pithom) located at the eastern end, near Lake Timsah, which was the northern end of the Red Sea. The size of the mass migration of 600,000 men, in addition to women and children, is, of course, totally unrealistic, but J has in mind that when they reach their eventual destination they will occupy the whole of central Palestine and the regions east of the Jordan. It is also stated that a large group of ʿereb accompanied them. This Hebrew term is often misunderstood, but it clearly corresponds with modern Arabic ʿarab, which is still used by the local Egyptians in this region to refer to the Bedouin who come into the Wadi Tumeilat to graze their livestock, as they have for thousands of years. In antiquity, this region was known as Arabia long before that term was applied to the Arabian Peninsula, as we know it today. This itinerary theme is picked up again in 13:17–18, where it is now linked with the element of divine guidance, which in turn is a common component of holy war ideology. All wars in the ancient Near East were regarded as holy wars, in which the gods were viewed as having a major role, so that elaborate measures were taken for receiving divine guidance both at the outset of the war and throughout the course of the campaign. 15 Thus, God did not lead them along the shorter route north toward the coastal region of the Philistines, because they were the most formidable foe, and that would put the Israelites in a bind between two enemy camps, and they would end up re14.  For critical discussion of J’s festival laws, see my Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 162–71. 15.  Of course, nothing much has changed throughout the millennia since then.

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turning to servitude. The strategy ultimately would be to attack Canaan from the more unprotected south, hence the apparent detour by the desert road toward the Red Sea (v. 18). Now a curious remark is added, that the people left Egypt “equipped for war,” which further strengthens the theme of holy war, in spite of the fact that it fits their previous servitude rather poorly. The remarks about the transport of the bones of Joseph in v. 19 makes the link back to the Joseph story in Gen 50:25–26. 16 The next stage in the journey is from Succoth to Etham, which is probably to be located at the modern site of Ismailia, a city on the north shore of Lake Timsah. It is said to be on the edge of the great desert of the Sinai Peninsula. 17 At this point, J explains how it was that Yahweh led the Israelites on their journey. This was done by means of a cloud column by day and a column of fire by night, which both guided them and offered protection. The imagery used by J may seem to be quite unusual, but in fact Assyrian accounts of military campaigns frequently suggest that the blazing presence of the god or goddess of war went before the army to lead them and to throw the enemy into a panic. Instead of the anthropomorphic form of the Assyrian deities, J substitutes the symbolic column of cloud or fire, but the effect is the same.

The Miracle at the Sea The event at the Red Sea, which brings to an end the period of the Egyptian sojourn, has become such a muddle of the two sources, J and P, that it is necessary to reconstruct the original version in J in order to understand how he has represented the event. This is especially important because the popular version of the story reflected in modern dramatizations emphasizes the splitting of the sea by Moses and the two walls of water between which the Israelites marched in triumph. However, this feature of the story is part of P’s embellishments and not part of the original. Consequently, I will reproduce a translation of the original J version: When it was reported to the king of Egypt that the people had all left in a hurry, Pharaoh and his servants changed their minds about the people, and thought, “What have we done by letting Israel leave our service?” So the king harnessed his horses to his chariot and called up his troops, selecting six hundred elite chariots with their commanders, as well as the rest of the forces. Thus the Egyptians pursued them, and as Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and saw the Egyptians coming after them, and they began to panic. The Israelites cried for help to Yahweh and protested 16.  See also the ultimate destiny of these bones that there buried at Shechem in Josh 24:32. 17.  Actually everything in the eastern half of the narrow Wadi Tumeilat could be said to be on the edge of the desert, including Succoth (Tell el-Maskhuta). See the map of the region, p. 294.

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Part 1: An Outline of the Yahwist’s Antiquities of Israel to Moses: “Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you took us away from there to die in the desert? What have you done by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we tell you in Egypt, ‘Just leave us be and let us serve the Egyptians,’ because it would have been better to be slaves to the Egyptians than to die in the desert.” Then Moses responded: “Do not panic but hold your ground, and just watch today how Yahweh is about to rescue you, because the Egyptians whom you see today, you will never see again. Yahweh is about to fight for you, and you must only remain calm.” Then the angel of God who was leading the Israelite forces moved and went behind them, that is to say, it was the column of cloud that moved from in front of them and stood behind them, coming between the Egyptian forces and the forces of Israel. Thus, the cloud and the oncoming darkness kept the two forces apart all night. At the same time, Yahweh drove back the sea by means of a strong east wind all night and made the sea into dry land. The Israelites then went through the sea on dry land, and the Egyptians pursued them into the middle of the sea. At that moment in the morning watch, Yahweh looked down on the Egyptian army from the column of fire and cloud and threw the Egyptian army into a panic. The Egyptians cried out: “Let’s make a run for it, for it is Yahweh that is fighting for them against the Egyptians.” Then the sea returned to its accustomed place so that when the morning light appeared the Egyptians fled into it and Yahweh swept them into the sea. Thus it was that Yahweh saved them that day from the hands of the Egyptians, while Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. When Israel witnessed the great deed that Yahweh had performed against the Egyptians, the people feared Yahweh and believed in Yahweh and in his servant Moses. 18

Unlike the mixture of J and P in the received text, which is quite confusing, this reconstruction of J is quite clear and needs little further explanation. However, there are two important observations that should be made here. First, the elements of holy war that were evident in the itinerary now come to the fore in their clearest form, even to the point of having the Israelites characterized as an opposing “army,” using the military term maḥanēh for both forces. This is in marked contrast to P, who treats the whole episode as if it were another plague with Moses’ magic wand. Apart from his reference to the Egyptian army taken over from J, P makes use of none of the other features common to the holy war tradition. Second, none of the earlier prophetic references to the exodus from Egypt, such as Ezek 20, make any mention of the crossing of the Red Sea. However, there is one striking parallel to this event, and that is the crossing of the Jordan River before the assault on Jericho ( Josh 3–4). This motif of the crossing of a river at flood stage at the beginning of a military campaign is very common in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions, and this use was imitated in the 18.  Exod 14:5–7, 9aα, 10–14, 19–20, 21aβγ, 22a, 23–24, 25b, 27aβb, 28, 30–31. The Song of the Sea in Exod 15 is likely a later post-P addition.

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Joshua story, even though the Jordan River is certainly no Euphrates. Now what is particularly noteworthy is the fact that there are also two versions of the crossing of the Jordan that have been combined, and each has a different explanation of how it was that the Israelites were able to cross the river on dry ground. The one explanation in Josh 4:16 is that the waters coming from upstream were blocked (by a land slide?) at a point carefully specified where the steep banks are close to the river, and this fortuitous blockage created a dam that made the river run dry for a short period of time, allowing all the people to cross. This is the original Dtr account. 19 The later Priestly account makes the crossing depend entirely on the priests bearing the ark, who stop the water from flowing by touching the water with their feet, and as long as they remain standing on the river bed, the water will not flow but merely rise like a great wall of water beside them. The moment their feet come out of the river bed, the water will start to flow again. It is not difficult to see that the Dtr version has a naturalistic explanation, corresponding to the J version of the drying up of the Red Sea, while the other strongly resembles the more miraculous and magical version of P’s crossing of the Red Sea. In my view, J developed his story of the crossing of the Red Sea on the model of Dtr’s version of the crossing of the Jordan, although the route around the northern end of Lake Timsah did not actually constitute a barrier in the same way that the Jordan River separates the east and west banks of the region. P makes the sea into a more formidable barrier by changing the route to a point further south so that the people were completely trapped between the desert and the sea (Exod 14:1–4). This allows him to embellish his account with the walls of water similar to his treatment of the Jordan crossing, and to treat Moses’ splitting the sea with his rod as a magic wand. 20 19.  The close correspondence between Dtr’s account in Joshua and in the Assyrian royal inscriptions are treated in J. Van Seters, “Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography,” SJOT 4/2 (1990) 1–12; repr., Changing Perspectives, vol. 1: Studies in the History, Literature and Religion of Biblical Israel (London: Equinox, 2011) 73–83. 20.  It may be noted that a comparison is made in Josh 4:23–24 between the episode at the Jordan and the Red Sea crossing, an addition that could very well have been made by J. A similar addition was made in Deut 11:4.

Chapter 5

From the Red Sea to Sinai The Bitter Water of Marah As indicated earlier, the desert journey from the Red Sea to Sinai is structured by means of an itinerary of the various stages on route and the episodes that occurred at each place, with etymological etiologies for some of the names. What is different from the earlier itinerary segment before the Red Sea is the fact that there are no references to the divine vanguard as guide and protector or other militaristic elements, because the destination is not a confrontation with a foreign army but a meeting with the deity at Sinai. This destination is already known from the call narrative. It is true that there is one skirmish with a band of Amalekites at Rephidim, but these are notorious desert raiders, 1 one of the hazards of desert travel, and not a battle between two armies. There is no need to deal in detail with these episodes. 2 Some general observations, however, may be helpful. The tract that the Israelites follow is not a haphazard wandering in the desert but a well-established route across the northern Sinai, on which one can expect to find some water. The first such place they come to after a three-day trek across the region of Shur is Marah, only to discover that the water is bitter and undrinkable, hence the name Marah (bitter). This leads to the people’s complaint and the subsequent “healing” of the water so that it was made sweet. This story illustrates very well how such etiological tales arise. Obviously, in the author’s time there was nothing wrong with the water here, so one could ask the question: why is such a place given the name “Bitter”? And the answer is given in terms of an event in the distant past and an action performed by Moses to make the bitter water sweet. Such a simple story technique, however, is used by J to make a larger point about the obedience and loyalty to Yahweh. The next stop is the oasis of Elim, where there is both abundant shade and water.

The Gift of Manna The next stopping place on the itinerary after Elim is the desert of Sin, midway between Elim and Sinai, but no particular place within the region 1.  Cf. 1 Sam 30 as an example of Amalekite raids. 2. See Life of Moses, 165–207.

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is named. This is because the episode recounted is the discovery of manna, which will become their food supply throughout their desert journey and is not associated with any specific place. To the itinerary notice P adds a date, but no particular significance is suggested by this. 3 Now within this particular episode of murmuring, P has made substantial additions that create problematic doublets, so that these must be separated from the basic J text at the outset. We will therefore consider J’s account first and then make some comments about P’s additions. 4 The Israelites come to Moses and Aaron and complain that that they have nothing to eat and that they were better off in Egypt and then accuse them of bringing the people into the desert to die of hunger. Yahweh then intervenes, telling Moses that he will rain down “bread from heaven” every evening, and each morning they will gather one day’s portion only. However, as a test of their obedience to instruction they will gather twice as much on the sixth day because there will be none on the seventh day. Then Moses and Aaron give these instructions to the people. So it was that with the morning dew the surface of the desert was covered with this flake-like substance. They did not know what it was and kept asking, “What is it” (man huʾ), hence the name manna. So everyone gathers as much as is necessary for each day. However, when some go out to gather on the seventh day, there is none, because they should have gotten that day’s supply on the sixth day. Then Moses explains that Yahweh has especially given them the seventh day as a Sabbath, a day of rest. This becomes for J the origin and explanation of the Sabbath. The narrative concludes with a further description of manna and the fact that it is their staple throughout their desert journey. This J story as reconstructed is clearly told and very easy to follow and bears all the characteristics of J’s antiquarian history, with his use of etiology, both for manna and the Sabbath. As with the previous story, there is an emphasis on the people learning to put their faith in the promises of Yahweh as reflected in their obedience to his instructions. P’s additions, however, are a series of embellishments that cannot be constructed as a separate story, but only confuse the narrative to which they are attached. The second appearance of the deity, vv. 9–12, seems quite pointless as an addition to the initial instructions. However, it adds to the manna the coming of the quail in the evening, as though they were to have this for an evening meal and the heavenly bread in the morning for breakfast. This quail feature is clearly borrowed from a later complaint story in Num 11, which was a one-time event, so it is completely out of place here. It is only mentioned in vv. 12 and 13a and then disappears from view. P is also concerned to make clear 3.  P also inserts the term “congregation” (ʿedah), the term for a religious gathering, in vv. 1 and 2, whereas J uses the more general word for an “assembly” (qahal), v. 3. 4.  J’s story is in 16:1a, 2–7, 13b–15, 21, 27–31, 35a. The rest is P. For a more detailed treatment, see Life of Moses, 181–91.

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that the Sabbath was already a well-known observance, because according to P it was established at creation and so he gives specific instructions as to how the Sabbath is to be observed by means of special preparations prior to the Sabbath. As with so many other episodes of divine intervention in P, the manna is not something natural but is a uniquely magical substance such that a jar of it should be kept in the sanctuary in perpetuity (even though the tabernacle did not yet exist). Let us return to the J story. There has been much discussion about possible older traditions, but I have already argued that J was heavily dependent on Deuteronomy and the prophets. In Deut 8, there is a special emphasis on the desert experience as a period of trial and testing: “You should remember the entire journey on which Yahweh led you these past forty years in the desert to humble and test you to reveal how you felt about keeping his commandments. He humbled you and let you hunger and then fed you with manna which was unknown to you and your fathers” (vv. 2–3a), and again with the exhortation not to forget Yahweh your God “who led you through the great and formidable desert . . . and fed you in the desert with manna which was unknown to your fathers, that he might humble you and test you and in the end to prosper you” (vv. 15–16). What is significant here is that Deuteronomy has the same combination of being fed throughout the whole desert period with manna as a provision by the deity, that the people did not previously know what it was, and that it was somehow to be a test of obedience to Yahweh. All of these elements J has used to develop his story. The one element missing from Deuteronomy, however, is any reference to the Sabbath. Ezekiel, on the other hand, in his treatment of the desert period in Ezek 20:10–13 mentions the fact that Yahweh gave the Israelites his “Sabbaths” (pl.) as a test of loyalty and obedience, which they often failed. But Ezekiel does not say anything about manna or any other divine provisions in the desert period. What we see in the Yahwist account is that he produced his story of the manna event by taking up the themes in Deuteronomy and combined it with Ezekiel’s concern for the Sabbath by specifically making the observance of the Sabbath the test of obedience through the Israelites’ inability to gather the manna on the seventh day and to observe it as a day of rest. The Yahwist’s dependence on both of these sources, which are completely independent of each other, is clear and indisputable.

Water from the Rock The next stage in the desert journey takes the Israelites from their prior location in the Desert of Sin to Rephidim (17:1). 5 There are two episodes associated with this place. The first has to do with the water supply again (vv. 2–7), 5.  This itinerary marker belongs to J although P has added the reference to the “congregation” and the remark “according to the commandment of Yahweh.”

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and in this case there is no water at all. 6 Consequently, the people complain to Moses in language similar to the last episode about a lack of food, and Moses intercedes on their behalf to Yahweh. This time, however, the people are spoken of as putting the deity to the test rather than the deity testing the people. Yahweh tells Moses to take some of the Israelite elders with him and go to the rock at Horeb and to strike the rock and it will produce a flow of water. Moses does this and it is witnessed by the elders, although not by the people themselves. This episode results in the etymological etiology of two place names of the region, Massa (“proof”) and Meribah (“contention”). This short piece has given rise to a lot of discussion, for example, does it represent originally two old oral traditions or a combination of two sources? These need not concern us here. 7 I regard all of it as the work of J. As in the previous case, J has again made use of a remark in Deut 8:15 where it states that Yahweh provided the Israelites on their desert journey with water from the flinty rock where previously there was no water, again as a test or proof of their dependence on him. In J’s case, he has turned this around and made it into the people’s test of Yahweh. However, in addition, J goes one step further and suggests that the specific location of this rock-producing water is Horeb, Dtr’s name for Sinai. This is curious because the people have not yet reached Sinai. But in Deut 9:21 we are informed about a stream that flowed down from Mount Horeb, so that J placed this source of water from the rock at Horeb, a short distance from Rephidim. This is the reason why only a few elders and not the entire people could travel to the site and witness this event. The fact that the water source was a mountain stream meant that it could be construed as extending as far as Rephidim where the camp of the people was located. At any rate, the construction of these stories by J reflects the nature of his historical “research,” with his primary source the earlier biblical traditions.

Victory over the Amalekites The Yahwist’s account of the military action against the Amalekites in Exod 17:8–15 is one more instance of the inherent dangers of desert travel and therefore is treated with the other hazards and is not part of their invasion of the promised land. 8 The Amalekites were notorious as desert-­ dwelling brigands who frequently made raids on the settled communities of the Palestine region, and they are characterized as harassing the Israelites during their journey, with a showdown coming at Rephidim. So Moses summons Joshua to prepare a select group for combat with the Amalekites. No explanation of Joshua’s identity or role as commander is deemed necessary 6.  P has his own account of this episode in Num 20:2–13, and even though he uses one of the same place names, he gives to it an entirely different location. 7. See Life of Moses, 191–98. 8. See Life of Moses, 198–207, for more details.

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because familiarity with his role in the later conquest of Palestine is assumed. The strategy of the battle, however, seems a little odd. Joshua is told to go out and fight the enemy while Moses stands on a hilltop overlooking the action with the rod of God in his hand stretched out toward the action. So long as Moses kept his hand up, Joshua was successful, but when he lowered it, the enemy got the upper hand. So Moses had to sit on a rock and have two assistants, Aaron and Hur, help him keep his hands up until the battle was successfully completed. What can we make of this rather strange procedure? In the account of the battle of Ai in Josh 8, at the beginning of the decisive attack, the deity commands Joshua to stretch out his javelin (or sickle-sword?) toward Ai to ensure victory, and this is taken as a signal for the ambush to arise and enter the city. This action ultimately leads to victory. However, the account also states that Joshua continued to hold out his weapon until the enemy was completely destroyed. Now it has been pointed out that a common motif in the iconography of Egyptian battle scenes is to have an Egyptian god stand with a sword extended while the Pharaoh and his forces slaughter the enemy. 9 In the biblical account of Ai it is the deity who puts Joshua in the same role. It would appear that J has placed Moses in the same role as Joshua, substituting the rod of God for the sword. However, J also seems to make a subtle shift from the stretched-out rod in one hand to the two upraised hands. The latter symbolize Moses’ primary role as intercessor on behalf of his people. Unlike Joshua, in J’s narrative Moses never leads his people in battle. The precedent for this shift to continuous intercession by Moses may be seen in 1 Sam 7 in which the Philistines attack Israel at Mizpah and the Israelites appeal to Samuel as prophet not to cease interceding with Yahweh on their behalf. Samuel does so, and this results in a great victory. Thus, we see that, in this encounter with the Amalekites, J is again able to combine the two roles of Moses as leader of his people and as prophet who supplicates the deity on their behalf. The story ends with a written record of the event, which is to be passed on to his successor Joshua. This may be a subtle hint about the literary intention of J’s own work as a history. To this record is added a physical marker, an altar that Moses sets up and to which he gives the name “throne of Yahweh,” also intended as a historical reminder. This latter memorial is closely parallel to the monument that Samuel erects after the battle with the Philistines, in which he sets up a stone and calls it Ebenezer, “stone of help” (1 Sam 7:12). Indeed, Samuel as both prophet and judge in the DtrH, who is never represented as a military leader as are the other judges, is an apt model for the Moses figure in J. 9.  See in particular, the study by O. Keel, Wirkmächtige Siegeszeichen im AT (OBO 5; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974) 101–9.

Chapter 6

Israel at Sinai The Giving of the Law and the Making of the Covenant: Exodus 19–24 The literary treatment of the Israelite’s stay at Sinai in its present form constitutes a very large part of the pentateuchal corpus, extending from Exod 19 to Num 11, which includes a major addition by the Priestly Writer(s) that has to do with the origin and articulation of the priestly form of religion. None of this is our concern in this present essay; our focus is only on the J portion of this corpus. Nevertheless, P has built his composition into the prior J narrative so that our first task is to identify the limits and character of J’s account and its relationship to the earlier Dtn version of the Horeb revelation in Deut 4 and 5. The critical issues of this large corpus will be left to the discussions cited in the notes. 1 The Yahwist begins this unit with an itinerary notice that continues immediately after the episode with the Amalekites in chap. 17, “They set out from Rephidim and came into the desert of Sinai . . . and there Israel encamped before the mountain” (19:2*). 2 Following this, Moses ascends the mountain of God and once again God calls out to him from this place, to remind Moses of the sign mentioned when he was here before (3:12), that they would be brought out of Egypt to this place. The speech the deity makes in vv. 4–6 is quite poetic, formulated as a prophetic speech to be delivered to the people below: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on the wings of eagles, and brought you to me. Now if you will carefully heed my words and keep my covenant, you will be my prized possession among all the peoples, for the whole world is mine. You will become my priestly kingdom and sacred nation. These are the words you must declare to the Israelites. 1.  Life of Moses, 247–89 2.  P has added the chronological notice in v. 1 and the phrase “and they encamped in the wilderness of Sinai” in v. 2. Chapter 18 is out of place in its current location in the text and belongs at the end of their stay at Sinai and so will be discussed in its proper place.

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When scholars dated J (and E) to the much-earlier Preexilic Period, this piece puzzled them because it clearly borrows the deuteronomic language of Israel being an exclusive possession of Yahweh, but as a post-Dtn exilic text it takes up this statement of exclusiveness and gives it quite a new twist. To earn the right of this exclusiveness, the people must first conform to the terms of the covenant to be set out later in this unit, and they must serve in the special role as a priestly kingdom among the nations. This divine declaration is not an isolated statement but is directly related to two subsequent events. But first Moses must deliver this message from the deity and once the people unanimously declare that they will agree to these terms and accept this role, then Moses reports back again to Yahweh. Yahweh then announces his coming to the people in which the people will witness the deity speaking to Moses in a most spectacular way, by means of a dramatic theophany on the mountain (vv. 7–9a). 3 Now Yahweh gives special instructions to Moses about how the people are to prepare for this occasion for the next two days, by washing their garments (in v. 10–11). Then on the third day Yahweh will come down on Mount Sinai in full view of the people, and when the shofar makes a long blast, they are to ascend the mountain. So Moses delivers these instructions of consecration to the people (vv. 13b–14). This special consecration of the people by which they are permitted to approach the deity on the mountain is directly related to the earlier statement about the people becoming a priestly kingdom. This interpretation of J’s intentions can scarcely be disputed and is confirmed my P’s very strong denial of just such an understanding of the laity. In the middle of these instructions, P has the deity give Moses instructions about setting barriers around the mountain as sacred space, and any violation by man or beast will be stoned or shot dead (vv. 12–13a). Again, at the conclusion of J’s theophany, P inserts repeated instructions and warnings about the sanctity of the mountain, and against the people trespassing its barriers (vv.  20–25). Even the consecrated priests may not violate the barriers of the mountain, while only Moses and Aaron may ascend it. Nothing so clearly illustrates the conflicting religious perspectives between J and P. Returning to the J account (vv. 16–19), on the third day the people witness all the signs of a great theophany, the thunder, lightning and a dense cloud on the mountain, but also a great loud blast of the shofar, all of which terrified the people. The people advance with Moses to the foot of the mountain but would go no further. The deity then descends in fire and smoke. “As the sound of the shofar grew ever louder Moses would speak and God would answer in the sound [of the shofar].” Following the long P interpolation in 19:20–21:17, the J narrative resumes in 20:18. The people who are witness3.  There has been an accidental scribal duplication (dittography) at the end of v. 9 and the beginning of v. 10, from the end of v. 8 and the beginning of v. 9.

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ing this terrifying event retreat to a safe distance, and what clearly terrifies them the most is the deity speaking to them, represented by the blasts of the shofar. They appeal to Moses to act as intermediary for them because they are afraid to speak directly with the deity, lest they die of fright (vv. 18–21). Now it must be significant that the shofar is given such a major role by J in the great theophany on Mount Sinai. Just as I speculated about the burning bush earlier as a representation of the menorah, so there can be no doubt that the use of the shofar played an important role earlier in the temple worship, as it would later in the Second Temple. But it was also an easily transportable religious object and symbol that could be adapted to a non-temple context of worship, and in later Judaism the shofar along with the menorah were powerful religious symbols in the synagogue. The Yahwist is concerned to address just such a community of Jews in the Babylonian Exile, and it is that symbolism that would resonate most strongly with them. What follows in v. 22 when Moses returns to speak with God on the mountain are not the Ten Commandments. J has no separate version of the Decalogue. The Decalogue in Exod 20:1–17 belongs to P, as is clear from P’s revision of the law of the Sabbath, which is based on P’s creation story in Gen 1:1–2:4a. P’s Decalogue is a modification of the one in Deut 5:6–21. In J, Moses receives from God a much more extensive code of laws, which covers Exod 20:22–23:33, some of which parallel those of the Decalogue, but most of them do not. Before we begin to look at this set of laws, it would be helpful to compare J’s account of the mountain experience with Deuteronomy. There are actually two versions of this event in Deuteronomy, the primary version in chap. 5 and another perhaps written a little later in chap. 4. The version in chap. 5 will be our chief concern. Deuteronomy 5 begins as a speech by Moses made to the Israelites in Moab at the end of their desert journey, in which he begins by exhorting them to keep all of the ordinances and statutes that he is about to deliver to them, that is, those contained in Deut 12–28. He then recounts for them the covenant made by Yahweh at Horeb 40 years earlier. Here, the deity is represented as speaking to all of the Israelites directly from the mountain from the midst of the fire (v. 4), although in the next statement this seems to be modified by Moses acting as a mediator of the message because the people were too afraid to climb up the mountain with Moses. What the people heard was the Decalogue, and at the conclusion it is confirmed: “These are the very words Yahweh spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the fire . . . with a loud voice, and no more than that” (v. 22). Then the words were written by God on two tablets of stone and given to Moses. At the conclusion of this terrifying experience, the leaders of the people met with Moses and expressed fear for their lives and did not want this to happen again. So they appointed Moses as their intermediary in any subsequent encounter with the deity. Anything that the deity tells Moses henceforth they will do.

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Yahweh accepts this arrangement, and so from that point on all the subsequent commandments communicated through Moses during the rest of the desert journey are given to Moses privately and only compiled in a book at the end of the journey in Moab as a kind of second covenant (vv.  28–32; 28:69[29:1]). The contents of this law-book are the laws in Deut 12–28. The parallel account of the giving of the Decalogue in Deut 4 is focused primarily on the second commandment. It begins in a way similar to chap. 5 with an exhortation to keep the statutes and ordinances that were given to them just prior to their taking possession of the promised land, to which all of these laws apply (vv.  1–2), but then recapitulates an event earlier in their desert wanderings at Baal Peor in which some of the Israelites were led astray by this foreign cult, with dire consequences. This is used as a warning against not keeping the law (vv. 3–8). This is followed by a further recapitulation of the giving of the Decalogue at Horeb (vv.  10–14), which follows the same version as chap. 5, with the people at the bottom of the mountain hearing the sound of the words, and these same words of the covenant were inscribed on the two tablets of stone. The way in which the Yahwist has attempted to handle this source is to begin first with a meeting between Yahweh and Moses alone on the mountain, prior to the audience with the people. In this preliminary meeting, the deity begins by recapitulating the earlier event of the exodus from Egypt as the historical basis for the events about to take place. This is then followed by a demand by the deity that the people agree to keep the commandments that have not yet been given and the terms of the covenant, rather than just exhortation to obedience by Moses. This prior agreement to keep the terms of the covenant is made by the people before they experience the terrifying theophany on Mount Sinai. The greatest change in the Yahwist’s version of the events is to combine the two covenantal law codes into one and to associate that one covenant with Sinai. This means for J that the people did not hear the words of the Decalogue during the theophany on the mountain but only the sound of the divine voice, which was the mysterious sound of the shofar. It is only after the people plead with Moses to receive the words of the deity in private that Moses then returns to Mount Sinai and receives the law code of Exod 20:22–23:33, which becomes the basis of the subsequent covenant in 24:3–8. The direction of literary dependence seems clear enough, although those who dispute that the J version is later than the ones in Deuteronomy simply invent redactors for every late element that they find in the non-P ( J) corpus. It is not the place in this essay to debate all of these issues, nor do I intend to deal with the Book of the Covenant in 20:22–23:33 and its relationship to the other pentateuchal codes in this essay. These I have treated in another place. 4 Nevertheless, I will comment on a few features at the beginning and 4.  Van Seters, A Law Book for the Diaspora.

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end of the code to illustrate its place within the Yahwist’s reconstruction of the Sinai law-giving tradition.

The Book of the Covenant The Book of the Covenant, also known as the Covenant Code (CC), is introduced by the statement, “While the people stood at a distance, Moses approached the dense cloud where God was” (20:21). This is followed by the rather curious version of the first two commandments of the Decalogue: Yahweh said the Moses: “This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken with you from heaven. You shall therefore not make either gods of silver to be alongside of me, nor make for yourselves gods of gold.’”

First, it is not clear how the opening remark of the deity to the Israelites corresponds to the description of the scene on the mountain where the deity was speaking to Moses and not the people, and the sound came not from heaven but from the dense cloud on the mountain as in v. 21 (cf. 19:16), to which Yahweh had descended, 19:18. Nor is it clear what the connection is with the following law, because no explanation is given. If, however, we look at the source J was using in Deut 4, the point is made in v. 11 that the fire on the mountain reached to the “heart of heaven” and that Yahweh spoke from the midst of the fire. And again in v. 36 it states quite explicitly, “Out of heaven he let you hear his voice . . . and on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his voice out of the mist of the fire.” So this is obviously the origin of this abbreviated statement in Exod 20:22 about speaking from heaven. Furthermore, Deut 4 also connects this form of divine revelation with his long discussion about the second commandment of the Decalogue: “Since you saw no figure at all on the day that Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, be careful not to succumb to the practice of making carved figures in the form of humans or animals.” In the highly abbreviated statement in J, he seeks to include not only the prohibition against making any such carved and molded images of Yahweh but also any other deity that could be reflected in the worship of such figures. This very brief version of the first two commandments of the Decalogue certainly presupposes the knowledge of the larger version in Deuteronomy. There can be no dispute about the direction of J’s dependence on Deut 4 in this case. The second law of CC has to do with instructions about the construction of an altar to Yahweh (vv. 24–26), and this law has become a matter of considerable controversy, which will not be dealt with here. 5 Our primary 5. J. Van Seters, “The Altar Law of Ex. 20, 24–26 in Critical Debate,” in Auf dem Weg zur Endgestalt von Genesis bis II Regum: Festschrift Hans-Christoph Schmitt zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. M. Beck and U. Schorn; BZAW 370; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006) 157–74. See reprint on pp. 303–320 of this volume.

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concern is how to understand this law in terms of Deuteronomy and its demand for a single sanctuary in Deut 12, which was the basis of a major reform movement in the late Judean monarchy period and later became the dogmatic legitimacy for the single temple in Jerusalem. How does J’s law of the altar relate to this religious development? The translation of the law in Exod 20:24 as it is generally rendered in most published translations is disputed, largely because the Hebrew text in its present form must be corrupt, and scholars are not agreed as to how to repair it. The first half seems simple enough: “You may make an altar of earth to me and sacrifice on it burnt offerings and shared offerings, whether of your sheep or cattle.” This seems clear enough, except that there is an ambiguity between whether this altar is to be intended for the whole community or for individuals within the community. Of course, if the offering of a sacrifice requires priests, then this would argue for a communal altar, but J does not make any reference to a priesthood of any kind for the Israelites in his writing. Furthermore, an earthen altar is hardly appropriate for a temple in Jerusalem, and v. 25 offers an option of making an altar of unhewn stones, as though there were a choice for the individual or small community. The patriarchs in J’s text of Genesis seem quite free to construct altars in a number of places. Consequently, J does not seem as restrictive on this matter as Deuteronomy. However, it is the second part of the verse that is the most controversial. As the text stands in the Hebrew Bible (MT), it should be rendered “In every place where I invoke my name I will come to you and bless you,” but this makes no sense because to invoke the name of a deity is to pray to him, and God cannot be said to be praying to himself. Most solutions attempt to render the active verb “to invoke” as a passive “I am invoked,” but there is no textual support for this form of the verb and no other instance of this use. There is an obvious scribal corruption in the text in which the first-person form should originally be in the second person: “In every place where you invoke my name, I will come to you and bless you.” Scholars have strenuously resisted this obvious understanding because it would run counter to what is suggested in Deuteronomy and later in P, namely, that there should be only a single central sanctuary. But Genesis is full of patriarchs who invoke the deity and who build altars to Yahweh in a number of different places, and all of these occur in J and none in P. If one accepts the fact that J is a product of the Exilic Period, then it would be most appropriate for him to advocate a view in which no central sanctuary was available to him and his universal deity could be invoked and encountered anywhere. It seems therefore appropriate that this is his response to Deut 12, the first law in Deuteronomy’s law code that demands one centralized sanctuary for everyone. For this reason, it is also quite misleading to characterize the J source as Deuteronomistic, as is so often done.

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The Book of the Covenant ends with a long epilogue (23:20–33), whose subject is not a solemn exhortation to keep this law code that has just been set forth, with blessings and curses, as one would expect from Deut 28 and the Holiness Code in Lev 26. Instead, J ends the code with a promise that God will sent his angel or messenger who will guide and protect them until they reach the promised land. The angel will lead them to a great victory over the whole region from the Euphrates in the northeast to the Red Sea in the south. This will be a glorious future. All this will come about if they give heed to this divine agent of the deity, with only a brief threat if they do not. We have, of course, encountered this angel before as the column of cloud that led the Israelites out of Egypt, offering protection for them, and defeating the Egyptians at the Red Sea (13:21–22; 14:19–20). This characterization is distinctive of J, and the angel/column of cloud appears again in his narrative. Once this law code and the covenant are ceremonially accepted, all that remains in this view is for the people to advance toward their destiny in the promised land. The major source for this epilogue in CC is once again Deuteronomy, specifically Deut 7. This has long been noted by scholars who have therefore been inclined to attribute all or part of Exod 23:20–33 to a “redactor.” This is the wrong approach, which overlooks the important differences in perspective from Dtn and the many interconnections that it has with other J texts. As I have tried to demonstrate above, J always modifies his Dtn source to conform to his own particular perspective and concerns. Quite apart from the fact that the Dtn knows nothing about the use of the “angel” (malʾak) as a divine intermediary in the conquest of the promised land, there is one other significant difference between the two views of the way in which the land will be occupied. For Dtn, the entire population of the land they are about to occupy will be “devoted to destruction” (ḥerem). This is the religious language of holy war, but it is immediately contradicted by warnings against intermarriage or entering into covenant relationships with the native population. The Yahwist takes a different approach, which resolves this contradiction. He avoids the principle of ḥerem altogether and instead he introduces the notion of expulsion (gāraš), which is never used by Dtn. J also suggests that this will actually be a gradual process of population displacement. Perhaps this description of a gradual occupation of the land is intended by J to be a picture not so much of the past as a hope for the future when the exiles begin to resettle the land. It is quite significant that Second Isaiah, a close contemporary of the Yahwist, describes his own hopes for the coming return from exile, precisely in terms of this theme of Yahweh as a vanguard and rearguard (Isa 52:12). 6 At any rate, neither in the substance of the Book

6.  More on this later.

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of the Covenant nor in its epilogue should J be labeled a “Deuteronomistic redactor.” A few words ought to be said at this point about the Yahwist’s code and its Babylonian background. 7 It has long been recognized that there is a remarkable affinity between a substantial part of this code and the Mesopotamian legal tradition in general, and the famous Hammurabi Law code in particular, especially as it has to do with the genre of casuistic law. In the past when the Covenant Code was thought to be the oldest biblical code, there was much talk about how this Babylonian tradition came to the Israelites by way of the Canaanites who may have first encountered it in the mid-second millennium b.c.e. This view of the Covenant Code’s origin is no longer tenable, and one must now look for a more viable solution. The most obvious period of such an influence on a biblical writer is the time of the Babylonian Exile, particularly in the period of the reign of King Nabonidus, and this for two reasons. First, We know that this famous code was a classic in the late Neo-­Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, and indeed Nabonidus had a special fascination for this ancient king and preserved any ancient inscriptions of this king that he could find. Numerous copies of Hammurabi’s stele that contained the law code were made so that it must have been quite well known. Now this monument contains a scene on the upper part of the stele that pictures Hammurabi standing before the sun god Shamash, who is seated on a throne that is set on a stylized mountain, and from whom he may be thought to receive the law code. The parallel with the biblical account of Moses on Mount Sinai is obvious. Second, Nabonidus was known for his great piety, and in one of his inscriptions he prays to the god Sin, his favorite deity: “Establish the fear of your great godhead in the heart of your people, so that they do not commit any sin against your great godhead.” This statement looks remarkably similar to the words of Moses to the people at Sinai when he accepts the role of mediating the laws of God to the people: “Do not fear; for it is in order to test you that God has come [in the theophany], and that his fear may be present before you, that you may not sin.” In my earlier study of the Covenant Code in which I pointed out Nabonidus’s obsession with Babylonia’s ancient past, I concluded with the following: It is, therefore, not hard to find a motive for such a portrayal of Moses as the great law-giver in a manner that is comparable to that of Hammurabi by a Jew living in Babylonia. A similar strategy was used by Philo in Roman Egypt in his portrayal of Moses as the great philosopher and by Josephus in Rome in his presentation of Moses in his history as leader and lawgiver. For J, Moses is the Jewish Hammurabi, and the Jews have laws that are 7. A Law Book, 56–57, 95–99.

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comparable to those of the Babylonians and also of great antiquity. Such a comparison would have appealed to the Jewish community within Babylonia to strengthen their own self-worth and identity. 8

Consequently, there is no sociohistorical context that is more appropriate and conducive to the composition of such a set of laws as we have it in J’s Covenant Code.

The Covenant Ratification Ceremony at Sinai Immediately after Yahweh has finished revealing this set of laws to Moses he returns to the people and informs them of all the “words of Yahweh” and all of the “laws” and the people respond with one voice that they are prepared to obey all of them (Exod 24:3–8). The suggestion that the code includes two categories is significant because the Decalogue is frequently spoken of as the ten “words” (dĕbarīm), whereas the more general “laws” are the mišpātīm. In this way, J makes quite clear that this Covenant Code includes both sets of laws in this ceremony of ratification. Moses then proceeds to write all the laws that he has received from Yahweh in a book, and this becomes the “Book of the Covenant” (v. 7). This terminology is derived from Dtr’s use of it for the book of the law that was found in the temple and later became the basis of the covenant renewal ceremony in 2 Kgs 23:1–3. Dtr’s Book of the Covenant was obviously all or part of the Dtn laws in Deut 12–28, the content of the second covenant in Moab and did not include the Decalogue. Furthermore, in Deuteronomy there is virtually no ceremony of ratification of the covenant except the remark by Moses about all the people entering into a “sworn covenant” (Deut 29:12), which is buried in a long speech of Moses without any description of any ceremony. In the covenant renewal in 2 Kgs 23:1–3, with all the people gathered in one place, the king reads out the content of the “Book of the Covenant” and then makes his oath to obey all of its terms, after which the people also pledge themselves to this covenant. In contrast to this very thin account, J creates a quite remarkable ceremony, which could hardly be the basis of Dtr’s description. First, Moses builds an altar at the base of the mountain and sets up 12 columns for the 12 tribes of Israel. 9 What is perhaps most surprising is that Moses invites some young men who are not priests to offer sacrifices on the altar, corresponding to the law of the altar in 20:24–26. 10 From the blood of these sacrifices 8.  Ibid., 57. 9.  This feature looks like a reinterpretation of the maṣṣeboth. Cf. Josh 5:20. 10. Ernest Nicholson, in what is otherwise a useful survey of the scholarly discussion of this text (God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986] 166–78), attempts to explain the reference to the “young men” by a comparison with the use of the same term naʿar for the priestly junior assistants mentioned in the story of Samuel in 1 Sam 2:13–17 (see p. 170), but this is quite misleading. They cannot be priestly

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collected in basins, Moses anoints the altar with half of it. He then reads all of the content of the Book of the Covenant to the people and they pledge to obey its requirements. Following this, Moses anoints all the people with the remaining blood as “the blood of the covenant,” thus representing both parties, and declares: “See the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has made with you, in agreement with all of its words.” The full significance of what the Yahwist is suggesting by this ceremony can only be fully appreciated when it is compared with a corresponding ceremony of consecration by P in Lev 8–9. What is given to us in P is a very elaborate presentation of the original consecration of Aaron and his sons as priests, in which all the elements of the sacrifices of both the burnt offerings and the shared offerings, as well as others from the P code, are dealt with, and the blood from the offerings are used to consecrate both the great altar of the tabernacle and Aaron and his sons. As far as the “congregation” of the people is concerned, they have no role at all except as spectators of this great drama. This was, of course, a one-time event, which was entirely invented by P, and it cannot be an accident that it is the direct antithesis to what we have in the J ceremony of covenant consecration. In J, there is no priesthood and by this unique act of consecration at Sinai, the whole people take complete responsibility for their own religious life in perpetuity. No priesthood or cultic institutions are necessary. By contrast, P constructs an elaborate priestly and cultic institution that is completely in charge of religious life on behalf of the people who are only very marginally involved. The construction of the institution of the priesthood by means of this elaborate replacement of all of the features in the J ceremony points to two very different conceptions of the Israelite religion and the role of cultic practice within it. As we will see below, this is not the only indication of antagonism between these two perspectives. The continuation of the J account, after the interpolation in 24:9–11, is picked up in vv. 12–15a, 18b, in which Yahweh invites Moses to ascend the mountain again to receive the tablets of stone on which is inscribed the law and commandment, that is, the content of the book that he has already compiled. Note that the number of tablets is not specified because the document is now much larger than the Decalogue. In Dtn, the content of the two tablets was different from the code, but in J they are the same. Then Moses prepares to go up on the mountain with Joshua, his second in command, leaving Aaron and Hur in charge in the camp. Moses ascends the mountain and again at this point P intervenes in the text with his own theophany on the mountain as if none had taken place previously, and this is followed by an elaborate set of instructions that have to do with the construction personnel in Exod 24:5 when there are no priests mentioned here or anywhere else in J. Consequently, he misses the point of the passage, where the youths take the place of priests.

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of a tabernacle and its furnishings, in addition to the two tablets of stone containing his version of the Ten Commandments. J’s statement about the reception of the tablets is resumed in 31:18*, “Yahweh gave him the tablets of stone.” To this, P has added the remark about the two tablets, written with the finger of God.

The Golden Calf Apostasy The episode of the golden calf in Exod 32 is a remarkable literary composition in a number of respects. First of all, it presents the scene of Moses on the mountain receiving the tablets of the law, while at the same time that this is going on it relates the account of the making of the golden calf in the Israelite camp below. The parallel account in Deut 9:9–29 makes no attempt to describe the calf’s construction in the camp and includes only the deity’s reporting to Moses on the mountain what has been going on below while he has been absent. Let us look at the story in Exod 32. The account begins with the people becoming impatient because of the long delay in Moses’ return from the mountain, reflecting the reference to 40 days on the mountain in 24:18b, and so they come to Aaron and demand of him that he supply them with gods who may lead them out of the desert, because they do not know what has happened to Moses. This, of course, is in violation of the very first clause of the Covenant Code, which they have just previously sworn an oath to keep.  Without protest, which one might have expected, Aaron immediately complies with their request and collects all of the gold jewelry and molds it into the form of a calf. The “calf” is a derogatory euphemistic reference to the bull symbolism of the storm god Baal. 11 The people accept this image of the deity as the one who rescued them from Egypt, and Aaron constructs an altar before it and declares that on the next day they would have a feast to Yahweh, which they did in a big way. Now the construction of the calf or bull statue might suggest that this is a case of apostasy to the worship of Baal, but that is probably not what is intended. Because Aaron immediately inaugurates a feast to Yahweh, what is more likely is the more subtle issue of assimilation of Yahweh with Baal through the use of shared religious iconography. That is the whole point of the second commandment. Thus, one could read the demand of the Israelites as that of having a common popular bull image mounted on a standard that could be used as a vanguard as they advanced toward the promised land. What the people wanted was concrete symbols of the divine presence, and this issue is discussed by J in considerable detail in chap. 33. The scene in v. 7 suddenly shifts back to the mountain top, in which the deity now informs Moses on what has been happening, the construction of the molten calf, and Yahweh makes clear that this object cannot be used to 11.  Cf. Hos 8:6, where the same derogatory term is used.

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represent the god who brought them out of Egypt. So Yahweh threatens to wipe them out and to start over fresh with Moses as the founder of a new nation. This event is understood as the first of a series of rebellions against the deity that will mark the rest of the desert journey, and in all of these Moses plays the role of an intercessor, not as he did in the previous occasions to ask for divine aid in times of crisis and physical need, but now to plead for forgiveness to avoid their destruction. In vv. 11–14, this intercession is framed in terms of two arguments related to God’s honor or reputation. First, if you kill all your people in the desert after you rescued them from Egypt, what will the Egyptians say? It will not look good. Second, remember your promises to the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to make them into a great nation and to give them the promised land. So Yahweh relents and spares the people. Up to this point, of course, Moses has only been responding to the deity’s report. Now he turns and descends the mountain with the tablets in his hand (vv, 15–20), 12 and Joshua, who accompanied Moses up the mountain, reappears and wonders what all of the noise from the camp is about. It sounds like a great celebration. As soon as Moses gets close enough to see the calf, it all becomes clear and he throws the tablets down the mountain and breaks them in pieces. Such an action is significant in antiquity because destroying the public inscription containing a set of laws or covenant signified its dissolution and annulment. Moses then grinds the calf into powder and throws it into the water and makes the people drink it. This has the character of a ritualistic ordeal. Then Moses turns to Aaron, whom he had previously put in charge, for an explanation (vv. 20–24). Aaron’s response that the people made him do it, and that he just threw all the gold into the fire and out came this calf, is perhaps intended for comic relief. If there was a tradition about Aaron as a second to Moses, such as that reflected in P, this certainly discredits any such view. In J, Aaron the Levite can hardly be trusted with that role and it is clearly Joshua, Moses’ ultimate successor, who has that position. Given the strong discrediting of the Jerusalem priesthood by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it is likely that the role of Aaron in this whole affair is quite deliberate. At this point we must consider the prior history of the golden calf episode in the sources that were available to J. The author in Exodus made use of two prior accounts, the one having to do with the apostasy of Jeroboam in 1 Kgs 12:26–32 and the other in Deut 9:8–21, 25–29. Both contribute to J’s account in quite different ways. The making of the golden calf in Exod 32:1–6 has its closest parallel in Jeroboam’s setting up of two golden calves, one in Bethel and the other in Dan, in which in both cases the calves are made of gold. Jereboam then declares: “Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up 12.  P has greatly embellished the description of the tablets to make them into sacred relics.

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from the land of Egypt,” and sacrifices are offered to them and a feast (ḥag) is established on the occasion. However, in the Exodus account, when Aaron declares, “There are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” because Aaron made only one calf, the use of the plural, “gods” is not appropriate. This is a clear indication that J borrowed the text of the declaration from the Jeroboam story. Again, in the story of Jeroboam a great deal is made of the establishment of a pilgrimage festival in the Kingdom of Israel to rival the one in Jerusalem and the reason for the construction of the gods in the first place. In J, the establishment of a pilgrimage festival (ḥag) is entirely inappropriate when the people are about to depart from Sinai to the promised land. J merely converts the festival into a grand celebration that has nothing in common with Jereboam’s ḥag. The one other feature that seems to connect the Exodus apostasy with the Jereboam episode is the fact that Dtr sees in this event the “great sin” that ultimately led to the destruction and exile of the Israelite nation. J also attempts to connect this “great sin” at Sinai (v. 30) with the disaster of the Exile (v. 34). None of these features appear in the parallel account in Deut 9. For the rest of his account of the golden calf apostasy, however, J is heavily dependent on his source in Deut 9–10. 13 One of the problems with making any comparison between this Dtn account and J’s story is that there seems to be various strata in the Dtn narrative with additions that interrupt the narrative flow. These cannot all be dealt with here. 14 The parallel accounts in Dtn and Exodus have in common Moses’ ascent of the mountain to receive the tables of stone, his 40 days on the mountain, the divine command to return quickly because of the people’s apostasy, his return with the tablets of stone and their destruction, the destruction of the calf image, and Moses’ intercession(s) before and/or after his descent from the mountain. There are many subtle differences between the two accounts, but I will focus on only a couple of examples. The first has to do with the destruction of the calf image, which seems to reflect a rather excessive amount of effort in both cases. Deut 9:21 states: “Your sinful object that you had made, the calf, I took and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it well until it was fine dust, and I threw it into the stream that flows down from the mountain.” Now this description of destruction of the calf seems to correspond closely with the destruction of a variety of idolatrous objects in 2 Kgs 23:11–12, in which Josiah is said to have burned the chariots of the sun, broken in pieces the altars of Ahaz and Manasseh and “thrown their dust into the brook Kidron.” The Josianic reform is the model for the Mosaic reform at Horeb. J takes over this description in a slightly shorter form. The stream in Deuteronomy becomes, 13.  The earliest account is 9:8–9, 11–17, 21, 26–29; 10:10–11, with secondary additions in 9:10, 18–19; 10:1–5. Even later non-Dtr additions are in 9:20, 22–24, 27a; 10:6–9. 14.  For a full discussion of the literary problems see Life of Moses, 301–10.

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for J, the one created by Moses earlier in Exod 17:6, and their source of drinking water, into which the rubbish was thrown (32:20). The other parallel has to do with the intercession that Moses makes on behalf of the people in Exod 32:11–14 before he went down from the mountain and its counterpart in Deut 9:26–29 which was made after the descent. As indicated earlier, J’s version contains two reasons why the deity should forgive his people, (1) what the Egyptians will say about him if he does not finish the people’s rescue, but kills them in the desert, and (2) the promises to the patriarchs regarding their future possession of the land of their travels. The parallel in Deut 9:26–29 gives the first argument in detail, but it is interrupted in the middle with the phrase in v. 27a, “Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” with no explanation as to how it relates to the petition. It seems like an obvious, late interpolation to make it conform more closely to the version in Exodus. 15 After Moses’ interrogation of Aaron regarding his role in the execution of this “great sin” (and the late interpolation in vv.  25–29), 16 J continues in vv. 30–34 with Moses’ attempt to make amends with the deity after this “great sin.” He returns to Yahweh to intercede on the people’s behalf, and even suggests that if the deity will not forgive the people, that he be accepted as a substitute. Yahweh rejects in principle the suggestion that an innocent be offered in place of the guilty—which is the basis of human sacrifice. In the meantime, Moses is to lead the people to the promised land with the aid of the guiding angel. Nevertheless, at some future time there will be a day of reckoning, a clear allusion to the Babylonian exile, just as it was in the case of Jeroboam’s “great sin” and the Assyrian Exile.

The Presence of God and the Tent of Meeting The rather protracted dialogue between Moses and Yahweh in Exod 33 is often treated in isolation from what has come before and after, partly because of the interpolated passages in 32:35 and 33:18–23, but this discussion about the divine presence among the people is a direct continuation from what has preceded in the deity’s command to Moses in 32:34b: “Now proceed and lead the people to the place about which I told you; rest assured, my messenger will show you the way.” This has reference back to the epilogue of the Covenant Code in the remark about the messenger/angel in 23:20–21, and the messenger motif is further amplified in 33:1–3a by the confessional themes of the deliverance from Egypt, the promises to the forefathers, and the conquest of the land. All of them are highlighted in J’s call of Moses in 15. Ezekiel 20 likewise refers only to the reason concerning what the Egyptians might say if God destroys the Israelites in the desert (vv.  9, 13–14, 22) and nothing about the patriarchs. 16.  This addition may have been inspired by the remarks about the tribe of Levi and their fidelity to the covenant in the poem in Deut 33:8–11. It is hardly compatible with the actions of Aaron the Levite.

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chap. 3. Now what must be clearly understood about the discussion of the messenger or angel is that it is not to be construed as some lesser divine being distinct from the deity, as in the later tradition of multiple angels. It is always singular and signifies a form in which the deity reveals his “presence” to humans. Consequently, as in the case of the Red Sea crossing, there is a complete identity between the messenger/angel and the deity. Following the promise about the messenger who will go before the people and lead them to their destination, Yahweh introduces a caveat in 33:3b. Because of the people’s persistent inclination to rebellion, he cannot actually travel and reside among the people during this desert journey, lest his anger like deadly fire destroy them. This means that for J there was not, or could not have been, a portable sanctuary in the middle of the camp during the Israelites’ travels from Egypt to the promised land. This issue is of the greatest importance because it reflects J’s attitude toward the Priestly tradition of the centralized temple in Jerusalem as reflected in P’s tabernacle, to which we will return below. The response of the people, in vv. 4, 6, is presented as an act of contrition, 17 which is another case of describing action simultaneously in two places, Moses on the mountain and the people down below, although it could only have happened after Moses returned to the camp. Likewise in vv. 7–11, the remarks about the Tent of Meeting also has to do with actions that took place subsequent to this dialogue with the deity and very much depend on the outcome of the negotiations between Moses and Yahweh, so I will postpone my remarks about the Tent of Meeting until later. Following directly on Yahweh’s statement about not traveling among the people, Moses takes up his response (vv. 12–13): “You have told me, ‘lead this people to their destination,’ but you have not disclosed who will go with me. . . . So if I have your approval, then please let me know your plans. . . . Bear in mind that this nation are your people.” To this appeal, the deity responds (v. 14), “My presence will go before you 18 and I will give you rest.” The notion of being given “rest” constitutes a promise by Yahweh to give the people success over their enemies in the upcoming confrontation in the promised land. But clearly Moses is not satisfied with this assurance of some future good fortune. He has to deal with the difficult task of governing this people on the desert journey. He wants the divine presence with him to confirm his approval, and to make it clear that, because the deity is among them, they can thus be identified as the people of Yahweh (vv. 15–16). This request is finally granted (v. 17). The question that remains is just what form this “presence” will take such that it will not destroy the people through some act of rebelliousness but will also meet Moses’ request for support of his authority. 17.  V. 5 is a later interpolation, probably by P. 18.  The Hebrew text has “with you,” but that is contradicted by v. 15, so it is preferable to go with the Greek version that has “before you.”

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Instead of the answer to this question coming after this dialogue, which one might expect, it actually anticipates it in the unit on the Tent of Meeting in vv. 7–11. In fact, the whole discussion between Moses and the deity in vv. 12–17 is quite meaningless without this unit on the Tent of Meeting as an explanation of how the divine presence would accompany the people from Sinai to the promised land. The Yahwist tells us that on their journey after Mount Sinai Moses would set up a tent outside the camp and at some distance from it, which he called the Tent of Meeting. Anyone who was inclined to seek Yahweh would then go out to this Tent of Meeting for this purpose. This has led some scholars to surmise that the unit reflects an old tradition about a special oracular tent, but such speculation is quite unnecessary. It merely refers to a very common practice of a person going to a local sanctuary in order to make a personal request of the deity, “to seek Yahweh” or “to seek the face (that is, the presence) of Yahweh.” 19 This identifies the Tent of Meeting as a portable place of worship. This simple meeting place, however, takes on a special role in which Moses would go out to the Tent of Meeting while the people stood at a distance at the doors of their tents and after Moses entered the tent then the column of cloud would descend and stand at the door of the tent in plain view and Moses would then speak to Yahweh “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” After the column was withdrawn, then Moses would return to the camp while Joshua would remain as the keeper of the tent. What is most significant is that no priests were ever associated with this Tent of Meeting. This means that the Tent of Meeting in J had no cultic function under the control of a special priestly cast. This is in total disagreement with P’s very elaborate presentation of the tabernacle, which P also calls the Tent of Meeting. This is not the place to debate the relationship between these two conceptions, which has recently become quite controversial. 20 The comparison is altogether different in the case of the tent which David is said to have set up to house the ark when it was recovered from KiriathJeʿarim and brought to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6). 21 The literary relationship between the two accounts is clear, when the two texts are set side by side. The account in 2 Sam 6:17 reads: 19.  Examples of such prayers spoken of as “seeking Yahweh” are very numerous in the book of Psalms, for example, Ps 27:8. 20. See the detailed discussion in on pp. 321–345 in “The Tent of Meeting (Exodus 33:7–11) in the Yahwist’s Sinai-Wilderness Story: A Test Case.” On Dtr’s displacement of the throne of the deity by the Ark of the Covenant and its importance for understanding the problem of the divine presence, see the important study by C. M. McCormick, Palace and Temple (BZAW 313; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) 172–90. McCormick’s entire monograph advocates a paradigm shift in understanding the relationship between Dtr and P, and this has direct relevance for the relationship between J and P as well. 21. The basic text dealing with the restoration of the ark in 1 Sam 6 and the divine promise in chap. 7 belongs to DtrH. For a full discussion of this, see my Biblical Saga of King David (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 241–67.

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They brought in the ark of Yahweh, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had set up for it.

This may be compared with the statement in Exod 33:7: Moses would take the tent and set it up for it outside the camp; and he called it the Tent of Meeting.

In copying the text from the David story, J has inadvertently retained the definite article on “tent,” and he has also included the reference to the ark in the phrase “for it” without any preceding mention of the ark, as in the David account. This strongly suggests that the tent in the David story provided the inspiration for the account in J’s Tent of Meeting. Furthermore, in the David story, David expresses his desire to build a house of cedar for Yahweh in place of a mere tent for the ark, which symbolizes the divine presence. Within the divine response to David’s proposal, communicated through the prophet Nathan, Yahweh recounts that, since the days when the Israelites came out of Egypt, he (that is, the ark) has been moving about in a tent. While J adopts the suggestion of the divine presence in the desert as associated with a simple tent, he plays down the role of the ark as symbol of that presence and instead associates the presence with the theophanic form of the column of cloud, which periodically visits the tent. For J, there is no priesthood or cult associated with this tent, only the young man Joshua, Moses’ successor, who was a permanent resident there. Because, in Dtr’s presentation of the invasion of Canaan ( Josh 3–6), both Joshua and the ark together play a prominent role, it is likely that J has in mind this role of Joshua as the appropriate custodian of the ark in the tent. Later, in J’s account of the abortive invasion of Canaan from the south, against Moses’ order, J says that neither the ark of the covenant of Yahweh nor Moses departed from the camp. This almost certainly implies that the ark was kept and remained in the tent. The column of cloud at the door of the tent as the form of the theophany by which the deity speaks with Moses establishes a continuity with the corresponding theophany on Sinai. This cloud theophany is either alluded to or assumed in the rest of the desert journey. It is also these special occasions that give legitimization to Moses’ role as leader and move the people to an act of worship. Yahweh’s speaking to Moses in this way is characterized as speaking “face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.” This special relationship is repeated a number of times, as “mouth to mouth” (Num 12:8), “eye to eye” (Num 14:14), and again “face to face” in his obituary in Deut 34:10. Because the term for “face” is the same as for “presence,” it is particularly appropriate within the larger context. 22

22. The unit in 33:18–23 appears to be a later addition in the text that constitute a parody on the notion of seeing the “face” of Yahweh in a literal sense, perhaps influenced

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The Covenant Renewal: 34:1–28 The instructions for the covenant renewal are given by Yahweh to Moses in 34:1–3, after the successful negotiations regarding the deity’s future relationship with his people. Moses is to prepare two tablets of stone, on which will be inscribed the same content as before. This time, however, the people are to keep their distance. So Moses prepares the tablets and climbs the mountain the next morning with the two tablets of stone (v. 4). Then Yahweh descends on the mountain in the theophanic form of the column of cloud and proclaims the divine name, Yahweh, along with the deity’s attributes, with special emphasis on the theme of mercy and forgiveness (vv.  5–7). Moses’ immediate response is to bow his head to the ground in worship and then make his appeal once again for the deity to travel among them even though the people are “stiff-necked,” and as a merciful deity to pardon their sins and adopt them as his inheritance. Even though Moses was not party to the people’s sins, he still identifies with them in his appeal to “pardon our wrongdoing and our sin, and take us for your inheritance” (v.  9). As a response to this plea, Yahweh then declares that he will again make a covenant with the people and then predicts that he will do great deeds and marvels that will be witnessed by the peoples among whom they live as something quite awesome. This statement is a little puzzling because it could hardly refer to their present location in the desert, and those living in the promised land when they invade it could hardly be described after the invasion as those living among them. This seems to be a veiled allusion to J’s own time in which Yahweh will forgive the people’s sins, which led to their present condition, and liberate them from the Babylonian Exile. In the words of Second Isaiah, J’s contemporary, all the various peoples in Babylonia and beyond will be witness to this marvelous event of their great return to their homeland. The terms of the covenant laws follow in vv. 11–26, which is far shorter than the earlier covenant code in chaps. 21–23. In the period of the classical Documentary Hypothesis, this doubling was enough reason to see two different sources in the two law codes, the longer one attributed to E and this shorter one to J. That explanation has now been largely abandoned, and this shorter version of CC is simply meant to be a case of pars pro toto. The prologue in vv. 11–16 deals very much with a recapitulation of the themes in the epilogue of the earlier code in 23:20–33. Then the laws begin with a prohibition against molten images, which speaks directly to their violation of this first commandment. The second law in vv. 18–20 on the festival of unleavened bread and the redemption of the firstborn summarize the much longer treatment in 13:3–16. The laws in 13:21–26 are slightly different verby the account of Elijah at Horeb in 1 Kgs 19:9–13. The diversion in vv. 18–23 breaks the continuity between 33:17 and 34:1.

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sions of the Covenant Code laws in 23:12, 16–19. This emphasis on the Sabbath and festivals is of particular importance for those living in exile as ways to preserve their identity. The unit ends in a rather odd fashion in which Moses is commanded to write a version of the law, which is to correspond to the words just dictated as the covenant law (v. 27). But in v. 1, the deity says that he will himself inscribe the law and this version seems to be reflected in v. 28. 23 However, it is not unusual to have an inscribed copy of a treaty as the official version and a written version as an archival copy. These two versions are much more clearly indicated in chap. 24. Now what we would expect at just this point in the narrative is Moses’ return from the mountain and perhaps his deposit of these tablets in the ark, just as we have it in Deut 10:5. Instead, P has taken up the narrative and in his own terminology, referring to the “two tablets of the testimony,” which he cannot place in the ark because it is not yet made. From this point on, P inserts his own work from 34:29 to Num 10:28, which does considerable violence to the continuity of J’s work. Furthermore, it becomes clear that Exod 18, which deals with the visit of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, to Sinai, along with Moses’ family, originally stood before Num 10:29–32 and has been misplaced to its present location. Consequently, we will deal with it at this point in J’s story.

The Visit of Jethro to Sinai and the Origin of the Courts There are a number of indicators that suggest the unit in Exod 18 has been displaced from its original location. First, the union is said to have taken place in the desert of Sinai at the mountain of God. However, in the previous events in Exod 17 the people are still at Rephidim, and it is only in 19:2 that they move to Mount Sinai. Second, the departure of Moses’ father-in-law in 18:27 is very abrupt, whereas in Num 10:29–32 there is a long discussion about whether or not the father-in-law will travel with the Israelites or return home, without any appropriate conclusion such as that reflected in Exod 18:27. Third, the matter of adjudicating legal disputes in v. 16 seems to presuppose the Covenant Code as the basis of law in the community. Fourth, the parallel in Deut 1:9–18 also suggests the establishments of the courts at Horeb just before their departure, which would fit with Num 10:29–32 very well. The introduction to Jethro’s visit has been padded with unnecessary details by a later writer and originally read: “When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard about all what God had done for Moses and for Israel, and how Yahweh had brought Israel out of Egypt, he came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the desert where he was encamped at the 23.  The reference to the “ten words,” i.e., the Ten Commandments, is secondary.

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mountain of God” (18:1, 5*). The names and their explanations in vv. 3–4 are entirely out of place and belong to the time of their birth in Exod 2:22, where the birth of the first child and his naming is given, but not the second, although the explanation of his name, Eliezer (God is my help), as “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh,” refers to his successful flight to Midian. We need not be concerned here with the discussion about the displacement of these texts, except to note that unlike the stories of the patriarchs where the wives and the children play an important role in the stories, because the offspring relate directly to the matter of ethnic identity, the sons of Moses play no role whatever in the future J account. So, unlike the later kings of Israel, the sons of Moses are not his successors. That role is given to Joshua, who does not even belong to the same tribe. Likewise in J, Aaron has no children because he is not the first high priest, as in P, and therefore there is no succession to the office of the high priest in J. When Moses is informed that his family has arrived he greets his fatherin-law most cordially and recounts to him everything that has happened, attributing their great deliverance to Yahweh. This elicits from Jethro a confessional response: “Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all gods,” and as a priest of his people he offers a sacrifice in honor of the occasion to which were also invited Aaron and all of the elders of Israel (vv. 6–12). It is certainly significant that Aaron is not the one to officiate at this sacrifice. This again makes clear the fundamental difference between the Yahwist and the Priestly tradition. The unit in vv. 13–26 has to do with the establishment of the system of courts and judges on the basis of the Covenant Code. Moses’ father-in-law observes that Moses is overworked by trying to deal with three different tasks by himself. The first has to do with those persons who come out to the tent of meeting to “inquire of God” about some personal crisis and Moses must act as the mediator of divine direction for them. The second is the adjudication of legal disputes in which he must function as judge. The third is his role as the teacher of the “statutes of God,” which is clearly Moses’ primary role in Deuteronomy. As the senior leader and politician of his own people, Jethro undertakes to give his son-in-law some good advice in government. Moses is to select able persons from among the people and give them basic instruction in jurisprudence and then leave it to them to administer the law. All of this seems clear enough, except that the account introduces another organizational principle, that of appointing officers with different ranks commanding thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, which is clearly based on the military model and not the courts. How is one to account for this mixture of two quite different systems of leadership? The parallel to the account in Exod 18 is to be found in Deut 1:9–18. Here, Moses complains directly to God about the burden of his leadership, and

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it is the deity that now instructs Moses in what he is to do. Deuteronomy knows nothing about Jethro or Moses’ family. Moses is simply told to share the general task of leadership with wise and experienced representatives of the tribes, and he organizes them according to the military model of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens within each tribe. This is alongside and in addition to the administration of justice, which is already dealt with in the deuteronomic law in Deut 16:18–20 and 17:8–13, so that in Deut 1:16–17 the judges are merely told to do a good job, and if the case is too hard to decide, then they are to bring it to Moses for his decision . It is clear that J has used this text and combined there two different roles of leadership into one. As we shall see in Num 11, J uses a different occasion for appointing a shared leadership of the people. After the appointment of the judges, the J version originally continued in Num 10:29–32. In this unit, Moses tries to persuade his father-in-law to join them in their journey to the promised land, on which they are about to commence. But Jethro refuses the offer. This little unit, however, is not without some literary problems in its present form. Thus, why the name of Moses’ father-in-law should suddenly change from Jethro to Hobab, who was originally the ancestor of the Kenites, is not clear. 24 Unlike the Midianites, the Kenites who occupied a region in the northern Negev, adjacent to Judah, were thought to have migrated into the region at the same time as the Israelites under Moses, and this seems like an attempt to create this identity and to suggest that in fact Moses’ father-in-law did go with the Israelites and did not return to Midian. This, however, is certainly not the intention of J. It is even likely that vv. 29 and 31 constituted a single speech of Moses to which v. 30 was Jethro’s response, followed by Exod 18:27: “But he ( Jethro) said to him (Moses), ‘I will not go; I am going back to my own land and to my own kinfolk.’ So Moses bid his father-in-law goodbye, and he went back to his own country.” Nothing in the rest of J suggests that Jethro or the Midianites traveled with them or even settled in Palestine. This is a typical case of textual corruption. 24.  See Judg 4:11

Chapter 7

The Desert Journey from Sinai to Kadesh The journey from Sinai to Kadesh is structured in a manner that is very similar to that of the section between the Red Sea and Sinai, with an itinerary marking the larger regions through which they pass and the various places that were the occasion of particular “historic” events. As in the earlier section, the etiological explanations of a number of these places correspond to what happened to the Israelites at that place during their travels and serve as markers of their past history. Likewise similar to the earlier series of stories before Sinai, those in this section are also dominated by complaints, but while the earlier complaints were based on the critical needs of water and food, the complaints after Sinai border on rebellion, as reflected in the golden calf incident, and the divine response is often in the form of punishment and even a threat on their very existence, in which Moses must serve as intercessor on their behalf. Also highlighted at the very outset is the theme of divine guidance, since the theme was so prominent in the dialogue between Moses and the deity at Sinai. To this second desert itinerary we will now turn. 1

Divine Guidance on Route The travel arrangements from Sinai on route to their ultimate destination are set out by J very briefly and simply in Num 10:33–36, especially when compared with those of P in Num 10:11–28. The ark now takes on a significant role beyond being merely a repository for the tablets of the Covenant Code and assumes an importance corresponding to that of the messenger/ angel. In Deuteronomy, the ark is merely the container for the tablets of the law and is never spoken of as leading the people. In DtrH, however, especially in Joshua, the ark plays a significant role in the crossing of the Jordan and the invasion of the land, particularly at Jericho. It has the function of a military standard, which in its Assyrian form was surmounted by an image of the god and led the forces into battle. In fact, this next leg of the journey from Sinai to Kadesh is viewed as a march to the place from which 1.  For a more detailed study see my Life of Moses, 220–44.

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an attack will be made on the land of Canaan. Re-enforcing this notion of a divine vanguard is the reference to the column of cloud, which provides them protection, just as it did on their journey out of Egypt. And all of this is in conformity with the promises made to Moses at Sinai about the divine presence being with them and leading them on their journey. This military aspect is further strengthened by the war cries that are uttered by Moses at the outset of the march, and the welcome back at the end of the day’s march when the ark was placed again in the tent.

The Complaints and Rebellions after Sinai The complaint accounts in the group after Sinai have a fairly regular pattern which may be outlined as follows: 1. The people complain about their conditions in the desert or they rebel against Moses’ leadership. 2. Yahweh becomes angry and punishes the people 3. The people ask for help or forgiveness 4. Moses intervenes with intercession 5. The punishment is mitigated

This pattern can be illustrated very clearly by the example in the first instance after Sinai, in Num 11:1–3. The people complain to Yahweh about all their misfortunes. Yahweh then responds with fire that blazed out from Yahweh and reached to the edge of the camp. The people appeal to Moses, and Moses intercedes with the deity on their behalf and the fire recedes. This leads to the naming of that particular place as Taberah (“burning”), because Yahweh burned among them. The structure of the story is obvious and needs no further comment. This short piece, however, has considerable importance for another reason, as it relates to the current scholarly dispute over and J’s and P’s understanding of the Tent of Meeting and its location. As we have seen above, in J the Tent of Meeting is outside the camp and some distance from it, whereas in P it is in the very center of the camp. Recently, a number of scholars have argued that the P version is the original and the non-P ( J) version in Exod 33:7–11 is secondary and a later addition. If this non-P unit is earlier than P, then it must presuppose that the fire blazes out from the front of the Tent of Meeting some distance outside the camp and has only reached to the outer edge of the camp before Moses intervenes with his appeal to Yahweh. If, however, we are to assume that it is later that P as some suggest, then the reader must assume that the Tent of Meeting is at the very center of the camp so that when the fire blazes out from the tabernacle, as it sometimes does in P, and in this case reaches to the outer edges of the camp, then obviously the whole camp and everyone in it would be dead, which makes no sense. Even if one agrees that the author of this unit is the same as the one who composed the Tent of Meeting in Exod 33:7–11, he could not assume that

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a reader would make that connection if the massive account of P’s Tent of Meeting came between the two texts. All J references or allusions to the Tent of Meeting during this part of the wilderness journey simply assume without further clarification the location of the Tent of Meeting as outside the camp. Indeed, the obvious reason for J’s beginning with this simple little narrative is to emphasize the whole point of the earlier discussion about why the deity could not travel “in their midst” (Exod 33:3), so that the Tent of Meeting outside the camp was a compromise. The next example of a complaint (Num 11:4–34) is more complex and combines two themes within the one occasion. Not only do the people complain and grumble to Moses about their food, but Moses complains about the people’s grumbling, which is wearing him out. Some scholars want to see this as a combination of two different stories, but there is no agreement about how to separate them from each other and the language throughout is typical of J elsewhere, so it is best to view it as one composition. The story in outlined is as follows. The people start grumbling about their limited diet of manna and want to have a change of diet to include meat. They recall all of the wonderful food that they had in Egypt, as was their habit, and Moses hears about it. This invokes the anger of Yahweh that blazes out, presumably at the Tent of Meeting, but this time instead of intercession Moses laments his own fate at having to care for the people, as if he were a midwife. He just cannot handle all of these people and their complaints on his own. Yahweh in turn responds to both complaints at the same time. First, he promises to give Moses some help by the appointment of 70 elders selected by Moses, as a kind of Sanhedrin, who are going to be inducted into their new roles at the Tent of Meeting the next day. At the same time Yahweh promises that the people will also get their meat, enough for a whole month. Moses can scarcely believe this promise, but he passes on the news to the people. The next day he gathers the 70 elders around the Tent of Meeting, at which point the cloud descends and the deity distributes some of Moses’ spirit to them, and as evidence of this endowment the elders prophesied ecstatically. Two of the elders who had been chosen but had remained in the camp also began to prophesy, and Joshua reports this to Moses with some concern over this irregularity, but Moses puts his mind at ease about this matter. Regarding the divine supply of meat, Yahweh by means of a high wind diverts a massive migration of quail into the desert, which provides an ample supply of meat, but at the same time some of it goes bad and produces sickness, as a punishment for their grumbling. This leads to another placename etiology, Kibroth-hattaʾawah (“Graves of Craving”). As I noted earlier, the parallel text in Deut 1:9–18 combines into one occasion the appointments for both the administrative and the judicial functions of the state at one time. The Yahwist, on the other hand, separates them into two occasions, and we have already seen how he deals with the

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judiciary in the story of the visit from his father-in-law. Here, he makes the administrative and governing function the result of Moses’ complaint about his overwork. This takes up the theme of overwork from Deut 1:9–15 and the appointment of the governing group as an action taken entirely on Moses’ own initiative, and makes it the result of a particular occasion and a specially inaugurated divine institution. The leaders even receive the divine gift of wisdom comparable to that of the gift of prophesy. This goes well beyond the Dtn tradition. By contrast, P has no such “secular” institutions and places everything in the hands of the priesthood.

The Dispute by Miriam and Aaron over Prophetic Authority The dispute by Miriam and Aaron over prophetic authority in Num 12 is a rebellion against Moses of a different kind. The pretext for the dispute is the objection of brother and sister to Moses’ marriage to a Cushite woman, that is, a black African, although how this could have come about is never explained, and it has given rise to a number of later folktales on the subject. The response of Miriam and Aaron to this situation is not to address their sentiments on this issue directly but to question Moses’ exclusive role as Yahweh’s prophet. They want some share in his authority, even though he was by reputation a very modest person. 2 These sentiments anger the deity, and he demands that the three of them “come out to the Tent of Meeting,” and they do so. Once again this statement assumes that the Tent of Meeting is outside the camp and not in its center. The column of cloud then appears at the door of the tent, and Yahweh addresses Aaron and Miriam with a lecture on the distinctively intimate character of Moses’ role as spokesman for the deity, communicating “mouth to mouth,” as compared with prophecy in general. This description agrees with J’s previous statement about Yahweh speaking with Moses “face to face.” Moses’ role, however, goes beyond that of prophecy to include the care of Yahweh’s “house.” In Priestly terms, this would mean the temple with Aaron as the head of that “house,” but here it clearly means all the people as God’s household, of which Moses is the leader. That is a role that is not shared with Aaron or anyone else. When the cloud departs, Miriam is discovered to have leprosy, “as white as snow,” which must be a play on the criticism of Moses’ black-skinned wife. This leads Moses to intercede on Miriam’s behalf and the deity responds by assigning her to remain outside the camp for seven days and only then be allowed to return. Again, as in the previous episode, J is able to combine two different themes, one having to do with Moses’ prophetic authority in 2.  This remark about Moses’ modesty recalls the call of Moses in Exod 3–4 but also a comparison with Jeremiah, who must be the inspiration for this theme. See also the servant in Isa 53.

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comparison with all of the other forms of prophecy and the other the issue of racial prejudice, into a single episode in the journey. An itinerary notice precedes and follows the episode identifying the location as Hazeroth. From there, they move on to the region of the desert of Paran.

The Spy Story and the Abortive Invasion from the South The Spy Story of Num 13–14 is another account of rebellion with dire consequences for a whole generation of the population of Israelites, but it also belongs to the theme on the conquest of the promised land. It explains why the more direct assault on the land from the south had to be abandoned and a more circuitous route taken many years later around Edom and Moab, in order to attack the land of Canaan from the East. Unlike most of the rebellion stories that are lacking in Dtn, this one does appear in Deut 1:19–46 as part of Dtn’s conquest narrative and an important source for the J story, as we shall see. The literary analysis of the Spy Story is quite complex because P has chosen to intervene with a variety of additions, which only tend to muddle and confuse the basic narrative structure and dynamic of the account, and a few scholars have even attempted to reconstruct a P version that they view as the base text. However, the J and P styles and vocabulary are sufficiently distinct and separate that the result reveals a clearly discernible J base with typical P additions for ideological purposes. Furthermore, it is clear that J is building on Dtn as his source, whereas P’s additions owe nothing to Dtn and would need to have arisen as an entirely independent composition, which hardly seems likely. Consequently, in what follows I will depend on my own previously constructed J version of the story. 3 The Yahwist account of the Spy Story tells how Moses sent a group of the people’s leaders from Paran to view the land of Canaan and report on the occupants and their cities and its productivity, and bring back some samples of the produce. The spies leave on their mission and go as far as Hebron, and they bring back from the Valley of Eshcol a huge cluster of grapes (which gives rise to an etymological etiology of the name Eshcol), and some pomegranates and figs. The spies report back to the people, showing the evidence of great fruitfulness but at the same time warning about the strength of the inhabitants and the great size of their cities. To this description they add the exaggeration that the mythical giants, the descendants of Anak, live there. One of the spies, Caleb, tries to play down this negative report by urging an immediate assault on the land, but the others insisted that they are not 3.  The J text consists of Num 13:3, 17–20, 22–24, 26*, 27–28, 30–31; 14:1–4*, 11–25, 39–45, omitting “according to the command of Yahweh” in v. 3 and all references to “all the congregation” and “Aaron.” A detailed discussion of this literary analysis can be found in Life of Moses, 363–82. In excursus 3, pp. 136–139 below, I have given an outline of the basic problems in the literary comparison of these sources.

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strong enough to take the land. This leads to the people mourning their plight and complaining to Moses, demanding that they go back to Egypt, as they had so often before. Through all of this Moses remains silent. Then Yahweh speaks to Moses and threatens to destroy the people with disease and start again with Moses as the founder of a new nation. However, Moses intercedes on behalf of the people, using arguments familiar from the Golden Calf Story, as well as the deity’s own self-description about his nature to forgive his people’s transgressions. At this point, the deity withdraws his threat; nevertheless the whole generation who experienced the exodus and the desert wonders are condemned to die in the desert, with the exception of Caleb. When Moses reports these words to the people, they admit their mistake and prepare to assault the land. Moses warns that this action will be futile and he and the ark do not participate in the attack. The people do not heed Moses and they are defeated. As much as J follows the basic story line in Dtn, he makes some significant changes in order to have the story conform to his pattern of Moses as intercessor on behalf of the people to mitigate the divine judgment. This role of Moses as intercessor is entirely missing from Dtn, which has Moses as prophet admonish the people to obedience before the deity intervenes. When the divine judgment is pronounced, Moses is actually included with rest of the people as belonging to the generation that would not reach the promised land. Thus, Dtn is a source from which J feels completely at liberty to depart for his own literary and ideological purposes. As indicated in the excursus, 4 P’s additions and embellishments to J cause some confusion to the story line with little sensitivity to the narrative structure. At the end of J’s narrative in Num 14:45, there is a large addition by P in chap. 15 that has nothing to do with the broader context, so that it is not clear what the Israelites did next. If we look at the parallel in Dtn, there is a problem. In Deut 1:40, after Yahweh passes judgment on the people he tells them to proceed into the desert in the direction of the Red Sea. Instead, they make the abortive raid against the highlands and are defeated, just as we have it in J. However, this is followed by two contradictory statements; in the first, they remain in Kadesh for a long time (1:46), but in the second (2:1) they do as the deity instructed them and travel in the direction of the Red Sea and spend a long time wandering around Mount Seir, until they finally move north to begin the conquest of the land. If we suppose that the statement about staying a long time in Kadesh originally came at the end of Num 14, then this would make good sense of the location of events in Num 20 in which the Israelites are still in Kadesh and only subsequently set out at the end of the 40 years on the route toward the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aqaba). This statement about remaining in Kadesh 4.  See p. 139.

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was inserted into Dtn by a copyist to bring it in line with J. However, it was displaced by P in a somewhat altered form in Num 20:1b, and in its place we have a large block of additional P material (vv. 2–13). So we will assume that in J the people remained in Kadesh until all of the older generation died off.

The Revolt of Dathan and Abiram Buried within P’s addition from chaps. 15–19 is another instance of rebellion belonging to J, the only one during the whole 40 years that the people remained in Kadesh. The instigators of this rebellion against Moses’ leadership were Dathan and Abiram. Fortunately, there is a parallel reference to this in Deut 11:6, which gives us enough particulars that J’s version can be separated from the P additions in Num 16. Within a list of the many past wonders that Yahweh did for Israel in Deut 11:2–7 is included “what he [Yahweh] did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben; how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that accompanied them, in the sight of all Israel” (v. 6). Not only is that valuable for establishing the limits of the earlier text, but it makes quite clear that this is the earliest version of the text in Num 16, because it knows nothing about the figure of Korah, who, in the P version is the most important figure of the three rebels. And because it is widely recognized that the list of the deity’s great deeds in Deut 11:3–6 is a later addition to Dtn from the J source, one may safely conclude that J was the older composition in Num 16, and P the later addition. Using this information from Deut 11:6, we may reconstruct the J story as follows: Now Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben rebelled against Moses, along with a number of others of the Israelites. Then Moses sent to summon Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, but they replied, “We refuse to go. Is it so trivial a matter that you have taken us out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the desert that you now set yourself up as a prince over us? In addition, you have not brought us to any ‘land flowing with milk and honey,’ nor given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Do you think you can put one over on all of us? We will not respond to this summons.” This made Moses quite angry and he said to Yahweh, “Take no notice of their complaint, I have not taken even a single ass from them and I have harmed none of them.” So Moses got up and went to Dathan and Abiram, accompanied by the elders of Israel. Dathan and Abiram appeared and stood at the entrance to their tents, together with their families. Then Moses said, “Let this be the proof that Yahweh has enlisted me to do what I have done and that it was not my own choice. If you and all your men die a natural death or experience the same fate as everyone else, then Yahweh has not sent me. But if Yahweh does something entirely unusual and the ground opens up its mouth and swallows them all, and they descend into the netherworld, then you will know

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that these men have held Yahweh in contempt.” As soon as he had uttered these words, the ground split open beneath them, the earth “opened its mouth and swallowed them whole” with their households. So they and all who belonged to then went down into the netherworld alive, and the earth closed over them. . . . The Israelites who witnessed the event fled at their cries, shouting, “Look out! Let’s not get swallowed also.”

In contrast to the much larger P context, which shifts the concern of the narrative in a different direction, this short J episode fits very well with the themes and concerns of the previous J examples of the rebellion motif. The one significant departure in this case is that there is no intercession on behalf of the guilty party, for obvious reasons, because it is a personal attack on Moses’ authority. Thus, it is most appropriate that this rebellion originally followed the rebellion in Num 13–14 and Moses’ refusal in the end to lead the people in an assault on Canaan, the “land flowing with milk and honey.” At the same time, the rebels again make comparison with Egypt and how good things were there, even calling it a “land flowing with milk and honey.” The elders who have been especially endowed with the spirit in Num 11:24–25 are here presented alongside Moses. The vocabulary used throughout is also characteristic of J. At the same time, it is important that one other feature regularly used as a structuring devise in J is missing and that is the itinerary or place name and its etiology in connection with this event. But even here J is quite consistent, because this happened during the 40 years they were at Kadesh, so an itinerary notice would have been inappropriate. Finally, a brief remark can be made here on J’s use of sources in the shaping of his narrative. The theme of a challenge to authority, both prophetic and political, can be found in other biblical literature, and both are appropriate to the single figure of Moses. As noted earlier, especially in the call narrative and in his role as intercessor, Moses is very similar to Jeremiah. It is significant, therefore, that in Jer 18:19–23, Jeremiah speaks about how in the past he interceded on behalf of the people, but now these same people want to do him harm. So he pleads with the deity not to forgive them but to administer divine wrath on them. Another figure, Samuel, who is both prophet and leader, is faced with a demand for a change in the form of leadership to that of a king (1 Sam 8). After appointing Saul as king, he then asks the people to bring forward their complaints against him and his leadership: “Whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken? Whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? (1 Sam 12:3)” It is clear that J has made use of these literary resources in a creative way to construct his portrayal of Moses.

Chapter 8

The Final Push: From Kadesh to the Jordan River Miriam’s Death and Burial The final stage of the journey after the 40 years in Kadesh begins in Num 20:1. However, P introduces this stage in a very curious way: “The Israelites, the whole congregation, came into the desert of Zin in the first month” (v. 1a). The desert of Zin is P’s exclusive terminology for the region in which Kadesh is located (cf. Num 13:21) and the location in which the story of the failed southern assault takes place, and there is no indication in P or J that they ever moved from this location for the next 40 years, so this itinerary notice makes no sense. Nor does it help to be told that this movement happened in the “first month” without indicating the year. As I indicated earlier, J’s statement in v. 1b, “the people stayed in Kadesh [many days]” (cf. Deut 1:46), was probably displaced by P to its present location and prompted his rather confusing itinerary remark. The statement that Miriam died there has often been attributed to P for no good reason, because P otherwise completely ignores Miriam. She is mentioned previously more than once in J and the death notice certainly belongs to this source. J, however, gives no indication when during the long stay in Kadesh this death and burial took place.

The Detour around Edom After a long interruption in the narrative by P, J then begins his account of the final push from Kadesh toward the promised land. 1 For this purpose, J has a valuable source in Deut 2–3, which he uses in a very creative way, as we shall see. To begin this final march toward the promised land, not directly north as in the first attempt, but by a long circuitous route through Transjordan, they must first deal with Edom. Instead of planning an attack against Edom, they send a delegation to negotiate a peaceful passage through the region (Num 20:14–21). Moses addresses the king of Edom: “Thus says your brother Israel.” This is recognition of the fact that their ancestor Esau was the brother of Jacob/Israel. After a brief historical recollection of their history 1.  For more detailed discussion see Life of Moses, 386–93.

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from the time of the patriarchs, the sojourn in Egypt, and the exodus, aided by the angel of Yahweh, they are finally at the edge of Edomite territory. They now request peaceful passage through their region by the King’s Highway. They are, however, refused passage and threatened with military resistance if they make any attempt to do so. This means that the Israelites, instead of going through Edom, must now set out on the long circuitous route around Mount Seir, the homeland of Edom, before heading north again. If we look at the parallel earlier version in Deut 2:1–8, we find a very different arrangement of events. First, it would appear that following the divine command in 1:40 to proceed into the desert in the direction of the Red Sea (Gulf of Aqaba) on the Arabah road, and after their initial disobedience, they spend the next 40 years wandering in the desert around Mount Seir, the homeland of the Edomites. Finally, they are permitted by God to go through the land of the Edomites, their kinsmen, who will not oppose them because they are afraid of the Israelites. Instead, the Israelites will traverse the region peacefully and pay for whatever food and drink they use. J has completely reversed this order of the march. Starting from one fixed location—Kadesh—instead of going northeast through Edom, they need to take the Red Sea road south around Mount Seir. The first place they stop on this long detour is Mount Hor (Num 20:22–23*), which originally read, “They journeyed from Kadesh and the Israelites came to Mount Hor on the border of the land of Edom.” This was likely followed by a simple death notice: “and Aaron died there [and was buried] on the top of the mountain” similar to the notice for Miriam in 20:1b. This was greatly embellished by P, because as the first ancestor of the office of high priest, Aaron was the equal of Moses. After the death of Aaron on Mount Hor, J continues the itinerary of the detour in 21:4: “From Mount Hor they set out in the direction of the Red Sea, to avoid the land of Edom; and the people became impatient with this route.” This leads to yet another revolt with complaints against God and Moses very similar to those in the earlier revolts. The response of the deity is to send “poisonous snakes” that bite the people and cause many deaths. Once again, after the people admit their wrongdoing, Moses intercedes and Yahweh has Moses erect a bronze image of such a snake and mount it on a pole, and those who looked to the pole were cured. This looks like an etiology of just such a snake image that was kept in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kgs 18:4). This episode has no counterpart in Deuteronomy. The itinerary in J, consisting of the short statements in 21:12–13, takes the people north again around the eastern side of Edom and Moab and up to the northern border of Moab, the edge of the Amorite kingdom of Heshbon. This route has been greatly embellished by later additions in vv. 10–11, 14–20. In Dtn, the route takes Israel again through friendly territory in Moab (Deut 2:16–19), just as it did in Edom. There is, however, a third source that

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is most important for its contribution to understanding the differences between these two itineraries. In the story of Jephthah in Judg 11, there is a bitter territorial dispute between Israel and the Ammonites over the rights to the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok rivers. The king of the Ammonites makes the claim, “Israel, when it came from Egypt took control of our land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan. It is time to restore it peacefully.” Jephthah’s response is a detailed account of the itinerary from Egypt onward, with particular focus on the route from Kadesh. He indicates that from Kadesh they sent messengers to both Edom and Moab requesting safe passage through their territories, but they were refused by both. Consequently, they went through the desert around both Edom and Moab and arrived on the east side of Moab north of the Arnon. In contrast to Dtn, Jephthah insists that at no time did they violate Moab territory. What seems clear, at least to me, is that J has this basic itinerary structure in mind, into which he then fits his additional episodes of Aaron’s death on Mount Hor and the story about the poisonous snakes on the desert route around Edom.

The War against the Amorites of Transjordan What follows in J after the journey around Edom and Moab is a war with Sihon, king of Heshbon and a second battle against Og of Bashan, both kings of the Amorites. 2 The first of these has two parallel versions, one in Dtn and the other in the story of Jephthah, while the second battle is paralleled only in Dtn. Let me start with a few remarks on J’s account on the Sihon and Og campaigns in Num 21:21–31 and 33–35. We are told that Israel sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites, with a request to pass through his land peacefully, as in the case of Edom, but he refused and marched out to Jahaz for a battle there, and Israel was victorious and took all of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the border of the Ammonites. They also captured all of the cities of the Amorites, especially Heshbon. Now what is striking in this account of the first campaign is that nothing is said about either Moses or the deity issuing any instructions. It is “Israel” that is in charge of the whole campaign. However, when one comes to the much shorter account of the campaign against Og, king of Bashan, then it is Yahweh who instructs and encourages Moses to victory and the subject “Israel” is not explicitly mentioned once! Another curious feature of the account is the detail with which it describes the extent of the conquest, not only in the taking of all of Sihon’s land, but the political boundaries of the region, as well as the conquest of all of the cities in it. However, it adds the comment that Israel settled in all of these cities, in v. 25, and again in v. 31: “Thus Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites.” Such statements, however, are quite premature, because the 2.  Life of Moses, 393–404.

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whole campaign, which includes the land west of the Jordan River is far from over. The campaign against Bashan merely states that they took possession of Og’s land, without further details. The Dtn account of the Sihon campaign in Deut 2:24–37 corresponds closely in its basic details with those of J, but the whole atmosphere and perspective are entirely different. It is the deity through Moses, who is in charge of the events, and divine intervention is the sole reason for the great victory. There is a very strong emphasis on the capture and destruction of all the cities from Aroer to Gilead. Throughout Dtn’s account, the term Israel is not used once. The same pattern is used by Dtn in the conquest of Bashan and it is this form of the story that is followed quite closely in J’s version of the Bashan campaign, so it is clear that Dtn is the sole source that J had for this part of his narrative. Turning to the Jephthah summary of the Sihon campaign in Judg 11:19– 22, one is struck with an almost verbatim version of the account in J, in which “Israel” is the subject rather than Moses. There is an acknowledgment of divine aid by Yahweh, the god of Israel (v. 21), as in Dtn, and this is used by Jephthah in a special way to make comparison with Chemosh, the god of the Ammonites, but this is not J’s concern and so he omits it. The central issue for Jephthah, as noted above, is the territorial dispute with Ammon, and so he emphasizes the conquest of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the fact that they settled in it and have held that land for 300 years. Consequently, in making use of the Jephthah story as a source, J has taken over this detail about the territorial borders and the settling of this whole region and has added it to Dtn’s focus on the conquest of cities. When it comes to a matter of deciding on the direction of literary dependence of one source on another, if there are two versions of a particular event that represent different perspectives on that event, as in Dtn and Judg 11, and a third version reflects a combination of both versions, as in the case of J, then the third version must be the latest of the three. This observation is further confirmed by the fact that, because J has only one source for the Bashan campaign, his treatment of this episode is much closer to that of Dtn, albeit in a much abbreviated form. In addition to the two campaigns of Sihon and Og, J includes a very brief account of a third conquest, that of Jazer, v. 32, which is situated midway between the other two campaigns, even though Jazer was on the northern edge of Sihon’s domain (v. 24). In the Jazer campaign, J introduces a different element not found in the others, that of military spies. The most remarkable feature of J’s account, however, is the incorporation of a long poem into it, which has only a very loose connection to the event in which it is placed. The source for this poem is Jer 48:45–46, one of a series of dirges, having to do with the destruction of the northern part of the Kingdom of Moab in the prophet’s own time, in the late 7th or early 6th century,

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and probably related to the expansion of the Ammonites into this region at this time. The dirge reports that “a fire went forth from Heshbon, a flame from the district of Sihon,” meaning that the devastation began in Heshbon and spread perhaps to the Arnon Valley. However, J construed the poem to refer to Sihon as the founder of the city of Heshbon and the cause of Moab’s loss of this northern region to Sihon, as an Amorite king, who was then subsequently defeated by the Israelites. This was J’s ingenious reinterpretation of the Jeremiah dirge that originally had nothing to do with the time of Moses. In order to support his interpretation, J had to make a few adjustments to the poem, so that when it speaks about Moab’s sons and daughters having been taken captive, he adds the phrase “to the king of the Amorites, Sihon.” The Yahwist was not a poet, but if he thought that such a poem contained a fragment of ancient history, then he tried to make use of it. At the end of the Israelite victory over Og, king of Bashan at Edrei, the Israelites took possession of his land (Num 21:33–35). However, this statement of land possession in J is quite incomplete, because the kingdom of Bashan is a large region but only one battle is specified, that of Edrei, whereas Dtn goes into considerable detail about the 60 cities that were taken subsequent to the battle of Edrei, in order to secure this region. Likewise, in Dtn the statement about the land possession introduces the specific grant of the land in Transjordan to some of the tribes (Deut 3:1–17). J, on the other hand, makes a break in the narrative at this point and postpones his treatment of land distribution to a later point in his narrative. He merely states that the Israelites set out (from some undisclosed point) and encamped in the “Plains of Moab” on the east side of the Jordan opposite Jericho. This location is clearly meant to anticipate the crossing of the Jordan under the command of Joshua at a point opposite Jericho ( Josh 3–4).

The Story of Balaam: Numbers 22–24 Between the conquest of the kingdom of Bashan and the distribution of the Transjordanian lands to the eastern tribes, J has placed his relatively lengthy Story of Balaam. This story in Num 22–24 is not an addition by a later writer but a carefully crafted literary work exhibiting many of J’s cherished themes, which may be found in the earlier narrative of his history. There are, however, a couple of small additions that interrupt the narrative, but these can be easily isolated from the larger work. These three chapters have invited a great deal of critical and not-so-critical study, which need not detain us here. 3 There was a time in the mid-20th century during the Albright era of 3. See my Life of Moses, 405–35. Two studies that deserve special notice are: H. Rouillard, La periscope de Balaam (Nombres 22–24): La prose et les ‘oracles’ (Études bibliques 4; Paris: Gabalda,1985); and S. Timm, Moab zwischen den Machten: Studien zu historischen Denkmalern und Texten (ÄAT 17; Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1989) 62–96.

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biblical scholarship when this story and the poetic oracles that it contained were regarded as relics from the 13th–12th centuries b.c.e., but this viewpoint was completely undermined when a plaster inscription was found at an archaeological site in the Jordan Valley in Transjordan, dating to the 8th century b.c.e., which told about a certain seer named Balaam son of Beor. This is exactly the same name as in the biblical text, while the content of the inscription is entirely different, as are the deities that this Balaam served. Nevertheless, it is clear that this figure was sufficiently famous in the region for receiving nocturnal visions from the gods, so that his name could be borrowed by J for this purpose. What is particularly remarkable is that J should select this foreign Ammonite seer as the completely obedient messenger of Yahweh, who delivers his oracles to a Moabite monarch. Let me briefly outline the Story of Balaam. When Balak, the king of Moab, and his people witness the great success that the Israelites achieved against the Amorite kingdoms, they become quite fearful of this new power in their midst. The king and the elders of Moab 4 decide to enlist the help of the seer, Balaam son of Beor from the land of Amaw (in Aram?). They want him to come and put a curse on Israel, because he is famous for his blessing and cursing. They are also willing to pay him handsomely for his efforts. When they arrive with their request, Balaam has them lodge the night while he consults Yahweh. When he lays out the delegates’ request to God, Balaam is told to refuse and send them home again, which he does. When they return home, Balak rejects this response and sends another larger delegation, promising an even bigger fee, but Balaam flatly turns it down. Nevertheless, he has them stay the night, but this time God tells him to return with the delegation, but to say only what he is instructed to say. At this point J’s story is interrupted with an addition—the episode of the talking ass. In spite of the explicit statement in 22:20, in which Balaam is told by God to go with the men who have come for him, the unit in vv. 21– 35a suggests that God was angry with him because he went with the men and so he sends an angel with a drawn sword to prevent Balaam from going further. However, only the ass can see the angel and so the ass will not proceed, which leads to Balaam repeatedly beating the ass, until the deity makes it possible for the ass to speak and defend his action as the one that saved Balaam’s life. At this point, Yahweh allows Balaam to see the angel with the drawn sword, and the angel reprimands Balaam, who admits his sin. He then receives exactly the same command that was given to him in v. 20, to proceed with the men but to say only what he is told to say. In terms of the larger narrative, this episode accomplishes nothing. Its whole conception of the angel of Yahweh is entirely different from that in the rest of J. Its only 4.  The references to the “elders of Midian” in vv. 4 and 7 are late intrusions into the text, in keeping with P’s vilification of the Midianites in chap. 25. Moses’ dealings with the Midianites are entirely otherwise.

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intent is to vilify Balaam as a disobedient seer who is not capable of having visions and cannot even see what the ass could see. 5 Once one brackets this episode, then the role of Balaam is entirely consistent as a completely obedient spokesman for Yahweh, and the statement in v. 35b: “So Balaam went with the princes of Balak,” continues directly from v. 20 and leads into the meeting between Balak and Balaam in v. 36. After the rendezvous of the seer and the king, Balaam warns Balak that he can only speak the words that Yahweh puts in his mouth. This is followed by a banquet in Balaam’s honor. The next day, Balak takes Balaam to a location where he can view the Israelite encampment and after sacrificing seven bulls and seven rams on seven altars, Balaam receives the word of God “in Balaam’s mouth” and he utters his oracle. This procedure is followed three times, from three different locations, producing three oracles, each of which amounts to a blessing rather than a cursing of the Israelites, much to the chagrin of Balak. Each of the oracles is in the form of a prophetic poem. After the third oracle, Balak decides that this is enough, and this ends the arrangement. 6 However, a fourth oracle has been added that deals with a vision of the future (24:14–24), and apart from some repetition of the oracle’s introduction with that of the third oracle, the format and substance is quite different and is very likely a later addition, as frequently happens in prophetic literature. After 24:13, the original J version ends in v. 25. 7 The Story of Balaam, and particularly the oracles, highlights a number of themes that are typical of J’s history, a few of which may be noted here. 8 The first oracle begins with the theme of blessing and cursing, which underlies the story as a whole, but this is also the basic theme of the patriarchal promises in J (Gen 12:1–3), and closely coupled with this is the promise of numerous progeny, which is now fulfilled in the countless “dust of Jacob” (23:10; cf. Gen 13:16). It was fulfillment of this patriarchal promise that so threatened first the king of Egypt, in Exod 1, and then the king of Moab. Balaam’s oracle also describes Israel as “a people dwelling alone, and not counting themselves as within/part of the nations” (23:9). For someone living in exile, this could point to the hope of being once again an independent state, but it could also suggest the retention of their identity as over against the nations (goyim). This distinctiveness is likewise expressed elsewhere in J in Exod 19:5–6 as God’s “personal possession among the peoples” and “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” and a people “distinct . . . from all other people who are on the face of the earth” (Exod 33:16). 5.  There were a number of other post-J attempts to vilify Balaam: Num 31:8, 16; Deut 23:5.6 (all P). 6.  Note that, throughout, each episode is marked by a place-name in the style of J’s itineraries. Thus, on the three successive occasions at which Balaam utters his oracles, each is identified by a different location. 7.  The J version therefore in contained in Num 22:1–20, 35b–41; chap. 23; 24:1–13, 25. 8.  For more detail see Life of Moses, 428–35.

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In the second oracle, in addition to the theme of blessing and cursing, there is a special emphasis on the divine presence among his people as exemplified in their deliverance from Egypt, and this presence makes them invincible. This oracle at the outset in 23:19 and in v. 23 uses the generic term God, ʾel, with the meaning of the one universal and creator deity, and as an alternative for Yahweh. This is otherwise quite rare, but we have seen it in use elsewhere in J in the Jacob story, and in J’s contemporary in Second Isaiah. 9 This shared usage in the period of the Babylonian exile is significant because in the royal inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian period the kings sometimes refer to their principle deity simply as ilum, “god,” the direct equivalent of ʾel, as an alternative designation for the deity. The third oracle (24:3–9) focuses on a prophetic vision of the promised land, with its lush vegetation and future kingdom. The divine deliverance in the exodus is repeated, but the focus is now on the anticipated success of the conquest. It ends again on the note of blessing and cursing with the Israelites as the object: “Blessed be those who bless you, but cursed be those who curse you,” which relate both to the framework of the story itself, but also recalls the divine promise to Abraham in Gen 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.” There is no reason to doubt that both texts are the common handiwork of J. The Story of Balaam ends on the same note with Balak angrily accusing Balaam: “I summoned you to curse my enemies, and look, you have now blessed them three times. So go home and be quick about it.” Balaam replies by reminding him that he had warned him at the outset, that he could only say what Yahweh had told him to say. And with that, they parted and Balaam went home to Aram. 10

Land Distribution to the Eastern Tribes The last large narrative unit by J, in Num 32, has to do with the distribution of the land taken from the Amorites east of the Jordan to be divided among the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh. 11 In Dtn, this distribution comes, in Deut 3:12–20, directly after the conquest of this region, and this is the primary source for J’s account. However, J has separated the conquest of Transjordan from its distribution to the tribes by the inclusion of the Story of Balaam, and this allows J some freedom in making significant changes in his presentation of this episode. Before making a comparison between J and Dtn, let me outline the main features of the J account. 9.  Gen 31:13; 35:1, 3:4–6:3; cf. Isa 42:5; 43:12; 46:12. 10. The suggestion by P in Num 31:8, 16 that Balaam remained in the area to cause trouble for the Israelites and was responsible for the people’s deviation from the worship of Yahweh is to contradict J completely and vilify the figure of Balaam. 11. See my Life of Moses, 436–50.

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As we have seen in several other places in J, P has made some embellishments to the unit in Numbers, which may be easily identified. Because the large P addition that precedes J’s narrative contains numerous references to Eleazer the priest (who succeeded his father Aaron) alongside Moses, P has interpolated these references to Eleazer into the text in 32:2, 28. 12 There is also an obvious doublet in vv. 10–12 (P) with v. 13 ( J), in which P’s remarks follow closely, in abbreviated form, the interpolation that he made in the Spy Story in Num 14:26–35. Excluding these P texts yields the J text: Num 32:1–9, 13–42. In this version, the Reubenites and Gadites, who had taken a large number of cattle as booty, approached Moses with a request to be allowed to take possession of all the land in the former domain of Heshbon and Jazer, south of the Jabbok, and forego having to cross the Jordan into the promised land. This proposal was not well received by Moses because it would be unfair for them not to take part in the whole expedition, and it would only discourage the rest of the tribes from entering the promised land, as happened at Kadesh in the time of their fathers. Then Yahweh would punish the people as he did formerly. The response of the two tribes was to suggest that they be permitted to construct temporary shelters for their livestock and allow their dependents to occupy the fortified cities for their protection while their armies join the rest of the tribal forces in crossing the Jordan. Only when the land west of the Jordan has been completely subdued will they return to Transjordan. Moses agrees to these terms and parcels out the land east of the Jordan. However, in addition to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, the half-tribe of Manasseh is also included 13 and receives his portion in the region of the former kingdom of Bashan, north of the Jabbok. Furthermore, in the case of the Manasseh tribe, the narrative suggests that the process of occupation was spread over a much longer period, with individual tribal units involved in conquest rather than the whole Israelite army. The parallel account in Deut 3:12–20 is a much shorter and simpler statement of the land distribution in Transjordan so that one can see that J has taken considerable liberties with his source. In Dtn, it is Moses who takes the initiative in assigning the territory east of the Jordan to the various tribal units of that region, without any prior request on their part. This distribution begins in the northern region with Machir, a sub-unit of Manasseh, and proceeds south to the Reubenites and Gadites with the outlines of the regions occupied, and ends at the Jordan opposite Jericho. Only after this distribution does Moses instruct these tribes in their obligations to participate in the conquest of the land west of the Jordan. In the meantime, their families 12.  The P additions in v. 2 are “and to Eleazar the priest and the leaders of the congregation,” and in v. 28, “to Eleazar the priest . . . and to the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of Israel.” 13.  It would hardly do for the tribe of Manasseh to be part of the initial request, because half the tribe would receive their allotment on the west side of the Jordan.

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may occupy all of the cities that have been taken. For Dtn, there is no threat from the inhabitants, because the land that they occupy is now empty of the former population. Throughout the Dtn account, the leaders of these tribes say nothing to Moses. Furthermore, in Josh 1:12–18, Joshua reminds them of Moses’ words to which they solemnly vow to obey, but there is no hint that this was a matter of mutual agreement between them and Moses. For Dtn, it is a matter of a monologue in which absolute obedience to the command of Moses is required with dire consequences for disobedience. In the case of J, this matter is turned into a dialogue between the two parties in which both points of view are presented and a negotiated settlement is reached. Indeed, the same contrast of monologue in Dtn in contrast to dialogue in J can be said for much of the larger works of both authors. The fundamental premise of Dtn is the pronouncement of divine commandments issued directly at Horeb or mediated through Moses, which demand complete obedience and threaten dire consequences for disobedience. By contrast, throughout the Yahwist, there is constant dialogue and negotiation, whether it is Abraham and Yahweh over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the dialogue between Yahweh and Moses in the call narrative, or between Moses and Pharaoh, or Moses’ distinctive role as mediator and intercessor on Israel’s behalf. 14 It should, therefore, not be too surprising that Second Isaiah, J’s contemporary, could be characterized as a prophet of dialogue between the deity and his people, in contrast to the prior prophets of divine judgment. The Babylonian Exile was just such an environment for serious dialogue about the Jews’ past, their future, and their relationship with the deity. And in this dialogue the Yahwist played a major role.

The Installation of Joshua and the Death of Moses The ending of J does not appear in Numbers because J’s history was never intended to be a work separate from what follows in Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. 15 Dtn represents a first-person recapitulation of the past by Moses up to his handing over of all the laws in the “land of Moab” at the end of his life. At this point, there is a significant shift to the narrative present, which recounts the final moments of Moses’ life (Deut 31, 34). Moses relinquishes his leadership role to Joshua with words of admonition in Deut 31:7–8, and it is also at this point that J intervenes in the text with his own special induction ceremony vv. 14–15, 23. The text states: Yahweh said to Moses, “The time of your death approaches. Summon Joshua and present yourselves in the Tent of Meeting, that I may 14.  There is also nothing of this in P, which is quite intolerant of any deviation from sacred and cultic laws. P’s way of dealing with human frailty is through the formal mechanism of the cult, which plays virtually no role in J at all. 15.  On this unit, see Life of Moses, 451–56.

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commission him.” So Moses and Joshua went and took their place in the Tent of Meeting. Yahweh then appeared in a column of cloud, and the column of cloud stood at the entrance to the tent. Thus Yahweh commissioned Joshua the son of Nun, saying, “Be strong and courageous. You will indeed bring the Israelites into the land that I swore under oath to give them. I will be with you.”

This is clearly the work of J. It follows quite precisely the basic format for the Tent of Meeting that is laid out in Exod 33:7–11 and in the induction of the 70 elders in Num 11:16–17, 24–25. It also confirms in the clearest way the intended relationship of J’s history to that of Dtn and the subsequent history in Joshua. Furthermore, J has been careful to make it clear throughout his work that Joshua was always the intended successor to Moses. Because Joshua was never party to any of the acts of rebellion, as was Aaron, he was thus the ideal person to lead the people forward. The account of Moses’ death is contained in Deut 34, but this narrative is not the product of a single author. It is clear from Deut 3:27, which anticipates Moses’ ascent of Mount Pisgah and his viewing of the promised land, that the basic version of the narrative in chap. 34 was that of the original Dtn. This was intended to come right after the commissioning of Joshua. In similar fashion, J built on Dtn’s version with his own additions. P also adds to the combined version of Dtn and J, as suggested by P’s anticipation of the event in Deut 32:48–52. The exact division of these three sources has long been a matter of debate, which need not detain us here. I will merely give my own solution to the problem of source division. The Dtn version originally had the statement, “Moses ascended to the top of Pisgah, and Yahweh showed him the entire region from the River of Egypt as far as the great river, the River Euphrates and as far as the western sea.” 16 At this point, J inserts a reference to the patriarchal promises: “Yahweh said to him, ‘This is the land about which I made the solemn oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not enter it.’” This language fits very well the corresponding language of the oath in J’s Abrahamic covenant in Gen 15. The Dtn version resumes in vv. 5–6, recording Moses’ death and burial. The text in v. 6a should read, “and they buried him,” not the singular; this was not a case of the deity serving as undertaker. The statement, “Nobody knows the location of his burial to this day,” may be a later addition. The age of Moses at his death belongs to Dtn but the remark about Moses’ vigor being unabated (as a contrast with Isaac in Gen 27) may be J’s addition, as is the statement about the mourning in v. 8. P, however, adds his own ret16.  This version of the land in vv. 1b follows the Samaritan Pentateuch; cf. Deut 1:7. The present Hebrew text, used in most modern translations, is a later corruption, using tribal names that make no sense before the invasion and distribution of the land.

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rospective version of Joshua’s commissioning by the laying on of hands by Moses in v. 9, quite distinct from J’s earlier version. J then briefly sums up the career of Moses as a great prophet and leader, which serves at the same time as his own summary of this major portion of his history.

Chapter 9

Observations on J’s Sources, Literary Techniques, and Ideological Perspective The Yahwist and His Sources The question of J’s sources and the way in which he used them lies at the heart of the current debates about the nature of this non-P corpus of texts and its relationship to both Dtn and P. This discussion goes back at least to the time of W. M. L. de Wette, 1 and it has never been resolved to the point of consensus within the field of pentateuchal studies. On the contrary, the gaps in viewpoints are as wide as ever. Hence, the summary that follows is my own understanding of this issue. It has long been acknowledged that the sources used for the composition of Genesis are quite different from those used in Exodus–Numbers, and within Genesis itself those that lie behind the Primeval History are quite different from those used for the patriarchal stories. From this observation, however, it does not follow that J could not have made use of all three types of sources to create his comprehensive history from Adam to Moses. The very nature of antiquarian historiography was to do just that, to go from the primeval origin of a people or nation to the more recent past. For convenience, however, we will look at each of these three time periods separately. Throughout my survey of J’s history I have tried to indicate what I believe to be the sources for this work, so that in what follows I will merely summarize these results. There was among the Phoenicians a large corpus of texts about Primeval History, duly acknowledged by the Greeks, but poorly preserved except in very summary form by classical scholars such as Eusebius. Nevertheless, this advanced “Canaanite” civilization, with strong connections to both the Greek and the Egyptian worlds, certainly had an impact on the hinterland of Israel and Judah as well. One of the Phoenician traditions had to do with culture heroes and the origins of trades and crafts, including that of agriculture 1.  W. M. L. de Wette, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (2 vols. Halle: Schimmelpfennig, 1806–7). See my remarks on de Wette in The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor”in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 205–15.

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and the cultivation of fruit trees by the original pair of humans. 2 In J, Adam is the first gardener and Cain also a tiller of the soil, while hapless Abel is the first shepherd. The descendants of Cain are noted as the originators of various skills and occupations. In Ezek 28:12–19, there is suggested a Phoenician myth about the primeval king who lived in Eden, the garden of God, which was on a sacred mountain. He lived there among the cherubim, until he was expelled because of some sin. It would appear that J combined this Tyrian myth about Eden with the theme of culture heroes and then relocated them in a Mesopotamian context. The marriage of the sons of the gods with human women, in Gen 6:1–4, is attested in The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, a large segmented genealogy of Greek heroes and ancestors. The subsequent stories of the flood (chaps. 6–8) and the tower of Babel (11:1–9) are heavily dependent on literary exemplars from the Babylonian tradition. The Table of Nations in J (Gen 10) strongly reflects the Eastern Mediterranean tradition of elaborate segmented genealogies of ancestors of all the various peoples and places of the region, as in the Catalogue of Women mentioned above. These genealogical tables, which often contain anecdotes associated with the various ancestors, called geneologiai in the Greek tradition, are the direct equivalent of the Hebrew toledot. The geneologiai had their origins in the 8th century and gave rise to an early form of antiquarian historiography under this same rubric. 3 In sharp contrast to this are the linear genealogies of Mesopotamian king lists and dynastic succession, the preferred form of P. The sources for the patriarchal tradition are obviously much different from the foreign sources evident in the Primeval History, being confined to the traditions of the Israelites themselves. There was the local Judean tradition of Abraham and his claim to possession of the land (Ezek 33:24), probably connected with the vicinity of Hebron, and also a corresponding story about Judah and his offspring, Gen 38. Neither of these two traditions had any original connection with the northern tribes of Israel. 4 Similarly, the northern story of Jacob that is reflected in Hosea 12 lies behind J’s development of this theme and one can often still identify the basic components of this tradition and J’s distinctive elaborations of it for his own thematic purposes. All of these patriarchal traditions were arranged in sequence by J and connected by means of genealogical succession, in the manner of a genealogiai. This genealogical structure was combined with another primitive historiographic structure, namely, that of the itinerary associated with ancestral migrations and the colonization of foreign lands. The initial migration of 2. See my Prologue to History, 83–86. 3.  For a full discussion of the early Greek and foreign genealogical tables, see West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. West also includes the biblical Table of Nations within this category, pp. 11–17. See also my Prologue to History, 86–99. 4.  Note also the derogatory aboriginal origin for Jerusalem and descended from Hittite and Amorite ancestors in Ezek 16:3.

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Abraham’s family from Ur of the Chaldeans to Harran reflects J’s own exilic setting for particular ideological purposes. The Joseph story was of northern Israelite origin, a self-contained novella about a Hebrew lad who rose from slavery to become second in command to the Pharaoh of Egypt. It was taken up and revised by J to fit his purpose as an explanation for how the household of Jacob migrated to Egypt and grew into a large people there. For a long time, scholars viewed J as merely a collector or editor of preexisting folktales and traditions, with little of his own originality in the collection that he produced. This is to seriously misunderstand the character of ancient antiquarian historiography, in which diverse materials from very different contexts are brought together, rewritten, arranged and supplemented in a highly creative way. This is what Herodotus called “research” (historiē), from which we derive our term for history. We have no better idea what Herodotus’s sources looked like before he took them up and incorporated them into his work than we do for much of the content of J. Herodotus may have invented some of his episodes out of whole cloth, as some have suggested. Yet Herodotus is still labeled the “father of history.” In the case of J, however, we are in somewhat better shape, because for the second part of his history in the story of Moses, we do possess parallel biblical sources, most notably in Dtn and in some of the Prophets. The prophetic literature prior to J does not say much about the exodus and wilderness experience, and what it does say is not always clear. Amos mentions Israel’s migration from Egypt, the 40 years in the wilderness and the conquest of the land of the Amorites (2:19; cf. 3:1; 9:7). Hosea describes Israel’s origins in Egypt in the following terms: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). This text hardly suggests a very large group and points to an origin tradition quite distinct from the origin of the Jacob tradition. The account of the exodus in Ezek 20:5–8 is more detailed but also more confusing. It states that when the deity chose Israel as his people, he revealed himself to the “house of Jacob” and at that point made a solemn oath or covenant with them to bring them out of Egypt and give them a “land flowing with milk and honey” that he had specifically chosen for them. This oath was made on the condition that they abandon all of their Egyptian deities. However, even before they left Egypt, they had already begun to rebel against these terms and revert to worshiping their Egyptian gods. From the perspective of J, it is surprising that Ezekiel says nothing about any prior sojourn by Jacob’s family in the land of Palestine, or how they got to Egypt and why, or any previous relationship between Jacob and Yahweh. It is clear that, for Ezekiel, the promise of land was first made as a covenant agreement in Egypt, and there is no suggestion of any other form of covenant. It seems obvious that as late as this prophet is in the early Exilic Period, there was no solemn oath to the three patriarchs to give them this promised

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land. The desert journey is also quite different from J. The deity gives to them a set of laws and Sabbaths (pl.) while in the desert, but there is no mention of either Horeb or Sinai and only a general remark about their continuous rebellion against the deity’s laws and God’s constant threat to obliterate them. There is also the suggestion that their time in the desert covered two generations by the end of the desert journey, and the second generation was no better than the first. There is no Moses to lead them or intercede for them to avert the divine anger, and yet God continually changes his mind. It is not hard to see how J could take up a number of these elements and creatively transform them into the larger narrative that he has produced. As we have seen in our outline above, Dtn is the most important source for J. In a study on the patriarchal promises that I published in 1972, I argued that originally in Dtn the promise of a land “flowing with milk and honey” was first made to the forefathers of the exodus generation, just as we have it in Ezekiel, and that the references to the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were secondary. 5 This viewpoint was later supported in a massive critical study by Thomas Römer and is now widely accepted. 6 What this means for my reconstruction of the Yahwist is that this author must be placed historically at a time later than Ezekiel and Dtn but earlier than Second Isaiah, who completely accepts the promises to Abraham and Jacob in the form that we find them in J. In addition to this major revision of Dtn, we have noted in our survey above a number of other alterations by J in the Dtn accounts of the Horeb/Sinai giving of the law, the episode of the golden calf, the appointment of leaders and judges, the Kadesh rebellion, and the conquest of the Amorite kingdoms east of the Jordan. This kind of adoption and modification of sources to conform to a particular historical and ideological/ theological perspective is precisely what one would expect of an ancient historian, and whether it be J or Josephus makes little difference.

The Yahwist’s Literary Structures and Compositional Techniques The Yahwist begins with a Primeval History, which was strongly influenced by Babylonian as well as Levantine traditions about origins, as a prologue to the history of the people, beginning with the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The development of this part of his history highlights two important literary structures used by J, genealogical continuity and the itinerary as it relates to the patriarchs’ migrations. Both these structures, genealogy and itinerary, are likewise of primary importance in the earliest 5.  “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period” (1972). 6. T. Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Vaterthematik im deuteronomium und in der deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, & Ruprecht, 1990).

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examples of Greek historiography, as indicated above. Prior to J the patriarchal traditions contained no genealogical connection between Abraham and the other two ancestors, and only Jacob was associated with a migration from Aram or a migration to Egypt. It was the Yahwist who created out of these quite separate traditions an ancestral history of successive generations and an elaborate itinerary of all their migrations and travels. Each episode is given a specific location and a number of them an etymological etiology for the place name. Migration traditions were very important among the Greeks the Phoenicians in the age of colonization, as well as among the Philistines and perhaps also the Arameans (see Amos 9:7). As indicated above, the patriarchal origins of the Israelites and the Judeans originally were not only separate from each other, but also Judean origins were quite distinct from the Israelite origins in Egypt and their subsequent migration and conquest of the land of Canaan. It was the Yahwist who integrated these two streams of tradition by means of the Joseph story as a way of explaining the migration of all the tribes of Jacob to Egypt and their long sojourn there to become a large nation within that kingdom. However, because the story of the migration from Egypt to the promised land occurs entirely within the one lifetime of Moses, genealogy as a structural devise is no longer necessary, and in its place we have the Babylonian model of the biography of an ancient hero, King Sargon of Akkad, who is rescued at birth from the Euphrates River eventually to become a victorious leader of a great nation. Likewise Moses is also rescued from the Nile to be raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s household. However, the Yahwist gives an ironic twist to this motif when Moses, the prince, is a complete failure in his first attempt at deliverance, only to become a shepherd and an entirely different kind of meek and reluctant leader. The contest between the two leaders, Moses and Pharaoh, begins badly for Moses in their first meeting, but eventually after the seven plagues Moses has Pharaoh conceding to all his demands. This is followed by the Israelites’ complete triumph over Pharaoh at the Red Sea. At Mount Sinai, Moses becomes the royal law maker on the model of Hammurabi, the ancient king of Babylon, and some of the laws in J’s Covenant Code, Exod 21–23, are closely parallel to those in the Hammurabi Code. This ancient king was greatly venerated by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon and a contemporary of J. For the rest of the Moses biography, however, he is cast in a prophetic role as intercessor on behalf of his people, on the model of Jeremiah. The whole of J’s narrative in Exodus–Numbers is encompassed within this one lifetime and career of Moses and provides a powerful unity to this part of his history. It is frankly inconceivable to me how a number of scholars can maintain the viewpoint that such a literary work arose in bits and pieces as random additions, by a number of different “editors,” made to a prior Priestly corpus over a prolonged period of time. On the contrary, as we have seen above, it is the P additions that break up and obscure the literary structures of J’s nar-

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rative for various ideological reasons with little regard for the contradictory character that they introduce into the narrative.

The Yahwist’s Theological Perspectives In addition to these literary structures, the Yahwist also employs a number of thematic structures reflecting certain theological perspectives that predominate in several major segments of his work. These themes are not necessarily restricted to one segment but are repeated occasionally as a way of creating a unity to the whole corpus. The basic theme of the Primeval History is the assertion that Yahweh, the God worshiped by the Israelites, is in fact to be identified with the deity who is responsible for the creation of heaven and earth and everything in it. Therefore, as the creator of all humanity, he is not just the deity of a particular people. To signify this understanding of the universality of Yahweh, the author uses the unusual hybrid term Yahweh-God (“Elohim”) throughout the story of creation and the Garden of Eden in Gen 1–3. From that point on, he can alternate between the two terms Yahweh and Elohim to refer to the single supreme being. As a consequence of this belief, J also regards Yahweh as the one to whom all of humanity is ultimately responsible. The world is governed by a moral order that applies to all and for which there are grave consequences for its violation. The various episodes within the Primeval History, most notably the Flood Story, make this point. At the same time, even when this order has been violated and would call for death or annihilation, there is a mitigation of the sentence, based on the recognition of human frailty. This principle, set out in the initial section of the history, is repeated in many forms throughout the rest of the work. This “monotheistic” theme is new with the Yahwist and is not reflected in the Dtn-Dtr corpus and does not arise in the prophetic literature until Second Isaiah, J’s contemporary. 7 It was the encounter in Babylonia with the belief in the supreme creator god, Marduk among the Babylonians or Sin among the Chaldeans, or referred to simply as ilim God, or El among the Phoenicians, that inspired the Yahwist and Second Isaiah, along with other likeminded Judeans in Babylonia, to identify this deity as Yahweh or simply El/Elohim, “God.” At the same time, the prior Deuteronomistic impulse to make Yahweh the only deity, to the exclusion of all others, resulted in the monotheism now reflected in the work of J and Second Isaiah and those that followed in their footsteps. The stories of the patriarchs are about the ancestors who are migrants and sojourners in a land that belongs to aboriginal populations, and it is to these forefathers, beginning with Abraham, that the deity promises both the 7.  For the relationship between J and Second Isaiah, see my “In the Babylonian Exile with J: Between Judgment in Ezekiel and Salvation in Second Isaiah,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (ed. B. Becking and M. C. A. Korpel; OtSt 42; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 71–89.

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land to which they have come and numerous progeny. This promise is given as an unconditional oath—a sworn covenant to Abraham and repeated to Isaac and Jacob. This unconditional covenant in J stands in contrast to the Dtn covenant of Horeb, which makes the promise of land and prosperity conditional on obedience to the law. For J, the figure of Abraham reflects a righteousness that depends first of all on belief and trust in Yahweh and his promises (Gen 15:6), and as a righteous person Abraham can teach his offspring what is right and just (Gen 18:19), before the giving of the law at Sinai. 8 This is the underlying theme of the Sodom and Gomorrah story but also recurs frequently in the story of Moses. Furthermore, being righteous and just does not require any form of priesthood or sacrificial cult. Altars built by the patriarchs are primarily markers of divine encounters or places of prayer, without priests or elaborate ceremony. This is entirely in keeping with J’s law of the altar in Exod 20:24. In P, there are no altars in the patriarchal age because there are no priests and no laws governing sacrifice until the institution of the priesthood and sacrificial cult at Sinai in the time of Moses. The major theme of the narrative covering the deliverance from Egypt in Exod 1–14 is J’s effort to interpret this event as the fulfillment of the promises of Yahweh to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As such, this not only ties these two originally separate bodies of tradition together, but it does so by introducing a new confessional designation for the deity as “Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Thus, in the call narrative after the deity has declared to Moses his name as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he states: “This is my name from now on, and by which I am to be invoked in successive generations” (Exod 3:15–16). On occasions later in the narrative, when the very existence of the Israelites is at stake—the Golden Calf episode at Sinai and the rebellion at Kadesh—it is the invoking of the patriarchal promise by Moses that is decisive in avoiding complete national catastrophe. Another major religious theme within the narrative of the plagues and Moses’ encounters with Pharaoh is the way in which the Pharaoh, who does not know Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, and cares little about him, slowly comes to the realization of just who this deity is. Thus, in the plague of hail, Moses promises to petition Yahweh to end the hail “so that you may realize that the earth belongs to Yahweh,” but then adds, “but I know that you still do not revere Yahweh-God” (Exod 9:29–30). By invoking the designation “Yahweh-God” and the statement that the earth belongs to Yahweh, J recalls the major theme of the creation story of Yahweh as the supreme deity. The point of the plagues is not just the recognition that Yahweh is the God of the Hebrews but the acknowledgement that he is the deity of all humanity. Another important theological theme that begins with the departure from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea is the nature of the divine pres8.  See also the figure of Noah in Gen 7:1.

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ence with his people. The focus in this unit is on guidance and protection in the form of the column of cloud, also identified as the angel of God and the one who brings them victory over their enemies. At Sinai, the cloud appears again as a great theophany, and it is in this context that laws in the form of the Covenant Code are given to Moses. In the long discussion between Moses and Yahweh concerning how the divine presence will be in their midst during the trek to the promised land, this issue is resolved in the form of a simple tent outside the camp at which prayer can be offered to the deity and to which the column of cloud will descend from time to time to meet with Moses on the people’s behalf. In addition, there seem to be two other symbolic forms of the divine presence suggested in J, the menorah, corresponding to the burning bush in Moses’ first encounter with the deity at Sinai, and the shofar as the voice of God in the later meeting on the mountain. Earlier, I pointed to J’s important shaping of the role of Moses as intercessor on behalf of his people when they displease the deity. This special prophetic model is dependent on another basic theme of J, distinctive from Dtn and P, and that is the forgiveness and mercy of God toward human frailty. To be sure, there is also divine punishment, but it is mitigated by appeals to the deity for mercy. This is articulated in a divine proclamation to Moses on Sinai after the Golden Calf episode in Exod 34:5–9, in which Yahweh is characterized as “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and fidelity, remaining constant to thousands by forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion and sin.” This becomes the basis for the renewal of the covenant, which had been previously annulled. In J, there are no sin offerings or any other formal cultic or liturgical mechanisms, apart from prayer, that are used to appease the anger of the deity. These are all the subsequent development of the P writer.

Conclusion Almost two decades ago, I concluded my earlier study of the Yahwist with the following remarks: The present study has tried to demonstrate that the J source is a comprehensive, unified work, extending from the Primeval History of Genesis to the death of Moses. It is a work of ancient antiquarian historiography that takes up the extant traditions, written or oral, and reshapes them, edits them, compiles and incorporates them into an extensive work. Genealogy, itinerary, and thematic structures give shape to the whole. Yet the work was never intended as an independent, self-contained history; it was meant to be an introduction to the national history of DtrH. This is clear from the integration of the ending into Deuteronomy and the transition to Joshua. 9

At that time, I decried the prevailing tendency among some scholars to stratify “the biblical text into multiple redactional layers with no sense of 9.  Van Seters, Life of Moses, 457.

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coherence in any particular stratum.” This practice has only increased to the point where these same scholars are proclaiming their “farewell to the Yahwist,” 10 and in its place they discuss individual fragments of this work as the product of numerous “redactors” dispersed among a comparable number of Priestly fragments. The non-P fragments are given no particular social or historical context except a vague postexilic or Hellenistic dating. When one identifies and removes all of these supposed non-P additions from the Priestly corpus of texts and then puts them all together, as I have done with J, one is amazed to find that they result in a complete narrative history, written in the same distinctive style and theological or ideological outlook, using the same literary techniques such as genealogy or itinerary, to connect together these so-called fragments. At the same time, all these conjectured non-P “redactors” are very careful to avoid any contamination by the style, distinctive vocabulary and theological perspective of P. In this collection of non-P fragments, there is not a single Israelite priest or sacrificial cult in sight, with one major exception—the creation and worship of the golden calf at Sinai. Here, it is Aaron the Levite (the first high priest in the P tradition), who makes the golden calf, builds an altar on which the people themselves offer sacrifices, and then Aaron proclaims a special religious festival in honor of the golden calf. This new style and method of current European scholarship as a way of accounting for the non-P corpus of texts that I have called the Yahwist must be judged as utterly implausible. 11 We have now come full circle to the remarks that I made in my preface to this book, in which I briefly set out my premise that the literary genre of the work produced by the Yahwist represents an early form of antiquarian historiography. It later became, along with the other biblical “histories,” the primary source for Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, which was modeled on the Greek work of Dionysius’s Antiquities of Rome. These late exemplars of an10. T. B. Dozeman and K. Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006). 11.  In contrast to the Yahwist corpus that we have recovered, there have been various scholarly attempts to reconstruct a corresponding P narrative text as a base text to which J was added, but this must be regarded as a complete failure. One recent example is that by A.  de Pury, “Pg as the Absolute Beginning,” in Les dernières rédactiins du Pentateuque, l’Hexateuque et l’Ennéateuque (ed. T. Römer and K. Schmid; BETL 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2007) 99–128. He reduces the earliest form of P to some Priestly texts in Genesis and Exodus only, and then he eliminates large portions from Exodus such as the Passover text of Exod 12:1–28 as well as all of the divine instructions on Sinai in Exod 25–31 and 35–40, except for parts of 8 verses out of 13 chapters, as well as many smaller P units! This results in a P text that has no priests and no sacrificial cult of any kind; in short, there is nothing priestly about it! On the other hand, it contains some large holes, for example, no story of Jacob, which de Pury must invent from the account in J, as well as a reason for why it was lost. This kind of cherry-picking and manipulation to establish P’s priority is hardly convincing to any but the committed.

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tiquarian historiography were based on a long tradition, both of which went back to the 6th century b.c.e., and such histories were undoubtedly common among the Phoenicians or “Canaanites” and throughout the whole of the Levant as well. By comparison, the Priestly corpus does not follow this historiographic genre at all but is primarily focused on the institution and articulation of sacred law and is built into J’s history as amplification and correction of the earlier work. Consequently, I invite those who have not yet bid “farewell” to the Yahwist and still have an open mind toward the corpus of texts that I have presented under this name, to explore further the debate in greater detail, as set out in the articles in part 2. To simply dismiss the Yahwist without any serious discussion of my reconstruction of this author for the last four decades, and in its place to adopt an alternative view involving a myriad of “redactors,” hardly suggests serious scholarly discourse and has come to resemble increasingly a critical orthodoxy. 12 I am not committed to the particular appellation, Yahwist, for our anonymous historian, a designation that has a long history and is not without its problems. However, alternative suggestions have not been more helpful. What is important is to identify this author and historian by the literary methods and devices that he has used, and the ideological and theological perspectives that he represents, within a specific sociohistorical setting, and finally to give him his due. He deserves nothing less.

Excursus 1.  The Connection between the Primeval History and the Patriarchs The literary connection between the non-P or J corpus in the Primeval History and the rest of J in Genesis has been a matter of dispute for some time. Von Rad makes it clear in his 1938 study of the Yahwist that the Primeval History was very much a part of J’s history, whereas Noth regards this part of Genesis to be quite different from what he considers to be a loosely combined collection of older blocks of Israelite tradition in the rest of the non-P Tetrateuch. According to Noth, it was only in the Primeval History that J was a “historian.” The assumption was that the patriarchal stories reflected archaic traditions of a simpler seminomadic way of life, long before the development of the state. With the radical redating of J to a much later period, the whole matter was cast in a different light. Frank Crüsemann presented a number of arguments against von Rad and others by disputing any connection between non-P in the Primeval History and the rest of Genesis, and 12. In my book, The Edited Bible, I have gone to great lengths to dispute the very existence of the “redactor,” this deus ex machina, who is indispensable to their pentateuchal reconstructions.

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many European scholars adopted this position, although his case, in fact, is very weak and quite misleading. 13 In order to adopt this view, one must completely discount any connection between the call of Abraham in Gen 12:1–3 and his migration from Harran with what precedes in chap. 11. In contrast to Crüsemann’s position, one finds the same kind of genealogical structure throughout the whole of J in Genesis, the same emphasis on migration and settlement in new lands and regions, the same association of ancestors with future nations. The change that comes about with the call of Abraham is the narrowing of the focus from the universal dimension to that of a particular branch of the Semitic peoples and their origins and national destiny. That, of course, is precisely what antiquarian histories are all about, and one could hardly expect otherwise from such a work.

Excursus 2.  Abraham and the King of Gerar (Genesis 20; 21:22–34) In my earlier study of Abraham and the king of Gerar in Gen 20; 21:22–34, I was primarily concerned with the interrelationship of the three stories in Gen 12:10–20; 20; and 26:1–11, about the patriarch’s passing off his beautiful wife as his sister. 14 At that time (1975), I followed the suggestion of Winnett, in which chap. 20, along with its sequel in 21:22–34, was regarded as a first revision by E of an early J narrative in Gen 12:10–20, 15 and chap. 26 was a second revision by a late J author. 16At the same time, I rejected the notion of an extensive E source, apart from this one revision, but I offered a number of reasons for seeing this story in Gen 20 as dependent on 12:10–20 and without which the story would have made no sense. I also believed at that time that chap. 26 was dependent on both chap. 20 and 21:22–34. Erhard Blum, in his study of these narratives, took issue with my order of these three episodes and offered his own reasons for dating chap. 26 as second in order and chap. 20 as third. 17 At the time, I defended my own position in my subsequent treatment of the Abraham tradition, 18 but another close look at this whole problem has given me pause and now leads me to revise this earlier view. I believe that there can no longer be any doubt about the fact that the episode in chap. 20 depends on knowledge of the story in 12:10–20 for its understanding of why Abraham and Sarah call each other sister and brother without any explanation until a rather late explanation is made by Abraham in 20:11–13: 13. See my critique in Prologue to History, 191–93. 14.  Abraham in History and Tradition, 167–91. 15.  F. V. Winnett, “Reexamining the Foundations,” JBL 84 (1965) 5–7. 16.  Ibid., 14. 17.  Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte, 405–19. 18.  Prologue to History, 247–48.

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Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, there is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me for the sake of my wife. Becides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not of my mother; and she became my wife. When God sent me wandering from my father’s house, I said to her [Sarah]: ‘this is the favor you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, he is my brother.’”

This passage also suggests that this was not the only time that Abraham perpetrated this same ruse. However, it also makes clear that the author was aware of Abraham’s call and migration from his father’s house in Harran which is part of the J narrative structure. Furthermore, in the genealogy of Terah in Gen 11:27–29 there is no suggestion that Terah had a second wife, nor does it mention the father of Sarah. This is an innovation that was created by the author of this narrative. The introductory statement suggests a further migration into the desert south of the Negev, outside of the promised land, followed by a sojourn in Gerar for no particular reason. This fits with nothing in J’s migration scheme. Another innovation in 20:7, 17 is to characterize Abraham as a prophet who could pray on Abimelech’s behalf so that his wife and female slaves would be cured from infertility. This seems a rather curious role for Abraham in this context. However, there was a type of itinerant prophet or seer in both Mesopotamia and Greece, and very likely in West-Asia as well, whose specialty was healing diseases and maladies of all sorts, and this role was generally quite distinct from that of the prophet as spokesman for the deity. 19 That is why the deity speaks to the king directly, acknowledges his innocence, and discloses to him Abraham’s role as a prophet with special powers of healing instead of the deity healing Abimelech directly. When Abraham responds to the king’s accusation, he speaks only for himself and not as a spokesman for the deity, and must acknowledge that he was in the wrong and not the king. This portrayal of Abraham is entirely different from the rest of Genesis. It is true that Moses seems to act as such a healer in a few cases, such as in Exod 15:22–26 and Num 12:9–15, 21:4–9, but it is made quite secondary to Moses’ role as spokesman for the deity and intercessor for the people. In fact, Abraham’s role in Gen 20 is quite confused, because the deity tells the king, who is the righteous one, to ask Abraham, who is actually the one who sinned against the king, to pray for the king in order to cure his family from barrenness! Furthermore, one would have expected the deity to communicate to this foreign king through the “prophet” Abraham, but instead the roles are reversed, and it is the king who receives the vision from the deity and must relay it to Abraham. This sort of understanding of prophecy and of the deity’s relationship with Abraham and foreign kings is quite 19.  See W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) 41–46.

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unprecedented in the rest of Genesis. The assumption that this foreign king of Gerar, who is otherwise identified as a Philistine, worships the same god as Abraham and receives direct revelations from his god, is quite foreign to the rest of the Pentateuch and suggests a complete acceptance of monotheism. For this reason, therefore, I will assume that the story in Gen 20 and 21:22–34 is a late post-J addition. As a consequence of this addition, the later references to this story in Gen 26:15 and 18 are also additions by this same interpolator.

Excursus 3.  The Source-Critical Problem of the Spy Story A few remarks are in order at this point on a comparison between the Dtn and the J accounts of the Spy Story, which will make clear that the Dtn version was the source for this story used by J. 20 What is important are not just the details but the ideological and literary perspectives from which each of these writers seeks to shape the narrative of this event. One of the basic functions of Deuteronomy is that of offering admonition to encourage obedience to God’s commandments and to issue dire warnings against disobedience that would result in severe penalties. Moses therefore is cast in the role of the great prophetic preacher. The Dtn Spy Story is structured as a hortatory example of just such a situation. In Dtn, the Israelites, under a divine command to lay claim to the promised land, set out from Horeb and travel through the great desert with the single intension of invading the hill country of the Amorites, and they arrive at Kadesh for this purpose (1:6–8, 19). When they get there Moses immediately tells them to prepare for the invasion and encourages them not to hesitate (vv. 20–21). The people, however, suggest that in preparation they should send scouts to explore the layout of the land in order to give advice on the route and what cities they will encounter—all good military strategy. Moses accepts this as a good idea and sends twelve men, one from each tribe (vv. 22–23). This, however, is a departure from the divine instructions, which leads to trouble. The spies go up into the hill country as far as the Valley of Eshcol, reconnoiter the region and take a sample of the produce for the sole purpose of confirming the divine promise of the land’s fruitfulness (vv. 24–25). Nevertheless, after the people receive the favorable report of the scouts, the people rebel against the divine command, because the scouts have also discouraged them by reporting all the difficulties of going forward and so the people refuse to advance (vv. 26–28). Once again, Moses intervenes by admonishing the people that Yahweh will fight for them and to put their trust in him, but to no avail (vv. 29–30a). Yahweh then passes judgment on their disobedience and condemns the current generation to spend the rest of their lives to aimlessly wander in the desert. 20.  The basic Dtn account is found in Deut 1:19–30a, 34–35, 39–45.

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At this point in Dtn, there are some indications that someone has made some additions to the text in vv. 36–39a. First, Caleb is introduced without any explanation as to who he is, although it clearly assumes that we know he was one of the spies (“I will give him the land through which he traveled”). He is made the exception because he was completely loyal to Yahweh, which assumes that he made the speech that we find in Num 13:30, but in Deut 1:29–30a it is Moses who makes these remarks, not Caleb. Moses himself, however, did not fair too well. He is included within the judgment of the people for no apparent reason, and this also is completely at variance with the account in Numbers in which Moses is the sole exception to all the rest. The parallel to Deut 1:37–38 is to be found in 3:26–28 in which 40 years later Moses is denied the possibility of entering the promised land because “Yahweh was angry with me because of what you did,” and at that point Moses is commanded to commission Joshua to take his place.” Some copyist has thought it appropriate to identify this even 40 years earlier as the time when this divine anger against Moses took place, but it is entirely inappropriate within this context and Joshua was certainly not commissioned to succeed Moses at that time. Therefore, what followed the divine judgment in v. 34–35, was the remark in v. 39 that the little children would be the ones who would finally occupy promised land. The similarities of the base text in Dtn with J and J’s dependence on it are clear, but there are also some significant differences. Instead of the divine imperative to invade the land as soon as they arrived at Kadesh, it is Moses who suggests that they simply go up to the highland region to the north and explore the various features of the land, as if to decide whether a foray into the region would be worthwhile (Num 13:3*, 17b–20a): Then Moses sent from the desert of Paran, . . . men who were all leaders of the Israelites, to survey (twr) the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go through the Negev beyond us and ascend into the highlands. See what the land is like, and the strength or weakness of the inhabitants, and the size of the population, the nature of the terrain they live in, and whether the cities are mere encampments or fortified, whether the land is fertile or barren and whether it has trees. Take courage and bring back some of the produce of the land.”

This is a rather curious shift from a group of scouts doing reconnaissance in anticipation of an attack in Dtn to a much more general survey as to the desirability of the land in J. However, it should be noted that in Ezek 20:6, it was Yahweh who had already “surveyed” (twr) the land, using the same verb as in J, with the description that it is “a land flowing with milk and honey” as reported by the spies in Num 13:27. So the spies in J are merely repeating and confirming the divine activity as to the suitability of the land, and expanding on the description of the produce. Furthermore, J adds to the Valley of Eshcol some remarks about Hebron as the spies’ primary destination, a

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site that is very important in the patriarchal stories and also has close association with Caleb. As we have seen in J, his structural pattern is different because the principle role of Moses is now that of an intercessor on the people’s behalf. Consequently, when some of the spies cite objections to advancing into Amorite territory because of the obstacles, it is Caleb, one of the spies, instead of Moses who immediately speaks against them and encourages the people to advance. But the rest of the spies continue to present a bleak report and persuade the people that they should not advance. Contrary to Dtn, Moses says nothing through all of this—no admonition of obedience to God. However, Yahweh suddenly appears and threatens to kill them all with disease and to start all over again with Moses. This too is a radical departure from Dtn, because in Deut 1:37 Moses shares the blame with the people and their punishment. In J, it is only after the first declaration of divine judgment that Moses intervenes and intercedes on the people’s behalf, so that the severity of the punishment is mitigated, and the second sentence now corresponds to the one mentioned in Dtn. Caleb, however, who expressed his complete confidence in Yahweh, is made the exception and promised the very land in southern Judah in which he traveled. Nothing is said about Joshua in J because it would be inappropriate at this point to suggest that he would be the one to lead the people into the land in place of Moses. The point I wish to make is that J has systematically reworked the account in Dtn to make it conform to his own narrative structure and themes, especially in casting the role of Moses as intercessor rather than just admonisher. The other complicating factor, as pointed out above, is that in the course of transmission of the text a scribe has added some details from the account in Num 13–14 to Dtn, and in particular, the remarks about Caleb in Deut 1:36. In addition to this, most of Moses’ admonition in vv. 29–33 appears to be made up of elements drawn from J’s account of the exodus and wilderness journey, including the vanguard theme, which is otherwise not a feature of Dtn. This is also the case in Deut 11:2–7, which has long been understood as a late addition based on J’s version of these events, but not P. A parallel for this kind of scribal interpolation may be seen among some of the manuscripts of the Qumran scrolls in which, for example, certain passages from Deuteronomy have been interpolated into Numbers to give a fuller account of a particular episode. 21 It should also be noted that no additions were made to Deut 1:19–46 from the P source, so that these interpolations were probably made before the P additions to J. The Priestly expansions of J consist of the following: Num 13:1–2, 4–17a, 21, 25, 32–33; 14:5–10, 26–38. In contrast to both J and Dtn, one cannot make a consistent narrative out of these pieces. P begins by fundamentally 21. See my Edited Bible, 332–40.

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changing the character of the episode. First, in P it is the deity who orders the whole plan of spying out the land with a list of all the names of the representatives of each tribe, which now includes Joshua in the group as well as Caleb. However, there is no reason given for why this information was necessary, especially because the reconnaissance covered the whole distance as far north as the region of Hamath in central Syria, and lasted 40 days. According to P, the report they bring back says nothing good about this whole vast area and greatly exaggerates the obstacles. Throughout the J narrative, P adds the figure of Aaron alongside of Moses and in 14:5 he has them prostrate themselves before the people. Now both Joshua and Caleb together respond to the people and issue encouragement. But they are threatened with stoning until the deity intervenes to rescue them. P then gives his version of the divine judgment by greatly embellishing what has been said previously, including a special plague that also kills off all of the leaders of the spying expedition, except Joshua and Caleb. This seems to be a combination of the two separate judgments in J. Furthermore, if according to P all the leaders except Joshua and Caleb are dead, then it makes no sense to speak of an invasion of the highlands the very next day. For the rest there is nothing particularly new. The additions by P appear to be very pedantic details, for example, the cutoff point at 20 years of age between those who will be alive after 40 years in the desert and those who will die, which only detract from the original J narrative.

Chapter 10

Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison Introduction For the last two decades, I have championed the view that the genre of literature in the Pentateuch and the historical books of Joshua to 2 Kings, the so-called Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), is best understood by comparison with early Greek historiography. Recently, however, Ernest Nicholson of Oxford has challenged the notion that there is any historiography whatever in the Hebrew Bible and disputed my views of biblical historiography in particular. 1 Nicholson begins by paying tribute to James Barr’s earlier piece “Story and History in Biblical Theology,” in which Barr expresses serious theological reservations about using biblical “history” as a basis for doing biblical theology. 2 Barr disputes that there is any “history” in the Old Testament in the sense of an account of the past using a modern critical and secular understanding of what passes for historiography, and so the large stretches of narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings should rather be viewed as just “story.” The term story is regarded as self-explanatory, a narrative that gives a continuous account of events within a chronological continuum that may contain some historical information and may have features that are historylike but do not pass the test of critical history. This only began with the Greeks and with Herodotus in particular. However, the rise of historiography and a comparison between Greek and Hebrew historiography is not Barr’s concern. The issue for him is the problematic use of history as a basis for constructing biblical theology. Nicholson takes up this position of Barr that the Hebrew Bible is story rather than history and that there is no history-writing in Genesis to 2 Kings, 1.  E. W. Nicholson, “Story and History in the Old Testament,” in Language, Theology and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (ed. S. Balentine and J. Barton; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 135–50. Cf. Van Seters, In Search of History; idem, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis. 2. J. Barr, The Scope and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980) 1–17.

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but in his case the focus is now entirely on the question of literary genre and the comparison between the biblical corpus and Greek historiography. To do so, Nicholson must read back into Greek antiquity the modern critical understanding of what constitutes a narrative as history. Nicholson, following Barr’s line of argument, concedes the fact that the narrative from creation to the end of the monarchy is “history-like” in form but then proceeds to take issue with G. von Rad over his understanding of the Yahwist as a historian based on the content of the work. 3 After reviewing the main blocks of tradition that J has brought together, the exodus and conquest, the Sinai covenant, the patriarchs, he continues: When we add to these examples the considerable amount of “myth” and the legendary material, including the account of creation and the garden of Eden and the primeval period, cult-foundation legends, aetiological narratives, folk-tales and the like, then it seems that the judgment that the Yahwist was a historian is not based on a belief that he wrote history in the plain man’s sense of the word, even though a modern historian might cull some history from some parts of what he wrote. 4

This is precisely the argument that Gunkel used against labeling Genesis as history. 5 It is based on content and governed by the modern scientific “plain man’s” understanding of what is appropriate to a historical narrative. Of course, neither von Rad nor any other serious critical biblical scholar would dispute that the Primeval History of Genesis and much else in J is not historical in this sense. So that is not the issue. The question for von Rad is how to characterize the genre of the Yahwist’s work as a whole. Certainly, if Nicholson had tried to use the same kind of argument against Noth’s DtrH, reviewing the content from the conquest and settlement in the land to the end of the monarchy, a “plain man’s understanding of history” would likely have had much less difficulty with it, of course making due allowances for the miraculous. Indeed, many histories of Israel in the past have had no trouble in using this corpus as the basis of their own more scientific versions. The real issue has to do with whether or not the writing of history as a literary genre ever occurred in ancient Israel and is represented by any of the writings in the biblical corpus. The comparison has always been with classical historiography, which has been credited with the beginning of the genre and with Herodotus as the “father of history.” Is there anything comparable to this genre of writing in ancient Israel? This question has been debated in a serious way for more than a century, but apart from a review of von Rad’s 3.  Barr’s argument with von Rad is entirely over his theology based on Heilsgeschichte, that is, on the content as unhistorical, not on a question of form. It is Nicholson who shifts the debate to the issue of form. 4.  Nicholson, “Story and History,” 137. 5.  Gunkel, Genesis.

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1944 article “The Beginning of Historical Writing in Ancient Israel,” 6 Nicholson ignores this debate and takes particular issue with my comparison between Greek and Israelite historiography. In his review of my work Nicholson focuses exclusively on Herodotus even though, in the case of the Yahwist, I place considerable emphasis on similarities with other Greek historians. 7 Furthermore, Nicholson makes no reference to the classical scholars that I cite in support of my discussion of Greek historiography. Instead, he simply makes reference to a few scholars who seem to lend support to his presentation. There is, however, considerable controversy about the nature of Herodotus’s historiography and about the rise of Greek historiography in general. Nicholson gives little hint in his remarks as to the broader scope of this discussion in classical studies or the issues involved.

Defining “History” in the Greek Intellectual Tradition At the outset of his criticism of my work, Nicholson makes it a fundamental issue to define history according to the use of the term historia in Herodotus and then uses him as a model for historiographic research and writing 8. The term historie in Ionic Greek means “inquiry” and relates to a number of areas of scientific research. The same is true of the verb historein, which means “to inquire about a thing or person” in a general way. It is the application of the term inquiries in the opening line of Herodotus’s history and the imitation of this by other later historians that has led to its general secondary application to what we now think of as history. Nicholson, however, suggests much more than this by his characterization of the term. He states: By “enquiry” Herodotus meant primarily travel and the active pursuit of data and a critical assessment of sources, whether written or oral. . . . Evidence is examined and facts checked and the result put to the test. It was the development of this critical attitude towards recording events and the development of appropriate methods that characterized Greek historiography. 9

This statement is misleading because it telescopes a long development that begins before Herodotus and continues after him through Thucydides to a 6.  G. von Rad, “The Beginning of Historical Writing in Ancient Israel,” The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966) 166–204. 7.  Van Seters, In Search of History, 8–18, 31–54. These other writers of Greek antiquities Nicholson addresses in a later work, and I will return to these below. 8.  This argument is interesting because Barr himself (Scope and Authority, 5–6) is very leery of etymological arguments. 9.  “Story and History,” 141. In support of this remark Nicholson cites A. Momigliano (“The Herodotean and the Thucydidean Tradition,” in The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 29–53. However, Momigliano is not referring to Herodotus specifically but to the end product, including Thucydides.

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particular historiographic tradition. One may therefore pose the question: Does Herodotus in the early stages of this development indeed manifest a “critical attitude towards sources and to the recording of events”? 10 A reading of the history, especially the first half, makes clear that such a statement needs serious qualification. There are many examples of legends and folktales that deserve no place in a critical history. No amount of “inquiry” or travel to foreign lands can test or verify such stories, most of which lie in the distant past. Herodotus’s travels and observations related to his inquiries are also concentrated in the first half of the history and have to do with the socalled digressions concerning Egypt in book 2 and the Scythians in book 4. The subjects of these digressions have to do with questions of geography of the regions and of the whole world, as well as social customs, legendary origins and ancient history. These have very little to do with the Persian Wars and the only excuse for including them is that the Persians fought wars with both the Egyptians and the Scythians. The point of this research, therefore, was not to investigate the events of the Persian Wars. It had to do specifically with the tradition of Ionian historie, especially that of Hecataeus regarding theories about world geography and ethnography, and the origins and customs of peoples. K. von Fritz has argued that Herodotus began his career as a researcher in this tradition. Herodotus was “critical” of Hecataeus, as he was of Homer, and his “inquiries” were used to prove his predecessor wrong. 11 But he was hardly a critical historian in the modern sense of this term. 12 In point of fact, historie had to do with a kind of empirical “scientific” activity of autopsy (seeing for oneself) and questioning of oral informants. 13 This activity is restricted to questions of geography and ethnography. It does not apply to what we think of as “historical events.” There is no indication in his history of examined evidence or interrogated witnesses that relate to the events of the Persian Wars. It is assumed by many scholars that Herodotus did find old veterans of some of the latest battles that he discusses to question for information, but if this is the case, he is surprisingly silent about it. 10.  Ibid., 142. 11.  K. von Fritz, Die griechischen Geschichtsschreibung (vol. 1; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967). 12.  The danger of equating modern historiography with classical history is spelled out by P. Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 5–15. Regarding the use of sources, Veyne states at the beginning of his discussion: “We will see that history then and history now are alike in name only” (p. 5). The distinction is very important because Nicholson tries to minimize it. 13.  See Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Thomas deals with the connection of Herodotus to the “Ionic enlightenment,” especially to medical writers and the pre-Socratic natural philosophers with their emphasis on “autopsy” or seeing at first hand. In comparison with Herodotus she notes: “the language of proof, the very need to cite proofs at all, the arguments and overt presentation of reasons why the audience should believe him, are striking” (p. 271). Thus, Herodotus’s style has more to do with rhetoric, the art of persuasion, than the creation of a critical methodology.

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It is entirely likely that his main sources of information were earlier written accounts. However, once Herodotus takes up the theme of the Persian Wars he applies the term historie to the work as a whole even though there is little evidence of this same kind of “inquiry” in the rest of it. The point is that historie began as a form of research that included antiquarian questions of causes and origins and in spite of Herodotus’s shift to more recent political events this Ionic tradition of inquiry continued after his time. It is noteworthy that Thucydides, who does seem to engage in historical research of contemporary events to which he himself is an eyewitness and who can question those involved, studiously avoids the use of historie and the related verb historein, very likely because he wants to distinguish what he is doing from that of Herodotus and the kind of “archaeology” with which it was still so strongly associated. History as a recognized genre does not actually come into being until Aristotle defined the term, using Thucydides as his model. History is what Alcibiades did and what he suffered, and for Aristotle that was trivial compared with epic and drama that contained “philosophy” and truth 14. He gave it no further discussion, but later the term history was applied to a rather broad range of works that included “archaic” history, which was full of legendary material, etiologies and origin stories. This development of archaic or antiquarian history can be seen in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus, whose “research” was in the older antiquarian ethnographic and genealogical traditions. But he too became involved in Greek historiography, particularly the early history of Athens. The Oxford Classical Dictionary says of him: “Though his background was in the tradition of Ionic historie begun by Hecataeus, he deserves to be ranked with Herodotus and Thucydides in the effect he had on the development of Greek historiography.” 15 His Atthis (history of Attica), extending from Athens’s origins down to the end of the Peloponnesian War, contained a great deal of myth and legend. In scope, it was close to that of Genesis to 2 Kings and it was a type of history that was imitated by many subsequent historians. The same position regarding Hellanicus and his relationship to Ionian historie is taken by Lionel Pearson. 16 Hellanicus was one of a number of socalled logographers who wrote works on local and regional history using this same form of antiquarian research. Indeed, it is likely that Herodotus made extensive use of their works, but this is now difficult to prove because they are only preserved in quoted fragments. Nevertheless, the scholarly tradition of the Hellenistic and later periods did accuse Herodotus of plagiarizing 14.  Aristotle, Poetics 9, 1451, 136b11. See the remarks by M. I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (New York: Viking, 1975) 53. 15. S. Hornblower, and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 677. 16. L. Pearson, Local Historians of Attica (Philadelphia: American Philological Association, 1942) 1–26.

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these earlier sources. One later historian who did quote from them extensively was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote The Antiquities of Rome, a history extending from the primeval age of ancestors down to the point at which Polybius begins his history of more recent times. This, of course, is in imitation of the Atthis tradition of Hellanicus and his successors, and Dionysius was, in turn, imitated by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews. 17 One may dismiss all of this as not doing historical research in the proper way, as indeed Thucydides and Polybius did when they advocated the view that historical research could only be done on contemporary political and military events by those with direct experience of them, such as ex-­generals and politicians. Even so, Thucydides in his introductory archaiologia and Polybius in his treatment of Rome’s constitution (book vi) could not dispense with antiquarian tradition. Furthermore, modern historiography would strongly object to the limitation of history to the memoirs of generals and politicians and to the period of one’s own lifetime. From our modern perspective, they were largely correct in their skepticism about the historical value of traditional material, even though it is still used. However, from the point of view of antiquity it would be very difficult to make the case that the Greeks in general did not regard this archaic history as history. Josephus, who wrote in both modes, the contemporary war monograph as an ex-general and “archaic history” 18 as a way of presenting Jewish identity to the Roman world, certainly thought that he was a historian in both respects. Even when Herodotus introduces a radical departure from the older way of doing “historical research,” he cannot escape the influences of the old methodology. In setting forth the glorious deeds of both Greeks and barbarians he is especially going to look for the cause (aitia) of the conflict, which leads to a search for the beginning. That starting point is a clear imitation of the opening lines of Homer’s Iliad. And that search for the beginning leads him immediately to consider the primeval age of myths and legends. He rejects them as a starting point, not because they are unhistorical, but because he cannot make a connection between the heroic age and more recent times in terms of his theme. His choice of subject matter, the Persian Wars, is chosen because it can be compared to the Trojan War and it has already been included within the cycle of heroic events by the Tragedian Aeschylus, who is therefore a source for Herodotus. Throughout his work he is constantly looking for beginnings and causes and that concern arises out of the older form of research. It is precisely in connection with the question of the subject matter as set forth in the introduction of Herodotus’ work that Nicholson attempts to draw a false comparison between biblical history and Herodotus. He states: 17. See H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 4: Jewish Antiquities (books 1–4; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930) ix–x. 18.  This is the term that Momigliano uses for this type of history.

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No one would seriously suggest that the Deuteronomist’s narrative could be given the title or subtitle “A Narrative of the Conflict between the Judeans and the Babylonians” in the way in which one may describe Herodotus’ history as “A Narrative of the Conflict between the Greeks and the Persians.” 19

This comparison is misleading because much of Herodotus’ work is not directly about the Greek–Persian conflict and because this is not how Herodotus characterizes his own work. He says that he wants to establish the beginning and the cause of the animosity between the Greeks and the barbarians, of which the Persian Wars is the final phase. He actually considers starting with the heroic age of myths and legends but dismisses them as uncertain and begins with the one who committed “unjust acts against the Greeks” (1.5) and this establishes a line of continuity with all the later events that he records. What is important for Herodotus is the “cause” or the one responsible for the eventual conflict and the Persian defeat as a consequence of that injustice. 20 If we use a similar analogy to suggest that the Deuteronomist’s history is to establish the beginning and cause for the destruction of Israel and Judah by a foreign power, which would be directly comparable to Herodotus’s description of his work, and if the biblical history was directly motivated by the most recent disaster, the destruction of Jerusalem, then we do have something that comes very close to what we have in early Greek historiography. Granted that the war monograph of Greek historiography did not become a feature of Jewish historiography until the books of Maccabees and Josephus’s Jewish Wars, the war monographs are not the entire scope of Greek historiography. To define the scope of all of Greek historiography by the works of two historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, is entirely unacceptable. Nicholson further asserts: The empirical principle that the researcher must report eyewitnesses’ accounts and that he should limit himself to what can be established from these sources, in other words, that history-writing proper deals only with contemporary events, would have ruled out any attempt such as the Yahwist or the Deuteronomist to write about events so distant from their own times. Herodotus, who emphasized the importance of what one had seen and heard and gave priority to what he had seen, . . . would have regarded such writings as the very antithesis of proper historical enquiry. 21

This statement is quite misleading. Does Nicholson mean that Herodotus was an eye-witness to the events that he records? In fact, it is doubtful that he 19.  “Story and History,” 143. 20.  See H. R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (APAMS 23; Cleveland: American Philological Association, 1966). 21.  “Story and History,” 143–44.

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actually witnessed any of them. Nor does he tell us who his informants were about any of the most important political events, and most of the events would have had no living witnesses left. The history that Herodotus covers is hardly “contemporary” in the strict sense as it is in Thucydides. Even Thucydides has a great deal of difficulty in getting information about the period between the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian Wars and must rely on a written source, Hellanicus, whom he criticizes for his brevity. In fact, as indicated above, the references to seeing and hearing in Herodotus have to do with geography and ethnography. There is every reason, in my view, to suspect that Herodotus made use of written sources, some of which were local “histories” that dealt with antiquarian matters of origins and therefore not dissimilar from those of the Old Testament.

Divine Causality in Greek and Hebrew Historiography On the matter of causality in history, 22 I would certainly concede the fact that the rationalistic spirit that arose in the 5th century and that very strongly influenced Herodotus and Thucydides in their history writing does not have its counterpart in Hebrew historiography. But apart from Thucydides, who does not allow any role for the gods in history, other historians were more cautious, and it is easy to overstate the case to make the distinction as Nicholson does. In his introduction to his new translation on Herodotus, David Grene discusses at length the role of the divine in Herodotus. He states: There are two worlds of meaning that are constantly in Herodotus’ head. The one is that of human calculation, reason, cleverness, passion, happiness. There one knows what is happening and, more or less, who is the agent of the cause. The other is the will of Gods, or fate, or the intervention of daimons. . . . In Herodotus, generally, any special God, or the Gods, of Fate, or (very commonly) The Divine (to theion or to daimonion) are all one. They all mean the power that controls the world of man. And this power’s relation to man is bound up with a maddening relation between man’s reason and understanding and such “signs” as the Divine has allowed us to have of its future or past intervention. Herodotus is quite definite on two points: that the Divinity is altogether “jealous” and prone to trouble us and that “there is, somehow, some warning given in advance [pros mainein] when great evils are about to fall on either city-state or nation [ethnos]” (6.27). 23

Grene goes on to discuss the “signs” in the History, whether oracles or dreams or in some other form and their relationship to the events. He also deals with 22.  Ibid., 144–46. 23. D. Grene, The History of Herodotus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 24– 31, quoting pp. 24–25.

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the theme of divine jealousy that results in disasters and how it relates to matters of moral behavior. He gives many examples of this, in one of which he refers to Herodotus’s own statement concerning the cause of the Trojan War: “The reason of this, if I may declare my opinion, was that the Divine was laying his plans that, as the Trojans perished in utter destruction, they might make this thing manifest to all the world: that great wrongdoings, great also are the punishments from the gods” (2.120). The fact that Herodotus modeled his whole treatment of the Persian Wars on the Trojan War, as many scholars have noted, makes this statement all the more significant. 24 One could cite many more examples from Herodotus that are not just a case of references to divine intervention “for the most part derived from accounts of others which he documents as offering an interpretation of events,” as Nicholson alleges. 25 There is a very similar emphasis on divine “jealousy” throughout DtrH, punishment for evil deeds not necessarily in the same lifetime as the offender, the same emphasis on signs and prophecies warning of disaster. Of course, Herodotus’s theology is quite different from that of DrtH and that difference can be seen in the way in which he understands the divine. For him, all humanity has some knowledge of the Divine, only the names of the gods are different. That leads him to a very different form of piety. Yet to suggest, as Nicholson does, that Herodotus could never recognize any history that allowed for divine intervention such as we have it in DtrH is to my mind quite unjustified. There is a difference of opinion in classical studies over the understanding of causality in Herodotus because divine causality and human agency in the explanation of events seems contradictory. Nicholson’s position resembles that of Donald Lateiner in which he lays out the various systems of explanation of historical events, four out of five of which have to do with forms of divine intervention. 26 Lateiner gives the most emphasis on the fifth having to do with “historicist, down-to-earth, political analysis, the sort of explanation expected of a modern historian.” 27 However, the authority that Nicholson cites is not Lateiner but John Gould and the latter is quite critical of Lateiner’s discussion. 28 In response to Lateiner’s discussion of divine causality in Herodotus, Gould states:

24. J. Romm, in his discussion on the relationship of Herodotus to Homer (Herodotus [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998] 12–31), compares the element of divine intervention used in both (pp.  26–31). For additional remarks on divine intervention and Herodotus’s piety, see also pp. 140–47. 25.  “Story and History,” 145. 26. D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) 196–206. 27.  Ibid., 204. 28. J. Gould, “Herodotus and Religion,” in Greek Historiography (ed. S. Hornblower; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 91–106, esp. pp. 92–98.

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Here, I have to confess, I find it hard to enter into the argument [of Lateiner] in the proper spirit of open-mindedness. For it seems to me self-evident that Herodotus took the possibility of supernatural causation in human experience quite as seriously as he took the involvement of human causation. His text is pervaded with the acknowledgement, both implicit and explicit, that the events of the historical past (even the immediate past) may display the presence of non-human powers at work. 29

Gould goes on to explain that the reticence that Herodotus expresses about certainty in matters of divine activity is not necessarily reflective of a skeptical frame of mind, as so often asserted, but represents the attitude of “the mainstream of ancient Greek ideas of divinity.” He continues: “Herodotus’ acknowledgments of the same necessary uncertainty are not based on a specific ‘historiographic principle’ but on the nature of Greek religion.” 30 He concludes his critique with the statement: “There are many other examples which I could cite but it is surely already clear that Lateiner’s assertion that Herodotus ‘generally omits the gods from his own explanations of historical events’ is a massive over-simplification of this aspect of Herodotus’ dealings with religion.” 31 The same statement could be equally applied to the views expressed by Nicholson. Certainly, Herodotus was much more circumspect than biblical writers in the way that he expressed the possibility of divine intervention, but the issue is not merely a matter of a historian’s style. Once it is recognized that the “father of history” could admit the principle of divine causality within his history, one can hardly make its exclusion the sine qua non for true historiography in antiquity. Admittedly, Thucydides was quite agnostic and refrained from any reference to divine causation, but that was not the case with Polybius who followed Thucydides example in dealing only with the history of the recent past. The whole issue of causation in Polybius’s Histories is notoriously difficult because it appears contradictory. On the one hand, he wants to explain historical events in terms of human agency and draw moral lessons from this; on the other hand he introduces the concept of Tyche “fortune” to explain the seemingly inexplicable. Frank Walbank, a leading authority on Polybius, states in the introduction to his massive commentary on the historian: “The role in history which Polybius assigned to Tyche is notoriously hard to define.” 32 While not part of the old Homeric pantheon, Tyche was a most important deity by the Hellenistic period, often used to represent the divine world in general and is often synonymous with a god or the gods in Polybius. Walbank identifies a number of uses in Polybius of this divine prin29.  Ibid., 93. 30.  Ibid., 94. Gould cites W. Burkert, a major authority on Greek religion, in support of this position. 31.  Ibid., 98. 32. F. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius (vol. 1; Oxford: Clarendon, 1957) 16–26, quoting p. 16.

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ciple. Tyche is used for “the area which lies completely outside of human control and those events of which the causes are not easy to detect or for which there are apparently no rational causes at all.” Polybius actually identifies acts of divine intervention, such as “heavy and persistent rain, drought destroying the crops, outbreaks of plague, in short what would today be termed ‘acts of God.’” To Tyche is assigned “events of a sensational and capricious character” and “this capricious and irrational force allows no one to prosper indefinitely.” This means that there is a power that brings about a reversal of fortune, and this comes about regardless of all rational attempts to avoid it. This characteristic led Polybius to moralize on the theme of the need for moderation in prosperity because a change in circumstances will almost certainly come. Tyche is also viewed as “a power which punishes wrongdoing” and is “something like Fate or Providence.” The greatest example of the latter for Polybius in his own time is “the rise of Rome to world-dominion in fifty-three years.” However, as Walbank points out, “in attributing Roman success both to calculation and rational causes and , simultaneous, to the overriding power of Tyche which comes close to ‘providence’, Polybius raises a problem which has stirred up much debate and evoked many attempts at a solution.” 33 There is no need for us here to review this debate about how to reconcile the contradiction in Polybius between divine causality and human agency in the explanation of historical events. It is enough to recognize that there was room in the best of Greek historiography to allow for some form of divine causality alongside human actions, and these are often in areas that are strikingly similar to those in the Old Testament. One could, of course, add the names of other historians who invoked divine intervention, such as the very popular Hellenistic historian Timaeus with his excessive invoking of divine intervention such that Polybius accused him of pietistic credulity. 34 More familiar is the historian Josephus who takes over his understanding of divine causality from his biblical sources. I would not deny that the classical historiographic tradition went far beyond its biblical counterpart in its treatment of historical cause and effect. However, it is quite misleading to suggest, as Nicholson does, that Greek historiography could not admit any degree of divine causality in the explanation of human events. In my study of Greek historiography, I made the statement that in Herodotus as in DtrH history is theodicy. 35 Nicholson rejects this as “wholly unjustified,” but he does not respond to those authors that I cite who have dealt with the theme of tisis, “retribution,” and hubris, “pride,” in Herodotus. 36 33.  The above quotations from Walbank are drawn from pp. 17–22. See also pp. 58–68. 34.  Pearson, The Greek Historians of the West, 269–70. 35.  Van Seters, In Search of History, 40. 36. J. L. Myres, Herodotus: Father of History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) 149–50, 153; H. Wood, The Histories of Herodotus: An Analysis of the Formal Structure (The Hague: Mouton, 1972) 15, 24ff.

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Thus, Henry Immerwahr concludes his discussion of Herodotus’s treatment of the great battles of the Persian wars in this way: If the battles thus show the divisiveness of human affairs, these differences are unified, and in a sense overcome, by the emphasis on the divine. Both Herodotus’ own “divine,” which is in accordance with “that which has to be,” and the local Greek gods, who are taking vengeance on the Persians for specific crimes, give the Greeks the final push, without which they could not have won. At Artemisium the gods saved the Greek fleet, and at Plataea and Mycale they concluded the victories by driving out the remnants of the Persians and completing the liberation of Europe. 37

Furthermore, John Gould, in his book on Herodotus, has a chapter on “why things happen.” 38 In it, he discusses revenge or retribution as the motive for conflict, both on the human level but also on the supernatural level. And the two levels can be related so that the supernatural works through the human need for revenge. Thus, Xerxes is drawn into the conflict with the Greeks by the need to revenge the mainland Greeks’ participation in the Ionian revolt, but behind this are the gods who inflict the night visions on Xerxes in order to carry out their own retribution on the Persians for the wrongs begun by Croesus and the hubris of Persian expansion. This is in order to restore the equilibrium of the world order. This notion that the gods are committed to a just world order also seems to be reflected in Polybius and in other historians, with Thucydides the exception. Thus, theodicy seems to be more basic to ancient historiography than Nicholson is willing to recognize. This duality of divine and human causation in Herodotus represents a long tradition in Greek thought and is also found in Homer and even if Herodotus presents a more “refined” version of it under the influence of pre-Socratic philosophy, it still reflects a religious view of reality. This same causal duality can be found at many points in the biblical “historical” tradition. Thus, when Dtr recounts how it was that the United Kingdom was divided under Solomon’s son Rehoboam, he goes back to the convocation at Shechem (1 Kings 12:1–20) in which the new king refused to concede to the request of the northern tribes to give them tax relief, against the wise advice of the older councilors, while yielding to the flattery of his younger contemporaries. Here are brought together various historical causes: economic (the tax burden), social (tribal divisions), psychological (the foolishness of the king), and so on. But beyond all of these, the author looks to the deity as the ultimate cause: “Thus the king did not give heed to the people; for it was a turn of events brought about by Yahweh that he might fulfill his word that Yahweh spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat” (v. 15). In this way, the author links the particular episode back to the larger ac37.  Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 304–5; see also pp. 306–26. 38.  Gould, Herodotus, 63–85.

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count of Solomon’s violation of deuteronomic law that receives its ultimate retribution in the loss of the ten tribes by his son. In a similar fashion, the author of the Court History has Absalom yield to the deliberately bad advice of Hushai instead of the wise advice of Ahithophel, which leads to his defeat. This is explained: “For Yahweh had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that Yahweh might bring evil upon Absalom” (2 Sam 17:14). The whole scene could have come right out of Herodotus, with the exception of the reference to the specific deity, Yahweh. The same kind of interpretation of events in found in the Joseph story in which the evil actions of the brothers are understood as part of a larger divine activity for the good of the people’s larger destiny (Gen 45:5–9; 50:19–21). How does Joseph know that these events are directed by the deity? He remembers the dream of his youth (42:9) and that is the clue to the events. It would be wrong, however, to interpret either these Old Testament texts or those in Herodotus as expressions of determinism. While the deity may intervene in human affairs to bestow a favor or to punish a wrong, this does not lead to an understanding that everything is rigidly determined. Even predictions are limited to specific persons and events and may be modified or mitigated in certain ways. One may argue that such a view is not logically consistent, but that does not negate the fact that many religious people both ancient and modern are perfectly inconsistent in such matters. While ancient historiography continued to develop various ways of expressing divine causality in human affairs in a more oblique and cautious manner, one cannot exclude from ancient historiography those “histories” that do reflect divine causality as an explanation of human events.

Storytelling in Herodotus Nicholson concludes that the corpus that we have in the Yahwist and the Deuteronomist is not the result of research or “enquiry” (historia) but is simply a case of both authors telling a “story,” using Barr’s term. 39 This effort to draw a distinction between history and story in the case of Herodotus is quite remarkable because the scholarly literature on Herodotus is very extensive on this historian as a great storyteller. This is the term, mythologos, “storyteller,” that Aristotle uses of him. 40 Indeed, there is great debate over the extent to which Herodotus invented his stories or at least radically reshaped his sources for the sake of his story. He stands in the traditions of both epic and drama in the shaping of his narrative for audience appeal. Thucydides, in an oblique criticism of Herodotus, rejects this form of entertainment at the expense of the “facts” as set down in a permanent record. Thus, if one is to use Herodotus as the standard of historiography, then one 39.  “Story and History,” 146–50. 40.  Romm, Herodotus, 11.

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must allow for the use of stories and storytelling techniques in such a work. In his recent book on Herodotus, J. Romm makes the point that Herodotus is both an historian and a storyteller. 41 He begins his treatment of Herodotus as storyteller by pointing out that the term “story” is actually derived from “history.” He goes on to state: For Herodotus, the history of the Greek conflict with Persia was, among other things, a great story: it had colorful, exotic scenery, larger-than-life characters, thrilling action, and an ending that, at the time it actually occurred, . . . had come as an enormous surprise. What is more, this vast and sweeping story gave room for the inclusion of dozens of smaller tales, some no more than a sentence or two in length, others occupying many pages of Greek text, some intimately connected to the main “plot line,” others so distant from it as to be no more than footnotes or parentheses. 42

One of the most important techniques of storytelling is the use of dialogue and the invention of speeches for dramatic effect and to reveal character. Invented speeches such as this even appear in Thucydides and have led to endless attempts to justify them. 43 For Herodotus, speeches make up a very large part of his work and few can be attributed to any historical sources. But above all, Herodotus is heavily dependent on Homer whom he imitates as a rival, just as he does Hecataeus in the area of “research.” His imitation and rivalry can be seen in the theme of the great war between Greeks and barbarians, in the concern for its causes, in the effort to memorialize great deeds comparable to those of heroes, and in the size and scope of the conflict. In all these ways, Herodotus tells a great story. Nevertheless, it is not a story in the usual sense of that term, a work of fiction with a plot line and a limited set of characters. It is an account of the past of the Greeks as it relates to their relations with foreigners with a special focus on the most important event, the Persian wars, and it is offered to the Athenians as an explanation of their part in that conflict. That form of narrative about the past that was subsequently imitated by others was given the genre designation by Aristotle as “history,” although he had Thucydides in mind rather than Herodotus. The latter only became the “father of history” in retrospect in the Roman period. By analogy the works of the Yahwist and the Deuteronomist have this same “history-like” quality and so deserve the same designation as that used in the Greek world. I am not aware of any other example of a story in the ancient Near East that has this “history-like” construction that stretches from the creation to the time of the writer with such a great diversity of material. Those that do in the Greco-Roman world are all considered histories. Indeed, in a statement that rather contradicts 41.  Ibid., 114–31. 42.  Ibid., 114. 43.  M. I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence and Models (New York: Viking, 1986) 12–15.

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his argument against Hebrew historiography, Barr finds a close similarity between Hebrew and Roman history writing. He states: “Perhaps we may cite Roman historiography rather than Greek, for Roman in a way presents a more suitable comparison with Israelite writing. Livy’s history of Rome can well be construed as expressing on a grand scale the favour of the gods to the people of Rome.” 44 Contrary to this distinction between Greek and Roman historiography, the same comparison can be drawn between Livy’s contemporary, the Greek historian Dionysius, in his Antiquities of Rome, and Hebrew historiography, as we shall see below. Nevertheless, if Livy’s opus can be labeled “history” then why not the Yahwist and the Deuteronomistic Historian? The fact that these works are chronological and that each set of persons and events is given an interconnection from one unit to the next, that the persons are “historical” figures from the past and that the sum total of events have direct relevance to the life, identity, and destiny of those to whom the works are addressed all make them look like histories. Therefore, they are histories. And how are such works produced? We need not debate here the notions of a complex traditio-historical process because Nicholson and I are agreed that we have to do with authors. I think that we would also both agree that behind these works there was a great diversity of sources and traditions. These materials needed to be sought out by research and inquiry and put together in their proper chronological order and brought into causal and conceptual relationship to each other, just as we have it in history writing. Unlike Greek historians, they do not make clear how they made their selection or critically reshaped the material they received. In a few cases, we can guess that they did, in fact, make some alterations and rationalizations. Nevertheless, the presumed method of composition has much more in common with what the Greeks call historia than merely storytelling.

Greek Antiquarian History and the Yahwist In a later discussion on this same issue of historiography in The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century, Nicholson makes some additional remarks about my treatment of “antiquarian history” in Prologue to History. 45 It is to this issue that I will now turn. After a brief description of my treatment of the Yahwist as “antiquarian historian,” Nicholson repeats much of what he says in the earlier article, but then adds one further point and this has to do with the difficulty of accounting for “the supposed influence of the so-called Greek ‘antiquarian tradition’ upon the Yahwist.” The question for him is how the Yahwist, living in the Exile in Babylon according to my view, could have 44.  Barr, Scope and Authority, 12–13. Nicholson passes over this comparison without comment. 45.  E. W. Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) 145–53; cf. my Prologue to History, 86–103.

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had access to the Greek materials. For him this would require that there were Greek scribes living in Babylon during the time of the Exile. He states: “Whilst it might have been possible therefore for a Jewish exile writing in Babylon to have been influenced by Babylonian religious and mythological lore, the suggestion that he would also have had access to, or come under the influence of, Greek ‘antiquarian’ texts during the sixth century is “egregiously speculative.” 46 First, let me say that I never, in any of my discussion of similarity between Hebrew and Greek historiography or the “antiquarian tradition,” suggest that the Hebrew authors were in direct contact with the Greeks. So Nicholson’s quoted statement is quite misleading. Our starting place must be an evaluation of the points of similarity that are numerous and that stand out all the more when compared with the complete lack of these features in Mesopotamian literature. 47 Nicholson can easily accept the impact of the Babylonian tradition on the Yahwist, although his adopting an early date for the Yahwist living in Palestine makes these similarities just as problematic as those with the Greek tradition. Does he dispute that there are such similarities in the origin traditions of both Greeks and Hebrews? And if he does not, then he must also offer a reasonable way of accounting for them. Second, there is within the biblical tradition predating the Yahwist a number of indications that a body of antiquarian tradition existed in Israel and the neighboring region similar to what one finds among the Greeks. Thus, Amos mentions the notion of a migration of the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete) and the Arameans from Kir parallel to that of the Israelites from Egypt (Amos 9:7), an interesting example of comparative ethnography. Deuteronomy 2:10–12, 20–23 contains digressions that reflect antiquarian notions of conquest of aboriginal peoples by Israel’s neighbors similar to her own at the beginning of their life as a people. Some of these are contradicted by other rival traditions of origin that are reflected in Genesis in which the peoples, Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites, all gained their land from the time of their eponymous ancestors. Deuteronomy 3:14 (cf. Num 32:41–42) also reflects a tradition of migration, conquest, and settlement. Such ethnographic digressions are a hallmark of Greek historiography, including Herodotus. One could also mention geographic digressions, such as the rivers of paradise in Gen 2:10– 14, which is similar to Ionian research as reflected in Herodotus. By a “western antiquarian tradition” I am referring to a common way of speaking about origins of peoples, cities, institutions, customs, and laws and their relationships with other peoples and states that was common within the world of the eastern Mediterranean, including the Levantine coast and its hinterland. One can hardly deny that during the 8th to 6th centuries 46.  Nicholson, Pentateuch, 153. 47. See my extensive treatment of these in Prologue to History, 78–103. These cannot be repeated here.

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b.c.e.

there was very active interchange between the Phoenician and Greek worlds such that common cultural traditions between the two regions are to be expected. The fact that so little of the Phoenician literary tradition has survived makes it difficult to appreciate the extent to which such antiquarian traditions were shared, but it is hardly “egregiously speculative” to suppose that the similarities may be accounted for in this way. 48 Many parallels between Greek folklore and the stories of Genesis have long been noted, especially by H. Gunkel, but only more recently has it been appreciated how this bulk of material has been used as a major source for the development of “archaic histories,” first in the form of genealogiai and then as local histories, such as the Atthis tradition. I have elaborated on this elsewhere and need not repeat it here. 49 The fact that already in the 6th century there was an effort to assemble a pan-Hellenic genealogical tradition of ancestors in the Catalogue of Women and the rise of the Ionic research (historie) on such tradition makes it no great leap to the exilic Yahwist. It should be made quite clear that antiquarian traditions, whether Greek, Roman, Hebrew, or Mesopotamian are not themselves history or historical and contain very little historical information as a rule, although that is often disputed. Nevertheless they were gleaned as source material by those who wrote archaic or antiquarian histories. These attempts to put traditional material into an orderly, chronological, unified account of the past of some state, people, or city in the form of a local history did not come about as a result of the gradual accumulation of tradition, a vague process of traditionhistory. It could only come about as a result of an intense and learned literary activity that I would characterize as historiography. The process by which this intellectual activity developed a critical methodology for dealing with materials from the past to construct such an account is long and complex, stretching from antiquity to the present and has hardly come to an end. In my Prologue to History, I made use of the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus as an appropriate analogy for the kind of history produced by the Yahwist. 50 The use of such analogies was disputed by Nicholson, so I want to defend my choice and expand my remarks, using the work of Emilio Gabba. 51 Dionysius’s major work of 20 books has the title Romaike Archaiologia, which is usually translated as The Antiquities of Rome, but rendered by Gabba as The History of Archaic Rome. It begins in the fifth generation of humanity 48.  On the archaeological and artistic interaction between Greeks and Phoenicians, see W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution; J. Broadman, “Aspects of ‘Colonization,’” BASOR 322 (2001) 33–42; W-D. Niemeier, “Archaic Greeks in the Orient: Textual and Archaeological Evidence,” BASOR 322 (2001) 11–32. 49.  Van Seters, In Search of History, 86–99. 50.  Prologue to History, 97–98. 51.  Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome.

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and ends with the war against Pyrrhus, the point at which the Histories of Polybius begins. So it may be viewed as a “prologue” to this history in the same way that Thucydides’ archaiologia is prologue to his history. Of this work, the first 11 books are extant and take the history down to 443 b.c.e., 400 years before the time of Dionysius. Of the rest, only fragments remain. In his treatment of Dionysius, Gabba is critical of those who judge the historian on the basis of modern attempts to reconstruct Rome’s past. He states: “It is quite apparent that Dionysius’s ways of examining and writing history were far removed from the kind of critical history that, in the form of a great scientific advance, has come to dominate the field of earlier Roman history.” 52 In similar fashion, Veyne says of Livy and Dionysius that they simply compiled all their information about early Rome that they could find, discarding bits that did not suit them but never seriously questioning the validity of the tradition as a whole. Their hope was that their version of the tradition would be accepted as the vulgate tradition and authoritative. 53 In my view, much the same could be said for the Yahwist. Furthermore, Gabba insists that there is no unified or uniform development of Greek historiography. He states: “The development of Greek historiography, despite the connections linking its various strands, was neither linear not homogeneous.” 54 The style and methods of historians depended a lot on the type of audience for whom the work was intended. This is the big difference between Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus makes an appeal to a broad public and creates a “rhetorical” or “dramatic”style of history that had many imitators, that is, Ephorus and Theopompus. This may be compared with Thucydides and Polybius, who wrote political and “practical” history for a limited audience of statesmen and generals and were highly critical of dramatic history. But despite their harsh criticisms (see Polybius, book 9.1–2), it is in the style of “rhetorical” or “dramatic” history in the Herodotean tradition that Dionysius wrote. In this respect, Gabba claims that Dionysius “belongs to a different school from Thucydides and Polybius,” and that “his approach undoubtedly bears a closer correspondence to modern historiography,” a rather surprising statement. 55 The point is that if it is true that both Herodotus and Dionysius represent types and styles of historiography quite different from that of Thucydides and Polybius, then simple generalizations about the nature of Greek historiography based primarily on Thucydides’ style are quite unwarranted. Ancient historiography could include a wide range of types and styles and I regard it as quite justified to use the term history for the Yahwist and the Deuteronomist as well. 52.  Ibid., 5. 53.  Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? 7. 54.  Gabba, Dionysius, 60; see also idem “Literature,” in Sources for Ancient History (ed. M. H. Crawford; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 1–79. 55.  Gabba, Dionysius, 65. He also makes the point that Dionysius’s choice of style was quite deliberate. He discusses at length Dionysius’s critique of Thucydides (65–69).

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Within the study of classical historiography, there has always been a lot of controversy over the nature of the speeches, which were obviously invented. 56 This sort of invention, even in Thucydides, violates the basic tenets of modern historical method. Nevertheless, as Gabba asserts, “Speeches had always been seen in Greek historiography as ‘historical facts’ having full parity with any of the other events involved in the narrative.” 57 The debate about speeches by ancient historians, therefore, was not about their inclusion but about how to compose them. The events require speeches for their understanding and interpretation. This is directly related to the purpose of the history and the requirements of the “cause” and explanation of the events and of the history in general. And it is in the speeches that the rhetorical and dramatic influences on historiography are most evident. Speeches likewise play a major role in Hebrew historiography in order to articulate the cause or explanation of events. It has long been noted that both the Deuteronomist and the Yahwist articulate their own understanding of the events they present through the speeches of prophets and leaders, which are not part of the received tradition but invented to articulate their own viewpoints on their histories in the same “unhistorical” way that we find them in Greek historiography. The Chronicler is also notorious for inventing speeches that have no counterpart in the parallel events recorded in Kings. Furthermore, Gabba gives considerable attention to the relationship of Greek history in general and Dionysius in particular to antiquarianism. In both In Search of History and in Prologue to History, I discussed the Greek “logographers,” who compiled antiquarian traditions and composed local histories, as precursors of Greek historiography. 58 Gabba argues that Dionysius regards earlier Roman historians for the archaic period in the same way as the early Greek logographers who were “reprinted” in Hellenistic times. 59 He states: “The merit of these local histories lay in their making public much information relative to their cities that had been conserved in sacred and profane places, rich in legend, myth, and fable, a patrimony passed down from father to son.” 60 This body of traditional material could not be ignored by later historians who put it to different uses, depending on their rhetorical purpose. Thus, Livy included it for the purpose of supplying “true moral exempla.” 61 Dionysius, on the other hand, was concerned with establishing 56.  Dionysius, 69–85. See also Finley, Ancient History, 12–15. 57.  Dionysius, 69. 58.  Van Seters, In Search of History, 8–31; idem, Prologue to History, 86–103; L. Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939); idem, Local Historians of Attica; von Fritz, Die griechischen Geschichtsschreibung. 59.  Gabba states that the logographers’ historiography was “more than likely derived from models received from the Near East” (Dionysius, 85), suggesting a close association between Ionia and the Levant, but he does not elaborate. 60.  Dionysius, 86. 61.  Ibid., 95.

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the Greek origins of Roman civilization. “The antiquarian material,” says Gabba, “functioned as a documentary support for the historical text. The combination of narrated history (facts and speeches) and the antiquarian research on various levels, enriched through comparison with Greece, must have given Dionysius and hence his readers a guarantee of certainty and authenticity transcending any doubts about the legendary material or the inherently more or less discordant hand-me-down versions. This combination of history and antiquarianism is one of the main merits of the work of Dionysius.” 62 This use of antiquarian research in Greek historiography may be compared with biblical use of etiology and physical markers as evidence of the truth of ancient events, that is, that such and such an object can still be seen “to this day.” Such etiological formulas had been identified in early form-critical study as indicators of folkloristic oral tradition. However, B. S. Childs noted that the same kind of attestation was also common to Herodotus and other early Greek historians. 63 In my view, it is book 1 of Dionysius’s Antiquities that resembles the work of the Yahwist most closely, and it is in this part of the history that Gabba finds the theme and intention of the work expressed most clearly. He states: “In Book I Dionysius reconstructs the ethnogenesis of the Roman people, which . . . must precede the global, political history of the city.” 64 He then goes on to show that for Dionysius the whole process of the foundation of Rome is described according to the classical principles of Greek colonization. Successive waves of Greek immigration, some coming as ancestors entering the land to live among the earliest inhabitants, others coming with warriors to help conquer the land. The parallel with the biblical tradition of the Pentateuch is obvious. Unlike Thucydides, whose archaiologia was criticized as being extraneous to the history as a whole, Dionysius’s ethnogenesis with its principle of emigration was at the very basis of the whole project. 65 Gabba likewise discusses at length the important role that religion plays in Dionysius’s history. 66 Dionysius believes, along with Livy, that the moral roots of the state “derive primarily from the goodwill of the gods.” 67 For this reason, he attributes to Romulus the legislation of the basic foundations of religious institutions, the worship of the gods, but also the abolition of unworthy myths. 68 Indeed, the figure of Romulus functions in much the same way as Moses in the biblical tradition. This legislation is seen as reflecting divine benevolence toward Rome and “hence a recognizably divine 62.  Ibid., 97–98. 63.  B. S. Childs, “A Study of the Formula ‘Until this Day,’” JBL 82 (1963) 279–92. 64.  Dionysius, 98. 65.  Ibid., 98–118. 66.  Ibid., 118–38. 67.  Ibid., 119. 68.  See also ibid., 154–77.

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intervention by the gods in history.” 69 Gabba discusses at some length the problem that Dionysius faced with his criticism of myth on the one hand and his belief in divine intervention against the atheists on the other. The lack of Roman myths led him to an understanding of Roman religion that was both Greek in essence but devoid of myth. Nevertheless, he still made abundant use of heroic legends in his history. His treatment of religion is basic to his understanding of the original and essential Greek character of Roman identity and culture.

Conclusion In my opinion, Nicholson has not made his case against drawing comparisons between Greek and Hebrew historiography and a case for eliminating historiography as a genre from biblical literature. To make his case, he must enter into a discussion with the many classical authorities that I have cited and to which more could be added, who would strongly dispute his characterization of Greek historiography in general and Herodotus in particular. However, all these references to classical scholars are not worth nearly as much as some time in reading the Greek texts themselves. If after reading the first two books of Herodotus, one is still convinced that Herodotus is the very model of a modern critical historian, then anything I say to the contrary will count for little. Similarly, if one reads the first book of Dionysius’s Antiquities and does not find some striking parallels to features in the Pentateuch, then she/he should give no more thought to further exploration of such historiographic comparisons. In my own experience, it was my encounter with these texts in an effort to understand ancient historiography that led me on. The search for helpful commentary was also important but secondary, and this challenge has prodded me to expand my familiarity with the scholarly literature, although I am aware of the impossible task of covering it adequately. Nevertheless, the range of opinion that is represented here and the many other authors on classical historiography that may be found in my previous publications will give anyone who cares to pursue this discussion further a much broader grasp of the issues than the few select citations presented by Nicholson. But most of all, I hope that this challenge and response will kindle a lively discussion in the best tradition of scholarly exchange on a most important subject. 69.  Ibid., 124.

Chapter 11

Author or Redactor? Introduction The choice of whether a certain form of literary activity reflected in the biblical text should be characterized as that of an author or a redactor, and whether or not these terms are even appropriate, has now come to the fore in biblical studies. In a couple of preliminary articles, as well as in a recent monograph, I have challenged the use of redactor and redaction criticism in biblical studies as anachronistic and inappropriate for antiquity. 1 To this challenge Jean-Louis Ska has offered a significant response in his Sigmund Mowinckel lecture to the University of Oslo: “A Plea on Behalf of the Biblical Redactors.” 2 Eckart Otto has defended the notion of the redactor in what seems to me quite a hostile recent review of The Edited Bible. 3 Christoph Levin has just published an article in defense of his understanding of the Yahwist as an editor, not as an author, as he rejects my critique of the notion of editor in The Edited Bible. 4 So the debate has begun—it was long overdue—and I am sure that it will continue for some time to come. This article is meant to advance this debate by dealing with the issues raised, along with its historical and methodological underpinnings. In addition, this article will attempt to remove some misrepresentations of my position that not only do not contribute to this necessary scholarly debate but actually hinder it.

1.  Van Seters, The Edited Bible; idem, “The Redactor in Biblical Studies: A Nineteenth Century Anachronism,” JNSL 29/1 (2003) 1–19; idem, “An Ironic Circle: Wellhausen and the Rise of Redactional Criticism,” ZAW 115 (2003) 487–500. 2. J-L. Ska, “A Plea on Behalf of the Biblical Redactors,” ST 59 (2005) 4–18. Ska, of course, responded to my articles, not to the monograph, which was published later than his response. 3. E. Otto, “Review of John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor,” in Biblical Criticism,” Review of Biblical Literature (May, 2007) on-line: http://www .bookreviews.org/pdf/5237_5516.pdf. 4. C. Levin, “The Yahwist: The Earliest Editor in the Pentateuch,” JBL 126 (2007) 209–30.

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A Response to Jean-Louis Ska’s Position on the Question of “Author or Editor” Ska briefly summarizes my two earlier articles, before he begins his response to them. Although I am not entirely happy with his summary of my views, I will not quibble about the details and turn directly to his position. Rather than attempt to defend the notion of editor in antiquity, Ska attacks the appropriateness of the notion of author for any work “both in Greece and in Israel.” The concept of author is held to be a product of the “Romantic Movement” in the modern world and as such is inappropriate for antiquity. Of course, notions of authorship covering a wide range of literary genres changed over time, even when there was quite conscious imitation of classical models for centuries in the modern era. But this is hardly reason for regarding ancient poets, dramatists, historians, and other writers as “editors” rather than authors. The claim by Ska, and others, that an author is an invention of 18th and 19th century “Romanticism” is, however, worth examining because a large part of the present problem results from the anachronistic application of this understanding of authorship and the corresponding Romantic understanding of redactor to biblical studies. 5 Prior to the rise of Romanticism, numerous texts were part of the educational curriculum and the object of academic study. There were, of course, the great classics works of the Greeks and Romans in many different genres, and the theological classics of the early church and the medieval and early modern periods. These were the great poets and playwrights, the philosophers of many ages, the historians, and the like. There is little point in denying authorship to this large corpus of traditional work, all of it held in the highest esteem. The primary function of academia at all the great centers of learning at the time was the transmission and perpetuation of this traditional corpus as the embodiment of wisdom and truth with little room for innovation. 6 With the rise of the natural sciences and historical criticism from the 16th century onward, however, this whole system was challenged. Now, innovation and new truth that was not based on the old “canonical” tradition was seen to be possible, and this in literary studies was most keenly reflected in the “battle of the books.” 7 The Romantic Movement of the late 18th century through the 19th century was the ultimate flowering of this new spirit as reflected in what 5.  For a thorough discussion of the rise of academic authorship in the Romantic Era as a form of “academic charisma,” see William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 6.  All this is spelled out in great detail in Clark’s book, cited above. 7.  See J. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Van Seters, The Edited Bible, 121–24.

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William Clark calls the “academic charisma,” not in the mere transmission of the older tradition, but in works that reflected creativity, originality, and individuality, and the author’s own persona. 8 As in the arts and music, these works consciously broke with tradition, were distinctive, and challenged the accepted wisdom and truth. They aspired to be judged by the labels of “inspirational” and “charismatic” and as such were judged on the basis of consistency, unity, coherence. These became the attributes and fundamental criteria of authorship.  All authors were artists subject to certain ideals of craftsmanship that typified this Romantic period. Under the influence of Romanticism older works were judged on the basis of whether they corresponded to these ideas. Consequently, what we are really talking about is a particular form of authorship that arose in this period, which revolutionized the study of literature up to the Postmodern period. Furthermore, it is in this same Romantic Era that there was a great fascination with the collection and editing of folklore and folk traditions, which are understood as the work, not of authors, but of the Volk as a whole and the embodiment of their Volksgeist. Such folklore was considered reflective of oral tradition, so that it was expressed in terms of the contrast between the oral and the written, the traditional and what is new and original. Those responsible for the collection and transmission of the traditional lore in written form were editors or redactors, as distinct from authors in the Romantic sense as stated above. The oral sources, the singers and storytellers, could remain quite anonymous; they were of no consequence. It is no surprise that this Romantic understanding of authorship and redactor came to the fore in the Germanic states and was pervasive in the German academic world and within biblical scholarship in particular in the 19th century. What is astonishing is that this Romantic notion of the author/editor dichotomy still persists in biblical studies to this day. It should, therefore, be quite unnecessary to say that imposing this sort of understanding of author and redactor on the vast world of literature prior to the Romantic Era is an anachronism, and this is certainly the case with respect to classical and biblical authorship. This is comparable to saying that there were no artists before the Romantic Era because art was also profoundly traditional. Yet it is precisely this Romantic ideal of authorship that is being used to judge whether any of the writers in the Bible are authors and to dismember texts if they do not meet the strict “Romantic” standards of organic unity, coherence, originality, and consistency of theme and outlook. The slightest deviations from such norms lead to the invoking of the redactor, who, of course, is not an artist but a mere collector of traditional lore, with no regard for coherence and consistency. However, the very essence of much of the activity of ancient authorship is based on the collection of ancient lore 8. See Clark, Academic Charisma, 141–43, 179–82, 211–13, 237–38, 296, 441–46.

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and of giving it some form of cohesion and continuity, especially as it had to do with presentations of the past. Herodotus is a good example. It is a marvelous collection of very diverse material that hardly has an obvious coherence or thematic unity, most of it, according to him, based on oral tradition. Furthermore, scholars have long debated the question of the theme of the Histories without much agreement because there is no single theme and no reason why there should be. To apply the criteria of modern authorship to Herodotus and then deny that he is an author is anachronistic, but to assert that because he is primarily a collector of oral tradition he is merely an editor, this is doubly anachronistic. But this is precisely what has happened in biblical studies. The Pentateuch and the historical books become merely anonymous collections of popular tradition and the expression of Israel’s Volksgeist put together by editors. Consequently, one often encounters the argument that, unlike most of classical literature, the literature of the Hebrew Bible is anonymous and therefore of a different character from those works in which the author is known. This notion likewise rests on the Romantic construction of authorship, which stresses the importance of originality, individuality, and notoriety as reflecting the persona of a particular writer and his genius, his distinctiveness from his predecessors. In the pre-Romantic period, it was the text that was all-­important and the source of truth and wisdom. To be sure, it was mediated by means of a charismatic or inspired person, and his name attached to the text gave it a certain authenticity as “canonical” or classical, but his individuality and persona was of little concern as far as the content of the text was concerned. It is true that from classical times authorship implies identity and authority, the one who takes responsibility for a written work or document, and thus it was that at a certain point in the biblical “canonization” process, in imitation of the classics, names of authors were attached to biblical writings. Nevertheless, because a literary work does not have a known author and is therefore anonymous does not necessarily make it a different kind of work from one whose author is known or assumed to be known. The mere loss of “the title page” does not make a piece of writing different in origin or mode of composition, although it may affect the reception of the work and its interpretation. Pseudonymous works try to influence their reception by falsifying the true authorship of their writings. The author (or authors) of Deuteronomy is unknown, but it is reputed to be the written words of Moses (Deut 1:5), in order to imbue it with greater authority. Nevertheless, it is entirely appropriate to use the term author for the writer of a literary work in the sense of the one who is responsible for its composition, whether the name of such a person is known or not. There is nothing inappropriate or contradictory in speaking about an unknown or anonymous author. And if a name is associated with a literary work and we know nothing more than that about the author, how does that fact make it

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any different from a work that is anonymous? 9 Ska, however, wants to attribute a quite different significance to biblical anonymity. He suggests that ancient texts in general and biblical texts in particular are anonymous “since they are not the works of individuals, or not considered as such, but works belonging to the ‘tradition’ of the communities. The ‘author’ or ‘writer’ is the mouthpiece of the community and ‘says,’ interprets and actualizes the tradition, the common possession of all members of the community.” In this capacity, Ska claims: “Their task is twofold. First, they are to be spokespersons of the common tradition, to be the living tradition for their contemporaries; second, they are to ‘actualize’ the tradition or traditional texts, because the writer is always the bridge between the past and the future. This is the reason there is ‘editorial,’ ‘redactional’ or ‘compositional’ activity in antiquity.” 10 Here, we come to the heart of the matter. Ska is not speaking about biblical literature in general, much of which would hardly fit this description, but the Pentateuch and, to a lesser extent, the historical books. Ska presents this description of the literary nature of the Pentateuch as though it were a self-evident truth, without the slightest need for justification, and as such, the reason for speaking about redactors rather than authors. As I have suggested above, it is this redactor and his relationship with folklore traditions that is also a product of the Romantic Era, a corollary of the Romantic author, and both equally anachronistic when applied to antiquity. In fact, it has its origins in the 18th and 19th centuries in which there was great concern to collect and edit and transmit into written form the folk traditions of Europe and other peoples. 11 Friedrich Wolf was strongly influenced by this movement and saw in Homer this same collection of oral folk traditions, and he anachronistically reconstructed the same process by which oral traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey were gathered together and put into their written form by editors in 6th century b.c.e. Athens. 12 The same understanding of the Pentateuch as a collection of small units of oral tradition was taken up by Wilhelm de Wette and was extensively developed by Hermann Gunkel and Hugo Gressmann, although they thought more in terms of collections of tradition made by storytellers, rather than editors. 13 Noth also pursued this approach to pentateuchal tradition with his block model of tradition transmission, which was wedded to the Documentary Hypothesis with its redactors. 14 This modern process of collection 9.  This distinction between classical authors and anonymous biblical writers is irrelevant if there is no authorship prior to the Romantic era. 10.  Ska, “A Plea,” 7. 11.  Of course the editors of folklore in the modern period were not anonymous anymore than authors, and some like the Grimm brothers were quite famous. 12.  Van Seters, The Edited Bible, 133–51. 13.  Ibid., 205–15, 247–56. 14.  Ibid., 265–69.

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and transcription of oral tradition to ensure its preservation is completely anachronistic for antiquity. Those writers that made use of traditional materials to create new compositions to address the concerns of their contemporaries were certainly not editors or redactors; they were authors. Thus, the great Greek dramatists who used primarily the well-known traditional themes of the heroic age were certainly individual authors and not merely editors and “channels of transmission” of communal tradition. Even Homer, whose treatment of the older traditions becomes the most authoritative and “canonical,” can hardly be described as an editor and “channel of transmission,” and few would so characterize him today. In order to support this Romantic notion that the Pentateuch consists almost entirely of very primitive oral tradition that was continuously transmitted and “actualized,” Ska creates a body of writers who transcribed the tradition into written form and then were responsible for its continuous transmission and “actualization” (by which, he means the interpolations) over several centuries. These writers are neither authors nor editors but anonymous “redactors.” The distinction is not new but quite familiar in the 19th century between two kinds of editors or redactors, (1) the critical scholarly editor (diorthotēs) of the Alexandrian type, who never made additions to the text, but tried to identify mistakes and corruptions made by earlier scribes, and (2) the “revisers” (diaskeuastai), those responsible for interpolations in the text. 15 The terminology comes from the scholia of Homer but Wellhausen and Kuenen, among others, made use of these terms as a useful distinction between different types of redactors of the Pentateuch. Kuenen merely lumped together all types of redactors under the single rubric R, which resulted in the completely contradictory notions about the editor/ redactor in biblical studies today. 16 The diaskeuastai who simply represent scribes who “corrupted” the text with longer or shorter interpolations for their own personal reasons should never have been regarded as editors in the first place. This 19th century confusion is the origin of Ska’s “redactor.” Ska seeks to account for the existence of the “redactor” as he understands it by pointing to certain kinds of “redactional activity” that cannot be attributed to either authors or editors. He asserts that in their role as “living channels of transmission” they “actualize” the text by means of “succinct and relevant additions.” This seems to be a polite way of referring to the dia­ skeuastai, the “revisers” or corrupters of texts, as they were regarded in the Homeric tradition. Ska argues that the textual variation to be found in the Qumran texts reflect precisely this kind of editorial activity. Thus, he points to the two different versions of the text of Isaiah and suggests that they “can hardly be attributed to the same ‘author.’” 17 Of course, critical scholars 15.  Ibid., 35–45, 140–51. 16.  Ibid., 235–38. 17.  Ska, “A Plea,” 8.

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have never attributed any particular text of the book of Isaiah to a single author and therefore, single authorship is not the real issue. To be sure, the two manuscripts reflect scribal variation related to different text traditions, though it is not clear that this is the result of a conscious, actualizing, “editorial” activity. There is certainly no ideological tendenz that can be attributed to either version to suggest a deliberate “actualization” of the text by the religious sect at Qumran. Ska also calls attention to the pre- or proto-Samaritan texts of Exodus and Numbers (4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb), which have many of the same expansionist characteristics as that exhibited in the Samaritan Pentateuch. While similar to SamP in their expansionist additions and therefore belonging to the same text-family, they nevertheless lack the one distinctive ideological feature, that of the command to build the altar on Mount Gerizim as an addition to the Decalogue, so this clearly attests to a late ideological addition by a member of the Samaritan community. But it would appear that the rabbis at a still-later date deliberately altered the reference to Mount Gerizim in Deut 27:4 to Mount Ebal in order to counter the claims of the Samaritans. 18 From these examples one may draw the following conclusions: (1) expansionist texts are not necessarily the result of an editing meant to turn the text into one that is particularly relevant to the needs of a singular community; two different sects of Judaism made use of the same expansionist text tradition; (2) a particular addition can be made to a text for ideological purposes, even when one sect uses an expansionist text-family and the other sect a more conservative text-family; and (3) there is no reason to attribute such deliberate “corruptions” in the textual tradition to editors or “redactors.” There are, likewise, long texts, medium texts, and short texts within the text-tradition of Homer, just as there are in the Hebrew Bible. The expansionist texts of Homer betray the same tendencies that one finds in Qumran, to include within one part of the text quotations drawn from another part of the text or a parallel text-tradition. Thus, the expansionist text of Numbers (4QNumb) contains quotations from Deuteronomy where they are deemed appropriate. This kind of text expansion appears to have been a habit of both Homeric and pentateuchal scribes, to perhaps recall from memory closely related texts in order to fill out a particular narrative with more detail. This appears to have been a widespread habit of ancient scribes which editors of texts resisted. Even in the fairly rare case in which we have such a blatant “correction” as the altar on Gerizim in SamP or its further “correction” to Ebal in MT, these should not be attributed to editors but to religiously zealous scribes. 19 What becomes abundantly clear from the great variety of text 18.  The Edited Bible, 334–40. 19.  For a comparable example in New Testament textual, criticism see B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the

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families represented at Qumran is that there was no attempt to edit the biblical texts to make them fit a particular religious bias. The Essenes could easily make any text fit their religious perspective just by giving it the appropriate interpretation in their commentaries. Redactors had nothing to do with either textual transmission or the commentaries associated with the biblical texts. Ska further argues that evidence for “redactional” activity is the best explanation to account for the contradictions and inconsistencies between the sources of the Pentateuch, and he appeals to the “pioneers and forefathers of the documentary hypothesis” throughout the 19th century in support of this view. Because I have reviewed this scholarly development in considerable detail in The Edited Bible and concluded that the notion of these editors’ making diplomatic copies of archival texts and conflating them into a single document is both anachronistic for scribal activity in antiquity and very problematic as a literary theory, I will not repeat that discussion here. 20 The nonbiblical parallels are nevertheless worth brief consideration. The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic appears to be a case of a writer using several different stories about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, along with some other materials, such as the Flood Story, to create a quite remarkable composition. Even though it is quite possible to identify some of the writer’s sources, based on older versions of the stories, there is no reason whatever to suggest that he should not be considered as the author of this epic and be demoted to the role of mere editor. That other ancient authors, such as all the great dramatists of Greece, made use of traditional stories that they then reshaped for their own purposes, does not make them any less authors than Shakespeare, who also did the same thing. It is likely that the Gilgamesh Epic was also subject to some later expansions, but even these should not be regarded as editorial. Because there was no ancient notion of copyright, a scribe could do whatever he or she liked with the text. Furthermore, Ska points to a parallel between Gilgamesh as a collection of traditional material and that of Gunkel’s approach to Genesis. Gunkel, however, treated the Yahwist’s collection of small units as the gradual accumulation of traditions by a school of storytellers, not as the work of a redactor, and von Rad directly challenged Gunkel’s position by arguing that the Yahwist was indeed an author and historian in the way in which he put his quite diverse materials together. 21 Ska likewise points to the parallel between research on the composition of Homer and that of the Pentateuch, which supports “the idea that the long poems [of Homer] we know are actually compilations of originally independent poetic pieces.” 22 As such, the poems also contain “inconsistencies,” and these are Ska’s primary point of comparison with the Pentateuch, New Testament (New York : Oxford University Press, 1993). 20. See The Edited Bible, 185–243. 21. Von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch, 50–52. 22.  Ska, “A Plea,” 11.

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which have likewise been used in the past to argue that Homer was the work of redactors. However, after citing a number of examples from the Odyssey, Ska comes to the surprising conclusion: “To be sure, J. Van Seters would rejoin that nobody considers Homer as the ‘redactor’ of the Odyssey because he may have used and re-elaborated earlier poems. The mere presence of inconsistencies in a literary work is not sufficient to deny its writers the title of ‘author.’” Ska goes on to point out that the inconsistencies are far greater and more numerous in the Pentateuch, and consequently, Homer is not a legitimate parallel to the Pentateuch. Contrary to Ska’s guess as to how I would respond to the comparison between Homer and the Pentateuch, I have tried to show in my recent publication that for 150 years leading classical scholars did believe that the inconsistencies in Homer were the result of redactors. Furthermore, it was the literary analysis of the Odyssey and the notion of parallel sources combined by a final redactor that so strongly influenced similar documentary theories in pentateuchal studies. 23 It is true that over the last 50 years or so, the notion of the final redactor has largely disappeared from Homeric studies— by contrast, redactors have proliferated in biblical studies. It should also be pointed out that in Ska’s examples from the Odyssey the most serious cases of contradiction are to be found in the ending in book 24, with that of earlier episodes. Now the Homeric scholars of Alexandria already recognized this as “un-Homeric” and marked it with obelisks in their editions, and this judgment, has been almost universally accepted by classical scholars in modern times. This ending was the work of a later poet (not an editor) to “improve” the older poem, and in spite of the Alexandrian scholars it remains in the Vulgate text. It is supplementations and interpolations such as this that are often the cause of contradictions in the extant form of the text, but these can hardly be blamed on editors. Ska cites a number of examples of contradictions in the Pentateuch and historical books as indisputable evidence of redactors in the formation of the biblical text. I would not for a moment dispute the existence of such contradictions, so that is not the issue. The question is how best to account for such contradictions, and Ska’s answer is the editor or redactor. That explanation only works if one adopts the original view of Richard Simon that the Bible consists of numerous archival documents that were rather artificially combined by editors without any addition or intervention in the text, a view which can hardly be sustained today. As soon as the editor is allowed to intervene in the compositional process with his own additions and modifications, there is no reason why an editor should tolerate contradictions any more than an author. Indeed, editors are scholars who are especially sensitive to mistakes and contradictions, and they regard it as their task to 23. See The Edited Bible, 133–84.

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correct, not corrupt, the texts that they edit. On the other hand, ancient texts without copyright are notoriously prone to interpolation, supplementation, and modification, usually in a very unsystematic fashion and at the whim of a copyist. Many interpolations of this sort can be identified by contradictions because the interpolator is usually concerned only with the immediate context in the original to which he/she is making an addition and not the literary work as a whole. 24 However, there is no single explanation for all contradictions, and each case must be evaluated on its own merits. Nevertheless, the attribution of contradictions to the role of an editor seems to me the least likely of all the possibilities. It is not a self-evident solution to the problem. The final evidence for redactors that Ska discusses is that of “interpreters of ancient texts.” 25 Here, the editor has changed from his role as one who merely conflates parallel sources in the classical Documentary Hypothesis to that of a theologian and interpreter of the traditions that he takes up, so that texts once attributed to the sources are now reassigned to editors. Indeed, an increasing volume of texts are attributed to redactors in the new “redaction criticism” so that the very existence of authors and historians such as the Yahwist (von Rad) and the Deuteronomistic Historian (Noth) have been completely supplanted by editors who are the new interpreters of ancient tradition. Ska and others seem quite oblivious to the fact that two entirely contradictory notions of redactors are being advocated, which seems to confirm the fact that even modern authors can incorporate quite contradictory notions into their works. It seems much more reasonable to me, following von Rad, to attribute the texts of Genesis, cited by Ska as redactional, to the author and historian, the Yahwist, and to make him responsible for the reformulation of older traditions in a programmatic way so as to make them fit his history from creation to Israel’s arrival in the promised land. That is what we know ancient historians did in their writing of “archaic histories” by which they constructed national identity. In his conclusion, Ska states that the issue is just a matter of terminology and convention and suggests that the term author in the modern Romantic sense of the term is just as problematic as redactor. As indicated above, however, there has never been any great problem in the past about discussing authors of the pre-Romantic Movement period or those of the classical world, only with anachronistically attributing to ancient authors the expectations of modern authorship. The term redactor, which is used as a justification for all kinds of literary theories about the formation of the biblical 24. See especially William McKane’s discussion of interpolations in Jeremiah and his conception of a “rolling corpus” in A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 1: Introduction and Commentary on Jeremiah I–XXV (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986) xlvii–li, lxii–lxxxiii. 25.  Ska, “A Plea,” 14–15.

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text, is likewise anachronistic and a serious abuse of language and should be avoided at all costs. We do know what ancient Alexandrian “editors,” who were the forerunners of their modern counterparts, did in antiquity and they did none of the things that biblical scholars have attributed to this class of persons. Ska ends with a quotation from von Rad that he says addresses “the very question we have discussed at length.” 26 It is worth repeating because it actually makes quite a different point from the one he suggests: “None of the stages in the age-long development of this work [the Hexateuch] has been wholly superseded; something has been preserved of each phase, and its influence has persisted right down to the final form of the Hexateuch.” 27 This statement, however, must be set in the context of an earlier remark in which von Rad discusses the relationship of the sources E and P to J. He states: The process by which E and P are superimposed on J, as well as their relationship to one another, is a purely literary question, which adds nothing essentially new to the discussion so far as form-criticism is concerned. The form of the Hexateuch had already been finally determined by the Yahwist. The Elohist and the priestly writer do not diverge from the pattern in this respect: their writings are no more that variations upon the massive theme of the Yahwist’s conception, despite their admittedly great theological originality. 28

What von Rad attempted to argue in Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch, against Gunkel and the suggestions made above, is that the Yahwist was the one responsible for combining a number of different traditions into one “massive theme” that constituted the basic form and structure of the Hexateuch, and while later authors, E and P, may have added some of their own theological perspective to this work as authors with their own “originality,” they made no fundamental change to its underlying theme. For von Rad, the redactors of the Documentary Hypothesis played a very minor role in this whole process as the ones who preserved the source documents in a combined form and he quite specifically says of this redactional process that it “adds nothing essentially new to the discussion” of the Hexateuch’s form. Apart from its rather passive role, it is hard to find in von Rad’s work any significant function for the redactor in the formation or interpretation of the biblical traditions.

What Did Von Rad and Noth Think about These Matters? It is not appropriate or necessary within the context of this present book to deal with my response to Eckard Otto’s review of my book, The Edited 26.  Ibid., 15. 27. Von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch, 78. 28.  Ibid., 74.

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Bible, nor to present my critique of Christoph Levin’s defense of the view that the Yahwist was an editor. These may be found in the original article in JHS from which this essay was taken. However, there is some merit in repeating what I said about how Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth understood and Yahwist and Dtr as authors and historians respectively. The tone of their responses to my understanding of the positions of von Rad and Noth, as well as comments by others on these matters, show that a serious debate on this question is necessary. This is not the place to repeat what I wrote in The Edited Bible, or to indulge in a kind of personal apologia, but to further the conversation on these issues. This said, since Otto has simplified my discussion of their position to the point of misrepresentation, I would like to begin by stressing that I simply pointed out that von Rad identified the Yahwist as a historian, a view that cannot be denied, as all the documentation shows. Noth likewise regarded his Dtr in Joshua to Kings as a historian, and not merely a “redactor.” He compared him to Greek and Roman historians, as I also did. It is true that although Noth originally accepted von Rad’s understanding of the Yahwist as a historian, which inspired his treatment of Dtr as a historian, in his later work on the Pentateuch he developed a quite different view of the Yahwist that eventually led to the redaction criticism reflected in Rendtorff. It is also true that von Rad originally accepted Noth’s view of Dtr, but then had trouble reconciling it with his Hexateuch and reverted to some talk of editors in the historical books. All this is set out in detail in The Edited Bible—no reader of Otto’s comments on the book would have guessed that this is the case. 29 Otto’s major argument against my position seems to be that all the students of von Rad and Noth and their students (including himself) to the third generation could not be wrong in their use of redaction criticism. That, for him, is the true tradition of von Rad and Noth, and not the aberration that I represent. Of course, this is just an ad hominem argument. 30 Otto devotes much space in his review to outlining his own view of the supposed development of redaction criticism from von Rad and Noth to Rendtorff, Koch and Smend, but does not address any of the specific arguments I have advanced in The Edited Bible about the points in which they have gone wrong. Most significantly, Otto does not address the evidence from the writings of von Rad and Noth provided in The Edited Bible. In fact, Otto chides me for providing too many references from these authors to support my view, but he himself does not offer a single one that contradicts the evidence that I have collected. Instead, he interprets von Rad’s presentation 29. See The Edited Bible, 256–83. 30.  I too studied for a year under von Rad, but that has nothing to do with my being right or wrong. I discuss in The Edited Bible the views of Otto’s teachers, including Koch and Steck, and why I disagree with their attribution of redaction criticism to von Rad and Noth. See ibid., 269–96. These matters cannot be resolved in terms of “(proper) discipleship” but only on the basis of the evidence.

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of the Yahwist to suit his own purposes. Thus he states: “[Von Rad’s] famous ‘Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch’ (1938) demonstrates the Yahwist as a redactor of the Shechem and Gilgal traditions, incorporating a great number of narratives that were until then handed down independently from the source of the Yahwist.” 31 What von Rad actually says is that the Yahwist was responsible for bringing together a body of scattered oral traditions into a unified literary work “around one central coordinating conception and by some massive tour de force [to] achieve literary status,” 32 without any reference to an intermediate source. 33 Nowhere does von Rad ever identify J as a redactor. That is, Otto’s own prejudicial interpretation of von Rad’s remarks. For von Rad, a redactor was someone who combined written sources, such as J, E, and P. The Yahwist is viewed only as an historian comparable to the author of the Succession Narrative, both of which he regarded as standing at the apex of Israelite historiography. 34 Likewise, Noth considers Dtr a historian and quite specifically denies that Dtr is merely a “redactor” as my quotations of Noth prove. Otto’s review, therefore, is just self-serving in favor of his own position. It should be noted that Levin also seeks to manipulate the views of von Rad and Noth in support of his redaction history. Concerning von Rad’s demonstration, in “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” of the literary unity of the Yahwist as an author and historian, Levin states in a footnote that this conclusion “taken as a redaction-history hypothesis, meets the facts with astonishing accuracy.” 35 There is, however, no justification for turning von Rad’s support for the Yahwist as an author into support for Levin’s view of the Yahwist as an editor. Furthermore, his misuse of Noth seems, at least to me, even more egregious. In support of his view that the Yahwist reflects an “editorial collection” of narratives in written form, he outlines six different blocks of narrative tradition, a modification of Noth’s block theory of primitive oral confessional traditions. These blocks have apparently experienced numerous (redactional?) interpolations prior to the time at which they were combined by the Yahwist, the first great editor. The blocks that cover the exodus, Sinai, and wilderness traditions are reduced to very small fragments with editorial expansions by the Yahwist and hardly what Noth had in mind. Noth, of course, did not regard the Yahwist as a redactor of the tradition blocks, nor even as the one who initially put them together. That unity was already reflected in his Grundlage. So Noth’s work on the Pentateuch is not helpful at this point in supporting Levin’s thesis. However, in order to explain the editorial process, Levin appeals instead to Noth’s work on DtrH. He states: “Considering the redaction of the Deu31.  Otto, Review of John Van Seters, The Edited Bible, 2–3. 32. Von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch, 48. 33.  This intermediary source G was Noth’s invention. 34. Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1:49. 35.  Levin, “The Yahwist,” 211 n. 10.

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teronomistic History, Martin Noth spoke of the ‘evidence that the work is a self-contained whole.’ To support his view Noth mentions a number of common characteristics that hold the work together.” 36 It is just such characteristics that Levin also finds in his Yahwist. This should come as no surprise because Noth follows von Rad’s example in arguing that Dtr is also an author and historian, just as von Rad did for the Yahwist. Moreover, what is most remarkable is that, in the very chapter Levin quotes, Noth strongly rejects the then-prevailing view that Dtr was an editor or editors in favor of the view that Dtr is an author and all of his arguments are meant to support this thesis. This completely contradicts Levin’s statement quoted above and all of his arguments based on it. I have already pointed out these facts at considerable length in The Edited Bible, but this evidence is simply ignored. Furthermore, not only does Noth argue throughout chap. 2 that Dtr is an author and historian, but he even offers the concluding statement: “Thus Dtr.’s method of composition is very lucid. The closest parallels are those Hellenistic and Roman historians who use older accounts, mostly unacknowledged, to write a history not of their own time but of the more distant past.” 37 The same thing could be said of the Yahwist. 38 Thus, the substitution of “editorial features” as a description for those characteristics that both von Rad and Noth regarded as the basic literary characteristics of an ancient author is, in my opinion, entirely inappropriate and a case of special pleading.

Conclusion It is not possible, within the short space of this response to Professors Jean-Louis Ska, Eckart Otto, and Christoph Levin, to take up all of the questions and issues related to the use of the redactor in biblical criticism. I leave that to The Edited Bible. What is important, in my view, is that the discussion has begun and this will hopefully lead to greater clarity in our use of terminology with respect to the composition and transmission of the biblical text, as well as the careful use of comparison in the explanation of these phenomena. The concept of the “biblical editor” cannot be taken for granted. It deserves and demands close and serious scrutiny. This article is an invitation to further this scrutiny. 36.  Ibid., 217. Levin’s quotation from Noth comes from the chapter heading of chap. 2 in M. Noth, The Deuteronomistic History ( JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981) 4. 37.  The Deuteronomistic History, 11. 38.  See pp. 143–163 above in “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible?”

Chapter 12

The Report of the Yahwist’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated Introduction As a champion of the Yahwist for many years, 1 I have been asked to respond to the essays in this volume 2 that seek to get rid of the Yahwist as a reminder of traditional source analysis, as reflected in the Documentary Hypothesis, and to replace it with a “new” and more sophisticated methodology, that of redaction criticism. For some inexplicable reason the source P is retained, as well as the distinction between P and non-P. P is regarded as providing the basic form and shape of the Pentateuch with non-P considered as filler or post-P redactional expansion. This looks like the pre-Wellhausian source analysis of Ewald in a slightly different form and displaced from his early dates into the all-inclusive “Persian period.” However, it is the non-P corpus, traditionally associated with J (and E) that is at the heart of the debate. Now we must be very clear about what is at issue in this discussion because the matter has often been obscured by details that have nothing to do with the current status of the debate and by the use of jargon, such as the “Yahwist hypothesis,” which is meant to suggest, I suppose, that the Yahwist is the real culprit in the Documentary Hypothesis. This seems to be the point of the historical survey of Thomas Römer, “The Elusive Yahwist.” For the most part I have little difficulty with the facts as he has laid them out, which have also been pointed out in my own publications. Our difference has to do with the viewpoint taken toward these facts and on a few important details to which we will return below. However, the point of his survey and of the remarks by K. Schmid, J. Gertz, and others 1.  Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition; idem, Der Jahwist als Historiker; idem, Prologue to History; idem, The Life of Moses; idem, The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); idem, A Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code. 2.  T. B. Dozemann and K. Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation.

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is to suggest that this Yahwist comes in so many different forms that it is difficult to deal with all of them and one must therefore generalize by the use of such a term as “Yahwist hypothesis.” 3 All of this I consider a smoke screen. It may be observed that there are many different understandings of P, whether as source or supplement, with different limits producing as many Ps as there are Js. The dating of P has been changed more radically than J, from being the earliest source to the latest. Yet these scholars seem to have no difficulty with the acceptance of P, which was as important to the Documentary Hypothesis as J. Consequently, the great diversity of opinion about J has nothing to do with the present proclamation of the Yahwist’s dismissal. In point of fact, the Yahwist, whose demise is being prematurely mourned, is a quite particular Yahwist, namely, von Rad’s Yahwist as articulated in his Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch (1938). It was specifically this Yahwist that was attacked by Rolf Rendtorff as the fundamental problem of the Documentary Hypothesis, which he then sought to replace by a quite different literary process, following Martin Noth, and which in turn has transmuted into the current form of redaction history. All of the recent discussion of the replacement of the Yahwist with editors goes back to Rendtorff’s Das Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (1977), of course ignoring any of the subsequent criticism that was leveled against Rendtorff’s position. In his historical survey Römer fails to mention my own critique of pentateuchal studies in Abraham in History and Tradition (1975), which appeared before the works of H. H. Schmid and Rendtorff. 4 My critique of the Documentary Hypothesis was fundamentally different from that of Rendtorff. It was not directed at source criticism, which remains basic to all historical criticism. Instead, it was directed at tradition history, especially the block model of Martin Noth, adopted by Rendtorff, and the use of the redactor in literary criticism. So let us focus on the real issue. Simply stated, von Rad’s Yahwist was understood as an author and historian who used an old liturgical confession of God’s deliverance from Egypt, as reflected in Deut 26:5–9, as the basic structure of his historical work. J then combined this with other older traditions about the giving of the law at Sinai, the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis, and the stories of the Primeval History, in order to produce a remarkable history of the people from the creation of humans down to the conquest of the land of Canaan—the basic story that underlies the Hexateuch. This understanding of the Yahwist was seriously undermined by Noth who relegated most of J’s work to a pre-literary stage of tradition development in the nature of numerous blocks of tradition, that were already combined in some vague 3. See also J. L. Ska, “The Yahwist, a Hero with a Thousand Faces,” in Abschied vom Jahwisten (ed. J. C. Gertz et al.; BZAW 315; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) 1–23. 4.  For my review of H. H. Schmid and R. Rendtorff, see my “Recent Studies on Pentateuchal Criticism” (1980).

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way before J inherited them. From this demolition of J by Noth it was but a small step for Rendtorff to dismiss the existence of J altogether. There is, however, a major problem with all of this. It is true that questions were raised against an early date for von Rad’s “little credo” of Deut 26:5–9, but this also meant that the whole basis for Noth’s confessional blocks of tradition was likewise placed in doubt. Furthermore, my own work and that of H. H. Schmid (Der sogenannte Jahwist, 1976) made it clear that much of the material within the “so-called” J corpus must be viewed as much later in date than was previously thought. Out of this came two competing proposals. The one, my position, was to affirm von Rad’s Yahwist as indeed an author and historian, 5 who was responsible for the great literary work as he claimed, but who belonged to a very different era from the one proposed by von Rad. The other, Rendtorff’s view, was to affirm Noth’s block theory of tradition growth, completely disregarding his grand scheme of tradition history in a pre-literary “amphictyonic age,” but instead assigning the process of their amalgamation and integration of diverse traditions to Deuteronomistic, Priestly and other redactors. 6 The author becomes completely superfluous. Thus, the question over the existence of the Yahwist (by whatever name one wishes to call him/her) boils down to this one issue: Is the non-P corpus of the Pentateuch or Hexateuch (excluding D and Dtr) to be regarded as the work of an author and historian, or is it to be viewed as the result of a complex editorial process? One argument of the redaction critics is to say that the Yahwist is simply an unfortunate carryover from the defunct Documentary Hypothesis. The same, of course, could be said for P, which still remains fundamental to their analysis. However, the problem with the Documentary Hypothesis is not source analysis, dividing the text into P and non-P, which remains basic to any literary criticism of the Pentateuch. The real problem was always the redactor whose characterization and use for solving literary problems seems so completely arbitrary, and I have spoken against this quite arbitrary deus ex 5.  Rendtorff, in both his Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem and in his earlier article, “Der ‘Jahwist’ als Theologe? Zum Dilemma der Pentateuchkritik,” in Congress Volume, Edinburgh (VTSup 28; Leiden: Brill, 1975) 158–66, ignored von Rad’s claim that the Yahwist was a historian and persisted in suggesting that von Rad spoke primarily of J as a theologian. This was a serious misrepresentation of von Rad’s intention in Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch. See my earlier critique of this in “The Yahwist as Theologian? A Response,” JSOT 3 (1977) 15–19; also idem, “The Pentateuch as Torah and History Book: In Defense of G. von Rad,” in Altes Testament und Moderne, vol. 10: Das Alte Testament: Ein Geschichtsbuch? (ed. E. Blum, W. Johnstone, and C. Markschies; Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005) 47–63. Unfortunately, Römer has continued to repeat Rendtorff’s view and consequently suggests that my characterization of the Yahwist as a historian was something new, but I was merely following von Rad’s clear position on this question of literary genre. 6.  Rendtorff himself is uncomfortable with the term redactor because he admits that it is derived directly from the Documentary Hypothesis, but he and his followers use it anyway.

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machina for 30 years. 7 It is the redactor that is the most characteristic feature of the Documentary Hypothesis! Lest it be suggested that this method of redaction criticism is something new, let me point out that it goes back to Friedrich Wolf and his Prolegomena ad Homerum of 1795 in which the various blocks of tradition and songs in the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together by editors in the 6th century b.c.e. and which continued to be modified by editors until their “final form” was reached by the greatest editor of all, Aristarchus, in the 2nd century b.c.e. This approach to the transmission history of Homer was very influential in the development of the Documentary Hypothesis in biblical studies. The notion of editors and redactional criticism was always at the heart of this shared methodology and it took classical studies 150 years to finally see the error of its ways and abandon this “redactor theory” in favor of the “author-poet.” One German scholar who led the battle against it, made the following characterization of redaction analysis among German classical scholarship of his day: Es ist ganz unvermeidlich, sich alle diese Redaktoren mit geschriebenen Texten in der Hand vorzustellen, da streichend, dort einsetzend und verschiedene Schnittstellen aneinanderpassend. Von Schreibtisch, Schere and Kleister zu sprechen, ist natürlich ein boshafter Anachronismus, aber die Richtung, in der alle Annahmen dieser Art liegen, scheint mir treffend zu bezeichnen. Buchphilologen haben diese Theorien erdacht, und Arbeit an und mit Büchern ist für sie die Voraussetzung geblieben. 8

In biblical studies, however, imagined redactors of this sort still persist in spite of all evidence to the contrary. 9 So we return to the question: Is the compositional character of the non-P corpus of the Pentateuch, the body of text usually assigned to J, to be viewed as the work of editors or as the work of an ancient historian, as suggested by von Rad? It is my conviction, based on the comparative material from classical examples of “archaic history” that the mark of such author-historians is the development, out of a body of diverse traditions, of a continuous and coherent account of the past with themes and interconnections to unite its various parts. 10 So far as I can see, the ancient “editor,” such as Aristarchus, never engaged in such activity but instead tried to restore the classical texts to their purest form and to stigmatize as corruptions any late additions that he might find or suspect within the text. To identify the use of particular 7.  See especially my remarks in Abraham in History and Tradition, 129–31. 8. A. Lesky, “Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Homerischen Epos” in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung (ed. J. Latacz; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979) 299. Latacz’s own comment on Lesky’s critique of the Wolf position (p. 12) was that Lesky remained for two decades as a voice crying in the wilderness ( “Rufer in der Wüste”). 9.  The full case for this view has been set forth in The Edited Bible. 10. See my Prologue to History; also, pp. 143–163 above in “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible?”

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themes and other techniques of interconnections in the text as “editorial” is, to my mind, completely without justification either in antiquity or in modern times.

P as the Link between Genesis and Exodus With this introduction, let me take up a few selected examples from the positions set forth above as space permits. 11 Let us first look briefly at the thesis, as set forth by Konrad Schmid, 12 that it was the Priestly Writer who first made the connection between the patriarchal stories and the exodus story and that in doing so P had no knowledge of the Joseph story. To support this view, Schmid attributes a minimal number of texts to P within Gen 37–50, and Priestly texts that do appear within the Joseph story are then merely assigned to a Priestly redactor. That, of course, is just special pleading. Let us then examine his reconstruction of this P source. It is usual for scholars to regard Gen 37:1–2 as belonging to P, because there is a clear break after v. 2. However, this would not fit Schmid’s thesis so he discards v. 2. Yet the remark about Joseph’s age in v. 2a is a regular feature of P in the patriarchal stories, and it also appears again in 41:46a. Of course, that too would speak against Schmid’s thesis. Furthermore, he must also discard the genealogy in 46:8–27 because it makes a clear reference to Joseph’s prior period in Egypt. Schmid accepts 47:27–28, which contains the remarks about the age of Jacob at his death and the length of time he spent in Egypt, but he rejects the statement in 47:9 about Jacob’s age when he arrived in Egypt, and the rest of the audience with Pharaoh in 47:7–11, which accounts for their settlement in Goshen, mentioned again in v. 27. Genesis 48:3–6 is regularly assigned to P because it recapitulates the language and themes of P so closely, but this again would manifest clear dependence of P on the Joseph story so it must also be reckoned as secondary. Thus, the only way that Schmid can support his literary theory is to invoke a Priestly redactor who uses precisely the same literary techniques, language and themes as P, but who cannot be viewed as independent from the non-P context in which his words are found, in this case, the Joseph story. Even Wellhausen admitted that he could not find any significant differences between P and Rp. 13 11.  I will not comment on Christoph Levin’s response to the papers (“The Yahwist: The Earliest Editor in the Pentateuch”), which would require a detailed discussion about our very different understanding of the Yahwist, except to say that his characterizing the Yahwist as an editor greatly confuses the issue of the debate. There is nothing editorial about the compositional activity that he attributes to J. I also cannot comment on papers that I did not receive in time for this response. 12.  “The So-Called Yahwist and the Literary Gap between Genesis and Exodus,” A Farewell to the Yahwist, 29–50. 13.  Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, 384–85. It should be noted that Rendtorff regarded P in Genesis as a supplement, not an independent source, and therefore had no trouble with the verses that Schmid excludes.

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What we have left of P in Schmid’s view is Gen 37:1–2a; 46:6–7; 47:27– 28; 49:1a, 29–33; 50:12–13, which he characterizes as “an acceptable and complete description of the Eisodos within P without an account of Joseph.” 14 However, any unprejudiced reading of the text that remains, even with this careful surgery, reveals the most glaring gaps in narrative continuity and coherence. P begins in 37:1–2aα: “Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojourning, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob.” Following this introduction we expect some narrative account of Jacob’s sons in Canaan. But instead, we are told that what follows after 37:2aα is the statement in 46:6: “And they took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and they came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him.” There is no explanation for why Jacob and his family should leave Canaan, the promised land, and make this great migration to Egypt with all their extensive possessions. Even grammatically it is problematic to understand why v. 6 suddenly begins with a plural verb. The recapitulation of the subject in vv.  6b–7a is surely intended as an introduction to the genealogy that follows in vv. 8–27. Furthermore, there is no reference to Jacob’s departure from Canaan, only his arrival in Egypt. If, however, we look at the preceding v. 5, “Then Jacob set out from Beer-sheba, and the sons of Israel carried their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him,” the continuation in v. 6 makes perfectly good sense as an extension of this earlier presentation. We have exactly the same phenomenon in other places in which P has added to, and embellished, the earlier J account. Note especially in Gen 31:17–18, which begins in a very similar fashion: “So Jacob arose, and set his sons and his wives on camels” (v. 17), followed in v. 18 by a rather confusing mixture of J with P embellishments (see also Gen 12:4b–5a). But if Gen 47:6 depends on v. 5, then the whole position of Schmid falls apart. 15 Following Schmid’s P corpus we next have the statement that Israel settled in Goshen (Gen 47:27–28), without any explanation of why they chose this region in particular, or why it should even be noted because in the exodus story P pays no attention whatever to this special location and even seems to contradict it. So Goshen is not a connective in P as it is in J. In this region of Goshen, they apparently prospered greatly. The period of Jacob’s sojourn in Egypt is given (17 years) and his total age is 147 years (cf 47:9). This in turn is followed by the account of Jacob’s death, preceded by his injunction to his sons to bury him in Machpelah (49:1a, 29–33) and the subsequent carrying out of this injunction (50:12–13). At this point, however, there is another 14. See Farewell, 46–47. 15. David Carr (Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996] 106–7) sees the problem and assigns 46:5 to P, which then means that 45:19–21 must also be P as well as the whole of Gen 31:17–18. This sort of solution, however, would be disastrous to Schmid’s position.

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serious gap in that it places the whole family in Canaan with no suggestion that they returned to Egypt. Gertz tries to solve this problem by adding v. 14 to the P account, but this is an act of desperation. Verse 14 reads: “After he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father.” This obviously refers to the Joseph story in 50:1–11 in which it is Joseph who is primarily responsible for the burial. Gertz disputes this latter connection and we will need to take this question up below. His one reason for attributing it to P is that it is necessary in order to make his understanding of P work. But that is no argument at all. If all the brothers with all their families and goods returned to Canaan, since Schmid regards 50:8b as a post-P addition, then why should they have made the arduous trip back to Egypt again? This P reconstruction as an independent work makes little sense. Schmid does not comment above on what follows in Exod 1 after Gen 50:13, but in another publication he makes it clear that Exod 1:1–5 (because it obviously presupposes the Joseph story) belongs to his Priestly redactor, 16 which for him would mean that Exod 1:7 continued from Gen 50:13. With this sequence, however, one would get the impression that this proliferation and great prosperity took place after their return to Canaan to bury their father. Nothing suggests that they are still in Egypt. And if this is immediately followed by Exod 1:13–14, then the gaps and confusion only become worse. Why have the fortunes of the Israelites changed so drastically? Where is this taking place and who are their oppressors? And what happened to the brothers? Even Exod 2:23aβ,b–25 does not help to answer these questions, because without v. 23aα there is still no mention of Egypt. It is simply impossible to read these bits and pieces of the P account separate from their present context. I rest my case. Schmid’s conclusions do not address my presentation of the Yahwist in a single detail and need no further comment.

The Yahwist as the Link between the Patriarchs and Exodus Traditions The essay by Jan Gertz builds directly on the earlier work of K. Schmid, with some modifications. 17 The heart of his paper has to do with the “postPriestly supplements” to Gen 50 and Exod 1. It is suggested by both Schmid and Gertz that 50:14 does not really belong to the Joseph story in 50:1–11 but is either a redactional addition (Schmid) or belongs to P (Gertz). The argument to support this is the assertion that the discourse between Joseph and his brothers is not appropriate after v. 14 and should come much earlier, 16. K. Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus (WMANT 81; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999) 30. 17.  “The Transition between the Books of Genesis and Exodus,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (ed. T. Dozeman and K. Schmid; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 73–87.

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that is, after v. 11. This is part of Schmid’s larger thesis in which he sees the whole family returning permanently to Canaan, so that 50:7b and 8b, as well as v. 14, must all be redactional (and for him, post-P). 18 But does this scheme make any sense? Joseph gives no hint in his request to Pharaoh that his return to Canaan is permanent but only that it is for the purpose of burying Jacob, and for this reason, he receives a large military escort. This is also suggested in vv. 9 and 11; the reaction of the local population only makes sense if the whole large company was viewed as predominantly Egyptian. Without v. 14, this large Egyptian contingent must also remain in Canaan. Second, why should the brothers be afraid of Joseph in their homeland? Joseph, without the Egyptian escort, would now simply be one of them and would no longer have any special status. Canaan is not regarded as part of the Egyptian empire in this story. Only after they have returned to Egypt would his brothers need to be concerned about their safety. So the passage in vv. 15–21 makes the best sense right where it is. Joseph’s continued provision and care for his brothers and their families must reflect a location in Egypt, not in Canaan, where they would go their separate ways. I have argued elsewhere that 50:15–21 is an addition by J that is parallel to the earlier reconciliation scene in 45:1–15. 19 Its purpose here is to anticipate the sojourn in Exod 1 with the word play on ‫ עם־רב‬the “numerous people” (50:20; cf. Exod 1:8–12). However, this still means that this unit is pre-P along with the rest. The only text that belongs to P in this chapter is the burial notice in vv. 12–13. It is entirely possible that 50:22–23 belongs to the original Joseph story, because it harks back to the earlier birth of the two sons in Gen 41:50–52. At any rate, 50:24–26 is non-P and in my view belong to J. The argument for making these verses post-P is because they have a clear connection with Exod 13:19 and Josh 24:32, which are also reckoned as post-P. But this is just circular reasoning. I have argued that they are all J although my case for this is never discussed. 20 But why should an editor take it upon himself to construct all of these interconnections in the text as if he were the author of the text? This is extremely unlikely. The interconnections are exactly what one would expect of an author, the Yahwist, if he were composing a comprehensive history. The prediction that we have in 50:24–26 has its parallel in the predictions to Jacob in Gen 46:3–4 and to Abraham in Gen 15:13–16. This is a well-known historiographic technique in classical literature and one that is also employed here. We come now to Gertz’s treatment of the “post-Priestly supplements” in Exod 1. The bald statement that Exod 1:6 presupposes the enumeration of the brothers in vv. 1–5 may be disregarded. Joseph and his brothers are the 18.  Erzväter und Exodus, 59–60. 19.  Van Seters, Prologue to History, 323–24. 20.  Ibid.; also idem, Life of Moses, 18–19.

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subjects of the prior unit in 50:24–26. The purpose of repeating the death notice of Joseph is clear from the structure of the unit. As I have shown elsewhere, the author ( J) constructs this unit on the parallel transition episode in Judg 2:6–10. 21 So close are the similarities between this unit and the one in Gen 50:26 and Exod 1:6, 8 that one cannot doubt a direct literary dependence of the latter on the former. It is obvious that the whole of Exod 1:1–5 is secondary to this construction. In order to use this scheme the author felt it necessary to repeat the mention of Joseph’s death so as to include “his brothers” and the whole generation as well. What are we to make of Exod 1:7, however, which is widely attributed to P? 22 If we must exclude v. 6 as a later addition then we end up with a statement that is nonsense. Who are the “sons of Israel” in v. 7? If this follows immediately after v. 5, then it suggests a period during the lifetime of these brothers, for there is no hint that they have died and whatever follows takes place during this time. But that is absurd, and v. 6 is certainly presupposed. The reason for the attribution of v. 7 to P is the obvious P terminology. Yet it is clear that vv. 9–12 also presuppose some knowledge of v. 7. This leads to the view that vv. 8–12 must be later than P. Yet the unit in vv. 8–12 plays on only two terms, ‫ רב‬and ‫עצום‬, and their verbal equivalents. The theme is also basic to the following unit in vv. 15–22, where the same language is repeated in v. 20. The verb ‫ רבה‬is common to both J and P, but the term ‫עצם‬ never appears in any of its forms in P, although it does appear elsewhere in J and is common also in D. It seems obvious to me that J originally had a statement in v. 7: ‫ובני ישראל רבו ויעמו‬, “The Israelites increased in number and grew strong.” 23 This is followed by the statement that the new king, at some later date, regarded this development as a serious threat. P has merely embellished the original statement with his own jargon, which somewhat obscures the point that follows. This reconstruction of the original text may be confirmed by the fact that in the earliest version of the descent into Egypt and their sojourn there in Deut 26:5–9, we have the famous statement in v. 5: “A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a great, strong and populous nation (‫)גוי גדול עצום ורב‬.” 24 On the basis of this text it is not hard to reconstruct the original version of Exod 1:7, as I have done. However, 21.  Idem, Life of Moses, 16–19. 22. See my treatment, ibid., 19–21, which has been ignored by Gertz. 23.  See also F. V. Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition, 16. However, Winnett’s notion that in Exod 1–2 there is an old document independent of the original J that P used and appended to the story of Moses to connect it to Genesis seems farfetched and against all the evidence set forth here. 24.  Gertz’s statement (“Transition,” 83), “The connection between Gen 12:2 and Exod 1:9 is at most conceptual, since the formulation of Exod 1:9 ‫ עם עצום ורב‬is not the expected correspondence to the promise of a ‫ גוי גדול‬in Gen 12:2,” is completely overturned by this earlier combination of terms in Deuteronomy and in Gen 18:18 and 26:12–16. In fact, J draws on a wide range of terminology to express the promise theme.

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nowhere in Deuteronomy is this great population expansion related to any promise to the patriarchs. This was completely unknown to D, and it is not even clear that the “father” refers to Jacob. It was left to a post-D author, the Yahwist, to combine this theme of becoming a great nation by making it a promise to the patriarchs, along with the land promise. In the patriarchal promises, the phrase ‫ גוי גדול‬is preferred, but in some other places, J also uses ‫עצם‬/‫ עצום‬and ‫רבה‬/‫רב‬, as he does here. P, developing his own characteristic terminology, extends the motif back to the time of creation. So it is not hard to see the line of development in the concept. Nevertheless, Gertz tries to turn this whole argument around and make the P version primary, which cannot be made to render any kind of narrative coherence and continuity, and to make the non-P secondary, even when it is the non-P material that provides a completely consistence and coherent story, and the latter is attributed to the “editor”! He ignores the use of the terminology of ‫ רב עם‬and ‫ עצום‬in J as a precedent for what we have here. We have already pointed to the use of ‫ רב עם‬in 50:20. The theme of the numerous people as a threat to the king is picked up again in Exod 5, the occasion of the first encounter between Moses (and Aaron) and Pharaoh. After the king dismisses Moses and Aaron, we have this statement (v. 5): “Pharaoh thought, ‘they (the Israelites) are now more numerous (‫ )רבים‬than the people of the land.’” 25 This would agree exactly with chap. 1. In terms of both language and perspective, this unit fits very well with Exod 1:8–12, 15–22. The use of ‫ עצום‬is even more instructive. In the Abraham story of J in Gen 18:18 the deity says in a divine soliloquy that Abraham is to become “a nation great and strong” (‫)גוי גדול ועצום‬.” This same phrase is repeated in exactly this form in another context. In Num 14:12 Yahweh threatens to destroy the people as a whole, because of their lack of faith in him, and in their place to make of Moses “a nation greater and stronger than they” (‫)לגוי גדול עצום ממנו‬. The connection with the patriarchal promise is obvious. In the Isaac story, Gen 26:12–16, we read that Isaac prospered in the foreign territory of Gerar and became very great (‫גדל‬, verb) and that he also had a “large household of servants” (‫ )עבדה רבה‬and as a consequence the king felt threatened and asked him to leave “because you are much stronger (‫עצם‬, verb) than we are.” Here is an obvious parallel to the Egyptian situation within the J corpus. This, in turn, is paralleled in another text in the Balaam story. In Num 22 the Moabites are in great dread of the Israelites because they are numerous (‫)רב‬, v. 2, and so Balak calls upon the prophet Balaam to curse this people “because they are stronger than us” (‫)כי עצום הוא ממנו‬. All of these texts belong to J and the language and themes expressed are completely consistent throughout. There is nothing comparable in P. 25.  This reading and interpretation of the text follows M. Noth, Exodus (London: SCM, 1962) 53, who emends the defective MT text, based on the SamP reading. See also B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974) 93, 105; Van Seters, Life of Moses, 74–75.

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Furthermore, as stated above, it was von Rad who pointed to the Yahwist’s dependence on Deut 26:5–9 for the structure of his literary work, and in spite of the re-dating of both the “little credo” and the Yahwist, the basic scheme of von Rad still fits the facts. It is not hard to see how an exilic J could make this statement in Deut 26:5 the basis of his connection between the patriarchs, represented by Jacob’s descent into Egypt with his family, and the exodus tradition. Furthermore, the particular selection of terminology in Exod 1:7*, 8–12 is directly suggested by D’s text. Since I have long argued for the heavy dependence of J upon Deuteronomy, none of this should cause any surprise. And an exilic date long before P is quite appropriate for all this literary development to take place. Gertz likewise passes lightly over the use of ‫ פרץ‬in combination with ‫רבה‬ in Exod 1:12: ‫“ וכאשר יענו אתו כן ןרבה כן יפרץ‬The more they oppressed them, the more they increased in number and the more they expanded.” This certainly does not reflect the P terminology in v. 7, which uses the more usual P term ‫שרץ‬, “to proliferate.” The term ‫פרץ‬, in the sense of bursting the limits of one’s territory, is rather distinctive of J, and this is the sense in which it is used in Exod 1:12. It also has a very similar sense in the divine promise of numerous offspring to Jacob in the Bethel theophany in Gen 28:14: “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall burst your limits (‫ )ופרצת‬to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.” Again in Gen 30:30, Jacob says to Laban: “For you had little before I arrived, and it has burst forth into abundance (‫ )ויפרץ לרב‬and God has blessed you wherever I went.” This also relates the term to the same theme of divine promise of blessing. 26 Second Isaiah, in the Song of the Barren Woman, Isa 54:1–5, which is clearly an image that is taken from the patriarchal stories, makes direct allusion to the theme of the promise of great population growth with the statement: “For you shall break out of your boundaries (‫ )תפרצי‬right and left, your descendents shall dispossess nations and resettle deserted cities” (v. 3). In the light of the repeated use of this term by J in connection with precisely this same theme, as noted above, it is hard to resist the conclusion that Second Isaiah is quoting J and his special language at this point. This means further that the use of this terminology in Exod 1:12 is probably by the same author, J, as in the Genesis texts and that it is deliberately used to recall this theme of the promises in the patriarchal stories. And because Second Isaiah, whom I have long argued is a contemporary of the Yahwist, 27 already knows of this usage, it must be prior to P and not dependent on P as the “new” redactional criticism suggests. What we have seen in our analysis is that it is not P but the earlier non-P Yahwist who is the author of this historiographic interconnection between 26.  See also Gen 30:43. 27. See Van Seters, “In the Babylonian Exile with J.”

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the patriarchal and exodus traditions, precisely as von Rad proposed. J does this by modeling the transition between the era of Joseph and his brothers and the later period of the oppression (Gen 50:26; Exod 1:6–8) on the transition from the age of Joshua and his generation to the following period of apostasy ( Judg 2:8–10). He combines with this the description of the sojourn from Deut 26:5, which mentions the great population growth, and then uses this as the motive for the oppression by the Egyptians. At the same time, his language makes constant allusion back to the time of the patriarchs and the theme of the divine promises so that a careful reader cannot miss the interconnection between the two. The Priestly Writer adds little to this continuity; in fact his embellishments tend to obscure what is so obvious without them. This literary artistry, which von Rad rightly attributed to the Yahwist as author and historian, should not be relegated in piecemeal fashion to innumerable hypothetical editors. They never existed! The next level of interconnection between the patriarchs and the exodus has to do with the patriarchal promises. It is often asserted that P is the one responsible for this interconnection by means of the texts in Exod 2:23aβb–25 and 6:2–8, which refer back to the P texts in Gen 17; 28:1–4 and 35:9–13. There can be no doubt about the importance of this interconnection for the P scheme of divine revelation, as Wellhausen clearly recognized. And yet it is remarkable that P feels no need to make any further reference to the patriarchal covenant and blessing in the subsequent narration and laws. By contrast, J (the non-P corpus) makes repeated reference to the patriarchal promises, but these are dismissed by Rendtorff and his followers as “redactional” and of little consequence for the whole. This seems to me highly prejudicial to the discussion. We will therefore look briefly at the J interconnection in Gen 46:2–4 and Exod 3:6. It may be useful to set them down, side by side: Genesis 46:2–4 God spoke to Israel in a vision by night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!” He answered, “Here I am.” Then he said, “I am El, the god of your father (‫אנכי האל אלהי‬ ‫)אביך‬, do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation (‫ )לגוי גדול‬there. I will go down with you to Egypt and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand will close your eyes.”

Exodus 3:4b, 6 God called to him out of the bush, and he said, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” . . . Then he said, “I am the god of your father (‫)אנכי אלהי אביך‬, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at the deity.

The similarity and interconnection between these two accounts are obvious. The setting for the first revelation is the journey by Jacob and his family to Egypt and the temporary halt at Beersheba where Jacob offers sacrifices to

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“the God of Isaac his father.” This, in turn, links the text with the Isaac story in Gen 26 and the revelations there, including the one at Beersheba in 26:24, which is of a very similar form: “I am the God of Abraham, your father.” This is then linked to the revelations to Jacob in 28:13 and 32:10 as “the God of Isaac, your father.” The use of the term, “God of your father” with the meaning “God of Jacob” is used by the brothers of Joseph in their appeal to Joseph for his forgiveness in 50:17 as the deity of the Israelites in Egypt. The use of the designation ‫ האל‬is likewise linked to the special revelation of the God of Bethel (31:13; 35:1). There can be no doubt that all these texts are part of the same non-P corpus, J. The Yahwist has embedded his theme of the patriarchal promises within the Joseph story with the specific intention of making a connection with the exodus theme. The reference to becoming a “great nation” (‫ )לגוי גדול‬not only picks up on the theme of the patriarchal promises typical of J but it also uses the same language as in Deut 26:5: ‫ויהי שם לגוי גדול‬. Once the whole pattern of interconnections among the passages in the J corpus of Genesis becomes clear, there is no reason left to dissociate the text of Exod 3:6 from these other texts. 28 It is only J who uses the term God of your father and what he means by this is the God of the three patriarchs. It certainly does not mean the god of Moses’ father. Furthermore, there is simply no divine revelation, no announcement of the deity in the unit 3:1–6 without this declaration. What has created some confusion is that the author of the unit in 3:1–6 has combined two different models for his revelation, the one taken from Josh 5:13–15 and the other from Gen 46:2–4, and it is the interweaving of these two that has created the impression of a combination of independent sources. Nevertheless, the whole unit in Exod 3:1–6 belongs to the same hand. Once it is admitted that 3:6 is integral to the unit, there is no need to see any of the references to the God of the patriarchs in the rest of the chapter as secondary. To do so is quite arbitrary. I do not need to examine the rest of the call narrative in Exod 3–4, because it has been treated by Dozeman, who has given considerable space to my views and who appears to be in substantial agreement with them. But Dozeman, who regards the story of the commission of Moses in Exod 3:1–4:18 as a pre-P composition closely connected to Genesis, is reluctant to call this work J because of its associations with the Documentary Hypothesis, although he has no such qualms about the use of P. Instead, he prefers to follow the example of Blum and use a term such as “D History” because it has a “similar outlook to the Book of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History, although each body of literature undergoes a distinct history of 28. See my earlier treatment of Exod 3:1–6 in Moses, 36–41; also Thomas Dozeman in “The Commission of Moses and the Book of Genesis,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (ed. T. Dozeman and K. Schmid; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 107–29.

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composition.” 29 But surely this terminology becomes more confusing than helpful, because it could easily be taken as part of D or Dtr, which it is not. The very fact that it incorporates into the history of Israel the patriarchal traditions, creating a whole new understanding of Israelite-Jewish identity, demands that it be recognized as a distinct literary work. The term Yahwist and its former equivalents have a long pedigree in historical criticism as a way of recognizing a corpus of texts distinct from P and I see no good reason for replacing it with another designation, such as KD or D History, which to my mind creates greater misunderstanding and confusion. The Yahwist, as an exceptional author and historian within the biblical texts, remains well and strong and will endure for some time to come. 29.  Quoted from his discussion of the “D History” in his forthcoming commentary on Exodus, which he has shared with me. See also T. B. Dozeman, “Geography and Ideology in the Wilderness Journey from Kadesh through the Transjordan,” in Abschied vom Jahwisten (ed. J. C. Gertz et al.; BZAW 315; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) 173–89.

Chapter 13

The Yahwist Flood Story and the Babylonian Flood Tradition Introduction The biblical Flood Story has been one of the most important texts in the history of pentateuchal criticism in establishing the division of sources, particularly in distinguishing between the Yahwist and the Priestly Writer as separate literary works, and the need for a redactor to account for their combination in producing the present text of Genesis. In addition to this, it has also long been recognized as the clearest and best example of the dependence of an extensive biblical text on its Babylonian counterpart. This provides the biblical scholar with a clear understanding of all the main components in the original story and how these have been treated by the two biblical authors, J and P, who are understood as having both contributed to the present text of Gen 6–8. Up to the present time, this pentateuchal analysis has led to the curious result that part of the original story is contained only in the J source and the other part only in the P source, with the rest shared between the two. This result has been explained by positing two independent sources, both of which contained the whole story, which were then combined by a redactor or editor who chose some parts of the original story from one source, some parts from the other source, and some parts from both. This analysis of the Flood Story then became the model for explaining the relationship of the biblical sources to each other for the rest of the Pentateuch. 1 The problem with this scheme should have appeared obvious from the outset. It seems to me entirely unreasonable to suppose that any writer or editor would have proceeded to compose a text in this way, and no precedent for such a scheme has ever been cited. It is much more likely that there is a base text that contains the whole story in its original form to which later additions by one or more hands have been made. This sort of literary 1.  For all the recent talk about the demise of the Yahwist, scholars have continued to follow this same division of sources in their treatment of the Flood Story, so I will continue to refer to the non-P portion of the text as J. For recent discussion on the Yahwist, see Dozeman and Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the Yahwist?

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phenomenon is very well attested in antiquity and should be taken seriously in this case as well. A more recent approach is to regard the P version of the story as the oldest and more original account and the J portions as post-P redactional additions. 2 In the discussion that follows, I shall first examine the source critical analysis to see if one can recover a consistent flood narrative in one particular source and how the second source is related to it, and then I shall compare these results with the Babylonian Flood Story as a way of testing and confirming these results.

The Source Critical Analysis of Genesis 6–8 The literary division of the flood narrative into two sources, J and P, has been so securely established, as though set in stone, since the beginning of the 20th century that it has been rarely questioned, except in only a few minute details. 3 The fundamental principle in the source division was the use of the divine names: “Yahweh” for the J source and “Elohim” for P. Using this criterion meant that both sources were incomplete in certain important aspects and that one had to invoke a redactor in order to put the pieces together. There is, however, a weakness in this criterion of source division because, while it clearly works for P, it is much more dubious for J. There are many places in Genesis where Elohim is used by a non-P source, and so long as one could account for them by belief in the existence of an E source parallel to J, then if E is excluded from the Primeval History, this means that all references to Elohim have to belong to P. However, the existence of an E 2.  See J-L. Ska, “The Story of the Flood: A Priestly Writer and Some Later Editorial Fragments,” The Exegesis of the Pentateuch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 1–22. The original version was published in Italian in 1994. In this study, Ska ignores my exilic date for the Yahwist, which affects much of his argument. For the rest, he follows the old arguments for the extent of P and its role as the base text for the Flood Story, so the critique presented here applies equally to his views. 3.  See H. Gunkel’s review in Genesis (1910) 59–77, 137–52. In English translation: Genesis (1997) 60–79, 138–51. I will cite this work in the English edition. Note the remark on p. 139: “The beginner can learn the proper way to distinguish the sources from this pericope [the Flood Story]. One proceeds from the surest criterion of source analysis, namely, from the names of god, and determines next the individual passages, and then the contexts that contain ‫ אלהים‬and ‫יהוה‬.” See already Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuch, 3–4. All the major studies and commentaries essentially follow this same division with no further argument or justification of this source division. Thus, for example, in the very detailed treatment of the flood narrative by Claus Westermann (Genesis 1–11, A Commentary [Minneapolis, MI, 1984] 384–480) he states that his primary concerned is with the account as a whole and not with the individual verses. “We can accept therefore the present results of source criticism (p. 396).” See also V. Fritz, “‘Solang die Erde steht’: Vom Sinn der jahwistischen Fluterzählung in Gen 6–8,” ZAW 94 (1982) 599–614. While Fritz pays particular attention to the Yahwist and his relationship to his source material he still basically follows Gunkel’s source division (pp. 600–601). Also, for J. A. Emerton (“The Priestly Writer in Genesis,” JTS 39 [1988] 381–400) the Flood Story is a test case for the independence of P. See my earlier treatment of the flood narrative in Prologue to History, 160–73.

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document has been questioned for a long time now, and there are few scholars today that believe in an E source. 4 Consequently, there is little reason to believe that J was restricted to the use of Yahweh for the designation of deity. While P makes it absolutely clear that the divine name Yahweh was not known before the time of Moses and therefore was not used by P before this time, 5 the fact that J declares that humankind began to worship Yahweh already in the second or third generation (Gen 4:26) does not limit his use of Yahweh only to a period later than this point in time. The divine name Yahweh is used throughout Gen 4, and the fact that within the creation story of Gen 2–3 J uses the hybrid form Yahweh Elohim suggests that both designations are equivalent and equally appropriate. Second Isaiah, whom I have frequently argued is a contemporary of J, 6 often uses Elohim (with or without suffix) along side of Yahweh as direct equivalents. Once scholars in the past had divided the text of the Flood Story, primarily on the basis of the designations for deity, then this division was supported by collecting and listing terminology that was characteristic of the one source as compared with the other, and in some cases where there might be a difference of opinion based on the divine name criterion, this second body of evidence could aid in the source division. 7 Yet this criterion of typical language is not foolproof and can lead to some questionable results, especially if it can be shown that one source sometimes deliberately imitates the language of the other. If one rejects the divine name criterion for identifying the J source, then one must consider each reference to Elohim and the context in which it appears on its own merits, including the language criterion used to confirm this source division, because it is not necessary that every reference to Elohim belongs to the P source. This is not a trivial matter because so often the Flood Story is cited as the model text in support of the Documentary Hypothesis, in which it becomes necessary to invoke a redactor to combine the pieces of the two separate sources in order to reconstruct the whole story. In addition, those scholars who do not subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis have no reason whatever to adhere to a strict use of this distinction. Consequently, the standard separation of sources based on the use of the divine names Yahweh for J and Elohim for P runs into some problems in three important places: 4. See the review of this issue in my Abraham in History and Tradition, 125–30; also Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition, 20–24; idem, “Reexamining the Foundations,” 1–19; S. Mowinckel, Erwägungen zur Pentateuch Quellenfrage (NTT 1; Trondheim: Universitetsforlaget, 1964) 59–118. 5.  Note however the exception in Gen 17:1, there Yahweh is used. 6.  “In the Babylonian Exile with J: Between Judgment in Ezekiel and Salvation in Second Isaiah,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion, 71–89. 7.  For a useful collection and summary of the terminology criterion, see Skinner, Genesis, 147–50.

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1. Gen 6:13 (Elohim), which begins the account of the construction of the ark and is clearly assumed in 7:1 (Yahweh) 2. Gen 8:1 (Elohim), which introduces the turning point in the flood 3. Gen 8:15 (Elohim), which is used in the divine command to exit the ark

When the units introduced by these Elohim speeches are assigned to P, the result is that P is judged to be the basic text to which the J texts have been added by a post-P redactor, using either an earlier or later source. 8 This sort of analysis, however, must be questioned on several grounds. If one brackets all the J passages as secondary, the result does not yield a very clear and consistent narrative and some vital parts, such as the release of birds and the sacrifice at the end, are left out. P also suggests that the same action in 6:18b–22 and 7:13–16a was done twice, with the same summary statement in 6:22 (“he [Noah] did everything that God commanded him” and 7:9b, 16a (“as God commanded Noah/him”). Of course, the “redactor” can always be blamed for such repetitions and unevenness in the text. If, however, the criterion of the divine name is not a reliable means of identifying sources, then the analysis of the three contested verses must be taken up again. Before doing this, however, one other feature must be pointed out, and this has to do with the way in which P often deliberately takes up J’s own terminology. The most striking example is the statement by the deity in the J source concerning Noah: “For I have observed that you are righteous (‫)צדיק‬ before me in this generation” (7:1b). This clearly relates back to J’s remark in 6:8 “But Noah found favor in the sight of Yahweh,” in contrast to the prior description of the wickedness of humanity and provides the reason for his selection and salvation. P’s statement in 6:9a, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries,” is a close parallel to 7:1b ( J). However, unlike J there is no indication either before or after it what this statement has to do with God’s decision to save Noah and his family, or that Noah was an exception to the general population. The connection must be entirely assumed from J’s remark in 7:1b. It was for this reason that Wellhausen was persuaded that P was directly dependent on J and was not an earlier source. Furthermore, as Wellhausen also points out, the rendering of the singular ‫בדור הזה‬, “in this generation,” in J by the plural form ‫ בדרתיו‬in P reflects a special late and rare idiom, with the meaning “among his contemporaries.” 9 One may note also that in God’s speech to Abraham in Gen 17:1, he exhorts him to “walk before me and be blameless ‫))תמים‬,” quite similar to what is said about Noah, but with Abraham P does not use the term ‫צדיק‬, “righteous.” In fact it is not otherwise used in P. 10 However, “righteousness” is important 8.  See n. 2 above. 9.  Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 390. See also Skinner, Genesis, 159. This observation is generally ignored in recent commentaries for obvious reasons. 10.  The construction ‫ צדיק תמים‬without the connective ‫ ו‬is strange, as if ‫ תמים‬is being used to interpret ‫צדיק‬. Westermann (Genesis 1–11, 414) also notes the problem but states: “The

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in J, both in recognizing Abraham as righteous (Gen 15:6) and in the matter of God’s sparing the righteous from divine judgment in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:23–28). 11 The direction of dependence is therefore obvious. Furthermore, once one accepts Wellhausen’s observation that P must be dependent on J for the statement about Noah’s righteousness, then P also assumes J’s reason for Noah’s selection by Yahweh for being saved from the food, which is spelled out in the earlier part of J’s narrative. J and P are not independent accounts of the flood: J must be the primary account and P is secondary to it. Once it is recognized that the Yahwist can use the term Elohim from time to time and that P imitates J’s terminology, although with some subtle differences, the source analysis of the Flood Story must proceed in a way quite different from that used in the past. This means looking again at the supposed lacunae in J’s flood account, which were indicated above. The first has to do with the construction of the ark in the form of the divine instructions in 6:13–16. While this has been regularly assigned to P in the past, because of the use of Elohim in 6:13, there is nothing in vv. 14–16 that is otherwise characteristic of P. Within 6:13 there are two terms ‫כל־בשר‬, “all flesh,” and the verb ‫שחת‬, which appear also in vv. 11–12, and these terms are judged to be P terminology. 12 But both terms are used in somewhat different senses in the two sources. So we must look again at 6:13, which reads: ‫ויאמר אלהים לנח קץ כל־בשר בא לפני כי־מלאה הארץ חמס מפניהם והנני משחיתם מאת־הארץ‬ God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh [all living persons] has come before me, for the world if filled with violence because of them. I declare, I am about to destroy them from off the earth.”

This may be compared with the parallel text in P, 6:11–12, which reads: ‫ותשחת הארץ לפני האלהים ותמלא הארץ חמס וירא אלהים את־הארץ והנה נשחתה כי־השחית‬ ‫כל־בשר את־דרכו על־הארץ‬ The earth had become corrupt in God’s view, and the earth was full of violence. And God saw that the earth had indeed been ruined for all flesh [every living creature] had corrupted its behavior upon the earth.

likely explanation is that the tradition that lay before P had ‫ צדיק‬only, as in J too 7:1, and that P apparently appended ‫ תמים‬to elaborate and clarify.” That seems like a desperate way to avoid saying, as Wellhausen did, that P depends on J. 11.  For the connections between the Flood Story and Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as J in Exodus, see D. M. Carr, “What Is Required to Identify Pre-Priestly Narrative Connections between Genesis and Exodus? Some General Reflections and Specific Cases,” in Farewell to the Yahwist? (ed. T. B. Dozeman and K. Schmid, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 166–67. 12.  Skinner, Genesis, 148.

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Once again, the vocabulary is similar in these two sets of verses, suggesting that there is a close relationship between the two, but the meaning of the key words ‫ כל־בשר‬and ‫ שחת‬used in both quotations is different. To judge properly the relationship between these texts, one must first treat each separately, to understand what is being said in them. In 6:13, the divine speech is in the form of a prophetic judgment oracle, announced against a particular group. The prophetic character of this statement can be recognized by the use of “end,” ‫קץ‬, as we have it in Amos 8:2: “The end (‫ )קץ‬has come to my people Israel.” This is a prophetic announcement of divine judgment of the direst kind. Likewise, the use of “the end” (‫ )קץ‬in Ezek 7 is particularly instructive. In Ezek 7:2–6 the phrase ‫בא הקץ‬, “the end has come,” which is repeated three times, has the meaning “ultimate destruction” as a result of divine judgment, in this case on the inhabitants of the land of Judah and Jerusalem. The term ‫ קץ‬seems to evolve over time into the final judgment for nations and then for the world at large ( Jer 51:13; Ezek 21:30, 34; 35:5). One of the primary reasons for this judgment in Ezek 7 is violence (‫)חמס‬ as in v. 23b, “because the land if full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence (‫)חמס‬,” see also v. 11. This is also given as the primary reason for the divine judgment in Gen 6:13. The similarity to Ezekiel’s terminology and usage is striking. Another important phrase used in Gen 6:13 is “all flesh,” ‫כל־בשר‬, and it is very common to find it in prophetic literature where it is consistently used in the sense of common humanity, 13 and it is this common humanity in Gen 6:13 that is directly responsible for the “violence” on earth, “because of them.” Consequently, if we bracket the P material in Gen 6:9–12, then “all flesh” in v. 13 becomes the exact semantic equivalent of ʾadam in vv. 5–7 in the sense of humanity as a whole, and the continuity between these texts becomes clear. The crimes are announced in vv. 5–7 and the punishment in v. 13. The link between 6:5–8 and v. 13 could not be closer than that. Furthermore, the use of the verb ‫ שחת‬in the sense “to destroy” and within the context of divine judgment is exactly what we have in the J story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In Gen 13:10, the doom of these cities is predicted: “This was before Yahweh destroyed (‫ )שחת‬Sodom and Gomorrah.” In Abraham’s dialogue with the deity about sparing the righteous, the verb ‫שחת‬ (Hiphil) is used twice: “Will you destroy . . . I will not destroy” in Gen 18:28, and again in vv. 31–32. In the words of the divine messengers to Lot in 19:13–14 the verb ‫( שחת‬Hiphil) is used three times, twice using the same participial form ‫משחיתם‬/‫ משחית‬as in Gen 6:13. Finally, in 19:29 as a conclusion to the destruction of the cities, the verb ‫ שחת‬appears again: “Thus it was that when God destroyed (‫שחת‬, infinitive with ‫ )ב‬the cities of the valley.” It would 13. Isa 40:5, 6; 49:26; 66:16, 23, 24; Jer 25:31; 32:27; 45:5; Ezek 21:4, 9, 10; Joel 3:1; Zech 2:17.

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seem hard to dispute the fact that the language in 6:13 is entirely appropriate to J and both are by the same author. Turning now to the P texts in Gen 6:11–12, we observe that P has also borrowed some of its language from J, just as it did in the case of 6:10, as noted above. P begins with the same opening, that of the observation of God regarding the conditions on earth, and v. 12 even repeats the phrase “and God saw” parallel to J’s “and Yahweh saw” (v. 5). However, exactly what was observed is not quite the same. It is not the activity of humans that has been scrutinized but the fact that the earth as a whole—the divine creation—has been ruined (‫ שחת‬in Niphal, v. 11), and this divine observation is repeated in v. 12, with the explanation that it was “all flesh” that had “corrupted (‫שחת‬ hiph.) its behavior upon the earth.” There are some serious problems here. First, if the whole earth is already in a completely ruinous state, as these two verses emphasize so strongly, then how is it in v. 13 that God declares to Noah that he is about to “destroy (‫ שחת‬in Hiphil participle) them (“all flesh”) from the earth”? The divine observation in vv. 11–12 and the deity’s promised action in v. 13 seem to contradict each other. The same verb ‫שחת‬ is clearly being used in two different ways. In the one sense in v. 13 it means “to destroy,” which is otherwise quite typical of J, as we have seen, but in P it is used in the special sense “to be corrupt” and outside the Flood Story is otherwise not common in P. Second, the phrase “all flesh” (‫ )כל־בשר‬in P means something quite different from what we have in v. 13. The phrase is used frequently by P in the rest of the Flood Story, and there it includes all living creatures including the animals, a meaning that is used almost exclusively by P,  14 and never by the prophets when they use it in oracles of divine judgment (or salvation). 15 Third, P also uses the statement in 6:11 “The earth was filled (or ‘had filled itself’ [Niphal])” with “violence” ‫ חמס‬similar to J in v. 13, except that J uses the Qal form for the verb and adds “because of them,” which must refer back to the remarks about humanity as the source of the violence in 6:5–7. The use of “earth” (‫ )ארץ‬in J is primarily focused on location, where the evils are being committed. P has no equivalent in his usage that corresponds with J’s remarks about the evils of humanity. For P “earth” primarily means the whole of creation and everything in it, even when it uses an almost verbatim quotation from J. From this comparison of texts we may conclude that 6:13 is not a continuation of P in vv.  11–12, but rather the logical continuation of 6:6–8 and J’s beginning of a divine speech that has to do with the construction of the ark in vv. 14–16. This fundamental correction in the literary analysis of the 14.  Gen 6:17, 19; 7:15, 16, 21; 9:11, 15, 16, 17. 15.  Judgment: Isa 49:26; 66:16, 24; Jer 12:12; 25:31; 32:17; 45:5; Ezek 21:4, 9–10[20:48; 21:4–5]. Salvation: Isa 40:5; 66:23; Joel 3:1[4:1].

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Yahwistic introduction to the story changes one’s whole approach to the place of J in the rest of the flood narrative. Consequently, J now includes the command to build the ark and the description of how it is to be built (6:14–16), similar to the description of instructions in the Babylonian source. Following these instructions, the deity announces his sentence of imminent judgment (v. 17aα): “As for me, I am about to bring the Great Deluge (‫ )המבול‬upon the earth.” The term ‫המבול‬, always used with the article, is specialized language that is limited to this great disaster of primeval times and is thus self-explanatory, and no further elaboration is needed. The rest in v. 17aβb is P’s embellishment. 16 This section is concluded in J with the simple statement “Noah did this” (v. 22a). Following the building of the ark is a second set of instructions by Yahweh to Noah to enter the ark and to take with him all of the animals and birds by pairs, with the special provision of seven pairs of clean animals and birds. It is now stated that Noah completely obeyed these instructions (7:1–5). 17 This is followed by a summary statement describing the entrance of the family of Noah into the ark, along with the clean and unclean animals, the birds and reptiles in pairs, “as Elohim (Yahweh) commanded him” (7:8–9). 18 Then Yahweh shut Noah in (v. 16b), and after seven days the flood came (v. 10). This consisted of 40 days and nights of constant rain (v. 12). The statement about the progress of the flood in J is again stated very simply, with 7:17 following directly after v. 12. This, in turn, was followed by vv. 22–23, both of which contain the language of J. 19 Furthermore, the animal, bird, and reptile series found in 6:7 and 7:8, 23 are also found in Deut 4:16–18 (except for the fish) and are common elsewhere in biblical literature; they owe nothing to P. 20 All the rest in 7:6, 11, 13–21, 24 are Priestly expansion that is built into the J narrative. 16.  The Yahwist uses the same term ‫ המבול‬again in 7:7b to refer back to this earlier divine announcement. The grammatical construction is also similar to that used by J in 6:13b, “I am about to destroy (Hiphil participle) and v. 17aα, “I am about to bring” (Hiphil participle). 17.  This section is assigned to J because it begins with the divine name. However, there is strong textual evidence from the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, the Syriac and two manuscripts, for reading “Elohim.” In v. 9b there is textual evidence for reading Yahweh instead of Elohim. This is another reason to be skeptical about the usefulness of the divine name as a way of identifying sources. In a text, such as the Flood Story, where the names for deity fluctuate so often, it is easy to understand how such scribal variation could take place. 18. As indicated in n. 14 above, Elohim should probably be read Yahweh in keeping with the rest of this unit. The remark in 7:16b, which originally followed v. 9, also contains the divine name Yahweh. 19.  Verse 22 corresponds to the language in the creation story, Gen 2:7, with ‫ חור‬being widely recognized as a gloss, influenced by its use in 7:15 (P). Verse 23 expresses the fulfillment of the divine declaration in 6:7 ( J). 20.  See the useful data collected by W. M. Clark, “The Animal Series in the Primeval History,” VT 18 (1968) 433–49. Unfortunately, Clark is still dependant on the classical division of sources in the Flood Story, and this leads him to somewhat contradictory conclusions.

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The source evaluation of 8:1 is another crucial test in the understanding of the J narrative in the Flood Story. Because Elohim is used in this verse, it is regularly assigned to P, even though it fits poorly with v. 2a (P), but very well with v. 2b ( J). The opening phrase in v. 1, “God remembered Noah” has its closest parallel in Gen 19:29 “God remembered Abraham,” which is also set in the context of another great disaster “when God destroyed” (‫ )בשחת‬Sodom and Gomorrah. 21 This was also about sparing the righteous. Because of the divine name Elohim this verse has been assigned to P, but there is nothing else to suggest the existence of a P version of this story and it is obviously dependent on the J narrative in 18:16–23 and part of the same source. Another instance is found in Gen 30:22: “God remembered Rachel” which is certainly not P, and unless one still subscribes to an E source, this too belongs to J. The phrase in 8:1, “all the wild and domestic animals” (‫ואת כל־החיה ואת־‬ ‫)כל־הבהמה‬, is also of interest, because even though this terminology is shared with P, it is found in the J story of creation in which God creates these same creatures and brings them to Adam to be named (Gen 2:19–20). Along with the birds, these two types of animals are specifically mentioned. Because the language of the creation story is also mentioned in 7:22, they all point to the same literary source. The phrase “which were with him in the ark” (8:1a) is also a repetition of the same phrase at the end of 7:23. The rest of the verse in 8:1b, “God caused a wind to blow over the earth and the waters subsided,” does not fit P’s description of the flood as reflected in v. 2a, but it does go well with v. 2b–3a, which is widely acknowledged to be J. Furthermore, the description in v. 1b is similar to J’s treatment of the rescue of the Israelites at the Red Sea in Exod 14:21bβ, in which Yahweh uses the wind to dry up the waters of the sea. 22 According to the statement in v.  3a, J tells us that “the waters steadily receded from the earth” until “the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (v. 4*). Into this simple account P again inserts another “150 days” as the duration of this phase of the flood and a date for the landing of the ark on Ararat. But then P goes on to tell us in v. 5 that it took another two and a half months before the tops of the mountains appeared, which would seem to contradict the landing on Ararat in v. 4. 23 The Yahwist continues in v. 6a 21.  Typical of efforts to justify the designation of Gen 19:29 as a solitary P text is D. M. Carr, Fractures of Genesis, 101, who blames its isolated position in J as a displacement by a redactor. He believes that a more appropriate original location is after Gen 13:12! (pp. 115– 16). The sole reason for assigning Gen 19:29 to P is because of the similarity with Gen 8:1, which is complete circularity. He has no comment on the similar case in Gen 30:22. 22.  Skinner in Genesis, 148–49, does not list a single example of P terminology in 8:1. 23. Von Rad (Genesis: A Commentary [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961] 128–29) resolves this problem by calculating that if the ark had a height of 30 cubits, it would have a draft of 15 cubits and thus come to rest on the highest point. This is ingenious but hardly what was intended in the text.

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with the statement: “It happened that after 40 days” and many scholars feel that this phrase has been displaced from its earlier position before 2b, which would make the 40 days correspond to the same period mentioned in 7:12. However, as we have argued above, 8:1 also belongs to J, so that if it is the same 40 days that was mentioned earlier, it would be less appropriate before 8:1. If it belongs in its present location, then it corresponds to the time it took for the waters to recede after the rain stopped, parallel to P’s second 150-day period. I would now opt for this second choice. 24 The episode of the birds in 8:6b–12 is entirely the work of J, with no additions by P. These verses present no major problems except perhaps that one should assume an additional wait of 7 days between the sending of the raven and the dove, as suggested in the Babylonian story. 25 This additional seven days is also indicated by the statement in v. 10: “Again he waited seven more days.” This may be confirmed, as Skinner has observed, 26 by the fact that the two-month time lapse between P’s dates in v. 5 and v. 13 corresponds to the 40 days plus 3 weeks in vv. 6–12. It would also confirm that P is entirely dependent on J’s version of the story. When the dove does not return after the third release, then “Noah removes the covering of the ark and sees that indeed the surface of the ground was dry” (v. 13b). The time has now come to exit the ark. The source analysis of the exit in 8:15–19 is more uncertain because the designation of the deity as Elohim is no longer decisive, and this element of the exit from the ark receives very brief treatment in the Babylonian tradition compared with the great emphasis on the sacrifice offered by the flood hero and the gods’ response to it. Nevertheless, there seems to be a close parallel between the divine command to enter the ark and its compliance in 7:1, 7 ( J) and the departure from the ark in 8:15–16, 18. That is not the case, however, with exit of the animals in 8:17, 19, which follows the style of P, but this addition owes nothing to the Babylonian story. The climax of J’s account is the scene of the sacrifice and the divine response, which is so evidently modeled on its Babylonian counterpart. This yields the following narrative in J 6 5Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every formation of the thoughts of his heart [mind] was continually evil. 6So Yahweh regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him deeply. 7And Yahweh declared: “I will wipe out humanity which I have created from the face of the earth, both humans and animals, reptiles and birds of the air, because I regret that I ever made 24. Cf. my earlier study, Prologue to History, 164. 25. The Babylonian story has the raven as the last bird that was sent out, which accounts for the fact that it did not return. 26.  Skinner, Genesis, 167–68. This also assumes that the 40 days in 6a is in its original location.

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them. Yet Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. 13So God announced to Noah: “I have decided to bring an end to all living persons, for the world if filled with violence because of them. I declare, I will destroy them from off the earth. 14So make for yourself an ark of cypress wood; make compartments in the ark, and seal it inside and out with bitumen. 15This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its width 50 cubits and its height 30 cubits. 16Make a roof for the ark and give it a finished slope of one cubit. Put a door in the side of the ark, and also make it with lower, second and third decks. 17aAs for me, I am about to bring the Great Deluge upon the earth.” 22aSo Noah did this. 7 1Yahweh said to Noah, “You and your entire household are to go into the ark, for I have observed that you alone are righteous in my view in this generation. 2From all of the clean animals you are to take seven, both male and female, and from the unclean animals just a male and female pair, 3as well as seven pairs of birds of the air, both male and female, to sustain life on earth. 4For in 7 days time I am going to cause it to rain everywhere on earth for 40 days and nights and I shall wipe out every living creature that I have made from off the face of the earth.” 5Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him. 7Noah together with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8From all the clean animals and from the unclean animals and from the birds and from all those that creep along the ground, 9by pairs they came to Noah into the ark, both male and female, just as God had commanded Noah, 16b and Yahweh shut him in. 10After 7 days the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 12For 40 days and nights the rain came down on the earth. 17The flood continued 40 days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark so that it rose above the earth. 22Everything on earth died that had the breath of life. 23Thus he wiped out every living creature from the surface of the earth, humans and animals and reptiles and birds of the air; they were all wiped out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those that were with him in the ark. 8 1But God remembered Noah and all the wild and domestic animals that were with him in the ark, and God sent a wind to blow over the earth and the waters began to diminish, 2band the rain from the heavens was restrained. 3aThe waters gradually receded from the earth, 4*and the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 6It happened at the end of 40 days, that Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, 7and sent out a raven which continued to fly about until the waters dried up from the earth. 8 [After 7 days] he sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided from the surface of the ground, 9but the dove found no resting place to settle down and so returned to him in the ark, for the waters still covered the earth. He stretched out his hand and took hold of her and brought her into the ark with him. 10He waited 7 more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11She came back to him in the evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak. Then Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the surface of the earth. 12So he waited another 7 days and sent out the dove, but

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it did not return again to him. 13bSo Noah removed the covering of the ark and saw that indeed the surface of the ground was dry. 15God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives who are with you.” 18So Noah came out of the ark with his wife, his sons and their wives. 20Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took some of all the clean animals and the clean birds and offered them as a whole burnt offering upon it, 21and Yahweh smelled the pleasing odor and Yahweh said to himself, “Never again will I curse the ground because of mankind seeing that human inclination is toward wrong-doing from one’s youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. 22As long as earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

The Priestly Account of the Flood The Priestly Flood Story begins in Gen 6:9 in a rather curious way with the statement “This is the genealogy (‫ )תולדת‬of Noah,” as if to introduce a long line of descendents as in 5:1 and 10:1, 11:10, but in fact it gives us no more genealogical information than that contained in the previous genealogy in 5:32. The statement about Noah’s righteousness is taken over from J, as we have already seen, and this is augmented by the statement, “Noah communed with God,” which imitates the remark about Enoch in 5:22, 24. The statement about Noah’s three sons in v. 10 is also quite superfluous if vv. 9–10 originally followed after 5:32. It is significant that with Noah P break’s the genealogical pattern by having three sons, instead of one, as his genealogical “successors.” He also does not mention any additional sons and daughters, as in the case of the rest in his list. The only reasonable explanation is that P built his flood account into the preexisting story of J. To do so, he consciously recapitulated the genealogy of Noah and the reference to the three sons. He then proceeded to give his own version of J’s remarks about the cause of the flood, in vv. 11–12, by anticipating J’s language and reason for the flood in v. 13. On the other hand, if we follow the dominant trend in pentateuchal studies and take P as a self-contained narrative in isolation from the J source, 27 then the remarks in 6:11–12 are completely bewildering. In the P story of creation, the final divine verdict was that the whole of creation was very good (Gen 1:31), and nowhere prior to the Flood Story in P is there the slightest hint that anything was wrong. For P the whole of creation, “the earth,” has now “become corrupt” for some unexplained reason and so the flood becomes a much more cosmic event than just a punishment of the human component, as in the Yahwist. Skinner, in his commentary on Genesis, recognizes the problem of associating the “violence” (‫ )חמס‬with the animal world and suggests that it indicates that originally in creation (Gen 1:30) all 27.  Gunkel, Genesis, 140.

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human and animals were herbivores, so that the violence reflects an end to this age of innocence in which the animal world now is dominated by carnivores. 28 This would be a unique understanding of ‫ חמס‬in the Hebrew Bible. But Skinner must still admit that there is nothing in P that suggests how such a change came about. Consequently, the Priestly Writer must assume J’s account of this decline, even if he puts his own ideological spin on it. This means, of course, that P’s Flood Story is entirely dependent on J’s version of the story and is built into it. When J makes mention of Noah, P interrupts the narrative with his own remarks about Noah and his sons, recapitulating the genealogical connection with 5:32, which was necessary because of the inclusion of the J text in 6:1–8. However, once P interrupts J’s flood narrative in this way, he must give his own version of the cause of the flood, using language from J in 6:13 to provide the transition back to the narrative, a technique which P often uses elsewhere. Into this J version P has made a substantial addition in 6:17aβb–21, in which he includes his version of the deity’s instructions about Noah entering the ark with all of the animals, birds and reptiles. It begins in v. 17aβ with a close parallel to J’s statement in v. 13, but it defines the use of “all flesh” in more comprehensive terms as everything “in which is the breath (‫ )רוח‬of life from under heaven.” This unit then continues with the statement (v. 18a): “I will establish my covenant with you (Noah),” but it does not say what the content of this covenant is or how it relates to the rest of the instructions regarding the creatures that are to be brought into the ark. 29 Only in 9:8–17 do we learn the content of the covenant, which is to never again bring a flood to destroy all the living creatures on earth. Now it seems very odd that this covenant is first announced precisely at the time when the deity is about to contradict the terms of the covenant by bringing a flood. It completely violates the flow of the narrative. In the original scheme of the Babylonian story, as we shall see below, the decisive change in the mind of the deity to never again bring a flood comes after the offering of the sacrifice, as it does in J. It is as if the P writer is trying, in this awkward way, to suggest that the deity never changed his mind; it was all part of the divine plan from the start. Following this declaration of a covenant, the deity then instructs Noah to enter the ark and to bring into it his three sons, his wife and their wives (v. 18b), as well as all the various species of living creatures (vv. 19–20). These 28.  Skinner, Genesis, 159. 29.  Westermann (Genesis 1–11, 422–23) tries to overcome this problem by making this covenant in v. 18a distinct from that in 9:8–17, and to suggest that it has to do entirely with the deity’s salvation of Noah and the rest of his family and all animal life, presumably on the condition that he carry out the divine instructions regarding the construction of the ark and the gathering of the animals. However, this is special pleading. There is no conditional link between the two, and his remark is motivated entirely by theological concerns. Cf. Skinner, Genesis, 162–63, who affirms the link of the covenant in 6:18a with 9:9.

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detailed instructions are given even before the ark is built! In his description of the living creatures P uses language that is similar to that used by him in the creation story (Gen 1:21–25), excluding those that live in the sea, so that his categories are more comprehensive than those used by J. It is all of these categories that are included in P’s understanding of “all flesh” (v. 19). However, if “all flesh” had already become corrupt (v. 12), it is not clear why any of these corrupt creatures needed to be preserved in the way suggested. J’s version is much more consistent in saving the animals, which were not part of the reason for the flood. P also makes no distinction between clean and unclean, because that distinction was not articulated as law until the time of Moses. Therefore, additional unclean animals were not necessary because in P there was no sacrifice by Noah. P also includes the storing of food for both humans and animals (v. 21). It is understood that at this point all are vegetarian. P also adds to J’s statement, “Noah did this” meaning that he built the ark, the further remark, “he did all that God commanded him.” By this addition P means that not only did Noah build the ark but he also loaded up the ark with his family and animals. However, this not only contradicts J’s version of two stages in the divine instructions and their successive completion, but it contradicts P’s own presentation in 7:13–16a. 30 Between the divine instructions to Noah in J in 7:1–5 and their execution in vv. 7–10, P inserts another chronological marker: “Noah was 600 year old when the flood waters were over the earth” (v. 6), and this is resumed again by P in v. 11a: “In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month.” This chronological device serves as a way to structure many of his additions. To the date of the flood he adds an expanded characterization of the disaster by giving it cosmic dimensions: “on that very day all the springs of the great deep burst out and the windows of the heavens were opened” (v. 11b). This precedes J’s simple statement that the rain fell for 40 days (v. 12), which is inappropriate here but fits well after v. 10. In vv. 13–16a, the Priestly Writer belatedly takes up the presentation of Noah’s fulfilling the instructions that the deity has given in 6:18b–21, which he had already indicated as completed in 6:22b. But the reference to “on that very same day” in 7:13 seems to refer to the precise day in v. 11. Yet the flood has already begun in dramatic style “on that very day,” and it has rained for 40 days (v. 12). One cannot conveniently blame this confusing mixture on a 30.  Ska (Story of the Flood, 3–6) proposes to get rid of any doublet between J and P by assigning all of 7:7–9 to P and regarding the whole of 7:1–5 are a later post-P addition. This would have 7:6–9 follow directly after 6:22, which would create three parallel accounts of Noah’s family and the animals being brought into the ark, one after the other, with the middle account radically different from the other two in language and requirements. There are strong reasons why P did not include the distinction between clean and unclean animals. Why would P make such a distinction in 7:8 if he completely contradicted it in 9:3, which allows every sort of bird, animal, and reptile as food for humans?

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“redactor” as a solution because removing all of the J texts does not solve the problem. P shows no interest in the larger narrative continuity. His additions are all ideological. When reporting on those humans who entered the ark, J only refers to Noah and his “household” (7:1) or “Noah and his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives” (v. 7, cf. 8:15), but P expands this to name the three sons in particular (7:13) in keeping with his genealogical interest, as in 6:10. P then repeats the list of animals, birds and reptiles who went into the ark (using his own terminology), and these creatures he identifies as “all flesh in which there was the breath of life” (v. 15), or simply “all flesh” (v. 16). These instructions “as God had commanded him (Noah)” (v. 16) do not agree with those of J in 7:2–4, “all that Yahweh had commanded him” v. 5). Furthermore, instead of repeating the statement about God shutting Noah and his family in, P merely transplants J’s remark “and Yahweh shut him in” from the end of v. 9 to this new location in v. 16b. The Priestly description of the flood in vv.  18–21 fits rather badly after v. 16 and must presuppose v. 17. Its purpose was to embellish the magnitude of the flood, although in doing so it has produced much the opposite effect, with the comment that the waters rose above the highest mountains by 15 cubits. In v. 24, P gives us the length of time that this constant rise in the flood waters lasted—150 days, as compared with J’s 40 days. Once J announces the divine action to reverse the flood’s effect and bring it to an end in 8:1, 2b, then P also has the springs of the deep and the windows of the heavens closed. From this point onward, P merely embellishes J’s account with chronological data in 8:3b, 4, 5, 13a, and adds the release of the animals, birds and reptiles with a renewed blessing of fruitfulness (vv.  17, 19), as in his account of creation. The Priestly Writer’s conclusion to the flood narrative in 9:1–17 is completely unrelated to J’s flood narrative and will be taken up below. If we put together all the pieces of P’s Flood Story, it would yield the following: 6 9This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, with complete integrity among his contemporaries. Noah communed with God. 10Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. 11Now the earth had become corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence. 12God saw that the earth had indeed become corrupt for all living creatures (all flesh) had corrupted their behavior on earth. . . . 17aβb . . .“in order to destroy all life (all flesh), every breathing creature under the skies; everything on earth will die. 18However, I will make a covenant with you. You are to go into the ark, you, along with your sons, your wife and the wives of your sons. 19You will also bring with you two of every sort of living creature of all flesh into the ark, to keep them alive with you. They are to be both male and female. 20 Likewise, the birds according to their species and animals according to their species, and the creatures that creep on the ground according to their species, two of every sort will come to you to keep them alive. 21You are also

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to take and store with you every kind of food, for both you and them.” . . . 22 He did everything that God commanded him. 7 6Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters came upon the earth. 11 In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that very day all the springs of the great deep burst out, and all the windows of the heavens were opened. 13On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, along with Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark. 14In addition, every species of wild animal, cattle, and reptile that creeps on the ground, and every kind of bird of every sort, 15went into the ark with Noah, in pairs of every living creature (all flesh) that breathed. 16aThose that entered, male and female of all living creatures (all flesh) went in as God commanded him (Noah). . . . 18 The waters swelled and increased greatly, and the ark floated over the surface of the waters. 19So much did the waters increase that they covered all the high mountains under the skies. 20Indeed, the waters increased above the mountains, covering them to a depth of 15 cubits. 21Every living thing (all flesh) on earth died, including birds, domestic and wild animals all creatures that move about on the ground in whose nostrils is the breath of life. 24For 150 days the water had increased over the earth. . . . 8 2aThen the springs of deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. 3b At the end of 150 days the waters had abated. 4*In the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month. . . . 5The waters continued to abate until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen. 13a In the 601st year, the first month and the first day of the month, the waters on the earth had dried up. 14In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry. 17“Bring out every living creature that is with you, all flesh: birds and animals and every creature that creeps on the earth, to be fruitful and multiply on earth.” 19So all animals, reptiles, and birds, and everything that moves upon earth, came out of the ark by their species. 31

What becomes immediately obvious from a comparison of these two flood accounts is that J reflects a very consistent and self-contained story without any serious lacunae, whereas P’s version contains no consistent narrative and many major lacunae. Furthermore, the narrative that it does contain consists of verbose embellishments on J’s narrative and a chronology linked to P’s wider framework that is quite foreign to the nature of the story itself. These observations may be tested by a comparison of the Babylonian Flood Story and the biblical account.

The Babylonian and Biblical Flood Stories It has long been recognized that the Flood Story of Genesis corresponds rather closely to the Babylonian flood tradition, especially that version that 31.  P text = Gen 6:9–12, 17–21; 7:6, 8–9, 11, 13–16a, 17a, 18–21, 24; 8:2a, 3b, 4*, 5–6a, 13–14, 17, 19.

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was preserved in the Gilgamesh Epic. 32 However, even though this version of the Flood Story is the most complete of those that have come down to us, it has the fundamental drawback of being an excerpt that was originally drawn from a version of a much larger epic, that of the Atra-ḫasis Epic. 33 In this epic, the flood is the last major episode in a series that extends back to the creation of humankind by the gods, and this larger context has a direct bearing on any comparison with how the two biblical accounts also relate to creation and the antediluvian period. Comparisons between the biblical and Babylonian sources are complicated by the fact that the Babylonian texts reflect a wide variety of different traditions, not always compatible with each other, and the texts themselves are badly fragmented with large lacunae at important points. This often invites the temptation to restore broken texts with passages from widely different time periods and perspectives. Nevertheless, the degree of similarity between the Babylonian and biblical flood traditions is such that a comparison is warranted, especially because the result of the comparison is significantly different for the two biblical sources, J and P. Our primary focus will be on Atra-ḫasis concerning the relationship of the creation story to the Flood Story, and on Gilgamesh for the details of the Flood Story itself. This is because the Atra-ḫasis Epic is badly preserved for certain parts of the Flood Story. According to the Atra-ḫasis Epic, the motivation for the creation of humankind resulted from a rebellion of the lesser gods against their obligation to do all the hard labor in service of the superior gods, and this dispute was resolved by means of the creation of mortals to serve the gods in place of the lesser deities. This worked well until the multiplication of humanity resulted in so much noise from overpopulation that it disturbed the gods’ rest, and various extreme measures were taken to diminish their numbers. Each time the supreme god Enlil brought in disasters, such as plague or famine, the rival god Enki found a way to bring relief and subvert the will of Enlil. Finally, the ultimate measure, a cataclysmic flood, was announced by Enlil and agreed on by all the gods under oath. Yet the god Enki, in spite of taking a vow along with all the other gods that he would not do anything to upset these plans, still managed to communicate indirectly to his pious devotee, Atra-ḫasis, concerning the threat of this flood and how to take measures to save himself and a few others from this disaster. This then is the point at which the Gilgamesh Epic takes up the story in the form of an account by the hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (this author’s name for Atra-ḫasis), as told to Gilgamesh. 32.  For translations, see “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” ANET 3:93–95; S. Dalley, Myths From Mesopotamia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 109–16. For a survey of all the Babylonian sources, see Van Seters, Prologue to History, 47–77. 33.  For translations, see W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-Ḫasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969); S. Dalley, Myths From Mesopotamia, 1–38.

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As with this Babylonian antiquarian tradition, there is also in J a strong connection made between the creation of humanity (haʾadam) in Gen 6:5 and the deity’s later regret that he has made humans because they have become evil and violent to the point that he seeks to destroy them all with a flood. But one righteous person finds favor with this same deity, not a rival god, and this god plans to save him. Even though J makes use of a very different set of traditions for his Primeval History up to this point (Gen 2:4b–4:26), he is able to use them in such a way as to fashion a similar scenario to that in the Babylonian tradition by locating the cause of the Flood in unacceptable human behavior. With P, the matter is altogether otherwise, because for him the models he uses are entirely different Babylonian traditions of creation and antediluvian history. We are not concerned here with P’s presentation of creation as a whole but only with the creation of humanity in the image and likeness of the deity. 34 There is a Neo-Babylonian text that begins with a description of the creation of humanity, using a creation tradition similar to that found in Atra-ḫasis, only very much abbreviated. 35 However, in addition to the creation of common humanity (lullu–men), whose purpose it is to do the labor of the gods, this mythic text continues by describing how the mother goddess and Ea/Enki are to make a king, corresponding to a new class of beings, that is, royalty (maliku-men), quite distinct from the rest of humanity. This version is different from the earlier texts of the creation of humanity as in Atra-ḫasis, which makes no such distinction. The text states in considerable detail how this first king is to have all of the attributes of the various gods and goddesses. The text is clearly intended as a mythical legitimization of kingship, because the language used in it reflects that used in royal coronation rituals and royal inscriptions. From the Priestly language in Gen 1:26–28, which begins with the statement: “Let us make humanity in our own image and according to our likeness,” it seems clear that humanity is given this same royal function over the rest of creation that the king has over common humanity in the Babylonian text. While the very end of the Babylonian text is defective, it seems to contain a warning about speaking evil of the ruling king. It seems quite clear that this Babylonian creation myth, unlike that of Atra-ḫasis, did not have any connection with the Flood Story. Instead, the creation of the first king is an accommodation to a quite different tradition that attempts to construct a chronology of royal succession back to the earliest period when kingship first descended from heaven. This is best exemplified in the Sumerian King List, which traces this continuous line of succession 34.  Van Seters, “The Creation of Man and the Creation of the King,” 333–42. 35.  W. R. Mayer, “Ein Mythos von der Erschaffung des Menschen and des Königs,” Orientalia 56 (1987) 55–68.

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back to the flood, but also includes those kings that ruled before the flood, when kingship first descended from heaven. The flood itself is not dealt with in detail in SKL but only represents a break in royal continuity, which had to be reestablished when kingship again descended from heaven. Even though SKL’s major extant exemplar dates from the mid-second millennium b.c.e., it is attested in the Dynastic Chronicle of the Neo-Assyrian period and in Berossus. The SKL tradition, reflected in these texts, contains a list of 8 to 10 antediluvian kings listed along with a chronology of very long reigns totaling many thousands of years. This series is interrupted by the flood, about which nothing further is said in SKL, and then kingship once again descends from heaven and the list of kings with chronology continues down to the time of the author. In the Dynastic Chronicle there is a large lacuna in the text between the antediluvian and postdiluvian kings that could perhaps accommodate some version of the Flood Story, but nothing of it remains. By the time of Berossus, a version of the Flood Story has been incorporated into the genealogy of kings, together with various other traditions. In the Primeval History of P, the continuity between the creation of humanity and the coming of the Deluge is established by a genealogical and chronological sequence from Adam, now treated as the first male, down to Noah (Gen 5). This genealogy, however, is treated in a fashion similar to a royal chronology, in which the ancestor’s lifespan is given and his age at the time that his first son was born. No other sons or daughters are named, so that the sequence has the appearance of a succession of “royal” ancestors. Noah constitutes an exception in P’s scheme because he has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, but all are born in the same year! This was apparently necessary to accommodate three parallel lines of descendants. Because the sons’ names were already known from J (9:18), P was obligated to refer to them all together. The ages of the antediluvian patriarchs are mostly in the 900-year range, which is greatly diminished in the period after the flood, just as is the case with the postdiluvian kings in SKL. There can be little doubt that P was strongly influenced by the Mesopotamian king-list tradition. It is this chronological and genealogical continuity that is the primary concern of P in his modification of J’s flood tradition. The dating within the Flood Story by the particular year of Noah’s life corresponds to the system of Babylonian dating by the year of a king’s reign. There is nothing in P’s contributions to the biblical Flood Story that suggests any familiarity with the Babylonian flood story. For P the continuity between the antediluvian period and the flood is essentially chronological, and the reason for the flood is of minimal concern to him; he has nothing new to say beyond what is already in J. Let us turn now to a comparison between the Babylonian tradition of the flood, as reflected in the Gilgamesh Epic XI and the corresponding details in the biblical account.

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Gilgamesh Epic 3

Yahwist Flood Story

A divine warning is given to Utnapishtim about the impending flood and detailed instructions are set out to build a boat of a specific size with seven levels and nine compartments in each level and the whole boat sealed with much bitumen.

In Gen 6:13–16 ( J) we likewise have the divine warning to Noah about the destruction of humankind and the command to build an ark of a particular size with cypress wood and install in it three decks and compartments and a roof and seal it with bitumen.

Animals are brought to the boat to preserve “the seed of all living creatures.” Utnapishtim’s family along with both domestic and wild animals enter the boat and Utnapishtim shuts the door. In Atra-ḫasis 3.1.37, there is a seven-day respite before the flood.

Noah brings his family on board, along with animals, both clean and unclean, and birds “to keep alive seed upon the face of all the earth” (Gen 7:3). Then God shuts the door. After seven days’ respite, the flood comes.

There is a great storm of wind and rain for seven days and the flood destroys all humankind.

The rain lasts for 40 days and produces the flood that destroys all creatures on earth.

After seven days, the storm subsides. Utnapishtim opens the window and views the disaster. The boat lands on Mount Nisir. After seven more days, birds are sent out; a dove, a, swallow and a raven, successively, to test whether there is any dry land.

The flood subsides and the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat. After 40 days, Noah opens the window and releases birds, a raven and a dove twice, at seven-day intervals. The last bird does not return and only then does Noah remove the covering or hatch.

Utnapishtim releases everything to the four winds (?) and then offers a sacrifice to the gods, who smell the sweet savor and decide never again to bring such a flood on the earth.

Noah and his family leave the ark and he offers a sacrifice. God smells the pleasing odor and promises never to bring such a destructive flood.

Utnapishtim is granted eternal life like the gods. In Atra-ḫasis, a new human race is created.

Noah becomes the new founder of the human race.

In the Yahwist version of the Flood Story, every basic element of the storyline follows its Babylonian counterpart, except in the matter of J’s monotheism, which eliminates the element of divine rivalry and substitutes for this the interplay between divine judgment and divine mercy, as we also have it in J’s account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 18–19. The Yahwist connects the Flood Story with the next unit, a piece of folklore in 9:20–27, by means of a genealogical notice in 9:18–19, which for the first time actually gives the names of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham,

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and Japhet. What is significant for our purposes here is that this statement could not have been introduced at this point by a post-P source, because it would have been completely redundant, with all of the prior references to the identity of the three sons in P. In J’s flood account the names and even the number of sons were not necessary, whereas they are necessary for the J story in 9:20–27 and table of nations that follow. This information of the names and numbers of sons, given twice by P within the Flood Story (6:10 and 7:13) is quite superfluous. P adds nothing new to the Flood Story from any Babylonian source, with the possible exception of the food supply (6:21), but this is only mentioned in the Hellenistic version of Berossus. 36 It could just as easily have been a P invention to fill an obvious gap in the story. For the rest, P embellishes the J account with three kinds of additions. First, he repeats the list of animals and birds to be brought on board, both before and after J’s account, because he rejects the notion of any distinction between clean and unclean for this period in history. Such distinctions were only possible from the time of the Mosaic laws and later. By the same token, the offering of sacrifice to the deity is also not possible before Moses, and indeed, throughout P’s whole primeval and patriarchal history he avoids any reference to animal sacrifice. 37 Second, P fits the flood narrative into his genealogical and chronological scheme, as an extension of his genealogical chronology in Gen 5. This leads him to introduce into the narrative his numerical and chronological calculations, when the flood stated (7:6, 11), and the duration of the various phases of the flood (7:24; 8:3b, 4–5, 13). These additions are often inserted in a rather awkward and disruptive fashion, throughout the text, as we have seen above, and they sometimes assume elements of J’s story, as they do for the date of the ark’s settling on Mount Ararat (8:4). It has also been observed that the 40 days in 8:6 and the three weeks taken for the release of the birds equals the two month span between the date in 8:4 and 8:13. 38 How P may have used J’s various time spans of 7 and 40 days may be a matter of endless debate, but it is certain that J did not make any use of the chronology in P. Third, the Priestly Writer also gives to the flood narrative a cosmic dimension, because for him, the flood represents a judgment on the whole created order. This comes out in a number of ways, in the corruption of the whole earth in 6:11–12, in the cosmic dimensions of the catastrophe in 7:11; 8:2a, and especially in P’s conclusion to the flood episode in 9:1–17. First, we have 36.  See the text in Lambert and Millard, Atra-Ḫasis, 135. 37.  P does repeat in Gen 35:14 the libation of oil on a pillar marker at Bethel, mentioned earlier in J (28:18), but concerning the many references to patriarchal sacrifices in J, P has nothing to say. 38. For discussions on chronology, see N. P. Lemche, “The Chronology in the Story of the Flood,” JSOT 18 (1980) 52–62; and F. H. Cryer, “The Interrelationship of Gen 5,32; 11,10–11 and the Chronology of the Flood (Gen 6–9),” Biblica 66 (1985) 241–60.

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the repetition of the blessing given by God at creation to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1, 7), with man’s superiority over all other creatures (v. 2) as in Gen 1:28. Second, humanity is no longer restricted to a vegetarian diet but may now eat meat of every sort. There is not yet any distinction between clean and unclean animals. All animals, birds, fish, and reptiles are equally acceptable (v. 3). Humanity is therefore no longer vegetarian as it was at creation. The only restriction is that humans must not eat their flesh with the blood (vv. 4–5). This restriction obviously does not apply to the animals. This shedding of blood is also tied to an injunction against murder, with a curious attempt to include as well all animals that kill humans (v. 5), and with an appeal again to humans’ creation in the image of God (v. 6). This law seems to be both a response to P’s statement at the beginning of the Flood Story that “the earth was filled with violence,” that is, the violence perpetrated by humans, and the extension by P to the animal world as well. However, as we saw above, this violence was only recorded in J’s primeval account, as in the story of Cain and Abel. The new order attempts to regulate this. None of this is remotely related to the Babylonian flood tradition. Finally, God enters into an eternal covenant, not only with Noah and his sons and their descendents but also with all of the other living creatures who came out of the ark (vv. 9–10, cf. 8:19). This is the covenant that commits God never again to bring a flood, with the rainbow as a reminder to God of his oath made to “all flesh,” which means every living creature. This cosmic character to the Flood Story is similar to that of the Babylonian Flood Story in the sense that both are associated with the notion of a renewal of the created order along somewhat different lines. However, in the Babylonian story it is focused entirely on humans and the need to restrict overpopulation, whereas in P this is hardly an issue with the divine encouragement to “be fruitful and multiply.” All the components of P’s cosmic and universal dimension, including those having to do with the animals, are entirely different and not likely to have been inspired by the Babylonian story.

Conclusion As I indicated at the outset of this study, the biblical Flood Story had been regarded by biblical scholars for more than a century as one of the most important texts in the literary criticism of the Pentateuch and in discussions of the relationship between the J and P sources in particular. Difficulties arise, however, when these two sources have not been correctly identified by the false application of the use of the divine name as the decisive criterion for making that source division. It has long been recognized that such a criterion as the divine names has not been decisive in other parts of Genesis. Once it is acknowledged that the use of Elohim for source division may not apply in every instance, then the whole character of literary analysis changes

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and we are left with a J narrative of the flood that fits very well with what precedes in Gen 6:5–8 and follows in 9:18–27. It is a story that made direct use of the Babylonian flood tradition from beginning to end, with its own necessary theological modification. The Priestly Writer made use of certain other Babylonian traditions, notably a descendant of the SKL antediluvian and postdiluvian king-list tradition, but P seems entirely dependant on J for the Flood Story itself. To this he adds his own ideological modifications as elaborate embellishments. The laborious attempt to make P the basic narrative and J’s additions as the work of a redactor has been most unfortunate, not only for understanding this story, but also as a guide for analysis of the rest of the Pentateuch as well. Once the proper limits and characteristics of the Yahwist’s Flood Story are understood, then it becomes clear that the whole of J’s Primeval History is prior to that of P, and P’s creation story and genealogy are likewise a supplement built onto the Primeval History of J. As we have seen above, it is P’s additions that have often obscured the continuity and clarity of J’s narrative. Furthermore, the similarities and interconnections between J’s Flood Story and the Abraham Story, particularly the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the righteousness of Abraham, confirm the continuity between J’s Primeval History and the patriarchal stories. 39 The complete fragmentation of the Yahwist’s historical narrative by the unnecessary introduction of the “redactor” into the literary analysis of the Flood Story in order to explain the relationship of J to P has played havoc with the literary criticism of the Pentateuch for more than a century. It is high time for a serious reconsideration of the Yahwist in pentateuchal criticism. 39.  See n. 11 above.

Chapter 14

The Covenant of Abraham in Genesis 15 Introduction Prior to the debate that arose in pentateuchal studies in the mid-70s over the Documentary Hypothesis and its division and early dating of sources, it was common, under the influence of form-criticism from H. Gunkel to C. Westermann, to analyze the pre-P corpus of Genesis (whether J or E) in terms of its early pre-literary traditions. The form-critical model introduced by Gunkel suggested that the portions of the text that were presented in story-form reflected early pre-literate legends, whereas those that were in non-story form were late. This led to a fragmentation of the sources, particularly J, into a large number of individual story units, with the “late” elements within the stories and the nonnarrative portions all considered as redactional additions. The “revisionists” of the 70s called into question the early dating of the pentateuchal sources, primarily J, and the way in which they were related to each other. 1 This gave rise to two conflicting methods: the one, represented by my work on Abraham and Hans Heinrich Schmid’s work on the “so-called Yahwist,” was to focus on one basic source, J, dating to the Exilic Period and somewhat later than Deuteronomy and the DtrH, with the P material being a supplement to J and with no redactors necessary. The other approach, represented by Rolf Rendtorff, was to dismiss the notion of a single author J (or any author?) and to regard the whole process of textual development as a growth by constant redactional supplementation. Both approaches shared the same tendency towards a much later dating of the Pentateuch than had previously been the case, but otherwise in was not so easy to reconcile these conflicting approaches. 2 An important work that represented something of a compromise between these two approaches, was that of Erhard Blum, who published a dissertation 1.  Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition; H. H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist; R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch. 2. For a critical review of these issues see my “Recent Studies on the Pentateuch: A Crisis in Method.”

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under Rendtorff, 3 in which he regarded the patriarchal traditions as passing through a long and complex development, culminating in two large but separate “compositions,” the one he called (post-)Deuteronomistic Composition (KD) and the other a Priestly Composition (KP). While he recognizes KP as a later development than KD, nevertheless he regards both as separate entities that were only combined much later in a kind of compromise arrangement in the Persian period. Thus, he is reluctant to speak about either “authors or redactors” and speaks instead of “tradents” and revisions. 4 Nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion we are concerned about how his scheme views the unit in Gen 15. Consequently, when approaching the study of Gen 15 it is important to understand these methological distinctions and suppositions, because they inevitably lead to different forms of analysis and conclusions. If one believes in the reality of a continuous non-P source throughout the Pentateuch ( J) or even a large part or parts of the Pentateuch (KD), then one will be concerned about the place of Gen 15 within that corpus. If, however, one treats the body of the non-P corpus as a vague collection of traditions and revisions, then it is much easier to view Gen 15 with complete disregard for the other non-P texts, as we shall see in the example studied below. Another important issue that arises in the study of Gen 15, and the Pentateuch as a whole, is the problem of dating. The revolution of the 70s meant that, in contrast to all of the earlier historical criticism of the Pentateuch, which regarded the bulk of the non-P corpus of texts in Genesis to Numbers as belonging to the early monarchy, the new approach considered these same non-P texts as “late,” by which was meant that they were post-Deuteronomy. All of the discussion in earlier scholarship on this question of dating, which had focused on oral traditions stemming from the second millennium b.c.e. behind the stories of Genesis, became virtually obsolete. Thus, it was necessary to construct a new form of social, historical and literary contextualization by which to control the question of dating literary texts. 5 Such a controlling framework or context is essential to any suggestions about how a particular text, such as Gen 15, was intended to address its own social environment. Far too often vague suggestions are made about dating and social context without offering any evidence for such a historical framework. In my previous work on the Yahwist in general and Gen 15 in particular I have make frequent and explicit reference to the controlling context in this literary work, and this will be an important issue in the critical discussion that follows.

3.  Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte. 4.  For a critique of Blum’s position see my Edited Bible, 277–81. 5. See my remarks in “The So-Called Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch,” in Leuven Congress Volume 1989 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991) 58–77.

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Some Remarks by Jean-Louis Ska on Genesis 15 In a recent discussion on Gen 15 by Jean-Louis Ska,  6 he sets out to give a new understanding of this chapter that is quite at odds with the one that I presented in my work. 7 It is based on a radically different understanding of this text from that which I have proposed, and if correct it has major consequences for pentateuchal criticism. In this article, Ska ends his study by drawing the following rather remarkable conclusions (80–81): He states: “Gen 15 . . . stems from a group of scribes who do not possess the literary skills and the competence of other scribes such as the well-trained scribes of the deuteronomic/deuteronomistic or priestly schools.” Now we may very well ask: Why was it necessary for several scribes to produce such a short piece of writing? No evidence is presented at any point for the existence of any such a school or their rival schools. Even if one admits to the possibility of some later interpolations and corruptions within Gen 15, these cannot be blamed on the author of the initial product. This notion of every literary work in the Pentateuch being the creation of scribal schools simply belongs to Ska’s conviction that individual authors did not exist in antiquity, so they are all replaced by scribal guilds or schools, which can persist over many years with no fixed date or location. Furthermore, if one is judging the production of Gen 15 by Deuteronomists and Priestly Writers or “schools,” then one would have expected some comparison with comparable examples from both of these authors or groups. But no such comparison is ever made in this study to support such a claim, so we will need to give special attention to this issue. Ska likewise concludes that this band of writers of Gen 15 belonged to the “people of the land” of Judah mentioned in Ezek 33:23–24 in which they refer to the land promise to Abraham, and he sees this group in conflict with the golah from Babylonia as reflected in Ezra-Nehemiah. This requires a rather remarkable leap in time of one and a half to two centuries and the belief against all biblical evidence to the contrary that there was no development in the patriarchal traditions in the meantime. Indeed, in Neh 9:7–8 Ezra seems to make quite explicit reference to the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 15 in preference to that of Gen 17. 8 Furthermore, Ska largely ignores the frequent favorable references to Abraham and the other patriarchs by Second Isaiah in Babylonia in the years following Ezekiel. I have often addressed the close relationship between Gen 15 and Second Isaiah, 9 but there is no discussion of that in this study. 6. J-L. Ska, “Some Groundwork on Genesis 15,” The Exegesis of the Pentateuch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 67–81. I will henceforth refer to this work by citing the page numbers in parentheses. 7.  See n. 1 above. 8.  See H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (WBC 16; Waco, TX: Word, 1985) 313. 9.  Van Seters, “In the Babylonian Exile with J.”

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Finally, Ska concludes that the scribes of Gen 15 have attempted to elevate Abraham and his claim to the land over those from the golah, whose primary emphasis is on Moses and the exodus from Egypt tradition, by portraying Abraham as a prophet prior to that of Moses. This is a remarkable and bewildering conclusion, which ignores completely the most important prophet of the Exile, Second Isaiah, which would completely contradict his conclusion. Nor does he discuss P’s portrayal of Abraham in Gen 17. Was not this “priestly school” led by Ezra the scribe from Babylonia? The primary motive of this exercise by Ska is to distinguish the scribes of Gen 15 from other groups of scribes who were responsible for different blocks of non-P texts in the Pentateuch. These were at one time (and still are by some) identified with the one writer J. But the study is made in isolation from its literary context and from any comparison with the parallel P text in Gen 17. The fact is that once one distinguishes Gen 15 as a distinct group of scribes with their own program and ideology, then there is no end to the number of scribal schools in the little religious community of Jehud and Jerusalem, and among a group that had a very small literate population. The whole reconstruction leads to a sociohistorical and cultural framework that becomes very difficult to imagine. Nevertheless, let us now turn to the specific details of this thesis.

What Kind of Literary Genre Is Genesis 15? The first question that Ska raises is whether or not the unit in Gen 15 is a narrative, and if it fails this test then it is a late inferior work. This question of genre is not new; in fact it goes back to the elaborate study by Gunkel in his Genesis commentary and continued to be a major concern in the study of the patriarchs until the 70s. 10 Gunkel’s concern, and those who followed him, was to uncover early legends or Sagen belonging to the preliterate, premonarchy era, and anything that did not meet these narrative criteria was “late,” that is, the time of Solomon or later. Anything that was the least bit Deuteronomistic or prophetic was very late, even exilic. However, once that whole system of analyzing and understanding the patriarchal stories is called into question, the narrative quality of a text has little to do with its age; nor should pristine narrative texts be reconstructed by means of eliminating those elements that do not meet the requirements of a narrative genre. This concern for the narrative quality of Gen 15, or lack of it, leads Ska to examine particular expressions in detail, although these are rather selective, in order to make his case that it is a late text. Nevertheless, let us look at these. Ska points out that the opening phrase, “After these things,” suggests the beginning of a narrative with a story line, but instead it is followed by a very common prophetic formula: “The word of Yahweh came to Abraham 10. H. Gunkel, Genesis; C. Westermann, Genesis 12–36. A Commentery (Mineapolis: Augsburg, 1985) 30–58.

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in a vision,” and consequently he infers that “this may mean that we have here a point of contact between Gen 15 and exilic or post-exilic prophetic literature” (p.69). He further points out that just the formula alone, which uses both the phrase ‫ היה דבר־יהוה אל־‬together with the word ‫מחזה‬, “vision,” is rather rare, and he interprets this as an “effort to create a prophetic setting. The short remark shows that Abraham is the recipient of a message and, moreover, of a ‘vision,’ exactly as other prophets” (pp. 69–70). This point is very important for Ska because he wants to attribute to the scribes of this unit the motive of attempting to elevate the prestige of Abraham by attributing to him the role of prophet. 11 This argument is very weak because there were no prophets in the patriarchal era so that all of the patriarchs received these “words” and “visions” from the deity directly. Such messages to the patriarchs are often introduced in a very simple way, but they can be presented by the deity in the guise of mortals and strangers, as in Gen 18–19; in angelic form, as in 22:11–12, 15–18; in a nocturnal dream, as with Jacob at Bethel 28:12–17, or a nocturnal vision (‫ )מראה‬in 46:2. These are all well attested forms of divine appearance in other biblical narrative and in prophecy. Furthermore, the role of the prophet is to serve merely as an intermediary to deliver the message of the deity to a king or the people to whom the prophet is sent. In the case of Abraham (and all the other patriarchs), the message is intended for them directly and never mediated. So unlike Moses, who was sent to deliver his message to the Pharaoh or to his own people, the patriarch’s role is not prophetic in the least. Within the larger context of the patriarchal stories, there is nothing in Gen 15 that suggests that Abraham is to be understood as a prophet. The most obvious comparison with Gen 15 would be the theophany by P in Gen 17, which also deals with the theme of the divine covenant to Abraham, especially as it has to do with the issues in this debate. First, let us also look at Gen 17, in terms of its narrative style, because Ska makes the statement that P’s narrative style is superior to that reflected in Gen 15. P introduces the narrative with a date: “When Abram was 99 years old.” This remark is part of a chronological obsession of the P writer that leads him to insert the age of Abraham and other patriarchs into the text at a number of points, whether they are appropriate or not (Gen 11:26, 32; 12:4; 16:3, 16; 17:1, 24–25; 21:5; 25:7; 36:28). However, all of these chronological connections (with the exception of those in chap. 17 and 36:28) are built into the prior non-P narrative and they are all quite superfluous to the narratives in which they appear. This is similar to P’s chronological style in the Flood Story in Gen 6–8. The actual introduction in 17:1b is very abrupt and confusing. It appears to imitate the opening remarks in 18:1 but in a highly abbreviated form: 11.  This suggestion is not new but goes back to Gunkel, Genesis (ET), 178, and is part of his argument for a “late date” for this text. See also K. Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus, 180.

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“Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him.” 12 This is confirmed by the similarity of the ending in 17:22: “When he finished speaking with him, God went up from Abraham,” which may be compared with 18:33: “Yahweh went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham.” None of this makes Abraham a prophet. The brief dialogue in 17:17–19 is also dependent on the story in 18:1–15 and Sarah’s remarks in vv. 12–15. What is surprising is the use of the divine name Yahweh in 17:1 (as in J’s 18:1), and this is followed by the identity “I am El-Shaddai” as though to contradict the prior statement. This juxtaposition of the two different divine names only makes sense in the light of Exod 6:2–3. Furthermore, the impression given by this introduction is that this is the first time the deity has appeared to Abraham, but P clearly assumes prior occasions, including the initial command to leave Ur and travel to Canaan 12:4–5. Within the long and highly ideological monologue by the deity there is a little dialogue about Sarah bearing a son one year hence, at 90 years of age, anticipating the story in 18:1–15, followed by the carrying out of the circumcision requirement after the divine speech. This, however, is very stilted narrative style, and the details make the larger context in which it is fitted look quite ridiculous. The argument that the Priestly narrative style is vastly superior to that of J in Gen 15 simply does not stand up to any scrutiny. One of the distinguishing features that Ska attributes to the scribes of Gen 15 is the lofty status attributed to Abraham, as compared with Ezek 33:23–24, and this could indeed be said of the whole J corpus. However, P is not to be outdone, for Abraham is not merely the forefather of one great nation but a “crowd of nations” (17:4) and the ancestor of numerous kings (vv. 6, 16, 20). This hardly represents the tradition of Ezekiel. Throughout this long divine speech in 17:1–21 nothing is said about the exodus tradition whatsoever. Indeed, the one brief remark about the land promise is that the deity will give to him and his descendants “the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan as a perpetual possession” (v. 8). If this chapter was taken in isolation from the rest of P, it could be interpreted as representing a view in contradiction to that of the exodus tradition, as Ska would like to do with Gen 15. However, Exod 6:3–4 makes the continuity between the two traditions of land promise clear. In this, P is of course, merely following J. From these observations on Gen 17, one can say that it is not a self-contained narrative at all but an ideological argument on the nature of Jewish identity, embedded within a much larger preexisting narrative that covers both the story of the patriarchs and the exodus. It seems to me rather arbitrary to make allowance for this in the case of P but not in the case of J’s covenant in Gen 15. Ska is quick to quote Gunkel on the narrative style of Gen 15 but ignores his 12.  This language, using the verb ‫ ראה‬in the Hiphil, is typical of revelations in prophecy. See also Exod 6:3.

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comment on Gen 17. Regarding the latter, Gunkel states: “What follows [in Gen 17] is even less a ‘narrative’ than Gen 15. The author is not concerned with narrative, but with establishing facts and propounding ideas. P’s other theophanies also have this bland form (35:9; Exod 6:3).” 13 In terms of the actual form of the presentation in Gen 15, there is, in fact, a much more useful parallel in the divine promises to David in 2 Sam 7. 14 The unit begins with a very short introduction in 7:1–3 expressing David’s desire to build a temple for the ark, and this is followed by a nocturnal vision: “the word of Yahweh came to Nathan” (‫)ויהי דבר־יהוה אל־נתן‬, with a very brief command: “Go and tell my servant David: ‘Thus says Yahweh.’” This is followed by a long divine speech directed to David, in which Nathan disappears from view. The end of the speech concludes with the remark: “In accordance with all these words (‫ )דברים‬and in accordance with this vision (‫)חזיון‬, thus Nathan spoke to David” (v. 17). What we have here is the same combination of terms to express the divine revelation as that which occurs in Gen 15 with only a slightly different form. Furthermore, Nathan’s role seems to be almost completely superfluous, a mere narrative formality. David does not address Nathan but immediately responds to the deity. It is not even clear just exactly where or when David did this: “David went in and sat before Yahweh” (v. 18). The narrative elements are at an absolute minimum. It is also instructive to see how this story is treated in Ps 89. First, the promise made to David is now characterized as a “covenant” (v. 4[3]), and it is David himself who has heard the deity “speak in a vision” (‫ )דברת־בחזון‬v. 20[19]. Nowhere is anything said about the prophet Nathan. It would appear that the author of Gen 15 was familiar with the literary tradition regarding the Davidic covenant and framed the oath to Abraham in these terms. There is no need to look further than this early Dtr text for comparison with the opening statement in Gen 15:1. Ska, as part of his argument, makes a comparison between the comments about Abraham in Ezek 33:24 and Isa 51:2 with those in Gen 15, on the assumption that the latter views Abraham as a prophet, which we have rejected above. What he does not do is explain how the rather belittling remarks about Abraham in Ezekiel are so entirely different from those in Second Isaiah. In fact Ska gives virtually no consideration to the latter at all. In Isa 41:8, it is Jacob the chosen one and Abraham the “friend” of God, those whom the deity “took from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest corners,” or in Isa 51:2 it is Abraham their father, who was called and blessed, These patriarchs are now the basis of their future hope. This is the voice of the golah, the exilic community in Babylonia, which sees the origins of the people in Mesopotamia, from which Abraham migrated from 13.  Gunkel, Genesis (ET), 263 14.  Van Seters, The Biblical Saga of King David, 241–67.

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his home in Ur of the Chaldeans. All of this has been argued many times before, but Ska has chosen to ignore any discussion of this position. 15

“Fear Not, Abram, I Am Your Shield”: The Salvation Oracle and the Abrahamic Covenant The divine word that follows the introduction is an “oracle of salvation” which has considerable importance for understanding the unit as a whole. It states: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Your reward will be great.” Ska recognizes this genre of prophetic speech as a salvation oracle, but rather than discuss its meaning and significance he complains about the fact that it is not preceded as he would have expected, by divine instructions to a prophetic figure for its deliverance. Yet, as we have explained above, there are no prophets in the age of the patriarchs so such remarks are inappropriate. Thus, we must give considerable attention to the oracle itself. As Otto Kaiser observed more that 50 years ago, 16 this genre has its roots in late Neo-Assyrian oracles, in which a prophetic figure delivers a divine word of encouragement to the king before an important military campaign. The elements of these oracles correspond closely with the three main parts of this oracle to Abraham: (1) an introductory word of encouragement—“fear not!,” (2) a pledge to offer divine protection for the king and his army, sometimes using the same language “shield,” (3) a promise of victory and the booty and territory that goes with victory. 17 It can also include the promise of successive heirs to the throne. Consequently, this kind of language is most meaningful in a Mesopotamian environment. Now it is significant that just this kind of oracular language is very characteristic of Second Isaiah. 18 The same formula, using the introductory “fear not!” followed by words of encouragement of divine assistance and protection, in Isa 41:10, 13, 14, is at the same time closely associated with the patriarchal figures of Abraham and Jacob whom Yahweh their God had assisted in the same way. Thus Isa 41:8–10 reads: But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, . . . Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; 15.  Van Seters, “In the Babylonian Exile with J,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (ed. B. Becking and M.  C.  A. Korpel; OtSt 42; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 71–89. 16. O. Kaiser, “Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung von Genesis 15,” ZAW 70 (1958) 107–26. 17.  Van Seters, Abraham, 254. 18.  Isa 35:4; 40:9; 41:10, 13, 14; 43:1, 5; 44:2; 54:4. See also Jer 30:10; 46:27, 28, which are obviously from the same period; see McKane, Jeremiah, 2:762–63.

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I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

What follows in vv. 11–16 in which the phrase “fear not” occurs twice, is the strong emphasis on the aspect of victory over their enemies, and this victory will manifest itself in a glorious departure from Babylonia, and a desert trek to the land of their fathers. This same theme of victorious return associated with the formula “fear not” occurs again in 43:1–7; 44:1–5. In Isa 40:9–10 it is the personification of Jerusalem that is encouraged to “fear not” in announcing the coming of the deity in victory (v. 10): See, Lord Yahweh comes with might, his arm rules for him, See, his reward (‫ )ׂשכר‬is with him, his wages before him.

Here we see the same term “reward” (‫ )ׂשכר‬that appears in Gen 15:1, along with the phrase “fear not.” The only term used in the oracle of Gen 15:1 that is not found in Second Isaiah is the metaphor of God as “shield” (‫)מגן‬, although the idea of divine protection is certainly there. However, it is quite common in the Psalms, 19 so its use should not be surprising to find it in Gen 15:1. Some scholars have suggested that there is a connection between the verb ‫ מגן‬in Gen 14:20, in the sense of “hand over” (the enemy) and the noun ‫מגן‬ “shield” in 15:1, but the two uses are entirely contradictory (cf. Hos 11:8). The common metaphorical use of the language of God as protector of his people and the “booty” as the land promises in Gen 13:14–17, has been taken up by the author of chap. 14 and construed in an entirely literal way to make Abraham into a renowned warrior. The same is true of the use of ‫“ רכשׁ‬possessions” in 14:11, 12, 16, 21, which is very common elsewhere in Genesis. Are we to date all of these texts as later that Gen 14? In fact, there are many names and terms in chap. 14 that are taken over from other parts of the Pentateuch in an elaborate and bizarre composition. 20 It is a very late, Hellenistic composition that is better left out of the discussion. What the imagery in 15:1 is actually meant to suggest is that Yahweh at some time in the future will lead and protect the offspring of Abraham in taking possession of the land. This will be the theme of the second part of the theophany and the covenant in 15:7–20, and 15:1 cannot be understood without the references to the exodus with “great possessions” (v.  14) and the conquest of the land in vv.  18–20. This theme is interrupted by Abraham with an objection that the “reward” will mean nothing to him if he remains childless (v. 3), so he must first be assured that he will indeed have 19.  Pss 3:4; 7:11; 18:3, 31, 36; 28:7; 33:20; 59:12; 84:10, 12; 89:19; 115:9, 10, 36; 119:114; 144:2. 20.  Van Seters, Abraham, 296–308. The title “priest of El-Elyon” applied to Melchisedek, is the same title that was used of the Hasmonean high priests in the Maccabean age (p. 308).

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many descendents (vv. 4–5). The author skillfully uses the nocturnal vision in order to make the comparison between the stars that Abraham can see at night and the number of his future descendents. Once Abraham accepts this reassurance, then the deity returns to the subject suggested in v. 1, that of the future possession of the land. Ska skips over this part of the narrative with little comment, except to say that the view of the night sky “does not solve any problem.” However, it is precisely the solution to this problem that is the subject of the next two episodes in J, in Gen 16 and 18, and resolved in chap.  21. Consequently, when Gen 15:1–6 is placed within its larger J context it does play a quite significant narrative role.

Narrative Style in Genesis 15 The discussion by Ska (p. 72) regarding the lack of narrative style in Gen 15:6 is most revealing. Here he appeals to Gunkel for the lateness of the composition as a whole: “But especially the abstract representation of v. 6 (‘he believed’) is a very significant sign of late style. An early narrator would have recounted an act at this point which would have portrayed Abraham’s faith as in 12:4; 22:3ff.” 21 Of course, what is early and late for Gunkel is entirely different for Ska. Gunkel is looking for a style that is appropriate to “ancient legends” (älteren Sagen), the oral nature of which he spelled out in great detail in the introduction to his Genesis commentary. So “late” means anything that is later than Deuteronomy, but Gen 15 has long been regarded (along with the rest of J) as post-D, so that its “lateness” is no longer surprising. 22 It is little wonder, therefore, that Gunkel would find the whole of Gen 15 as inappropriate to the narrative style of such early legends. Ska does not comment on Gunkel’s comparison of chap. 15 with the P covenant in chap. 17, in which, on stylistic grounds Gunkel declares: “How much more ancient is chap. 15 than chap. 17 on the whole!” 23 So the quotation from Gunkel is misleading within the context of the present discussion. Furthermore, the connection between the statement about Abraham’s faith and the covenant that follows is not so difficult to understand. The author of Ezra’s confession makes a direct connection between Abraham’s faith and the covenant that followed: “You [Yahweh] found his heart faithful before you and made with him the covenant to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites (Neh 9:8).” Likewise, from a narrative perspective it is important that the narrator inform us about the divine recognition of Abraham’s righteousness prior to the dialogue between the deity and Abraham in Gen 18:16–33, which is dominated by the theme of righteousness. As one who is righteous, he can instruct his household in what is righteous 21.  Gunkel, Genesis (ET), 182. 22.  Van Seters, “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” 143–47. 23.  Gunkel, Genesis (ET), 183.

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and just. And he can also serve as the dialogue partner with the deity about the fate of the righteous in the divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed, one cannot make judgments about any particular part of a narrative unless one has first discerned the limits of the larger narrative context under consideration.

Comparison between Genesis 15 and Deuteronomy Regarding a comparison between Gen 15 and Deuteronomy in the second part of his study (72–75), 24 Ska restricts his remarks to Gen 15 and does not include the whole of the J (non-P) corpus, which all yields much the same result, that is, that in spite of notable similarities in language, the perspective of J is non-Deuteronomistic. In this regard Ska cites many studies but studiously avoids mine, even though I began the whole recent debate, along with H. H. Schmid, regarding the relationship of the Yahwist to Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist.  25 I came to quite different conclusions from Ska, but these need not be repeated here. On one point, however, we do agree, and that is that the unconditional covenant of Gen 15 is quite different from the conditional covenant of Deuteronomy. By the same token, it is also radically different from the P covenant in Gen 17, which is conditional in quite a different way from that of Deuteronomy and also different, therefore, from the unconditional covenant of Gen 15. Nevertheless, there is an observation that Ska makes that is questionable in the way he uses it. Regarding the deuteronomic formula of the gift of land, he states: “[T]he formula ‘land that I give you to possess,’ in Deuteronomy, is never addressed to an individual, but always to the people of Israel” (pp. 74–75). This is quite misleading because the “individual,” whether it is Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, is always the forefather of the people, so that it is to the people as a whole that this land promise is always made, and this is always how it was understood. None of the patriarchs ever gained control of the land in which they sojourned. The addition of the patriarchal names to the land promises created no conflict with understanding who the ultimate recipient of the land promise was, that is, the people as a whole. However, it did make that promise to the people unconditional, and that is the whole point of the ideological shift in J, which was clearly understood as such in Second Isaiah. 24. Such a comparison was already suggested by Gunkel (Genesis, 183) as part of his argument for a late date. 25.  In addition to my “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” 143–47, see my Abraham in History and Tradition, 249–78; “The So-Called Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch”; Prologue to History, 215–76; “The Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch: The Case against It;” “In the Babylonian Exile with J: Between Judgment in Ezekiel and Salvation in Second Isaiah,” 71–89. See also H. H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist; Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist.

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Consequently, I completely reject Ska’s disparaging remark about Gen 15: “In my opinion we have here a ‘literary patchwork,’ a ‘collage’ or even a ‘pastiche’ made up of different elements coming from different traditions and different schools” (p. 75). On the contrary, this is a new perspective that is developed quite consistently throughout J, in the rest of the patriarchal theophanies, but especially in the call of Moses in Exod 3–4. Likewise, when the covenant was under threat because of the people’s apostasy in the episode of the golden calf, Moses appeals to the covenant with the patriarchs, in Exod 32:13–14. It is only when one breaks the larger non-P corpus into little pieces that one can argue that this central piece is a “pastiche” of elements from this larger whole. It is that assumption that I completely reject.

The Literary and Social Context of Genesis 15 In the last part of his study (pp. 75–80), Ska attempts to explore the social and ideological milieu out of which Gen 15 developed. What I find very curious about this discussion is the highly selective way in which only a very few texts are viewed in order to develop a kind of negative argument, while at the same time ignoring the large body of texts that do deal with Abraham in a highly positive way and define rather clearly the special milieu in which this and other Genesis texts about Abraham arose. To these we will turn first, and then we will look at the one late text (Isa 63:16) used by Ska to interpret the Abraham tradition in a negative manner and the inference that Ska draws from it. I will not repeat my earlier remarks about the opening statement in 15:1 and its similarity with the very similar form and language in 2 Sam 7. It should be noted that the Abrahamic covenant and the Davidic covenant are both unconditional promises related to their future offspring. Indeed, the Abrahamic covenant represents a kind of democratization of the royal covenant, which is likewise reflected in Gen 12:2–3 and its parallel in Ps 72:17. 26 This also agrees with the form of the opening statement in 15:1, which is most appropriate when addressed to a king, as in the Mesopotamian parallels mentioned earlier. However, as in the case of kings, all such promises of greatness and a prosperous nation are of no consequence unless Abraham has an heir. It is precisely this issue that is raised in vv. 2–3 and anticipates what will follow in chaps. 16 and 18. These chapters reflect no concern at all on Abraham’s part about the lack of an heir, but rather presuppose that the issue has been addressed earlier. By contrast, P’s treatment of this matter of the lack of an heir has Abraham responding to the deity with laughter (17:17), which seems completely inappropriate. The deity again assures Abraham that he will have numerous progeny as the stars of the heavens for number (15:5), which parallels the earlier comparison with the dust of 26. See Van Seters, Abraham, 274–75.

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the earth in 13:16. This is very similar to the statement in Second Isaiah with respect to the returnees from Babylon: “If only you had heeded my commands .  .  . your offspring would have been like the sand in number, and your descendants like its grains” (Isa 48:18–19). This seems like a rather obvious reference back to the promise to Abraham in Gen 13:16, rather than the language used by P in 17:4–6. All of this suggests that chap. 15 is indeed part of a larger whole. The response in v. 6 to the divine promise in v. 5 is quite remarkable: “He believed in Yahweh and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (‫והאמן ביהוה‬ ‫)ויחשבה לו צדקה‬. This declaration that Abraham is considered by Yahweh to be righteous anticipates the special focus in chap. 18:17–32 on the whole question of Yahweh’s execution of justice on Sodom and Gomorrah. It is precisely because Abraham has already been recognized in chap. 15:6 that he is righteous and the father of a great nation who can teach his offspring how to behave in a righteous and just way, that the deity can inform him about the impending destruction of the cities. This, in turn, leads to the long discussion of whether the righteous must also perish with the wicked. By comparison, this is not the language of P, in which Abraham is regarded as “blameless” (‫ )תמים‬in 17:1 and the notion of righteousness is rarely used in the rest of P. The prophets of the Exilic Period, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah, are particularly concerned about the issue of righteousness (ṣedāqâ) and its cognates. The prophet Ezekiel seems to focus primarily on individual righteousness or its lack, and the consequences in the form of individual punishment (Ezek 18; 33:12–22), in which the righteousness of others cannot save him (14:14– 20). Only if the wicked turn from their sins and do what is right can they hope to be delivered from their penalty. This is an issue that is dealt with again in Gen 18:17–32. Second Isaiah shifts the focus from the individual to the corporate group and begins with the premise that the sins of the people have received divine justice, and now righteousness has to do far more with vindication and justice among the nations. Now, righteous means deliverance for Israel the servant of Yahweh, and Jacob the chosen one, who is “the offspring of Abraham, my friend” (Isa 41:8). It is this constant reference to the patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob in particular, and their destiny from the time that they were brought from their distant homelands (v. 9) down to the present time, when their descendants find themselves in the same distant places. It is righteousness as vindication and restoration that is so pervasive in the message of this prophet. The same connection between the pursuit of righteousness and Abraham is made in Isa 51:1–2: Listen to me, you who pursue what is right (ṣedek), you who seek Yahweh, look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; when he was only one person I called him, I blessed him and made him many.

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Here Abraham serves as both the model for doing what is right as well as their hope for the future, and this combination is precisely what is reflected in Gen 15:1–6. The other important term in Gen 15:6 is the verb “believe” or “trust” (‫)אמן‬: “Abram believed Yahweh.” This faith has to do with Abraham’s future offspring and the destiny of the people. In a similar manner, Moses, in the call narrative in Exod 4:1–9, has the problem of persuading the people to believe him, when he is sent to tell them that Yahweh has appeared to him and promised to deliver them from their bondage. Moses complains to Yahweh that they will not believe him (‫)אמן‬, and so he must be equipped with appropriate “signs” that will convince them. When Moses and Aaron return to Egypt and tell the people of their forthcoming deliverance with the accompanying signs, then they believe (‫ )אמן‬in the message of deliverance (4:31). Again, at the Red Sea, after their rescue from the Egyptian army the people again express their belief in Yahweh and in Moses (Exod 14:31). In the people’s refusal to believe and enter the land from the south at Kadesh, Yahweh complains to Moses: “How long will the people not believe (‫ )אמן‬in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?” and he threatens to destroy them for their lack of faith (Num 14:11; cf Deut 1:32). Faith in the deity and in his promises is an important theme in the Yahwist. Second Isaiah is implicitly the prophet of hope, even though he seldom uses the term “believe” (‫)אמן‬. In Isa 43:10, people of Israel have been chosen, in order to know Yahweh and believe (‫ )אמן‬that Yahweh is the one true God (“I am He”—a play on the divine name). It seems clear, at least to me, that the Yahwist and Second Isaiah share this same exilic milieu and that is likewise reflected in Gen 15. One of the most decisive indicators of the sociohistorical milieu of Gen 15 is the reference to Yahweh bringing Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of the Amorites as a future possession in v. 7. This reference is tied closely to the J narrative in 11:28–31; 12:1–5, which recounts the migration from Ur of the Chaldeans to Harran and then from Harran to Canaan. 27 The background to this migration is the late Neo-Babylonian Empire, in which there was a strong Chaldean-Aramaic population in Ur, as distinct from the older population of Babylon, and the Chaldeans of Ur had close religious and social ties with Harran, a major city of the upper Euphrates region. 28 Both Ur and Harran had important temples of the god Sin, and the ruler of the Babylonian Empire at this time was Nabonidus (556–539). He was an Aramean with close family ties to both Ur and Harran, in which he restored the temples to Sin in both locations. What is most significant is that he made a remarkable migration with much of his royal entourage from Babylonia 27.  On the source designation for these texts, see my Prologue to History, 202–3. 28.  There is frequent reference to the Chaldeans of Babylonia in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Second Isaiah, and 2 Kgs 24–25, but it is very rare in any later texts.

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to Harran, his home town, and from there moved south through Syria (the land of the “Hittites”), all the way to the oasis of Teima in Arabia (in the midst of Amurru), where he stayed for 10 years until near the end of his reign. The king claims in his inscriptions that he made this journey by order of the god Sin. This strange behavior of the final king of the Babylonian Empire became rather celebrated at that time. 29 It would appear that the biblical writer of the Abraham story created a similar scenario for the migration of Abraham and his family, at the command of the deity, from Ur to Harran and then south to the land of the Amorites, while some of their Aramean kinfolk stayed behind in Harran. This connection with Harran would be important for the Jacob story as well. No other plausible explanation has ever been suggested for just these details of the Abraham story. 30 Once the Persians had conquered Babylonia, Ur and Harran no longer had the same importance. The story certainly could not have arisen as early as the time of Ezekiel (Ezek 33:24), who treats the remark about the ancestor Abraham as a local Judean tradition. On the other hand, Second Isaiah certainly seems familiar with the account of a patriarchal migration from such distant regions. Furthermore, the reference to the Amorites (Gen 15:16), which is used regularly for the early pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land in Deuteronomy and in J, was a common designation for the peoples of Western Asia in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian texts. 31 In the Assyrian texts, the terms Amorites and Hittites can be used synonymously for the entire western region from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt. Josh 1:4 uses “land of the Hittites” for this whole region, but Deuteronomy prefers the term Amorites, although both terms can occur in the lists of nations, as they so often do in Deuteronomy but never in P. From the early Persian Period onward, Amurru comes to mean the desert regions further south, and P no longer uses this terminology and prefers Hittites for the foreign population in general. So Ska’s attempt to take v. 16 as very late and as distinct from its use in the list of nations in vv. 18–21 is without foundation. The other question that relates to Gen 15:7 is its relationship to the common formula, used for the exodus tradition, “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Deut 5:6; Exod 20:2; cf. Lev. 25:38 [HC]). Ska suggests that the formula “I am Yahweh who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess” is intended as an alternative or replacement of the exodus tradition by the Abraham tradition. In order to do this he must, of course, regard vv. 13–16 29.  For a detailed treatment of Nabonidus’s reign, see P-A Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus King of Babylon 556–539 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). For the move from Babylon to Teima, see pp. 150, 169–74. 30.  Van Seters, Abraham, 23–26. 31. See my “Terms ‘Amorite’ and ‘Hittite’ in the Old Testament,” VT 22 (1972) 64–81.

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as a later correction by a “redactor,” which is convenient but cannot be supported by any convincing argument. Against this is the fact that Second Isaiah seems to see no tension between these two traditions and makes explicit allusions to J’s exodus story: the departure from Babylon (Isa 52:11–12; cf. Exod 12:33–39; 13:17–22); the crossing of the sea (Isa 43:16–19; 51:10; cf. Exod 14:21:b–22a, 23–25); the journey through the wilderness and water from the rock (Isa 48:21; cf. Exod 17). There is no suggestion whatever in Second Isaiah of a conflict between the patriarchs and the exodus tradition. Furthermore, the Abraham and Jacob traditions are treated side by side. Against all of this evidence of continuity between the patriarchs and the exodus tradition in the late Exilic Period Ska sites as negative evidence a text from a much later period (Isa 63:16), in which some groups seem to question the need for their dependence on the ancestors, Abraham and Jacob, and look to God alone as their father: “For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us, it is you who are our father, our redeemer from of old.” Ska want to set this text in opposition to the description of God’s act of redemption of his people at the crossing of the Red Sea in 63:11–14, in order to construct from this two rival traditions. However, this is reading far too much into v.  16, which in any event is a quite controversial text to interpret. The most obvious way to interpret it is to see in it a contrast between the forefathers Abraham and Israel ( Jacob), who are long dead and therefore unable to render any help in the present, and Yahweh, who is their living father and can intervene on their behalf. There is little here that can be used as a basis for reconstructing two rival traditions. Furthermore, Abraham is coupled with Jacob/Israel as he is in Second Isaiah, and it was the “house of Jacob” that was in Egypt according to Ezek 20:5, so there is little basis in this text to support Ska’s hypothesis. Likewise, in order to strengthen his case that the migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans “is of exactly the same ‘theological’ kind as Israel’s exodus out of Egypt,” he construes the patriarchal migration as “one of Yahweh’s ‘mighty acts’ of salvation, with Abraham as a parallel to Moses (p. 78). This, in fact, is vastly overstating the case. Nowhere are the migrations of Abraham and Jacob ever construed, either in Genesis or in Second Isaiah, as acts of divine redemption, nor is Abraham’s role as forefather ever understood as similar to that of Moses, the prophetic leader of a large national entity. Abraham and Jacob are “chosen” ones; they are never “redeemers.” Speaking “theologically,” the first migration was an act of “election” to create a people; the second was an act of “salvation” to deliver that people from bondage. The two are not in the least incompatible.

The Use of Priestly Language in Genesis 15 In order for Ska to make his case, much depends on his being able to distinguish between the “redactor” responsible for Gen 15:13–16 and the

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“redactor” of the rest of the chapter. In order to do so Ska refers to the “more ‘priestly’ style” in vv. 13–16, as compared with the more Deuteronomistic language in the rest of the chapter (pp. 78–80). Because Ska dates the whole chapter later than chap. 17, it is hard to see how this perceived difference is relevant. Ska does not elaborate on this P language but must depend on others, such as Konrad Schmid, who does. 32 The argument rests entirely on the presence of ‫“( רכושׁ‬possessions”) in v. 14 and ‫ ׂשיבה טובה‬in v. 15. For ‫רכושׁ‬ as a P term, Schmid cites Gen 12:5, 13:6, 31:18, and 46:6, all of which he regards as P, but all of these examples are within texts in which only part of the text belongs to P and the rest to J. Thus, the allocation of that portion of the text that contains ‫ רכושׁ‬to P may just as easily belong to J, and it is only the general consensus of the Documentary Hypothesis wishing to construct a Priestly document that leads to decisions of content. There may be one text that can help decide this question. Num 16:32, which contains the term ‫רכושׁ‬ as part of the account of the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram and their punishment in vv. 25–34, in which the figure of Korah is secondary. This is made quite clear from the parallel account in Deut 11:6–7 in which Korah and his men do not appear, and therefore the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram must be pre-P. Once one removes the reference to “all the men that belonged to Korah,” then all the rest corresponds to the description in Deuteronomy. There is no reason to regard ‫ רכושׁ‬as a special term belonging to P. The other possible Priestly term cited by Schmid is ‫ׂשיבה טובה‬, which is found in Gen 25:8–9: Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age (‫)בׂשיבה טובה‬, old and full [of years], and was gathered to his people. Isaac and Ishmael buried him . . .”

This may be compared with Gen 15:15: As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age (‫)בׂשיבה טובה‬.

What we find is that there is only one phrase in common. If we look at the remarks about the death of Isaac in Gen 35:29 (P), we find: Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, old and full of years; and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

Here, the disputed phrase “in a good old age” is missing. 33 In fact, its presence in 25:8 is completely redundant. If, however, we turn to the Dtr text of Judg 8:32, we find this statement: 32.  Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus, 181. The study of Deuteronomistic and Priesly terminology in J. Ha, Genesis 15 (BZAW 181; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989) 94–95, to which Schmid and others appeal, is very superficial. 33.  See also Gen 49:33 (P) where the phrase ‫ בׂשיבה טובה‬is also missing.

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Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age (‫)בׂשיבה טובה‬, and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father.

What is clear from this comparison is that the form in Judg 8:32 is much closer to that of Gen 15:15, than the highly embellished form in Gen 25:8. It is more likely that P added the phrase from Gen 15:15 to his usual formation in Gen 25:8 than to see ‫ בׂשיבה טובה‬as P phraseology. Consequently, there is no clear evidence of P language or style in Gen 15 as has been claimed. This also seriously undermines Ska’s reason for viewing the section in Gen 15:13–16 as a late addition, which means that the text makes a vital link between the patriarch Abraham and the exodus tradition. There is no need whatever to view Gen 15 or any part of J as later than P, as Ska and others have proposed. It is an exilic document contemporary with Second Isaiah, expressing the same hopes and concerns as the prophet of that period.

The Covenants of D, J, and P Compared In order to deal with the relationship of Gen 15 to Gen 17, one must address a plausible understanding of the development of the covenants of D, J, and P, and their relationship to each other. There are clear indications as to the direction in which the covenantal idea developed. This subject cannot be laid out in full here, but for the purposes of comparing Gen 15 ( J) and 17 (P), a few brief remarks would be helpful. The Deuteronomic Covenant is the covenant that was “cut” (‫ )כרת‬in stone at Horeb (Deut 5), which above all else demanded absolute loyalty to the one deity, Yahweh, as well as a set of basic moral principles. This covenant could be brought to an end by literally breaking the tablets of stone (Deut 9:16–17), when the people committed apostasy, and had to be reinscribed when the covenant was renewed. The Horeb covenant was augmented with a code of law delivered through Moses during the wilderness period, and given to the people prior to their entrance into the promised land (Deut 28:69[29:1]). This land was promised to the generation who came out of Egypt, and was conditional upon obedience to the deity, as reflected in the Horeb covenant and subsequent D code, with its blessings and curses. The curses consisted of the dire consequences of disobedience, including the loss of land and nationhood. This becomes the underlying ideological principle in the DtrH, which ends with just such a disaster. The principle concern of this covenantal notion is the constant threat of national apostasy, first reflected in the fate of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and then in the failed attempt at reform and the accumulation of violations, leading to the demise of the Kingdom of Judah as well. Ezekiel, in Ezek 20, follows this same basic scheme, although it does not know of any Horeb/Sinai covenant in his account. The solemn oath (= covenant) was given to the “house of Jacob” in Egypt on their commitment to Yahweh as their only god (vv. 5–8), and obedience to the statutes and laws subsequently given to them in the wilder-

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ness. Apostasy and disobedience to the laws resulted in a constant threat of corporate punishment and disaster. The social milieu for this deuteronomic development of covenant was the late monarchy and early Exilic Period. The Yahwistic Covenant is built on a set of solemn promises to Abraham, and repeated to Isaac and Jacob, which include both nationhood and possession of the land. These promises are confirmed by the “cutting” (‫ )כרת‬of the covenant in a special ceremony in Gen 15:7–21, in which the animals are cut in half (cf. Jer 34:18–19) and the party under obligation to uphold the covenant passes between the animal parts. In this case, it is not Abraham, but the deity alone who symbolically passes between the pieces. 34 This covenant is clearly intended to supersede and take priority over the D covenant at Horeb/Sinai, in that every time the deity threatens to eliminate completely his people because of their violation of the conditional covenant at Sinai, Moses reminds Yahweh of the covenant with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What is fundamentally required of this patriarchal covenant is faith in the promises of God. Nevertheless, this patriarchal covenant is complimented by the covenant made at Sinai (Exod 20:22–23:19), 35 which is then written on a scroll, the so-called book of the covenant (Exod 24:3–8), and inscribed on the stone tablets (v. 12). This second covenant presents a guide for the social and religious behavior of the people as a whole, wherever they may be, and compliments the first covenant of promise in the same way that D presents the covenant law contained in Deut 12–28 as a compliment to the Horeb covenant of Deut 5:6–21. As argued earlier, the context for this covenant and law code in Gen 15 is the late Exilic Period. The language of the Priestly Covenant changes entirely. Now all covenants become eternal (bĕrith ʿolam), and are set up as equivalent to the decrees of the created order of the universe. Thus, the covenant established with Abraham and all of his offspring (Gen 17) is such an eternal decree that cannot be brought to an end. While it includes the land promise of the earlier J and D covenants, it is essentially a covenant of identity. Thus, the broadest marker of this identity is circumcision, without which one is excluded from the covenant. Later in the narrative, other laws and regulations under Moses will define various hierarchal levels and degrees of this identity. While P includes D’s 10 words in a modified form to make the Sabbath into an eternal decree of creation (Exod 20:1–17), P’s primary concern is to transform the Sinai laws into decrees having to do with the whole cultic order of the worship of Yahweh, while embedding within the code the older Holiness Code, which more closely approximates the codes of D and J. 36 The consequences of violating either the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision or the Sinai laws and institutions is that it can lead to punishment or exclusion of individual 34.  See von Rad, Genesis, 186–87; Gunkel, Genesis (ET) 180–81. 35.  On J’s “book of the covenant” see Van Seters, A Law Book for the Diaspora. 36. See my Law Book, 82–95.

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offenders, but the covenant itself can never be brought to an end by those who belong to it. This is a fundamental shift from ethnic or national and political identity, as in D and J, to religious identity in P. The Jewish diaspora can all be part of this identity, because the cultus is now in the hands of a distinct class of priests in the homeland, with only a few festivals, carried over from D and J, being permitted by the laity. Even the patriarchs in P never offer any sacrifices, as they do in J. Sacrifices are not possible until after the institution of the priesthood under Aaron and the cultic legislation of Sinai. This is the only scenario of the three stages of covenantal development and transformation that to me makes any sense. For J and Second Isaiah, their forced sojourn in Babylonia was only temporary and all they needed was faith in the promise of restoration to their homeland. The covenantal ideology was specifically crafted to address that issue. For P, however, the reality had changed with only a small group returning and an increasingly large diaspora content to stay where they were. Preservation of cultural identity was paramount outside the homeland, and this was gained through the act of circumcision and the keeping of certain customs and festivals (for example, the Passover) by each individual family. Meanwhile, in the homeland the sacrificial cult was practiced and maintained by a special priestly cast in the central sanctuary on behalf of the people as a whole. To suggest that a special group of Abraham devotees in the late Persian period, presumably with their own cult practices, could completely ignore the whole tradition reflected in Exodus to Deuteronomy, to which so much of the practice of Jewish religion was now related, as well as the reconstruction of the temple with its priestly ritual in Jerusalem, based on the P code, is just not a credible option. Nor has any credible Sitz im Leben been suggested by Ska for his Abraham devotees or how they ever managed to get their seditious non-P document into the biblical text. This is completely contradicted by the fact that in Neh 9:7–8, Ezra, the leader of the golah, is the one who gives priority to the covenant that Yahweh “cut” (‫ )כרת‬with Abraham in Gen 15 over that of the P covenant in Gen 17, which receives only perfunctory reference in the remark about the name change of Abram to Abraham. There is not the slightest hint of any tension between the two traditions in this postexilic community. Second Isaiah clearly manifests how completely integrated they have become by the end of the Neo-Babylonian period, thanks to the work of the Yahwist, the author and historian of Israel’s origins.

Chapter 15

The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34) The first scholarly work in Albert de Pury’s impressive list of publications is his 1969 article, “Genese XXXIV et l’histoire,” 1 which presents a detailed treat­ment of Gen 34 and begins his long preoccupation with the Jacob tradition. For several years, Professor de Pury and I have been engaged in lively discussion about the nature of the patriarchal narratives and the sources of the Pentateuch. In tribute to him, therefore, I offer my own reading of Gen 34 for his judicious scrutiny. It is usual for scholars, and de Pury is no exception, to begin their discussion of Gen 34 with the disclaimer that this is a very difficult text to analyze and interpret and that no previous attempt has yielded a satisfactory explanation of the source-critical difficulties or the social and cultural context out of which it arises. Even among the older literary-critical approaches, there is nothing like a consensus on the source division of the chapter, its relationship to other pentateuchal texts, or its traditio-historical interpretation. 2 Those who eschew any division into sources and interpret it holistically from an implicit or explicit ideological perspective manifest an even greater divergence of opinion. Their interpretation usually invites more comment on the interpreter than on the effort to win support for a particular understanding of the text. 3 Notwithstanding such a host of difficulties associated with this text, I will set out the issues and my attempt at a solution with the hope that the discussion about a historical-critical understanding of this text can be clarified. 1.  A. de Pury, “Genese XXXIV et l’histoire,” RB 76 (1969) 5–49. 2.  On the history of scholarship, see ibid.; also C. Westermann, Genesis 12–36, 532–45; Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist, 201–13; E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vatergeschichte, 210– 23; U. Schorn, Ruben und das System der zwolf Stamme Israels (BZAW 248; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997) 256–60. 3. M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). See the critique of this book by D. Fewell and D. Gunn, “Tipping the Balance: Sternberg’s Reader and the Rape of Dinah,” JBL110 (1991) 193–212; and Sternberg’s response, “Biblical Poetics and Sexual Politics: From Reading to Counter-Reading,” JBL 111 (1992) 463–88. See also A. Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: Almond, 1983) 76–78.

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We may begin with the rather widespread agreement in the past that certain aspects of the story point to some internal tensions and thus to its disunity. This may be seen in the account’s fluctuation between the issue of Shechem’s deflowering of Dinah and his subsequent effort to marry her, on the one hand, and the issue of esta­blishing a general connubium between the Hivites and the sons of Jacob on the other. There is, first, the abrupt shift in subject from general connubium in vv.  9–10 to Shechem’s personal plea for Dinah (vv. 11–12). After the brothers raise an impediment to the marriage in vv. 13–14, the narrative returns to the subject of connubium in vv. 15–18 with its sequel in vv. 20–24, but it is interrupted by the personal action of Shechem in v. 19. Finally, the action of the two brothers, Simeon and Levi, in vv. 25–26, are best understood as revenge directed specifically at Shechem and the recovery of their sister, which is criticized by Jacob in v. 30, but this is interrupted by the general action against the whole population by all the sons of Jacob in vv. 27–29. Widespread agreement about this division of sources, or at least a division of perspectives, in the latter part of the story has not been matched by a corres­ponding agreement about v. 1–10. It is usual to distinguish between a Shechem version of single, personal action and a Hamor version of corporate negotiation and reprisal, but both arise out of the same initial incident in vv. 1–3 and attempts at separation within these verses seem arbitrary. At the same time there has been a reluctance on the part of many documentary critics to use the standard criterion of language because it often runs counter to how they divide the sources and because there is a good deal of priestly language in those verses that a number of scholars would like to identify with the source E. This results in a degree of latitude being given to a late redactor (post-P?) who put the accounts together and imported his own terminology into the narrative. But the use of a hypothetical redactor to solve literary problems seems arbitrary and in my view unacceptable. If we approach this text using a different model of literary analysis, that of the supplementary method as I have done for the rest of the Tetrateuch, and if we suppose that the base text is a J story that has been expanded by P, then the division of sources and their relationship becomes quite different from what is usually proposed. This would suggest that the later version, P, changed the sin­gle request for marriage into a proposal for complete connubium between the two groups with the major additions in vv. 9–10, 15–18, 20–24, 27–29, and some minor additions in vv. 5, 13b, 25b. With this division in mind, let us turn to the basic account. 34 1Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the region. 2When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the region, saw her, he seized her and lay with her by force.3 And his soul was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the girl, and spoke tenderly to her. 4So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl to be my wife.” 6And Hamor the father of Shechem

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went out to Jacob to speak with him, 7just as the sons of Jacob came in from the field. When they heard of it, the men were indignant and very angry, because [they thought] he had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done. 8But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The heart of my son Shechem longs for your daughter; please give her to him in marriage.” 11Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor with you, and whatever you say to me I will give. 12Put the marriage present and gift as high as you like, and I will give whatever you ask me; only give me the girl to be my wife.” 13aThe sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully. 14They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us.” 19And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his family. 25aOn the third day . . . two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares. 26They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went away. 30 Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” 31But they said, “Should our sister be treated like a harlot?” (nrsv)

From the point of view of language, this base account does not contain any terms that are distinctive of P. Those that are characteristic of J while not nume­rous are nevertheless significant. Thus, the phrase in v. 3, “to be drawn to” (‫ דבק‬+ prep. ‫ )ב‬appears in Gen 2:24 to express the love between a man and a woman, and in the same verse, “to speak tenderly to” (‫ )דבר על לב‬is found in J’s Joseph story, Gen 50:21. The only other use of the verb ‫ עצב‬in the Hithpael, “to be vexed” (v. 7), is in Gen 6:6 ( J). The use of the term, ‫במרמה‬, “with deceit” (v. 13), appears also in the story of Jacob’s deception of Isaac in Gen 27:35. The distinctive expression, “to be made odious to someone” using the Hiphil of ‫( באשׁ‬v. 30), is also used by J in Exod 5:21. The reference to the Canaanites and the Perizzites as the inhabitants of the land (v. 30) occurs in J also in Gen 13:7 (cf. also 12:6). By contrast, the Priestly language of the expansion is quite clear. Within the texts that have to do with connubium (vv. 9–10, 15–18, 20–24), the requirement that every male be circumcised certainly reflects the outlook and language of P. In addition, the expression “to dwell in the land and gain possessions in it” (v. 10) is the special language of P, as in Gen 47:27 (see also Num 32:30; Jos 22:9, 19). Similarly, the listing of the possessions of the sons of Jacob, “their livestock, their property, their animals” (v. 23), is also in the style of P (Gen 31:18; 36:6; Jos 14:4) and the rare verb ‫אות‬, “to be in agreement” (vv. 15, 22, 23), is otherwise only found in the “Priestly” context of 2 Kgs 12:9. The descrip­tion of the plundering of the inhabitants of Shechem in vv. 28–29 is very similar to that in Num 31:9 (P). The constant reference

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to the “defilement” (‫ )טמא‬of Dinah as the motivation of the Jacobites actions (vv. 5, 13b, 27) uses the particu­lar Priestly language for condemned sexual activity, as used in Ezekiel, the Holi­ness Code and P. Consequently, the test of language would seem to confirm the proposal that we have in Gen 34 as a base narrative by J, as set out above, and to this has been added a P supplement. The task that remains is to interpret the two literary strata within this unit and in the context of the wider literary horizon, without, however, obscuring the distinctive voices of the two authors or violating the diachronic relationship of the texts to each other or those in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. The J story stands in the context of the earlier account of the birth of the children of Jacob, including Dinah as the last child of Leah and only daughter of Jacob (Gen 30:21), and Jacob’s arrival with his family in the region of Shechem where he has safely established himself (33:18–20). 4 The story begins with the rather innocent move of Dinah seeking social intercourse with the women of the land, for she after all is the only female of her generation within the family circle of Jacob. But this exposure leaves her vulnerable to the attraction of young men outside her circle, including the “most eligible” and a son of the ruler, Shechem. 5 As eponym of the city he has heroic stature and is the most distinguished male of the region (v. 19). He sees her, takes her and lays with her and thus “deflowers” her. It is at this point that one must be careful to understand what the narrator is saying. He is setting down in very simple terms a series of actions for which Shechem is to be held responsible. There is nothing in the series of verbs used that suggests violent rape against her will. 6 Even the verb ‫ענה‬, rendered in the nrsv quotation above with the phrase “by force,” can be used in contexts which would not suggest rape in our sense (see Deut 21:14; 22:24). The only one who can answer that question is Dinah, and she is silent. From the point of view of the narrator and his society, her consent or lack of it is not germane to the series of events that follow. What is more important is the subsequent attitude of Shechem and whether he will take responsibility for what he has done. Here the answer is as clearly in the affirmative as the narrator can make it. He is “deeply attached to Dinah” (cf. Gen 2:24), he “loves” her and he speaks tenderly to her. 7 His intentions are clear. He means to have her as his wife. The situation created by the narration of events in vv. 1–3 sets up two separate, but related, procedures controlled by custom and law. The one has 4.  P adds in v. 18 the phrase, “which is in the land of Canaan when he came from Padan Aram.” The rest belongs to J’s itinerary pattern that is evident elsewhere. 5.  This vulnerability is also reflected in the stories in which the patriarch represents his wife as a sister and an eligible virgin in Gen 12:10–20; chap. 20; 26:6–11. 6. See also L. Bechtel, “What If Dinah Is Not Raped? (Genesis 34),” JSOT 62 (1994) 19–36. 7.  In addition to Gen 50:21 ( J), see also Ruth 2:13; Hos 2:16.

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to do with the arrangement of marriage between the two families, usually conducted by the heads of household, in this case Hamor and Jacob. It is for this reason that Hamor takes the lead in the arrangements of the marriage with Jacob and his sons (vv. 4, 6–8). The other has to do with the deflowering of an unbetrothed virgin, for which Shechem, the one responsible, is directly accountable to the father of the girl, and it is therefore Shechem who must make restitution for what he has done to Dinah (vv. 11–12). As the law in Deut 22:28–29 and Exod 22:15–16[16–17] indicates, the restitution is in the nature of the bride-price (mohar) and marriage. But there seems to be some difference in emphasis in the two versions of the law. In Deut 22:28 the action of the violator is expressed with the verb ‫ תפשׂ‬suggesting rape. 8 By contrast, Exod 22:15 speaks of the unbetrothed virgin being “seduced” (‫)פתה‬, which suggests her consent or cooperation. The account in Gen 34:2 uses ‫לקח‬, “take,” which would appear to be rather neutral between these two. Yet, the version of the law in Exodus makes clear that it does not matter in this case whether the girl was a willing or unwilling participant in the sexual encounter; the result is the same. She has no say as far as the law is concerned. Consequently, Dinah remains silent throughout the whole narrative. However, unlike Deuteronomy, the law in the Covenant Code gives discretion to the father as to whether or not he will give his daughter, while the one who deflowered the virgin daughter must still pay the bride-price for virgins. I think that it is for this reason that the narrator places so much emphasis on the attitude and eagerness of Shechem to marry her and to treat her well and to pay a large mohar for what he has done. It may be pointed out that other Near Eastern law codes recognize this situation in which one violates another man’s virgin daughter and for which the penalty may be triple the usual amount. This may account for the remark in this story about “multiplying” the amount of the mohar in the restitution payment (v. 12). The attitude of outrage that the sons of Jacob express in v. 7, that Shechem’s deed is a scandal and something that was just not done in Israel, seems by com­parison with the legal provisions mentioned above to be greatly exaggerated. The language used by the brothers is parallel to the law in Deut 22:20–21 that has to do with the discovery that a man’s daughter who was betrothed as a virgin was not a virgin after all. It is therefore assumed that the daughter has been surrepti­tiously behaving as a harlot and scandalized her father’s house, which would result in capital punishment for the daughter. The brothers accuse Shechem of a comparable scandal in which he has made her into a harlot (v. 31), and this accu­sation is used to justify their actions. Consequently, before Jacob, the father of the girl, can give his response, the brothers intervene with an objection to the marriage (v. 13a), which is disingenuous and not made in the best interests of their sister. They raise the matter of Shechem being uncircumcised, which is offered as a taboo and 8.  See also v. 25 with ‫ חזק‬in Hiphil to express the rape of a betrothed virgin.

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barrier to any such union. The objection is deceitful (‫ )מרמה‬because its only purpose is to prevent the marriage. They themselves are not subject to the same restrictions from taking native women as wives, which they must have done. 9 Yet this objection does not deter Shechem, who willingly and immediately submits to this requirement, so that there is no further impediment to the marriage (v. 19). In spite of the great economy of language one may assume that Dinah is now installed in Shechem’s house as his wife. There is nothing in v. 25 to suggest that she is being held there against her will and in need of being rescued. Consequently, the action of the two full brothers of Dinah, Simeon and Levi, who take advantage of the unsuspecting inhabitants to murder the father and son and remove their sister from Shechem’s house, is entirely culpable. There is no suggestion in the text that Dinah was rescued. The culpability of the brothers is reflected in Jacob’s reprimand in v. 30, in which he indicates that they have also placed his whole household in jeopardy. The reply of the two sons that Shechem has treated their sister as a prostitute is contradicted by the narrator’s clear presen­tation of Shechem’s actions to the contrary. The fact that Yahweh gives protection to Jacob’s family when they depart from the region (35:5) cannot be taken as divine approval of their actions. The final word on their actions is to be found in the curse in 49:5–7 in the same way that the curse on Reuben in 49:3–4 is to be understood as completing the episode in 35:22. Comparison has often been drawn between this story of Dinah and the rape of Tamar by Amnon in 2 Sam 13, usually to highlight the similarity in the viola­tion of the women and the motive of revenge by the brothers. Whatever the lite­rary relationship between the two stories might be, and that is disputed, 10 a close reading of the two stories side by side reveals a strong and remarkable contrast between them. In the Amnon–Tamar story, it is not a foreigner but a half-brother within the family who carefully plots his crime of passion. Also, in this story, Tamar is given a voice in order to make it clear just how much he has wronged her and this is matched by Amnon’s hatred of Tamar and her rejection from his house after the crime. The words of Simeon and Levi fit Amnon’s treatment of Tamar (“Should he treat our sister as a prostitute?”) in a way that they do not fit Shechem. The P expansion changes the character of the story significantly. First, the action of Shechem is characterized as defilement (‫ )תמא‬in vv. 5, 13b, and 27, and thus as a crime that is used to legitimize their extreme action. This includes not only the execution of Shechem, the perpetrator, but also the whole population, which is all held responsible. Second, by stating that Jacob kept silent (‫ )חרשׁ‬when he heard about his daughter’s defilement until 9.  So also noted by Fewell and Gunn, “Tipping the Balance,” 199–200. 10.  I have tried to show elsewhere that the Court History was written after J, which in this case would make the Amnon story later than Genesis 34. See In Search of History, 277–91.

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the brothers came in from the countryside, P may be suggesting that Jacob had forfeited any claim to redress, and this responsibility is passed on to the sons. Thus, in a comparable situation in the P Code, if a father hears of a vow made by his daughter while living at home and keeps silent (‫)חרשׁ‬, he loses the right to dispute it, and the same applies to a husband’s right to oppose a vow made by his wife (Num 30). Jacob’s silence therefore legitimizes the role of the sons in taking the lead in the negotia­tions in place of Jacob himself. Third, P makes out of the single instance of intermarriage a question of the principle of general connubium, using the words of Deut 7:3, as a request that comes from the Hivites. For P, however, the issue is not a threat of religious apostasy as in Deuteronomy, because the common wor­ ship of Yahweh is not even a possibility in the Patriarchal Age. At this stage there is only one marker of common identity that can be applied and that is cir­cumcision, based on the Abrahamic covenant. But in giving to Hamor and Shechem this requirement by which to become “one people,” the sons of Jacob disguised the fact that they were using the requirement to cripple them for a fatal attack. Finally, the description of the attack by the sons of Jacob by P in vv. 27–29 is so similar to Yahweh’s war of vengeance on Midian in Num 31:7–11 that the two events suggest a similar interpretation. In P’s view the vengeance of the brothers for their sister’s defilement is justified. This creates within P itself a certain ambivalence, for on the one hand it lays down the principle whereby those on the outside may become one people with the sons of Jacob through circumcision (see also Exod 12:48). On the other hand, the defilement that has been committed by one person results in a very vindictive retaliation on the whole people. Moreover, the comparison between the two authors of this story can be taken a step further in that both J and P are concerned to express their views on rela­tions between the descendants of Jacob and foreigners. In my view, J also had before him the general principle of such relations, as outlined in Deut 7:1–3. For J, the inhabitants of Shechem are the Hivites, who are closely associated with the Canaanites and Perizzites, all mentioned in Deut 7:1 as those with whom one is not to have any relationship. Yet prior to this episode both Abraham and Isaac have entered into covenants with the uncircumcised Philistines (Gen 21:22–24, 27, 32; 26:26–31). These are viewed as nonaggression pacts, and nothing is said about connubium. 11 In Gen 34, however, the question of intermarriage is raised by the circumstances and the patriarch, Jacob, does not seem to object. In fact, connubium for all the sons is a virtual necessity. There can be no question at this point of a possible corruption of patriarchal religion by the worship of foreign gods because they are not purged from the group until after this episode (35:2). 11.  Cf. Deut 20.

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The attitude of those against intermarriage is viewed by J as excessive and fanatical and a threat to the welfare of the community. Furthermore, one can also compare J’s account with Deuteronomy’s treatment of intermarriage in the context of captives of war in Deut 21:10–14. The justifica­tion for taking a foreign female captive as a wife is simply the motive of “love” (‫)חשׁק‬, a term elsewhere used in Deuteronomy (7:7; 10:15) of Yahweh’s love for his people. Once the Israelite has taken his captive as his wife and “deflowered” (‫ )ענה‬her, he cannot treat her as a slave and if he no longer “delights” (‫ )חפץ‬in her, then he may let her go free but may not sell her as a slave. If such conditions of connubium are possible between an Israelite male and a foreign woman, then why not between an Israelite woman and a foreign man? J uses the same terms ‫ חשׁק‬and ‫ חפץ‬to express Shechem’s love for Dinah, as well as the verb ‫ ענה‬to suggest the basis of his obligation toward her. Even though the general cir­cumstances are different, in neither case does the woman have any say in the matter. But if one takes both the law concerning the deflowering of an unbetroth virgin and the law regarding the marriage of foreign captives together, there would seem to be adequate precedent for the intermarriage between Shechem and Dinah. This, it seems to me, is what J is suggesting in this story against strong prejudice to the contrary. For P, connubium is permissible within certain strictures of religious obser­vance, as reflected in the rite of circumcision. At the same time, the violation of impurity can result in a heavy penalty that can extend to the whole group, as in the case of the Midianite woman of Baal Peor, the daughter of a prince of Midian, 12 and the subsequent slaughter of the Midianites in Num 25:6–18; 31:1–20. In both cases, the slaughter of the Shechemites (Gen 34:27–29) and the Midianites (Num 31:1–20), the women could be taken as captives and made into concubines for the pleasure of the males, but only if the women were virgins and therefore “pure.” This seems to be a revision of the deuteronomic law of holy war in Deut 20:10–15; 21:10–14. In P, there are no comparable rights for the foreign women. They are merely part of the booty and the property of their captors, and that is the way that they are treated in Gen 34:29.

Conclusion There are two points that I would like to make about this analysis. First, this combination of J and P does not result merely in ambivalence or a “balance” of viewpoints (contra Sternberg) but in contradiction and incoherence. An ideologi­cal reading is one that invariably makes a choice, while ignoring or playing down the evidence for a contrary reading. The historical-critical analysis tries to identify the ancient voices in the narrative and to uncover 12.  This is a direct parallel to Shechem, the son of the prince of the Hivites.

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their impact on the text. Because of my own modern make-up and social perspective, I may feel a greater inclination for the viewpoint expressed by the basic narrative of the Yahwist rather than the P supplement. Even so, I am uncomfortable with the silence of Dinah in both accounts, although I have tried my best to explain it. I cannot invent a voice for Dinah, which the social history suggests she does not have. 13 Furthermore, as a historian of literature, I know that neither version of the story can be ignored, nor can either perspective be made to conform to a modern view­point. Thus, for the ancient society both of J and P, Dinah is silent and the whole matter of her fate is in the hands of the male population, whether it is her father and brothers or those of the larger community. The social norms and atti­tudes as reflected in both the Covenant Code ( J) and the Priestly Code make that fact quite clear. Second, the most effective way of understanding this account in Gen 34 is intertextual, and I have tried to bring to bear on this text a number of related texts from elsewhere in the Old Testament. Such an intertextual approach is not new, except that it is usually considered without regard for the historical-literary rela­tionships between the texts. My own intertextual analysis depends directly on the diachronic relationship of one text to the other and the way in which the later text is making use of, or revising, the earlier one. The issue of intermarriage is dealt with in different ways by D, J, and P (and in that order), and this text points up the cultural dilemma in an interesting and provocative way. But the historical reading that I have given to the text will make sense only if the texts are read in the temporal sequence and relationship that I have suggested and if this sort of reading helps to clarify what is, in its present form, a very difficult text. 13.  Even Tamar, whose plea is so moving and effective in the narrative, is told by Absolom, her brother, to be quiet (‫חרשׁ‬, 2 Sam 20). She has no voice in this matter.

Chapter 16

The Joseph Story: Some Basic Observations Introduction While the field of Egyptology may be the discipline in which Donald Redford has made his greatest contributions to scholarship, he has nevertheless also had a significant impact on biblical studies. Among his many important contributions to this field, the best known and most often cited is his book, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (1970), a work written early in his career. It was a very bold work at the time of its pub­lication, challenging both the early dating of the Joseph story, using his Egyptological expertise for his careful review of the Egyptian coloring, and the Documentary Hypothesis, which was at the time the dominant method of literary analysis of the Joseph story. In both respects, he anticipated the furor of the mid-70s, with my own work, Abraham in History and Tradi­tion (1975), being a part of that change, along with the book of Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchs (1974), on the dating of the patriarchal traditions and the works of H. H Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist (1976) and Rolf Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (1977) on literary questions. Redford’s book continues to have a significant impact on the discussion of the Joseph story and to inspire renewed attempts at solving the problems that beset this difficult composition in Gen 37–50. In preparation for this essay, it was a real pleasure for me to reread his book in the light of the more recent discussion on this unit of biblical literature. In tribute to a friendship of more than 40 years, I want to offer some basic observations on recent developments in the discussion of the Joseph story which reflect the continuing influence of Redford’s earlier work. The current debate about the form, nature, compositional character and sociohistorical setting has its point of departure in the piece by G. von Rad, “The Joseph Narrative and Ancient Wisdom (1953).” 1 In this brief study, von 1.  G. von Rad, “Josephsgeschichte und altere Chokma” (VTSup 1; Leiden, Brill, 1953) 121–27. The English version appears in G. von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966) 292–300. References are to the English version.

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Rad advo­cated the view that the Joseph story was an independent novella, written as a didactic tale of early court wisdom and quite separate from the rest of the patriarchal “sagas.” In terms of its literary quality and characteristics he associated it closely with the Court History of David (2 Sam 6–1 Kgs 2) as part of a corpus of literature that he felt belonged to the era of “Solomonic enlightenment.” Von Rad denied that the story had any “historico-political interests” or any theological interest in the “redemptive history” of the Hexateuch but only a “strong didactic motive.” 2 This characterization of the Joseph story applied to the whole non-Priestly corpus in chaps. 37, 39–47, 50 as a unity, with only minor modifications made to it by the two pentateuchal sources, J and E. It was a work written by a Judean author for the royal court but based on “Egyp­tian literary influences and models, even specific literary sources.” 3 Redford’s own detailed treatment of the nature and com­position of the Joseph story offers an alternative to that of von Rad, and much of the subsequent discussion takes up a posi­tion in relationship to these two poles. 4 Redford is quite critical of von Rad’s characterization of the work as a wisdom story and his association of the Joseph story with the “Court History of David” and the Davidic-Solomonic era. His discussion of “the Joseph story as literature” 5 uses the designation of “Märchen-Novelle” with emphasis on the work as a timeless tale. Redford plays down the use of the patriarchal names of Jacob, Reuben, Joseph as simply the equivalent of “father,” “elder brother” and “youngest brother” to argue for its novella qual­ity as fictional and timeless. For Redford, all the connections to the wider setting are redactional. Rather than similarities to the Court History of David, he points to parallels with biblical stories such as Ruth, Esther, Judith, and Tobit that have much the same qualities. His own dating of the Joseph story that arises out of a detailed examination of the Egyptian color within it places its composition in the Saite period correspond­ing to the end of the Judean monarchy or Exilic Period. His lit­erary analysis also leads him to dispute the division of the story into two independent sources, J and E, and adopts a sup­plemental approach in which the unified core story has received some major and minor additions, that is, the episode of Potiphar’s wife in chap. 39, a “Judah” expansion, some glosses, and a “Genesis editor” who inserted chaps. 38, 48–49 and other connections with the wider pentateuchal context. 6 This bold challenge by Redford sets the stage for the subsequent flood of literature on the Joseph story. I cannot review all of it here. Instead, I will make a few basic observations on some scholarly treatments of the Joseph story as it has to do 2.  Ibid., 299. 3. Ibid. 4.  A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 100–105. 5.  Ibid., 66–105. 6.  Ibid., 106–86.

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with questions of the form of the story and its setting, the relation­ship of the story to Israelite traditions about their early history and the “redactional” connection of the Joseph story into its place in the Hebrew Bible.

The Form of the Story, Its Relationship to Tradition, and Its Sociohistorical Setting The questions concerning the Joseph story’s form or genre, its relationship to the larger Hebrew national tradition and its social or historical setting are issues so closely related that they can scarcely be considered independently. These subjects continue to be hotly debated with a rather wide range of possi­bilities considered. On the matter of genre, most scholars have adopted the designation “novella” as the most appropriate with the implication that it is a skilled literary work of fiction that is largely independent from its present pentateuchal set­ting. This designation must be qualified by saying that if the work is regarded as passing through several stages of develop­ment, then novella is usually applied to the core story of Joseph before its incorporation into the wider context of the Pentateuch. I. Willi-Plein, however, takes the Joseph story as a unity, excluding only chaps. 38 and 49 and some minor addi­tions, and this leads her to put considerable weight on Joseph and his brothers as figures of Israelite prehistory. 7 In her view, the work must therefore be classified as historiogra­phy (Geschichtsschreibung) intended to answer the questions of how the sons of Israel migrated to Egypt and how the Joseph group relates to the rest of the Israelite tribes. W. Dietrich combines both genres by distinguishing the novella of the basic Joseph story from its use as “historiography” when it is expanded and becomes integrated into the Pentateuch. 8 While novella usually means a short story, Hum­phreys applies the term short story to the success story of the slave who rises to the position of vizier over the land of Egypt in chaps. 40–41 and 47:13–26 as an earlier stage in the development of the larger novella. 9 The relative independence of the Joseph story on the literary level has encouraged most scholars to treat it as a unity outside the various modes of pen­tateuchal analysis, and the Documentary Hypothesis in partic­ular, as Redford does, with additions, glosses, and editing as secondary expansion. The degree to which the Joseph story is a wisdom tale, as von Rad suggested, has largely been modified on the basis of Redford’s criticism although a number of scholars consider his critique to be overstated and adopt a posi7. I. Willi-Plein, “Historiographische Aspekte der Josefsgeschichte,” Hen 1 (1979) 305– 31, esp. pp. 322–23. 8. W. Dietrich, Die Josepherzdhlung as Novelle und Geschichtsschreibung (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989). 9.  W. L. Humphreys, Joseph and His Family: A Literary Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988) 15–31.

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tion between the two. 10 This leads to a range of different opinions about the genre’s setting and function. Von Rad sees a close association with wisdom interests and therefore a setting that is appropri­ate to the court and to didactic concerns of scribal education. Others follow von Rad in this court setting but with special emphasis on the political aspects of the story and so view it with a political purpose. Redford views the work as belonging instead to the realm of belles lettres that one finds in the Egyp­tian short story and in later independent stories in biblical lit­erature. Those who agree with Redford’s later dating look for a historical setting after the demise of the monarchy as litera­ture more appropriate to the diaspora. Thus, both von Rad and Redford, and many who follow them, seem agreed on the view that the Joseph novella has lit­tle to do with the larger patriarchal history and that the con­nections to the wider narrative setting are secondary. In this, they were reacting to the earlier efforts to read the Joseph story itself as a form of tribal history. The Joseph novella has an entirely different literary quality from the preceding patri­archal “sagas.” This raises the closely related issue of the rela­tionship between the Joseph story and the larger Hebrew national tradition of the Patriarchs and the Exodus that both von Rad and Redford set aside on form-critical grounds. Their view, and all those that have followed their lead, conflicts with the earlier position of M. Noth that the Joseph story was cre­ated as a bridge between the patriarchal traditions and the Exodus tradition. 11 A full critique of patriarchal tradition-his­tory, including the Joseph story, was undertaken by W. McKane, Studies in the Patriarchal Narratives (1979). 12 McKane is critical of Redford because, he argues, the names used in the story are not just those of individuals for which others could be substituted. Jacob and his sons are Patriarchs and do belong to a specific time of origins. 13 He also affirms Noth’s understanding of the Joseph story as a bridge piece. 14 He states: “It is best described as the result of an ample artistic development of what functions as a connecting piece between these two themes [the Patriarchs and the Exodus].” 15 Westermann makes a similar point, that all the names of the patriar­chal family of Jacob and their relationships in the Joseph story are known from the story of Jacob in Gen 28–35 so that the Joseph story is composed with this specific Jacob tradition in mind as an amplification of it. 16 Nevertheless, the Joseph story does not belong to the same genre of “family saga” that he associates with 10.  See the recent critique of M. V. Fox, “Wisdom in the Joseph Story,” VT 51 (2001) 26–41, with a review of this question from von Rad to the present, pp. 26–29. 11. M. Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, 208–13. 12. W. McKane, Studies in the Patriarchal Narratives (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1979). 13.  Ibid., 87–90. 14.  Ibid., 146–50. 15.  Ibid., 147. See also Willi-Plein, “Historiography,” 322–29. 16. C. Westermann, Genesis 37–50 (trans. J. J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986) 27. See also G. W. Coats, Genesis, with an Introduction to Narrative Literature (FOTL 1; Grand

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the other patriarchal stories. 17 For Westermann, it is a novel or short story that combines elements of the family story of the older tradition with the concerns of politi­cal life and the monarchy. In his view, therefore, it reflects the transition from patriarchal society to the monarchy in the Davidic era. Likewise, E. Blum argues that any Israelite or Judean reader who encounters these names in the story would need to have a certain knowledge of the patriarchal traditions regard­ing Jacob and his sons and the sojourn in Egypt because of the famine as related to the cause of their presence in Egypt as a people before the Exodus. 18 It seems to me that this point can­not be made strongly enough in view of some recent attempts to reconstruct the compositional history of the Joseph story and ignore this basic context. However, Blum qualifies the position of Westermann by asserting that the Joseph story does not need to assume all of the content of the present form of the Jacob story. Dietrich reviews this broader setting and notes that for the oldest level some of the patriarchal tradition is known, but points out that there are some inconsistencies with the present form of the Jacob story. 19 Thus, the Joseph story seems unaware of the fact that the brothers only have one sis­ ter or that the mother of Joseph is dead (second dream). Both of these are not serious objections. The story of Dinah in Gen 34 is a late composition by the Yahwist, who also added the reference to her birth in Gen 30:21 as an anticipation. 20 Daughters who are not matriarchs or mothers of heros are not mentioned in such lists but are assumed, as they are in P (see Gen 46:7, 15). The second problem, the men­tion of the mother of Joseph in the account of the second dream in 37:9–11, is not a real problem because the whole of this dream is a very weak addition. It seriously detracts from the story and reflects nothing that happens later on. For the rest, Jacob is an old man, and all his wives are dead. Neverthe­less, Dietrich insists that the Joseph story does not become a bridge to the exodus tradition until the revision level (“Judah stratum”). Thus, he associates the references to Goshen to the later level of the story as well. 21 This means that his early ver­sion of the story, the Joseph novella, 22 abandons Joseph in Egypt and ends the story at 45:27b, which is hardly likely. This would create the situation in which Joseph, the forefather Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 263–315. Coats seems to adopt a position similar to Westermann. Note his definition of genres, pp. 5–8. 17.  The form of “family story” as understood by Wester­mann in his treatment of the patriarchal stories is a misnomer. The mistake has been to make the family element into a genre category under the influence of the so-called family sagas of the Icelanders. But they have little in common, and the application of the family story as genre to world literature would be quite unworkable. See my Abraham in History and Tradition, 134–37. 18. E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte, 229–70, especially his remarks on p. 238. 19.  Die Josephserzählung, 45–52. 20. See my discussion of Gen 34 in “The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34).” 21.  Die Josephserzählung, 47–48. 22.  Ibid., 53–66.

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of the cental northern tribes, is left behind in Egypt and has no connection with the land of his destiny and Jacob never sees his son again. But Jacob’s removal to Egypt surely implies the tradition of the descent and sojourn. In Dietrich’s view, it is only with the Joseph story’s inte­gration into the larger context that it becomes “historiogra­phy.” 23 This understanding of the expanded story’s genre seems to depend heavily on Dietrich’s view of the similarity between the Joseph story and the Story of David’s rise and the Succession Narrative. The primary similarity is the “coat of many colors,” which Dietrich regards as dependent on the David story. He also takes the same view that the story in chap. 39 is dependent on this same Amnon–Tamar epi­ sode in 2 Sam 13, although he admits to the likelihood that chap. 39 is also derived from an Egyptian source. This leads him to ascribe the references to the coat and chap. 39 to the same “revisor” of the Joseph story. But an early dating for the Succession Narrative is not very likely, and the direction of dependence is uncertain. 24 It also seems that the story in chap. 39 does not belong to the rest of the Joseph story because it reflects an entirely different attitude toward the deity. The relationship of the Joseph story to the David story is not clear and does not come into an interpretation of this narrative. An approach that is similar to Dietrich is that taken by N. Kebekus, 25 except that he proposes two revisions in place of one. The basic version of the Joseph story (the Reuben level) is a “novelistic” tale with both a social and political message. His limits are 37:5–45:8 and he cuts this story down to where it becomes trivial. He makes it a story about class struggle, which seems most implausible. He then has a Reuben expan­sion that carries the story all the way to 50:22–26* (including much of chap. 48). This is the point at which the story is integrated into the Pentateuch by an 8th-century Jehovist ( JE) using elements of the older Jacob story. The second revision (the Judah stratum) is viewed by Kebekus as a post-pentateuchal redactor. This reviser incorporates a lot of indepen­dent traditions, such as Gen 38, 39, and 49 as well as the Priestly material. 26 At some points, he argues that this final redactor imitates P and attributes some P texts to his redactor. However, the verses that he attributes to P still contain some references to Joseph and must be dependent on the older Joseph story. This final version Kebekus regards as reflecting the social and theological concerns of the Postexilic Period. If one accepts the view that there exists an older Jacob tra­dition that recounts Jacob’s marriages and the birth of his chil­dren in Gen 28–32; 35:16– 23.  Ibid., 67–78. 24. See most recently my “Court History and DtrH,” in Die sogenannte Thronfolgegeschichte Davids.Neue Einsichten und Anfragen (ed. A. de Pury and T. Römer; OBO 176; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 70–93, as well as the other contributions to this volume. 25. N. Kebekus, Die Joseferzählung (Munster: Waxmann, 1990). See especially the conclusions on pp. 338–43 with English summary on pp. 356–57. 26.  Ibid., 327–30.

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20, and that this Jacob tradition was available to the author of the Joseph story, then the Joseph story need not have been composed to fit into the present ver­sion of the Jacob story. One may safely assume, on the basis of Hos 11 and 12 that in the Northern Kingdom of the 8th century there were separate origin traditions about the ances­ tor Jacob and an Exodus from Egypt. It is likely that shortly afterward, the notion of Jacob and his family migrating to Egypt was introduced to combine these traditions, as reflected in Deut 26:5 and Ezek 20:5. The Joseph story developed this theme, and there is no evidence that it ever existed apart from this. It is doubtful that one can place this development before the mid-8th century or later than the 7th century b.c.e. It seems to me highly implausible that there existed a story about a temporary sojourn in Egypt by Jacob’s family result­ing in the transplant of his entire family that lasted only as long as the famine. The severity of the famine forced the group’s transplant to Egypt for an extended period. That fits so well as an explanation of the transition of Jacob to Egypt that it must have been viewed in this way by all who knew both traditions. Furthermore, the role of Judah adds another dimension to the traditiohistorical problem. It is not hard to see how, from a Northern point of view, Judah may be regarded as just another son of Leah with no particular prominence. However, the effort to give Judah the first born position in place of Reuben must reflect a Southern, Judean, orientation. From the Judean point of view, Jacob is still identical with the Northern Kingdom until the later’s demise and the subsequent adoption of the Northern traditions by Judah. The witness of the preexilic prophetic literature seems quite clear on this point. 27 This sets limits on what one can say about the history of the story’s development and its dating. This does not mean that the Joseph story is a form of tribal history that reflects or embodies relations between tribes in a pre-state period or that it somehow supports the notion that the Joseph tribes were the ones that emigrated from Egypt at the time of the exodus. There is no nucleus of historical events embedded in the story of the brothers. One can, of course, see some reflection of the later political status of the house of Joseph in his privileged position and the close association of Benjamin to Joseph as reflective of political reality. Judah cannot replace Joseph as the one to whom the brothers bow down (cf. Gen 49:8–11) for the story hardly permits this, so he merely replaces Reuben as spokesman for the rest. Some of the connections with the subsequent Exodus nar­rative can easily be viewed as secondary, such as 46:1–4 and 50:22–26 and the P additions. But what are we to make of the frequent references to Goshen in 45:10; 27. See K. L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998) 125–218 and S. L. McKenzie, “Jacob in the Prophets,” in Jacob: A Plural Commentary of Gen 25–36, Mélanges offerts à Albert de Pury (ed. J-D. Macchi and T. Römer; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001) 339–57.

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46:28–47:12 (cf. 47:27 [P]; 50:8)? There is an alternate location for their settle­ment in “the land of Rameses” in 47:11. How does this fit with the Land of Goshen? This is a problem that is usually ignored. The settlement in Goshen can only be explained as an anticipation of the sojourn-Exodus story. The whole scheme in the plague narratives demands that Israel live in a region apart from the rest of the Egyptians and the Joseph story provides a rather elaborate explanation for just how this separation from the general Egyptian population came about. 28 Consequently, any decision concerning the form and function of the Joseph story must include some serious consideration of its place within the development of the larger national tradition. Nevertheless, before a proposal concerning the nature of the Joseph story can be made, one needs to address another common assumption about this story, and that is its supposed political nature. The representation of Joseph as “ruler” of his brothers does not need to be a political tale developed as “pro­paganda” to legitimate the rise of the Northern Kingdom or a particular dynasty within it (contra Carr, Blum, Crüsemann, Coats, Dietrich). 29 That is hardly likely or necessary. It could just as well reflect the long history of the fact that the monar­chy had been located within the “house of Joseph.” 30 Conse­quently, any Israelite or Judean reader will of course recognize in the first dream the simple fact that this is a prediction of the future status of the Joseph tribes and will recognize that the brothers’ response is wrong. But that is only the obvious and superficial interpretation of the dream and not the ultimate meaning that the author intends for this dream prediction. Knowledge of the Joseph tribes’ future greatness may add to the reader’s interest in how Joseph will overcome his tempo­rary adversity. But the real significance of the dream that shows the brothers’ sheaves bowing to Joseph’s sheaves is to be understood primarily in terms of the predictive intercon­ nection between the dream and the later event in which the brothers bow to Joseph in Egypt. It is this correlation between dream prediction and the later outcome of events that is under­stood in the story as a revelation of the divine activity behind the events. Joseph remembers the dream when he sees 28. H.-C. Schmitt (Die nichtpriesterliche Josephsge­schichte [BZAW 154; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter,1980] 121–24) proposes that all the references to Goshen in Exodus are late and dependent on the Joseph story. That is hardly likely. 29.  G. W. Coats, From Canaan to Egypt (CBQMS 4; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1976) 86–89; F. Crüsemann, Der Widerstand gegen das Köngtum. Die antiköniglichen Texte des Alten Testamentes und der Kampf um den Frühen israelitischen Staat (WMANT 49; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978); Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte, 240–44; Dietrich, Die Josephserzählung, 64–66. Dietrich warns about making the story a political allegory (p. 64) but he seems to do so anyway. So also Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis, 273–80. 30.  In my view, only the first dream is original and fits with the rest of the story. The second clearly does not fit because Joseph’s father and mother never bow down to him. The whole metaphor becomes hopelessly confused.

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the brothers bowing to him, and when he reveals himself to them he tells the brothers that it is the hand of the deity that has brought about the particular set of events. The reader now realizes that the dream was not about the future rule of the house of Joseph but about this particular situation. No connec­tion is made between the role of Joseph in Egypt and the future monarchy of the Northern Kingdom. The dream’s sig­nificance is primarily within the story itself and is not to be construed as an allegory whose meaning is outside of the story, relating to the house of Joseph’s domination of the rest of the tribes of Jacob. Furthermore, one cannot pull together all of the references to ruling or administration from the various levels of the story in order to make out of it a tract on the monarchy or how court officials ought to administer the realm. The account of Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt and his administration of the realm in Gen 40–41 and 47:13–26 belongs to the success story and is treated by the Joseph novella as foreign to Israelite life and custom. Joseph’s own initial behavior toward his broth­ers may be misunderstood by them as typical of foreign des­pots and their officials, but the reader knows that this behavior is for a special purpose in the story, and when the brothers are reconciled there is no further suggestion of ruling, and even the Pharaoh acts in a kindly manner. The reference to the brothers’ possible enslavement in Gen 50:15–21 does not belong to the Joseph novella and is not about how the house of Joseph should rule his brothers. A political interpretation of all these scenes is arbitrary and not indicated by the story itself. Even if one rejects the interpretation of the Joseph story as political propaganda, the prominence of Joseph would suggest that the story arose before, or shortly after, the demise of the Northern Kingdom. Yet the question still arises: could the Joseph story in its basic form have been written in the 7th cen­tury? Even if the story was written at this time, it could not have made Judah the hero because the prior tribal history did not allow for that. Joseph and Benjamin were the youngest brothers, and it was the house of Joseph that ruled the house of Jacob for so long. I see nothing against such a late date and much that speaks in its favor. The Northern traditions of Jacob and the Exodus came south and perhaps for a time stood beside the Judah traditions, such as the one reflected in Gen  38, before they were amalgamated in a revised version of the Joseph story. Where does all this leave us in the matter of the Joseph story’s genre? The answer to this depends very much on the degree to which one recognizes various levels in the story. Without going into precise textual details at this point I would accept as fact the view that an original “success story” in chaps. 40–41 and 47:13–26 formed a core source for the Joseph story, although the youth was only identified with Joseph at the stage of the novella. This second stage included the exposition in chap. 37, the incorporation of the “success story,” the double journey of the brothers to Egypt and their reconciliation with Joseph, as well as a brief

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account about Jacob’s subsequent descent into Egypt and their settlement in the land, and finally Jacob’s death and burial in Canaan. Such a story could function as an independent short story or novella while assuming the general outline and content of the Jacob story and the descent into Egypt in the same way that many of the great epics and tragedies of ancient Greece assume knowledge of the heroic age and the traditions of origins. The story is the creative filling of the “gap” in the tradition that explains the descent and sojourn in Egypt and uses that setting to tell the tale of Joseph. It does not need to be part of any­thing outside of it to be complete and dramatically satisfying. However, a later author, the exilic Yahwist, in attempting to tell the complete story of the people’s history from the Patri­archs to the Exodus could incorporate the Joseph novella as a source into his historiography with his own themes and con­cerns.

The Joseph Story as a Diaspora Story In contrast to this proposal to see the Joseph story as a nar­rative tale developed within the Jacob traditions, Redford puts forward a proposal that he feels is more akin to the chronolog­ical limits he has assigned to the background of the story, viz., 650–425 b.c.e. He further states: This time span puts us into the period when the Diaspora with all its consequences was a reality. Do we hear a faint echo of the Exile in the story of a boy, sold as a slave into a foreign land, whither shortly his clan journeys to join him, themselves to enter into a state of servitude to a foreign crown? 31

Redford has taken some liberties in his summary of the story to make it fit with the Exile, for it is not at all clear what level of the story he is talking about. There is no servitude for Jacob and his family, who are actually rescued by this foreign power and given property in the best of the land of Egypt. The servitude of Jacob’s family only comes in the story’s connec­tion with the “Pharaoh who knew nothing about Joseph” in Exod 1. Redford also sees the same type of story in the case of Ruth, Esther, Judith, and Tobit, but he does not suggest a distinct category of story. But the suggestion has been taken up by A. Meinhold, who formulates the genre of “diaspora novella,” 32 and this in turn has been developed in new direc­tions by C. Uehlinger with direct reference back to the Redford quotation above. 33 This represents an important new line of development in the study of the Joseph story, one that is very much at odds with the previous discussion and needs to be explored. 31.  A Study, 250. 32. A. Meinhold, “Die Gattung der Josephsgeschichte und des Estherbuches: Diasporanovelle I,” ZAW 87 (1975) 306–24. 33. C. Uehlinger, “Fratrie, filiations et paternités dans 1′histoire de Joseph (Genèse 37– 50*),” in Jacob: A Plural Commentary of Gen. 25–36 (ed. J-D. Macchi and T. Römer; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001) 303–28, esp. p. 314.

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Meinhold develops his notion of a “diaspora novella” pri­marily by comparison with the story of Esther, which he regards as dependent on the Joseph story. He also accepts Redford’s late dating of the Egyptian color of the story so that he too puts the date at 650–425 b.c.e. 34 His genre “diaspora novella” as applied to the Joseph story includes the whole story with particular emphasis on chap. 39, where Joseph is the model Yahwistic Hebrew under the guidance and protection of Yahweh. This perspective is used to interpret the rest of the story including what many regard as the older nucleus in 40–41 and 47:13–26. In his review of the theological perspective of the Joseph story as diaspora novella, he covers the whole range from chaps. 37 to 50, with emphasis on the divine plan to save his people. 35 Here he sees a kind of dialogue with Second Isa­iah, also in the diaspora, but with a different attitude to the for­eign population. All of this merely raises the question of the degree to which the Joseph story, as he understands it, is related to the sojourn and exodus that follows it, where there is a reversal of the people’s fortunes vis à vis the people and ruler of Egypt. There are two problems with Meinhold’s notion of a “diaspora novella” genre to cover the Joseph story. The one has to do with any approach that views the Joseph story as a multistaged development. One would then need to face the question: at what stage is the story a diaspora novella? This might eliminate much of the evidence for such a genre because Meinhold draws from several different stages, according to most literary analyses, to make his case for such a genre. A second problem has to do with his comparison with Esther. The latter is a diaspora story because it is set in the diaspora, and the heroine acts in an environment that is intended to correspond to that of the audience to which it is addressed. The stories of Daniel, which have much in common with the Joseph story, are also set in the “exile,” but they actu­ ally relate to a situation of foreign domination in the Hellenis­tic period that is not in the diaspora but in Judah. The fact that much of the action takes place in a foreign land does not necessarily make a narrative a diaspora story any more than Jacob’s sojourn in Harran is a diaspora story. Furthermore, the stories of Esther, Daniel, and one could add Tobit, are about individuals or families in exile or diaspora and not about ancestors who belong to another era. Creating the category “diaspora novella” by association with Esther merely allows Meinhold to interpret the Joseph story in this way. The figures of Joseph and Jacob are by their very nature associated with another set of traditions that relate their destinies to the home­land of Palestine. That is not the case with diaspora heroes. Much the same can be said about the recent study of M. Fox. 36 He emphasizes the similarity between the Joseph story and the book of Daniel, 34.  Meinhold, “Die Gattung,” 311. 35.  Ibid., 320–23. 36. See Fox, “Wisdom in the Joseph Story,” VT 51 (2001) 26–41.

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which used and developed motifs taken from the former work. But the use of dreams as apoca­lyptic prediction related to the destiny of the Jews and the piety that is strongly linked to Jewish culture and religion is quite different from the Joseph story and develops these themes in very a different way. Too much rests on elements of the Joseph story, such as chap. 39, that are late additions to support the characterization of the whole as “pietistic.” Furthermore, Fox does not sufficiently reckon with the way in which wisdom itself underwent a transformation into a more pietistic form, even within Proverbs. The approach of Uehlinger is quite different. 37 While he obviously has taken over the terminology of “diaspora novella” from Meinhold, his application is directly related to the presentation of Redford quoted above. 38 Uehlinger accepts both Redford’s dating for the oldest level of the story to the Saite period and the idea that from the earliest level of the “success story” in Gen 40–41 and 47:13–26, the account of Joseph’s rise to power is a “diaspora novella” with its Sitz im Leben in the Exile. He views this “novella” as the product of a diaspora Yahwist to whom the figure of Joseph offers a model of success within the Egyptian environment in the 7th to 6th centuries b.c.e. The next stage in the development for Uehlinger is the roman de Joseph, which includes the introduc­tion of the sons of Jacob, particularly in the Reubenite version in chaps. 37 and 42 and fragments of 43 and 45. He seems uncertain about whether it ends at 45:7 or in the unit in 47:5–6a, 11–12, which seems necessary if the older unit of 47:13–26 was incorporated into it. 39 Nevertheless, this also seems an odd place to stop. The essential point of this roman is now to be looked for in the interchange between Joseph, the figure who is emblematic of the diaspora Yahwist in Egypt, and his “brothers” from Pal­estine, the sphere of their father Jacob. The earlier novella has been enhanced and modified by affirming Joseph’s origin from the northern territories of Jacob, and his exile in Egypt is the result of rivalry by the other components of this region, his “brothers.” His prosperity in exile, however, has given him a new status of power, the power to save them, such that he can enter into a new relationship with them. Uehlinger treats the story as an allegory and thinks it is obvious that behind these roles one can recognize a debate between the Yahwists of the Persian period Egypt and those of Palestine. The piece is a demand for recognition of the superiority of this Joseph group over their Palestinian counterparts, and therefore it is the work of an author living in Egypt. A later addition from the Pales­tinian side is reflected in the so-called Judah recension, which sees the rise of Judah to a position of leadership in the late 5th-century period 37. C. Uehlinger, “Fratrie, filiations et paternités dans 1′histoire de Joseph (Genèse 37– 50*),” esp. p. 314. 38.  Ibid., 311–12. Uehlinger makes direct reference to the Redford citation given above. 39.  Ibid., 313–15.

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and reflects as well the close association of Benjamin with Judah in the story and in the politics of the late period. All of this is still at the stage of an independent story and there remains for Uehlinger numerous redactional stages by which the story is finally incorporated into the Pen­tateuch. To this issue we will return below. Let us go back and look at the plausibility of this whole scheme. First, it should be noted that Uehlinger has taken over the category of “diaspora novella” from Meinhold but has rather abused the term by his narrow limitation to the “success story,” For Meinhold the attribution of the “diaspora novella” to a Yahwist depended on the inclusion of chap. 39, which Uehlinger has excluded as a late addition. Within the limited “success story” there is nothing Yahwistic. The deity is the same for both Joseph and the Egyptians, and there is no exile of which this foreign slave is a part. He is an unfortunate indi­vidual with no community who seems to assimilate very eas­ily into Egyptian society, quite unlike Daniel and his friends. There is, of course, no evidence that Joseph was ever viewed as a model for the Egyptian diaspora. Quite the contrary, Philo viewed him critically as one who assimilated too easily with the foreign culture. Second, I cannot believe that an indepen­dent “success story” existed with Joseph as the hero’s name. This is the name of an ancestor of the “house of Joseph” that stood for the Northern Kingdom and whose destiny is bound up with this region. The limits of this success story give no clue as to how this Joseph, a completely assimilated Egyptian has any relationship with such an ancestor. The situation is not much better for the next stage in Uehlinger’s development. The story of Joseph is an ancestor story and remains such no matter how much it is developed and refined. Third, there is no group of exiles in Egypt that to my knowledge ever identi­fied themselves as the remnants of the “house of Joseph,” and Uehlinger has not furnished any evidence of this. On the con­trary, from the Elephantine documents onward, they always identified themselves as Jews. The witness of Jer 43–44 suggests that the exiles of the Eastern Delta region were pre­dominantly Jews who migrated there after the destruction of Jerusalem. This is the region that is the background for the Joseph story, but there is nothing of Uehlinger’s reconstruc­tion that would fit such a setting. The social and religious his­tory that he reconstructs is based on his interpretation of the text and its various strata which are then seen to fit this his­tory. Quite apart from these general considerations of his the­ory, Uehlinger’s reconstruction depends at the very outset on a rather dubious literary judgment about P’s relationship to the Joseph story. He asserts that P has no knowledge of the Joseph story, and this means for him that the incorporation of the Joseph story into the Pentateuch came about after P. If his position regarding P can be maintained, then his very late development of the Joseph story must be taken seriously, even if one cannot accept his view of

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the piece as a “diaspora novella/roman.” If, however, he is wrong about this, then the whole of his reconstruction must be scrapped. What are the texts, therefore, that he attributes to P? These consist of the following: Gen 37:1 (2a?); 41:54b; 46:6b–7; 47:(:7b–10)28; 49:1a?, 29–33; 50:12–13 (Exod 1:1–5a etc). 40 This sequence of texts, in his view, sets forth the movement of Jacob’s family from Canaan to Egypt, and there was nothing prior to P that made the connection between the Patriarchs and the sojourn in Egypt, so that these texts told the whole story. Let us look at them. There is no dispute about Gen 37:1, but Uehlinger admits to a problem with v.  2, which most pentateuchal scholars accept as belonging to P. At most, he accepts only v.  2a: “this is the history of Jacob’s descendants,” which he says is a little inconvenient for his hypothesis because it is hardly appropriate for what follows. Verse 2b introduces Joseph and some of his brothers and gives Joseph’s age in typical P fashion: “Joseph, 17 years old, was keeping sheep with his brothers.” This is similar to another statement in 41:46a: “Joseph was 30 years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,” a text that Uehlinger also excludes from his list of P texts. Uehlinger does include 41:54b in P, not because it has any marks of P’s style or vocabulary but because it is neces­sary for his hypothesis to account for Jacob’s descent to Egypt in this source. In fact, this verse is an obvious link between the “success story” and the following account of Jacob’s sons in chap. 42. The remark in 41:54b states that there was a famine not merely in Canaan (cf. Genesis 12:10) but in all the lands, thereby extending the Egyptian famine of the “success story” to Palestine and the larger story of Joseph and his brothers. There is food in Egypt because Joseph has made special arrangements for the famine which “all lands” are experienc­ing. With some surgical skill, Uehlinger includes only 46:6b–7 in order to get Jacob to Egypt. But this is very abrupt after 41:54 (which is not P anyway), and v. 6a has all the vocabu­lary marks of P. Yet v. 6a is linked closely to what precedes, which is part of the Joseph story. Uehlinger also excludes the obviously Priestly genealogy of 46:8–27 because it expressly recognizes Joseph’s prior presence in Egypt and for the same reason he excludes Exod l:5b. These can all be attributed to a late P redactor. No sooner does Uehlinger have Jacob arrive in Egypt but he has an audience with Pharaoh (47:7b–10) for no apparent reason because he eliminates Joseph’s introduction in v. 7a. Uehlinger includes 47:28 in P but not v. 27 even though it has such obvious P terminology in it: “Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in Goshen, and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and increased greatly.” This statement, however, clearly depends on all the prior deliberations about how it was that Jacob settled in Goshen. The unit in 48:3–7 is like­wise not included in Uehlinger’s P, but it is 40.  I have tried to represent his style of listing as closely as possible even though it is not always clear what he means by his parentheses and other symbols.

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so obviously in P’s style and themes that its exclusion is made simply in the inter­ests of his hypothesis. There is no dispute about 49:1a, 29–33; 50:12–13 as part of P, but they cannot be taken as separate from their contexts. Thus, 50:12–13 has all the brothers return­ing to Canaan to bury their father. P therefore does not have any statement about the return to Egypt such as we have in 50:14, which is clearly part of the account of Joseph’s burial of his father in 50:1–11. P’s remarks are obviously built into the older version. This is enough to show that the hypothesis of Uehlinger that P contains no Joseph story and can be con­structed as an account of Jacob’s descent into Egypt without reference to the Joseph story is unworkable. This failure to demonstrate the independence of P from the Joseph story seri­ously calls into question the notion of a “diaspora novella” that was developed through successive stages from the Saite to the late Persian period and only at the latest stage inserted into the Pentateuch by a post-P redactor. This brings us to a consideration of the relationship of the Joseph story to the rest of the Pentateuch.

The Joseph Story within the Pentateuch There have been a number of studies recently that have advocated the notion of late post-P “pentateuchal” or “hexateuchal” redactors, and it is the influence from such pro­posals that have encouraged Uehlinger to construct his hypothesis of a P source without a Joseph story and the incor­poration of the Joseph story into the Pentateuch only at this late redactional stage. 41I should point out that Redford antici­pated much of this discussion by his notion of a “Genesis edi­tor.” 42 This source includes much of P but also much that is non-P, and what I have elsewhere attributed to the larger pen­tateuchal source J. Redford left rather vague the way in which his “Genesis editor” incorporated the independent Joseph story into the Pentateuch so that subsequent approaches to the Joseph story that were not encumbered with the Documentary Hypothesis could work out the details of this editorial level. Let us turn to a recent attempt at those details in the work of K. Schmid. 43 Schmid rejects the long-established view that within the pre-P patriarchal stories the Joseph story represents a bridge to the Exodus tradition. He considers Gen 48:21–22 and 50:24–26 as part of the post-P redaction, but he disputes that Gen 46:1–4 makes any reference to the Exodus. Following Blum’s reconstruction of the development of the patriarchal tradition in Gen 12–50, 41.  Most recently, T. C. Römer and M. Z. Brettler, “Deu­teronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,” JBL 119 (2000) 401–19; see my critique of some earlier attempts in “Is There Evidence of a Dtr Redaction in the Sinai Pericope (Exodus 19–24, 32–34)?” in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. L. S. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie ( JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 160–70. 42.  Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 179–80. 43. K. Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus, 56–63.

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Schmid regards Gen 46:1–5a as the integration of the Joseph story into the patriarchal history (Vätergeschichte) before its union with the Exodus tradition. The text tells of the deity’s appearance to Jacob to reassure him that despite his imminent descent into Egypt he will still become a great nation. God further states: “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again.” Schmid interprets this statement to refer to Jacob’s personal sojourn in Egypt and his return to the land to be buried after his death along with the permanent return of all his family. Thus, Jacob’s becoming “a great nation” is entirely limited to the few years that Jacob was alive in Egypt. This seems to me to be a very strained interpretation of this text. All the promise texts that refer to the patriarch becoming a great nation have to do with the future destiny of the offspring far beyond the limits of the patriarch’s own lifetime. As support for his view of a more immediate fulfillment, Schmid points to the statement in 47:27: “Thus Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they gained possessions in it and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly.” This, in turn, is followed by a statement in v.  28 about the length of Jacob’s stay in Egypt of 17 years, which leads Schmid to interpret v. 27 within the lim­its of v. 28, that is, within Jacob’s lifetime and to understand 46:3–4 in the same way. This argument is seriously flawed. First, Gen 47:27–28 is by P and therefore has no direct bearing on the interpretation of the earlier text. Second, “Israel” does not mean the patriarch Jacob, as it does else­where in the Joseph story, and it is very doubtful that P means that the growth of “Israel” refers only to the proliferation of Jacob’s family during his 17 years in Egypt. Because P admit­tedly does make a connection with the later Exodus tradition, this is just a prolepsis of the longer sojourn. It therefore would point to exactly the opposite view of Schmid’s position, that is, that in both cases (Gen 46:3 and 47:27) the statements point ahead to the longer sojourn. However, if Gen 46:1–4 does make a connection with the exodus, then it links the whole theme of the patriarchal promises to the exodus and destroys Schmid’s basic position. Furthermore, the self-presentation of the deity to Jacob in 46:3: “I am the God, the god of your father,” has many inter­connections with other divine appearances of this sort both in what precedes in the patriarchal stories and in what follows in Exo­dus. It consists of two components. The first of these, “the God” (‫)האל‬, using the definite article with the divine name El, is a rather distinctive designation used within the Jacob stories in connection with the divine revelations of the god of Bethel (“house of El”). 44 It also occurs in one other instance outside Genesis, in Second Isaiah (Isa 42:5) in which ‫ האל‬is identified with Yahweh and means the only deity. The second component in the deity’s self-disclosure to Jacob is as “god of your father,” which means “the god of your father Isaac” (v. 1). This has 44. See my discussion of these texts in “Divine Encounter at Bethel.”

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a link back to the revelation to Isaac in 26:24: “I am the god of Abraham, your father,” and to Jacob in 28:13: “I am Yahweh, the god of Abraham, your father, and the god of Isaac.” It also provides a link with the revelation to Moses in Exod 3:6: “I am the god of your father, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob.” He also introduces the divine revelation in the same way with the summons: “Jacob, Jacob” (Gen 46:2) and “Moses, Moses” (Exod 3:4). There can be no doubt that the same author has formulated all of these self-disclosures and in so doing has created the composite designation of “Yahweh, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac and the god of Jacob,” which is so important in the rest of Exod 3. The theme of Yah­weh as the god of the three Patriarchs is not actually complete until its full form in Exod 3:15, in which it is declared that this is Yahweh’s distinctive name and title in perpetuity. 45 In Gen 50, Schmid interprets the narrative regarding Jacob’s death and burial as a story originally about the return of the brothers and their families to Canaan, which has been supplemented by his late redactor (vv. 5b “and I will return,” 8b, 14, 22, 24–26) in order to have the Israelites return to Egypt for the period of the sojourn. This is, likewise, a very forced interpretation of the episode. Joseph’s request to Pha­raoh is limited only to the obligation to bury his father, and he is to be accompanied by a large Egyptian entourage, including a military escort as befits his position. Nothing in this description fits a general return of Jacob’s descendants. Furthermore, the whole dialogue between Joseph and his brothers (vv. 15–21), in which they are afraid of some reprisals from him, makes no sense if all of the brothers and their families have returned to Canaan to live there. Joseph would no longer pose a threat, becoming merely one brother among many without any special authority. It is only as a high Egyptian official that such a threat exists. The episode is certainly a doublet of the earlier one in 45:4–6 (7), with special emphasis on Joseph’s providen­tial role. Yet there is an important difference. In the earlier instance in 45:4–6, the emphasis is entirely on Joseph’s role in pre­serving his family in time of famine. In 50:20, the famine is no longer in view; instead, it is the preservation of “a great peo­ple” (‫)עם רב‬, using precisely the same language that appears in Exod 1 to describe the Israelites in Egypt. The connection is clear. It is the non-P, exilic Yahwist who has integrated the ending of the Joseph story into the larger pentateuchal narra­tive as a bridge to the exodus. Furthermore, Schmid’s view that Exod 1 has been com­posed by a postP redactor using the P source (Exod 1:1–5, 7, 13–14), rests entirely on the argument that the non-P narra­tive in vv. 8–12, 15–22 is dependent on the statement of the proliferation of the people in v. 7, which is attributed to P. The connection between v. 7 and what follows and the fact that P language 45.  Idem, Life of Moses, 15–21.

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is present in v. 7 is not in dispute; however, what is disputed is that the whole of v. 7 belongs to P. I have discussed this matter thoroughly elsewhere, but Schmid chooses to ignore my arguments in his treatment of this text. So I must repeat them briefly here. The only connection made to the ter­minology of v. 7 in what follows is to the verbal pair ‫ רבה‬and ‫ עצם‬and their adjectival equivalents. However, it is notewor­thy that in the whole series of P formulas that include the pair ‫ פרה‬and ‫( רבה‬Gen 1:22, 28; 8:7; 9:1, 7; 35:11; 47:27), neither the verb ‫ עצם‬nor the adjective ‫ עצום‬is ever used. There is not a single other appearance in P, but it does appear elsewhere in J (Gen 18:18; 26:16; Num 14:12; 22:6) and in a fixed pair with ‫ רב‬it is common in Deuteronomy (Deut 4:38; 7:1; 9:1, 14; 11:23; 26:5). In Exod 1:8–12, 20, the fact that Israel has become “great” and “mighty” is seen as a threat to Egypt’s security. This is parallel to the situation in the Isaac story in which Abimelech tells Isaac to leave his territory because “you are much ‘mightier’ (‫עצם‬, verb) than we” (Gen 26:16). In the Balaam story, the Moabite king wants Bal­aam to curse Israel because the people are too “mighty” (‫ )עצום‬for him. It is also likely that one should read in Exod 5:5 (following Noth): “Pharaoh thought, ‘they (the Israelites) are now stronger/more numerous (‫ )רבים‬than the people of the land.’” This would agree exactly with chap. 1. Both in terms of language and perspective, the unit in Exod 1:8–12, 15–22 fits that of the rest of exilic J but has nothing in com­mon with P. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that J originally had a statement in v. 7: “The Israelites increased and became very mighty,” and v. 8 follows directly from that. This fits much better after v. 6 than after v. 5, as the sequel to the Joseph story. The reference to “sons of Israel” also con­nects with the same phrase used in Gen 50:25 as those addressed by the aged Joseph. P then subsequently embellished J’s statement in Exod 1:7 with his own formulaic lan­guage to conclude his own series with the Exodus account. To suggest that the P account in Exod 1:1–5, 7*, 12–13 makes sense as an earlier independent introduction to the exodus account seems to me incredible. The independence of a P doc­ument cannot be sustained in this and many other instances and should be abandoned.

The Yahwist and the Story of Joseph The current tendency within pentateuchal scholarship is to identify an independent Joseph story that has been incorpo­rated into the larger pentateuchal narrative. I have argued for the view that the non-Priestly author of the Pentateuch, identi­fied as the exilic Yahwist, was responsible for incorporating this independent story into the larger narrative setting. There is general agreement about the additions of chaps.  38, 39 (with its editorial connections in chap.  40), 49, and P as dis­cussed above. The difficulty is trying to separate the basic Joseph story from the J additions used to incorporate it into the patriarchal corpus and connect it to the Exodus that fol­lows. In place of the older source analysis separating J from E, the current

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supplementary or redactional methods look for clues to literary strata in the doublets and tensions in the actions of Reuben and Judah in chaps. 37, 42– 45 as well as the parallel role of the Midianites and Ishmaelites and the use of the patriarch’s name, Jacob and Israel. None of this has proven to be very decisive and is scarcely helpful in the sec­ond half of the story, chaps. 46–50. It is with the second half of the Joseph story that one must begin because here the most direct connections are made with the larger Yahwist narrative. As indicated above, the Joseph story is familiar with the tradition of Jacob and his 12 sons, offspring of more than one wife with the two youngest being those of his favorite wife. It also knows of the sojourn in Egypt and explains how this descent into Egypt came about. These are traditions shared by the Yahwist. So it is only in certain texts that the concerns of the Yahwist himself are spelled out. First and foremost of these is Gen 46:1–5. This text, or a part thereof, is generally taken as an intrusion from the larger patriarchal traditions. The text is clearly marked off by the itinerary in which Jacob sets off and arrives in Beersheba where he experiences the vision and then in v. 5a departs again “from Beersheba.” The deliberate connection with the Isaac story of Beersheba in Gen 26 by mentioning the deity as “the god of his father Isaac” to whom Jacob sacrifices at the very place where Isaac has built an altar and from whom Jacob receives a similar promise of becoming a “great nation” makes it clear that we are dealing with the author of the non-P version of the patriarchal stories, the Yahwist. Furthermore, as Blum points out, 46 the language and form of the vision is par­ticularly close to that of Gen 31:11, 13, especially in the deity’s self-identification as ‫האל‬, “the God.” This clearly identifies this with the exilic Yahwist’s rendering of the Jacob story. 47 At the same time, the unit establishes a link with the Exodus tradition by affirming that it is in Egypt that Jacob is to become a “great nation,” using the language of the patriarchal promises but also that of Deut 26:5 and anticipating the theme of a “numerous and strong people” in Exodus 1. The remark about the deity accompanying Jacob into Egypt and later bringing him back is clearly meant to have a twofold ref­erence, both to him personally with his burial in Canaan but also with his offspring in the future. The unit in Gen 46:1–5 has been integrated into the Joseph story by the direct reference to Joseph’s role in his father’s burial and by linking Jacob’s descent into Egypt within the events of the Joseph story. It is quite possible, as Willi-Plein suggests, 48 that v. 4b (“and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes”) was the final part of Jacob’s statement in 45:28 with the second person suffix, “your eyes” originally a first person suffix, “my eyes.” Thus, the night vision becomes an interlude and Beersheba a way-station on the route to Egypt. However, the departure notice in 46:5 is very peculiar. It states: 46.  Blum, Die Komposition, 246–49. 47.  Van Seters, “Divine Encounter at Bethel.” 48.  “Historiographische Aspekte,” 307.

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“So Jacob arose from Beersheba and the sons of Israel set Jacob their father and their dependants and wives on the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.” Blum draws attention to the similarity between this verse and Gen 31:17: “So Jacob arose and set his children and his wives upon camels.” 49 Both verses have the same pair of verbs, ‫ קום‬and ‫ נשׂא‬followed by a similar action of putting people on wagons or camels. But in Gen 31:17 the verb ‫ קום‬is used as a coordinate verb in the sense of beginning an action, to get up and do something. Thus, the reb renders the verse “At once Jacob put his sons and wives on camels.” But this use of ‫ קום‬will not work for 46:5 because the verb ‫ קום‬is being treated as a verb of motion parallel to ‫ נסא‬in v. 1, “Israel journeyed . . . to Beersheba.” That would strongly suggest that “from Beer­sheba” is an addition and that without it v. 5 followed 45:28. Let us reconstruct this unit of the Joseph story without Gen 46:l-4a, beginning at 45:28: Israel said, “It is enough. Joseph, my son, is alive. Let me go and see him before I die, and Joseph’s hand shall close [my] eyes.” 46:5So Jacob arose . . . and the sons of Israel car­ried Jacob their father, their children and their wives in wag­ons that Pharaoh had sent to carry them. 45:28

If we also exclude the P text in 46:6–27 and the subsequent connections with Goshen we are left with the following sequel: Then Joseph mounted his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father. . . . When he arrived in his presence, he embraced him and wept on his shoulder a long time. Israel said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, having seen your face while still alive.” 47:5 LXX, 6aWhen Jacob and his sons had come to Joseph in Egypt, Pharaoh king of Egypt heard and Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I see your father and brothers have come to you. The land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land.” 11–12So Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them prop­erty in the land of Egypt, in the best region, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had ordered. Joseph provided his father and his brothers and his father’s whole household with food for each dependent. 46:29–30

This reconstruction eliminates the addition of the rather clumsy effort by Joseph and his brothers to acquire the Land of Goshen as the region of settlement in anticipation of the exo­dus story (Gen 46:28, 31–34; 47:1–4, 6b). It is a doublet to the account reconstructed above in 46:29–30; 47:5 LXX, 6a, 11–12. The suggestion in the addition is that because the brothers present themselves as shepherds they can live in this border region separate from the rest of the Egyptians. This concern for the fact that the Israelites settled in the Land of Goshen sep­arately from the rest of the Egyptians is very important for J’s treatment of the plagues story in which the rest of Egypt is 49.  Blum, Die Komposition, 248–49.

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affected by the plagues but not the Land of Goshen. It is an obvious expansion of the motif in the original story in which Pharaoh generously offered Joseph’s family the best of the land of Egypt. J identifies the “best of the land of Egypt” as Goshen (47:6b). This means that all the references to Goshen are clues to J’s modification of the Joseph story. 50 The original story also has Joseph summoned by Jacob his father just before his death and makes Joseph alone swear that he will bury his father in Canaan. The brothers are not involved in this at all (47:29–31). At this point in the novella, Jacob dies. The immediate sequel is 50:1–7, 9, 14*. Verse 8, with its mention of Goshen, and vv. 10–11, with its etiology, are additions. J has added vv. 8, 10–11 and the references to the brothers in v. 14. 51 In the addition J is concerned to place the burial site “beyond the Jordan” so that the family of Jacob retrace the route of the conquest by approaching Canaan from the east. 52 The original account almost certainly presupposes the most direct route. There is also some irony in the fact that the dependents and animals are left behind because the people are to return. In the plagues story, when Moses asks for the right to make a pilgrimage into the desert Pharaoh tries unsuc­cessfully to get Moses to leave the dependents and animals behind in order to be sure that they will return (10:9–11; 24–26). P tries to correct the expanded burial account by means of a second oath in 49:29–33 that includes all the brothers, and the proper burial place at Mamre in 50:12–13. Where does the Joseph novella end? As Humphreys sug­gests, the earliest level, the success story, could have con­cluded with the death of the vizier at a ripe old age and his burial in a tomb in Egypt. 53 The Joseph story would have taken this over in v. 22 and perhaps in v. 26 in modified form. J has further expanded this ending in a number of ways. In the unit 50:15–21, J imitates the previous scene in 45:4–6 (7–11). However, there is a fundamental difference. The hand of divine providence is not limited here to the family’s deliver­ance from the famine, which has long past. It now has to do with the larger destiny of the people, the “many people” (v. 20) that will be the theme of Exod 1. 54 Likewise the appeal to “the god of your father” and to forgiveness are constant theo­logical themes of the Yahwist. The final farewell speech of Joseph combined with his death notice together with the tran­ sition statements in Exod 1:6, 7*, 8 have been modeled on the same transi50. The reference to Goshen in 47:27 belongs to P as a slight modification of 47:11 where land of Rameses is likewise interpreted as Goshen. It simply follows J in this as it does in the Exodus story. 51.  All the pronominal suffixes refer only to Joseph, “all who went up with him to bury his father.” 52.  Burial on the east side of the Jordan, as some under­stand this text, would not be burial in the land of Canaan. See Westermann, Genesis 37–50, 201. 53.  Humphreys, Joseph and his Family, 135–53, esp. p. 147. 54.  The usual focus on a political interpretation of this unit misses the point in J’s larger scheme.

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tion from the time of Joshua to that of the Judges in Josh 23; Judg 2:6–10. 55 Within the farewell speech of Gen 50:24–25 there are two concerns. The one is to connect the Exodus with the land promise to the three Patriarchs, the full triad that will be repeated in Exod 3. The second is the oath placed on the Israelites to carry up Joseph’s bones to his inheritance plot. This looks back to Gen 33:19 as a special gift of Jacob to Joseph and looks ahead to the carrying out of this oath at the time of the Exodus in Exod 13:19 and their final burial in Josh 24:32. The death bed blessing by Jacob of Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh in Gen 48:1–2, 8–21 (22?) also belongs to J. It emphasizes the theme of numerous progeny and future national greatness. It ends in v. 21 with a reference to the Exodus similar to that of 46:4 and 50:24. In addition, the reference to the two sons must be connected with the anecdote about their birth in 41:50–52 and the final remarks about them in 50:23. This brings us to the place of Judah in J. The role of Judah has been regarded by many as secondary. So also does Redford, who regards some of the references to Judah as replace­ments for Reuben. 56 The parallel between Reuben and Judah in chap. 37 seems clear enough, with vv. 25–27, 28a?, b as the addition, but this does not explain why the Ishmaelites were added as a parallel to the Midianites. If the Midianites were the ones who took Joseph out of the cistern and brought him to Egypt, then Reuben is as guilty as the rest of them and his remarks in 42:22 difficult to explain. Judah is presented as a rival in a less favorable light. It may be, as some have sug­gested, that the Midianites have been introduced to mitigate the crime of the brothers. The introduction of Judah into the story has allowed the later J author to expand on his role in the story. Thus, chaps. 43–44 highlight the role of Judah to the detriment of Reuben, in some cases, such as 43:3, 14 and 16, as substitutions for Reuben. The intrusion of Judah with his new proposal (vv. 8–10), however, adds nothing and is only intended to anticipate 44:18–34. The confession in v.  16 could lead into chapter 45. Verse 17, however, clearly sets the stage for the speech of Judah in 44:18–34. It is a moving speech and some are reluctant to see it as secondary, but it is not necessary to the plot. The closest parallel to such a long speech that reca­pitulates the past, including the recounting of dialogue, is the servant’s speech in Gen 24:34–49. This strongly suggests that it is by the same hand, J. Chapter 45 has been viewed by many as overly redundant with expansions. The remark in v.  2 seems unnecessary. In Joseph’s speech in vv. 4–13, the phrase “For God has sent me before you to preserve life” (v. 5b) is repeated in v. 7: “God has sent me 55. See Van Seters, The Life of Moses, 16–21. 56.  Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 138–64. Against the stream, H.-C. Schmitt (Die nichtpriesterliche Josephsgeschichte) views the Judah version as primary and the Reuben version as second­ary. He is followed in this by U. Schorn, Ruben und das Sys­tem der zwölf Stämme Israels. Space does not permit a debate on this issue here.

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before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you numerous survivors.” The remark about five more years of famine (v. 6) is repeated in v. 11 and v. 9 is a repetition in longer form of v. 13b.These repetitions suggest that vv. 7–11 are an expansion and the original went from v. 6 to v. 12. The reference to settling in Goshen (v. 10) also goes together with the other ref­erences in chaps. 46–47. Within 45:4–5, it is not easy to eliminate the reference to Joseph’s being sold by the brothers into Egypt, which seems necessary for the contrast between human and divine activity. This would confirm the originality of the Judah text in 37:25–27, 28aβb. The unit in vv. 16–20 with the friendly instructions by Pharaoh follows 45:1, 4–6, 12–14 and fits very well with 47:5 LXX–6a, 11–12. The rest of the chapter, without the awk­ward statement in v. 21a: “The sons of Israel did so” and the insertion of “Israel” in v. 28, all belongs to the early novella. Thus, we have come full circle in our literary observations of J’s additions to the Joseph story.

Conclusion The literary observations that I have attempted to set forth above are heavily indebted to Redford’s study of the Joseph story modified by my own understanding of the larger compo­sition of the Pentateuch. 57 It was an independent story of north­ern provenance in the late monarchy that combined the Jacob traditions with the questions of the origins of the sojourn in Egypt, imitating a tale about a foreign slave’s rise to power in Egypt. This entertaining and edifying story, like a Greek drama, was taken up by J in his larger historiography of the Patriarchs and used as a bridge to the Exodus. The story attracted other embellishments, such as the attempt at moral edification in chap. 39 as well as additional links to the patriarchal tradition in chap. 49 and P’s additions. All of this works well within the supplementary model of the composi­tion of the Pentateuch without the need for a “Genesis editor” or various other late pentateuchal redactors. 57. See Redford, A Study, 170–71. He proposes a some­what different division of the text.

Chapter 17

The Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 1–5) within the Larger Context of the Yahwist’s History Introduction In a recent study by Rainer Albertz, “The Beginning of the Pre-Priestly Composition of the Exodus,” 1 he attempts to unravel what he believes to be the complex development of these opening chapters of Exodus, as part of a larger pre-Priestly composition that extends to Exod 34. In this he claims to be building on the work of Erhard Blum’s study of Genesis, 2 which followed in the scholarly tradition of Hermann Gunkel’s form-critical method of viewing the development of oral tradition of individual myths and legends (Sagen) to their final combination in literary form. Blum modified this method so that it also applied to the literary forms of the tradition that expanded in a process of successive supplementation, resulting in the final form of a late Deuteronomistic composition (KD). This in turn was combined with a quite different, purely literary, Priestly composition (KP) to form the book of Genesis. However, Blum did not extend this method to Exodus–Numbers, except to trace KD and KP separately through this corpus to their ultimate combination, together with Deuteronomy, to form the Pentateuch. Albertz, along with several other European scholars, do not regard this analysis of Exodus–Numbers to be complete. Instead they view the growth of the Moses tradition as very similar and parallel to, but independent from, that of the patriarchal tradition of Genesis, with the combination of Genesis with Exodus coming at a rather late Priestly stage in the development. Albertz’s study of the pre-Priestly composition (KEX) in Exod 1–5 is an attempt to uncover the various early layers in this literary process. In this brief background sketch of the development of the scholarship of his methodology, Albertz neglects some important particulars in this history, ignoring some of its more controversial aspects. First, the approach 1. R. Albertz, “Der Beginn der vorpriesterlichen Exodus-komposition (KEX): Eine Kompositions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Ex 1–5,” TZ 67 (2011): 223–62. 2.  Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte.

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employed by this “new” methodology is, in reality, a combination in varying degrees of the fragmentary, supplementary, and documentary hypotheses of the 19th century. It attempts to play down the classical Documentary Hypothesis by dismissing the sources J and E as authors, but the source P is treated in a rather ambiguous fashion, as a series of Priestly redactors who maintained their distinctive identity over a very long period of time, while J loses its identity and merely becomes non-P. It should also be noted that, throughout most of the 19th century, J and E were regarded as merely collectors (or “redactors”?) of Sagen, and P was viewed as the final redactor of the Pentateuch, so there is actually little difference from the methodology of the 19th century. 3 Second, a major criticism of Gunkel’s form-critical method which placed heavy emphasis on the Sagen in Genesis, was put forward by Gerhard von Rad, in Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs. 4 Von Rad objected to Gunkel’s fragmentation of the Yahwist into so many pieces and argued instead for J as the author of a history. 5 Martin Noth attempted to counter von Rad’s criticism by viewing the tradition history of the Pentateuch in terms of major blocks of tradition that were slowly brought together to form a uniform composition of which J and E were variant versions. 6 It was this block model of Noth that was adopted by Rolf Rendtorff, while regarding the Yahwist (and Elohist) as superfluous. The vacuum, thus created, was filled by “redactors.” Third, the system as devised by Gunkel and modified by Noth was based on the understanding that the traditions reflected in the Pentateuch belonged to the earliest period of Israel’s existence as a people in the pre­monarchy age and thus derive from a preliterate age of oral tradition. When it is admitted under the pressure of more recent pentateuchal research that its traditions do not necessarily reflect oral tradition but belong to a much later period of Israelite and Judean literacy, then the attempts to accommodate the GunkelNoth approach to this new reality become highly problematic. Rendtorff was very vague about just when he saw this process of tradition development taking place, and that has been characteristic of scholars who follow his lead. For the most part, there is little regard for the larger “controlling context” of the biblical literature outside of the Pentateuch, especially the prophets. 7 3.  For an extended critic of the history and methodology of pentateuchal criticism, see my Edited Bible, 185–297. 4.  G. von Rad, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs (1938). 5.  See also von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments I, 57. 6.  Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch. Ironically, Noth used von Rad’s understanding of the Yahwist as historian to argue for the Deuteronomist as a historian of Joshua to 2 Kings, but this thesis has also tended to suffer the same fate as von Rad’s Yahwist. 7.  For a discussion of the “controlling context” of pentateuchal texts, see J. Van Seters, “The So-Called Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch,” 58–77.

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Fourth, from the early 70s, my studies supported both von Rad’s view of the Yahwist as a historian and Winnett’s view of a supplemental approach to pentetuchal sources, rather than the classic Documentary Hypothesis. However, against both von Rad and Noth, I redated the Yahwist to the late Exilic Period, later than Dtr, and this means that any tradition-history has to take Deuteronomy and the prophetic literature into serious consideration. While my position was strongly contested, it was accepted by Hans Heinrich Schmid and Martin Rose, 8 and by the mid-80s also by Rendtorff and Blum, which led the latter to date his KD source to this same late Exilic Period. Consequently, Albertz also dates his Exoduskomposition to this same late Exilic Period as the consensus within European scholarship. Fifth, nevertheless, there remains a fundamental difference between those who regard both the non-P and P sources as redactors and my view, which regards the whole corpus from Genesis to Numbers as primarily the work of two authors J and P. Blum’s use of KD and KP is something of a compromise between Rendtorff and myself. Consequently, whenever Albertz refers to his Exoduskomposition (KEX), I will continue to use the term Yahwist for the same non-P corpus.

Locating the Problem The problem with the opening chapters of Exodus as the European scholars understand it, and as recently expressed by Albertz, is that the pre-Priestly exodus story was originally a self-contained narrative with no connection to the patriarchal stories in Genesis. In order to maintain such a view, however, they must eliminate every reference to Genesis that was previously assigned to J, such as Exod 1:6, 8; 3:6, 15–16; and 4:5. Albertz, in particular, appeals to the 1977 study of the tradition-history of the Pentateuch by Rendtorff, particularly as it has to do with the patriarchal tradition and its relationship to the exodus from Egypt. 9 With regard to the land promise theme, he finds the distinction especially obvious in the promise of land to Moses in Exod 3:8 and quotes Rendtorff: “Das Land wird hier als unbekanntes Land eingeführt . . . mit keinem Wort wird erwähnt, daß die Väter schon lange in diesem Land gelebt haben und daß Gott es ihnen als ständigen Besitz für sie und ihre Nachkommen verheißen hat.” 10 This statement is, of course, completely contradicted in Exod 3:16–17, in which the deity gives the command to Moses: “Go and assemble the Elders of Israel and say to them, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 8.  Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist; Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist. 9. R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch, 65–70. It was not published in 1976 as Albertz states. 10.  Ibid., 66.

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and I promise that I will bring you up from the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” Of course, this parallels not only v. 8 but also vv. 6–7 as well. It is entirely arbitrary to select only part of the divine speech and not deal with the whole unit. Rendtorff can simply dismiss the remarks about the patriarchs as secondary redactional expansion, but that seems to me quite arbitrary. In the same way, Albertz treats all of the other connecting passages in Exod 1. However, does Exod 3:8 actually reflect a “Grundlegend” that has no connection with the patriarchs? The answer to this question is that it does indeed reflect a prior literary tradition, but not in the way that Rendtorff suggests. There are two components, that of the prior inhabitants of the land and the description of the land as “flowing with milk and honey.” They appear again in this combination in Exod 13:5 and 33:2–3 but also separately throughout J. 11 It is clear from all of these that J is using set literary clichés. The origin of the cliché of the “land flowing with milk and honey,” as a description of the promised land is Deuteronomy, as in 6:3b: “just as Yahweh, the God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey.” 12 In this and other instances (Deut 11:9; 26:15; 27:3; 31:20) it is firmly linked with the promise to the “fathers.” Consequently, it is entirely arbitrary to separate the description of the land from the promise to the fathers. However, in the case of Deuteronomy the “fathers” originally signified those who came out of Egypt, and not the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which means that all of the references to the three patriarchs in Deuteronomy are secondary. Thus, the connection between the promise of land and the “fathers” in Deuteronomy is entirely consistent. However, when J has Moses address the elders of the people with the message that Yahweh, the God of their fathers has appeared to him with the promise of deliverance and the gift of the promised land, then the “fathers” cannot refer to that generation but must refer to the forefathers. It was the Yahwist who took over this theme and terminology from Deuteronomy, but identified the “fathers” with the three patriarchs, and this resulted in the text that we have in Exod 3:6–8 and 16–17. This understanding of the internal development of the deuteronomic tradition I had already set out in 1972, 13 and it was further supported by Thomas Römer’s doctoral study, published in 1990. 14 The same applies to the list of nations in Exod 3:8 and 17 and their parallels in Deuteronomy. 15 When D makes use of the list 11.  With “milk and honey” only in Num 13:27; 14:8; and 16:13, 14. 12.  See also Deut 11:9; 26:9, 15; 27:3; 31:20; see also Josh 5:6. 13.  “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period;” see also my “So-Called Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch;” idem, Prologue to History, 215–45. 14.  Römer, Israels Väter. 15.  See also Exod 23:23, 28; 34:11; Num 13:29 and Deut 7:1; 20:17; see also Jos 1:4; 3:10.

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of nations it is quite specifically in connection with the conquest of the land and the nations that inhabit it. It seems obvious that J has made use of typical Deuteronomistic terminology. The reason why Rendtorff did not consider this is because at the time that he did his study he still believed that this basic narrative in Exodus was older than D. However, there is no basis for suggesting there is any such “Grundlegend” in Exodus that is earlier than Deuteronomy. Furthermore, we may well ask whether there was any tradition prior to Exodus that indicated how the Israelites got to Egypt in the first place, because in Exodus they are always recognized as “Israelites” or “Hebrews” as distinct from the native Egyptians. There is only one reference in Deuteronomy that answers this question about how the Israelites came to be in Egypt and that is in the little credo in Deut 26:5–9, which begins “A wandering Aramean (that is, a Bedouin) was my forefather and he went down to Egypt and he sojourned there, few in number.” This may be combined with the remark in Ezek 20:5–6: Thus says Lord Yahweh: “On the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the house of Jacob, revealing myself to them in the land of Egypt, I swore to them, saying: ‘I am Yahweh, your God.’ On that very day I vowed to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of lands.”

It would appear that Ezekiel was quite familiar with the tradition about the migration of the “house of Jacob” to Egypt and of the promise by Yahweh to this group to be brought out of Egypt and given a land “flowing with milk and honey” just as it is portrayed in the “little credo.” It is also this same deity Yahweh that revealed himself to these people as their God to the exclusion of the other deities of Egypt. It is hard to dispute the fact that it is this Dtr tradition that is also reflected in J’s exodus story, including its language and clichés, although it has been expanded by this author in many creative ways. The descent of Jacob and his family have already been dealt with in J by means of the Joseph story so that the Exodus story builds directly on this foundation as the explanation for why the Israelites are in Egypt. The transition in J is made in Exod 1:6–7*: “So Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation, but the descendants of Israel multiplied and became powerful (‫)רבו ויעצמו‬.” 16 This language is also used in vv. 9 and 20. This sequence of the family of Jacob increasing into a nation is also reflected in Deut 26:5b: “There [in Egypt] they became a great nation, powerful and numerous (‫)עצום ורב‬.” Furthermore, the little credo in Deut 26:6–8 follows with a sequence of events which refer to the harsh 16.  Verse 7 has obviously been embellished by P but the base text is easily restored. See Life of Moses, 19–20.

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treatment by the Egyptians, the appeal of the Israelites to Yahweh, the God of their fathers, and the deliverance by the deity with signs and wonders. Each of these themes is developed in the J account in great detail: (1) the hard labor imposed by the new Pharaoh and the efforts to control the size of the population; (2) the response of the deity to the cries of the people to the God of their fathers; (3) the rescue of the people by means of signs and wonders interpreted as a series of plagues. To this may be added the remark in Ezek 20:5 about a revelation to the Israelites in Egypt as “Yahweh, your God,” that is, the God of the house of Jacob, when he made the oath to them to deliver them from Egypt. This corresponds to J’s treatment of the revelation of the patriarchal deity in Exod 3–4 and the form that this event took. All of this constitutes the prior tradition that J used and developed in his own narrative. There is no need whatever to presuppose any other ancient exodus tradition. The little credo concludes with the simple statement about the deity bringing the people to the promised land, “flowing with milk and honey,” and this theme is greatly augmented by the rest of Deuteronomy. Ezekiel 20 also has a version of the wilderness journey, with emphasis on repeated disobedience, but ending with the deity bringing them into the promised land, “the land that I swore to give them” (v. 28). The whole sequence from the descent of the patriarchs into Egypt, their growth in Egypt from a few persons into a numerous people, their oppression by the Egyptians and rescue by the deity, their trek through the desert to the promised land were all part of the tradition that preceded J’s composition in Exodus. There is not one scrap of evidence, except the scholar’s own imagination, that suggests that this sequence was divided up into a number of separate blocks or pieces. This may be confirmed by the fact that Second Isaiah, a contemporary of the Yahwist, fully reflects all of the main features of the Yahwist composition, including the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, the exodus from Egypt and the Red Sea crossing, the wilderness journey and the entrance into the promised land. 17

The Beginning of the Exodus Composition Let us return to Albertz’s discussion of the problem of locating the beginning of the exodus story in its earliest form. 18 He rejects the earlier proposal of K. Schmid 19 that the story began with the account of the birth of Moses in Exod 2:1–10, and accepts my view that this birth story must have been preceded by the narrative about the midwives in Exod 1:15–21 as a failed effort at birth control of the Hebrews and the subsequent command to throw 17.  Van Seters, “The So-Called Deuteronomistic Redaction of the Pentateuch;” idem, “In the Babylonian Exile with J.” 18.  “Der Beginn,” 227–38. 19.  Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus, 152–53.

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every newborn Hebrew male into the Nile in v. 22. 20 There is no need to deal at length with Schmid’s proposal that the union within the “house of Levi” is meant to signify it as illegitimate and the motive for Moses being placed in the basket in the river. The reason for the remark that a male member of the “house of Levi” married a daughter of the same “household” is quite obvious. The phrase “house of Levi” means the descendants of the tribe of Levi, and the union had to be within that tribal group for the offspring, that is, Moses and Aaron, to be regarded as Levites. The more serious question, which Albertz does not ask, is: Where did this “house of Levi” come from? 21 The “household” (‫ )בית‬of each of the various tribes is mentioned in Exod 1:1–5 (P), but that would certainly not fit Albertz’s analysis of the beginning of the exodus story. The house of Joseph is suggested in Gen 50:22–23, which is attributed by Albertz to P. There is, at any rate no way to escape the obvious connection between the birth of Moses and the prior descent of the forefathers of all of the tribes into Egypt and their subsequent proliferation. The story of the midwives within the present context of the preceding remarks about the great proliferation and strength of the Israelites is often regarded as somewhat problematic because with only two midwives, as suggested in 1:15b, the numbers serviced by them could hardly be very great. So Albertz regards the story as only connected to the larger basic exodus tradition by means of the text in 1:20b–21a, inserted by a redactor (the usual method for solving all problems). 22 This, of course, solves nothing because the story makes no sense except as it relates to the Pharaoh’s attempt to control the Hebrew population. The problem of the number of midwives is entirely restricted to the inclusion of the two names in 1:15b, which could just as easily be viewed as a late gloss. There seems to be no other reason for mentioning them. In addition, one could also regard this process as beginning rather early in the Pharaoh’s reign and extending over a considerable period of time. In any event, one cannot be too rigorous with such stories. The language in 1:20b links it closely with that used in v. 9. Nevertheless, it is clear that the exodus story could not begin with the story of the midwives. This leads Alberz to consider the various options in the preceding non-P texts and he settles on v. 9 as the beginning. However, he has a problem because it is obvious that this cannot do without the introduction of the Pharaoh in v. 8. But v. 8 contains a reference to Joseph and 20. J. Van Seters, “The Patriarchs and the Exodus: Bridging the Gap between Two Origin Traditions,” in The Interpretation of Exodus: Studies in Honour of Cornelis Houtman (ed. R.  Roukema; Contri­butions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 44; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 7–10. Most of this earlier critique of Schmid’s study Albertz chooses to ignore when it also applies to his own work. 21.  The same question applies to the “house of Jacob” in Ezek 20:5. 22.  “Der Beginn,” 230.

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the preceding Joseph story, so he must consider it a later addition. Albertz argues that it is difficult to make a connection between v.  8 and v.  6, but in fact, as I have already shown above, v. 8 follows on v. 7 (without the P glosses). Albertz also insists that v. 6, with its mention, not only of Joseph but also of “all his brothers” presupposes the listing of all the brothers in vv. 1–5, but this is not the case at all. Verse 6 follows directly the unit in the J story in Gen 50. In 50:14–24, Joseph and “his brothers,” without naming the latter, are mentioned continuously several times. It is therefore most appropriate that the deaths of the brothers in v. 6 be mentioned along with that of Joseph. Furthermore, the “brothers” of Joseph in v. 24 are identified by their offspring in v. 25 as being the “sons of Israel,” and it is this same sequence that one finds between Joseph and his “brothers” in Exod 1:6 and the “sons of Israel” in v. 7. The continuity, therefore, between Gen 50:26 and Exod 1:6–7 is very close and it is the intrusion of P in Exod 1:1–5 that has interrupted this. 23 By contrast, P says nothing anywhere about the death of Joseph and his brothers but depends entirely on J for this information. How can a list of names of the members of Jacob’s household who entered Egypt in Exod 1:1–5 form any kind of transition between Genesis and Exodus? Furthermore, P is merely recapitulating in abbreviated form the list that he has already given in Gen 46:8–27, where it was appropriate to distinguish between those who came into Egypt and Joseph who was already in Egypt (vv. 20, 26–27). However, the same observation in Exod 1:5b, “Joseph was already in Egypt,” is now quite out of place in this context because the whole family has been in Egypt for many years, and Joseph and his brothers are now dying off. Instead of our much-too-easy solution, Albertz, following other text critics, must invent another non-P late hexateuchal redactor (HexR), who is responsible for Gen 50:24–26, for the addition of the references to Joseph in Exod 1:5b, the recapitulation of Joseph’s death in v. 6, and the further reference to Joseph in v. 8. 24 Of course, v. 8 contains the subject, the “new King,” 23.  Regarding the desperate attempts to introduce a number of P and non-P redactors between Gen 50:22–26 and Exod 1:1–5, as outlined in Albertz, “Der Beginn,” 232–36, I have dealt with this in other places, and will not repeat that discussion here. See my Life of Moses, 15–21; idem, “The Patriarchs and the Exodus,” in The Interpretation of Exodus, 1–15; idem, “The Report of the Yahwist’s Demise has been Greatly Exaggerated!” in A Fairwell to the Yahwist? (ed. T. Dozeman and K. Schmid; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 143–57. Cf. D. M. Carr, “What Is Required to Identify Pre-Priestly Narrative Connections between Genesis and Exodus? Some General Reflections and Specific Cases,” in Farewell to the Yahwist? (ed. T. Dozeman and K. Schmid; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 159–80. 24.  Albertz, “Der Beginn,” 235–36. Verse 1:1b is also a problem because of its reference to the prior descent into Egypt and seems therefore connected with v. 5b so it is also given to HexR. But v. 5a is also a problem for this view because it mentions the 70 persons, which also include Joseph who was in Egypt, in Gen 46:26–27. Perhaps the whole list in Gen 46:8–27 should also belong to this HexR.

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which is needed in order to understand v. 9, so he merely has the redactor transfer the subject from v. 9 to v. 8. It seems that there is almost nothing that a redactor cannot do. That such a skilful redactor can make all of these seamless connections is quite unbelievable. However, even this maneuver does not truly solve the problem, as Albertz admits. He must still find some prior reference to the great expansion of the people, and he suggests that somehow it has fallen out of the text, but in fact it is to be found in the text of v. 7, which has been obscured by P, as I have already shown above. The base text in v. 7, using the same language as in v. 9, belongs to J and it is P that has amplified it.  25 Even so, v. 7 (in the J form) also cannot be the beginning of the story. As the examples of the prior tradition in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel indicate, there has to be some explanation for the descent of the small group of forefathers into Egypt before the great proliferation of their numbers that leads to the crisis in these opening verses in Exodus.

The Construction of the Store Cities Pithom and Rameses The base text in Exod 1:9–12 which Albertz attributes to his Exodus redactor (REX)—there are no authors, only editors—is not considered by him as problematic, and he spends no time discussing its content. This is a little surprising, considering the fact that he acknowledges a connection between this unit and those of 2:11–15 and 5:1–21, reflected in the theme of the “burdens” (sblt) which the Pharaoh has imposed on the Israelites. For him, the connections are merely “redactional.” 26 Furthermore, in an earlier publication Albertz placed considerable importance on 1:11 as a secure basis for the antiquity of the Exodus tradition. He states regarding this tradition: However, one report is credible, namely that the Egyptians set the group [of Israelites] to build the “store cities Pithom and Ramses” . . . which probably went with the new residence in the eastern Delta constructed by the Ramessids in the middle of the thirteenth century. The view dominant in the earlier Exodus tradition in particular, that this was a group of workers conscripted to forced labour by the state (Ex. 1.11–14; 5:3–19), is indisputable, even if the detailed description of the social conflicts this involved are more stereotyped and probably arise from experiences of forced labour by Israelite groups under Solomon. 27 25.  Albertz (“Der Beginn,” 230–31) recognizes that within v. 7 there is the use of the verb ‫ עצם‬which is not characteristic of P, but he argues that P uses it here to tie his statement more closely to that of the non-P material in v. 9. But that is not very convincing. P could just as easily embellished v. 9 with his own terminology. It is P that has expanded the simple statement of J in v. 7 with his own terminology, and not with the terminology of v. 9. 26.  “Der Beginn,” 236–37. 27.  A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (vol. 1; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 44–45.

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If Albertz no longer believes that Exod 1:11 is the basis for the oldest Exodus tradition he should have addressed this issue, because it also affects the other closely related texts. Consequently, we must address the social and historical background reflected in the “store cities of Pithom and Rameses” and their literary parallel in 1 Kgs 9:15–21, because they have much to do with the dating of the formation of the Exodus tradition. In Exod 1:11, we are told that the Israelites were subjected to hard labor building the store cities of Pithom and Rameses. Contrary to Albertz, the more important of these two names for the present study is the reference to the city of Pithom. What we know from the archaeological excavations at Tell el Maskhuta (Pithom) by the University of Toronto expedition in the 1977–85 28 is that Pithom was built as a large city for the first time by Pharaoh Necho II about 600 b.c.e., so that any reference to the construction of this city must be later than this date. 29 The building of this city was directly related to Necho’s construction of the fresh water canal that went from the western branch of the Nile at Bubastis to Pithom where it emptied into Lake Timsah, which was at that time directly linked to the Red Sea. 30 The first phase of the city of Pithom was unfortified and was probably destroyed during an invasion into the eastern Delta by the Babylonians under Nebuchadrezzar II in 601 b.c.e. This led to the construction of a rectangular fortification wall enclosing the heart of the city, ca 200 meters by 250 meters, with a thickness of ca 9.5 meters. This great wall was built entirely of brick, as were the buildings that it enclosed. Pithom remained an important commercial and religious center down to Roman times. This massive building project was situated in the region of “Arabia” or Succoth, which was on the southern and eastern border of Goshen. It is likely that refugees from wars in Palestine, including Israelites and Judeans, but also others, inhabited this region of Goshen and were known to the Egyptians simply as “Hebrews.” 31 It seems reasonable to conclude that large numbers of these inhabitants were conscripted as corvée labor for this mas28.  I also participated in this excavation in 1978 and 81 as a field supervisor and associate director. The first preliminary report of the 1978–79 seasons appeared as J. S. Holladay, Cities of the Delta, vol. 3: Tell El-Maskhuta (ARCE Reports; Malibu, CA: Undena, 1982). The final report has not yet been published. 29.  See J. S. Holladay, “Maskhuta, Tell El-,” in ABD 4:588–92; J. Van Seters, “The Geography of the Exodus,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham; JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 255–76, esp. pp. 256–64. 30. See Herodotus 2:158. Herodotus also tells us that in the course of construction 120,000 persons lost their lives. 31.  See D. B. Redford, “The ‘Land of the Hebrews’ in Gen XL 15,” VT 15 (1965) 529–32. Redford points out that in the Saite period the term “land of the Hebrews (ʿybr)” meaning Palestine, was used along side of the “land of the Assyrians,” “the land of Amurru (Syria),” and the “land of Crete” (pp. 531–32). This usage persisted down to Roman times.

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sive project and memory of this survived among these groups for a long time. Another detail that is of interest in the J story that fits in well with this period is the portrayal of the Hebrew work force as serving under a system of foremen and Egyptian supervisors consisting of a highly organized construction project that involved the making of great quantities of bricks (Exod 5). This is precisely what one would expect to be the case with Necho’s construction projects. None of this is reflected in P, who regards the Israelites as more widely distributed among the Egyptians and subject to a variety of different forms of hard labor. The second city refers, of course, to Pi-Ramesses, which was originally built by Ramesses II as his capital, and, as is the case with Albertz, it has been the one that has received the most attention. Its ruins now lie under the modern town of Qantir, which is located on what was once the eastern branch of the Nile. 32 After the Ramesses dynasty came to an end the capital was moved to Tanis, but the city of Pi-Ramesses survived in a diminished state for many centuries. 33 However, the archaeological history of this site at Qantir is very difficult to establish because it is covered by a modern town and a cluster of small villages, as well as rich farm land and exploration of this site has been very slow. One thing that we can say about it is that it was situated on the northern portion of the region of Goshen and hence in the Joseph story Goshen is also known as the land of Rameses. 34 It has always been a fertile region, as it is today. It was located on the strategic route leading to the northeastern exit from Egypt and therefore like the eastern entrance to the Wadi Tumilat, vulnerable to attack and invasion from western Asia. It would not be surprising if the city of Rameses was fortified as well as Pithom. This threat from the northeast, and its relationship to the construction of these two cites seems to be reflected in the remarks made by the Pharaoh in Exod 1:10 about the possibility of attack in which the local population of Goshen might be inclined to side with the enemy. The reference to the Solomonic construction of store cities in 1 Kgs 9:15– 19 and the foreign workforce used for this construction in 9:20–21, to which Albertz also refers in the quotation above, provides another interesting parallel to the Exodus tradition. Albertz seems to suggest in his earlier study that this provides evidence for the literary construction of the tradition in the Solomonic period. Quite apart from the fact that the archaeological evidence can no longer support the notion of a massive construction of these cities by Solomon, 35 the reference to the five foreign peoples used by Solomon for the project as those who survived the initial conquest of the land by the 32.  Van Seters, “Geography of the Exodus,” 264–67. 33. D. B. Redford, “Exodus 1.11,” VT 13 (1963) 401–18. Redford points out that the shortened form of the name Rameses belongs to the Saite period (pp. 409–10). 34.  On Goshen, see my “Geography of the Exodus,” 267–69. 35. For a useful summary, see I. Finkelstein and N. S. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) 123–45.

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Israelites, makes it certain that we are dealing with the Deuteronomist as author of this unit. It seems quite clear that the author of the exodus tradition used this Deuteronomistic account of the construction of “store cities” by a foreign labor force who had also survived a massacre as a model for the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt. When this is taken together with the previous evidence regarding the city of Pithom, then it becomes clear that such a composition could not have been written before the late Exilic Period. Furthermore, it seems arbitrary to separate the unit in 1:9–12 from those in 2:11–15 and 5:1–21, because they all deal with the common theme of corvée labor and without 1:9–12, the other references would not make any sense. Consequently, there is no reason whatever to create a separate the block of texts that Albertz identifies as the Exodus tradition, and the notion of a redactor becomes entirely superfluous. It is all the work of a single author, the Yahwist, and this would agree with a time later than both the Exodus tradition in Deut 26:5–9 and in Ezek 20. The Priestly Writer, by contrast, pays no attention to the geography or these cities and does not refer to the Land of Goshen; nor does he have in mind the system of corvée for the construction of large public works. On the contrary, he suggests that the Israelites were widely distributed throughout the land, such that in his Passover narrative the houses of the Jews can only be identified by the mark of blood from the Passover lamb on the lintel and doorposts (Exod 12:7). P also regards the oppressed Israelites as engaged in a wide variety of tasks in addition to brick-making (1:14). Consequently, P’s version must be put much later in time then that of J.

The Story of Moses in Exodus 1:15–2:23aα and 4:19–20a In keeping with the notion that the pre-P Exodus composition was created by a redactor, Albertz identifies Exod 1:15–2:23aα + 4:19–20a as “eine politische Moseerzählung,” which the redactor has incorporated into his work. 36 However, the ending of such a Moses story is hardly appropriate for a political tale of a leader’s unexpected rise to power from a very threatened beginning, such as one finds in the Sargon Legend or Cyrus’s rise to power in Herodotus (I, 108–30). Moses is a religious leader, not a political figure comparable to a king, and his role goes far beyond the limits of this unit. It hardly represents a self-contained narrative and as such is not a story at all. The ending in 4:19–20a is most puzzling, because the deity, who has not been mentioned at all as known to Moses, suddenly issues him a command to return to Egypt, which he does for no apparent reason. Albertz overcomes these difficulties by simply indicating that the “redactor” used only a fragment of the original story to suit his own purposes. That seems like a rather desperate strategy for solving literary-critical problems. 36.  “Der Beginn,” 237–38.

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These story elements deserve some further comment. The focus in the past has been primarily on the parallel in the Sargon Legend because of the striking similarity between the exposure of the child Moses in a basket on the Nile from which he was rescued by the daughter of Pharaoh and the similar placing of the child Sargon in a reed ark in the Euphrates from which he was rescued by a humble drawer of water and reared by him, to eventually become a great king. Too much can be made of this comparison: (1) the birth story in the Sargon Legend is only a small part of a much larger composition, most of which has little similarity with the biblical story of Moses; (2) the motif of the exposed child who is rescued from death to become an important figure is very common in folklore, as D. B. Redford has shown in an article published many years ago. 37 Redford lists 32 examples of this motif. A number of these have to do with a certain stigma that is attached to the child who for this reason is exposed, only to be rescued to become a person of importance. The Sargon Legend belongs to this group. A second large group has to do with a prophecy of a child who will be born and whose destiny it is to overthrow or replace the present ruler. This leads to attempts by the present ruler to forestall such an eventuality by doing away with the child, but the latter escapes this fate by being exposed and then rescued, only to gain power over the realm in the end. An example of this is the Cyrus legend in Herodotus 1:108–130. A third small group is a variation of the second, in which the identity of the child who would be a threat to the king or realm is not known, and this leads to a larger massacre of children. But in spite of this the child escapes this fate. An example of this type is the story in Matthew’s Gospel (chap. 2), the massacre of the innocents by Herod. Redford also includes the story of Moses in Exod 2:1–10 in this group, but it fits this category rather poorly. The fact of the matter is that in some features, such as the child’s exposure, there are striking similarities with these stories, but in the primary motivation of the king to destroy the children, it fails rather badly. Instead, we have Moses as an exposed foundling rescued by the princess because she takes pity on the child, even though he is a Hebrew child, and she takes care to raise him as a Hebrew child with the child’s mother serving as his wet-nurse. This directly connects the birth episode with the theme of the attempt to eliminate all the male Hebrew offspring in 1:22. Moses is raised within the palace as her son and she gives him an Egyptian name, yet he remains a Hebrew and is conscious of it and it is never suggested that he is a direct threat to the throne. What this indicates is that this birth story has undergone a major modification of a common folklore motif in keeping with the larger context. 38 37.  D. B. Redford, “The Literary Motif of the Exposed Child (cf. Ex. ii 1–10),” Numen 14 (1967) 209–28. 38. Cf. Childs, The Book of Exodus, 8–12 for a useful review of the history of traditions of this episode. However, Childs is still operating under the older history of traditions ap-

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This likewise suggests that we reconsider the story of the Hebrew midwives in Exod 1:15–21. It must be said, at the outset, that this is a very odd narrative in its present form, because it was doomed to failure from the very start. Any midwife who killed the babies she delivered would very soon lose her livelihood, if not her life. And it could hardly be expected of all of them to cooperate in such an act. Perhaps that is why the number was reduced to just two. Furthermore, if it was just a matter of birth control, then the removal of the females would be much more effective. 39 The only context in which a specific royal command is given to an individual midwife to do away with a male child is in the case of a particular male child being regarded as a threat to the crown. That is comparable to the many cases in which the person ordered by the king or his representative to do away with the child exhibit’s compassion and spares the child’s life. It is just such a motif that is radically modified here in which the Egyptian king orders all of the Hebrew male babies to be killed by all the midwives and not a specific male child. The story motif of the exposure of Moses is not an ancient tradition but merely a means by which the author, J, was able to introduce the figure of Moses into the larger account of the oppression as the one who would ultimately deliver them. Once he is rescued from the river the genocide theme disappears completely. In fact, in subsequent episodes it is clear that Pharaoh does not want to lose his valuable work force. With the unit in 2:11–15, there is the initial aborted attempt by Moses to be the leader of his people to deal with “their burdens,” sbltm (v. 11), which picks up the theme of the oppression in 1:11 and anticipates the future role in 5:4–5. Moses, when acting on his own, is a complete failure and must flee the wrath of the Pharaoh and escape to the land of Midian. He is quite content to marry a local woman, raise a family and live the life of a shepherd. It has long been noted that the unit in 2:15b–22 has close parallels with the story of Jacob in Gen 29: 1. Jacob is in flight from his brother and he arrives in the land of the “Easterners,” (bny qdm) 2. He encounters shepherds there at a well and assists them in watering their flocks by removing the stone covering single-handed. 3. He meets Rachel, who has come with her sheep, tells her who he is, and she runs home and tells he father. 4. Laban goes to meet Jacob and invites him into family. He later marries Leah and Rachel, who bears him twelve sons and a daughter.

The episode in Exod 2:15b–22 follows a very similar pattern: 1. Moses flees to Land of Midian (east of Egypt). 40 proach of oral traditions. See also I. Willi-Plein, “Ort und literarische Funktion der Geburtsgeschichte der Moses,” VT 41 (1991) 110–18. 39. See Childs, Exodus, 11. 40. In the Gideon story ( Judg 6) the Bene-Qedem are closely associated with the Midianites.

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2. Moses also meets a group of shepherds, daughters of the priest of Midian, who have come to water their flocks. 3. A group of male shepherds try to drive the women away but Moses comes to their aid and they are able to water their flocks. 4. Moses is invited into the family circle and marries one of the seven daughters, who bears him two sons.

The similarity between the stories is obvious and is usually explained as two examples of a “stock scene,” derived from the oral level of the tradition. 41 However, there is a fundamental difference between the two stories. The episode in the Jacob story is much more highly developed as an introduction to an extended narrative about Jacob’s life and role within this new family circle, while the various elements in the Moses narrative are treated in a very cryptic fashion. The only part that receives more detailed narrative treatment is the scene between Reuel and his daughters, and this is probably in anticipation of the later reunion of Moses with his family and father-in-law in Exod 18. It seems entirely likely to me that the author of this unit simply borrowed the motif of the meeting at the well from the Jacob story, which is its more original setting, and in its present form is a work by the same author. In his treatment of this part of the Moses story (Exod 1:15–2:22), Albertz recognizes that it is incomplete, and so he adds 2:23aα, which mentions the death of the Pharaoh, and 4:19–20a, in which the deity informs Moses that all the men who were seeking to kill him are dead, and Moses proceeds to return with his family to Egypt. 42 Albertz admits that even this is not an adequate ending to the story, just as 1:15 is incomplete as the beginning of a separate block of tradition, so he suggests that REX has merely used fragments of the original for his own purposes. This is a very convenient solution, but looks like special pleading; furthermore, it is not without problems. First, prior to 4:19, in this reconstruction, there is no indication that Moses has any relationship to the deity Yahweh, so that 4:19 is very abrupt. Second, the death of Pharaoh accomplishes nothing because the plight of the Hebrews has not changed, and nothing in this reconstructed source has indicated that he can do anything about it. Both of these issues are addressed in 3:1–4:17. The question that we must ask about the basic traditional source in Albertz’s analysis is whether the troublesome texts in 2:23aα and 4:19–20a that refer to the death of the king and Moses’ return to Egypt actually belong to the narrative following 2:22? 43 Scholars have long regarded the unit in 2:23aβb–25 as belonging to P, but there is no reason to doubt that v. 23aα also belongs to this same unit, except for its apparent connection with 4:19. 41.  Childs, Book of Exodus, 31; R. C. Culley, Studies in the Structure of Biblical Narrative (Philadelphia: Fortress / Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976) 41–43. 42.  See also Blum, Studien zur Komposition der Pentateuch, 20–28. 43.  See also Childs, Book of Exodus, 93–95; W. H. Schmidt, Exodus (BKAT 2/1 NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1974–88) 208–15; Blum, Studien, 20–22.

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If we take 2:23–25 as a separate unit, this would mean that the natural continuation of 2:22 would be in 3:1 and the call narrative that follows. This narrative knows nothing about any death of the Pharaoh and the reasons given by the deity for Moses’ return to Egypt are entirely different. It assumes that the conditions in Egypt have not changed since the time of Moses’ departure. Furthermore, the instructions about Aaron coming to Moses’ aid in 4:14–16[18] are continued in 4:27, in which Aaron comes to meet Moses in Midian at the mountain of God and they depart from there together. This contradicts everything in 4:19–26, in which Moses returns to Egypt with his family prior to his return with Aaron and without his family. A number of solutions have been proposed, but none have found favor with everyone and perhaps never will. However, it is possible to identify certain assumptions that lie behind the various possibilities, and how they relate to the larger whole. Some scholars use the difference in the name of Moses’ father-in-law, Reuel (2:18), to separate the unit in 2:15–22 from 3:1; 4:18, which uses Jethro. But Exod 18, which seems to be strongly dependent on 2:15–22, uses the designation Jethro for Moses’ father-in-law repeatedly as the original name. Furthermore, the unit in Num 10:29–32, which probably went with Exod 18 originally, uses Hobab the son of Reuel, the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law. All of this suggests some later scribal glossing of the text and by itself cannot bear much weight as an argument for a different source. 44 Exod 18:3–4 seems to make a direct reference to the original naming of the two sons in 2:22, in which the second one has dropped out, but the two are still reflected in 4:20. Consequently, there is no reason why 2:22 could not be followed immediately by 3:1 and this makes the call narrative part of the same base text, the Yahwist. The older adherents of the Documentary Hypothesis put a great deal of weight on the divine name criterion, 45 especially as it had to do with the distinction between J and E. That no longer holds for scholars, such as Albertz, and is not our concern in this present study. Nevertheless, the use of the divine name is still made to apply fairly strictly in the case of P and non-P texts. In my view, this distinction should not be the only or decisive criterion for identifying sources. This is particularly important for the texts in 4:19–26, which seem to interrupt the J text and for that reason be viewed as secondary. Whenever the divine name is mentioned in dialogue with Moses in this unit it is always Yahweh that is used. Now we may set aside the episode in 4:24–26 as a separate addition or interpolation that has little close relationship with either J or P in the larger narrative. The rest, however, can with little difficulty be taken as belonging to the same source. 44. See Winnett, Mosaic Tradition, 62–68. Winnett points out that Jud 4:11 refers to the Kenite “Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, which reflects still further confusion on this matter. 45.  Schmidt, Exodus, 106–10. Cf. Van Seters, Exodus, 35–63.

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If, as I argued above, 2:23–25 belongs to P, including v. 23aα, then 4:19–20 must also belong to P. The reference to the “rod of God” v. 20b is certainly a strong indication of P, and scholars have often invoked a P redactor to account for it as an interpolation. The divine speech in vv. 21–23 also betrays distinctive P language. This can be seen in its characterization of the anticipated plagues as “miracles” (mōpētîm), just as we have it in 7:3, 9; 11:9–10. Moses and Aaron are given explicit power to perform these miracles (4:21, 7:9; 11:10). In J it is always the deity that brings the plague, and not Moses, who simply announces it. The theme of the deity hardening Pharaoh’s heart (using ḥzq in Hiphil), in 4:21b is typical of P, as in 7:3 and 11:10b, whereas J consistently speaks of Pharaoh himself becoming obstinate (kbd). 46 Only in the final stage does Yahweh harden Pharaoh’s heart, in 10:1 (kbd in Hiphil) and in 10:27 (ḥzq using Piel). 47 Furthermore, the oracle in 4:22–23 is a direct anticipation of the final plague. The major stumbling block to accepting any of these texts in 4:19–23 as P is the use of the divine name Yahweh. Schmidt seeks to overcome this difficulty by attributing vv. 21–23 at least to a Priestly redactor, 48 but if the redactor could use the divine name Yahweh, then why is the redactor “Priestly”? Why was such an “editorial” intervention into the text even necessary? The clue to the solution of this intervention by P, in fact, lies in a statement in 4:19, which specifies that this was the speech that was given to Moses in Midian, in contrast to his later speech in Egypt. There is simply no other reason for drawing attention to this location. At the same time the two speeches in vv. 19–23 must assume the previous narrative about Moses in J, including the revelation at Sinai in which Moses is informed of the deity’s identity as Yahweh. Consequently, there is no longer any need for P to use the generic term Elohim in the deity’s speech with Moses. P certainly could not alternate different terms for the deity with the same person, even if he reserved the explanation for the change until the later speech in Exod 6:2–3. It should also be noted that P anticipated his identity of the patriarchal deity El Shaddai with Yahweh by introducing the deity’s speech to Abraham in Gen 17:1: “Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai,” as if to make quite certain of the identity of El Shaddai with Yahweh.

Exodus 3:1–4:17 There is no problem with the unity of Exod 3:1–4:17 and its attribution to a single author, in my case to J, 49 unless one follows Albertz and others in 46.  Exod 7:14; 8:11[15], 28[32]; 9:7, 34. 47.  It is possible that P has modified this text or has inserted it here, since he consistently uses ḥzq whereas J always uses kbd in the other texts. It would also appear that P attributes this final hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to the grand design of the deity from the beginning. 48.  Schmidt, Exodus, 211–12. 49.  Van Seters, Life of Moses, 35–63.

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assigning the references to the patriarchs in the non-P portions of chap. 1 to a later redaction. Because I have already shown above my reasons for not doing so, and because I have also argued that the whole corpus of J in Genesis with its patriarchal promises belongs to a post-D Exilic Period, there is little reason to engage in a detailed critique of this discussion. Albertz admits as much, 50 but places considerable weight on the study of Thomas Römer, so perhaps we can briefly consider that position here. Albertz accepts the position of Römer that, contrary to some recent scholars, it is not the whole of Exod 3–4 that is later than P but only those texts that are dependent on Yahweh as the God of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which are then attributed to a post-P Hexateuch redactor. 51 The argument rests on a very slim basis. It is observed that the P text of Exod 6:2–8 has a close relationship to Ezek 20:5–6 in two respects: (1) Yahweh reveals himself to the “house of Jacob” in Egypt and (2) he swears to rescue them and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. There is no indication of a prior oath to the patriarchs. It is clear and undisputed that P follows this same scheme in Exod 6:2–8 (1) by revealing himself as Yahweh to Moses and thus to the Israelites as the God of the covenant, vv. 2–4 and (2) by rescuing them from the Egyptians and giving them the land that he swore to give their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In a comparative study of these two texts, Johan Lust has made the case that P is heavily dependent on Ezekiel, but P has modified his source in two significant respects. 52 First, he has gone to considerable lengths to identify the God revealed as Yahweh at the time of the exodus with the God of the Patriarchs, and he has changed the recipients of the land promise from the generation who came out of Egypt to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All this is clear, and yet there is one further observation which takes us back to P’s covenant in Gen 17. Throughout the whole lengthy discussion regarding the covenant, there is only one verse (v. 8), which mentions the gift of the land, as though that topic has been covered elsewhere in the text, although not previously in P, and it is not repeated in the P portion of the Abraham story. The land is never directly promised to Isaac (cf. 28:4 with a very oblique reference), and in P’s version of God’s revelation to Jacob at Bethel, there is also a brief statement of the land promise in 36:12, which is obviously built on J’s Bethel revelation in Gen 28:10–22. It seems abundantly clear that the promise to “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” originates in J. The whole point of the P text in Exod 6:2–8 is to reconcile the statements 50.  “Der Beginn,” 238–39. 51.  T. C. Römer, “Exodus 3–4 und die actuelle Pentateuchdiskussion,” in The Interpretation of Exodus . . . in Honour of Cornelis Houtman (ed. R. Roukema; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 69–70. 52. J. Lust, “Exodus 6,2–8 and Ezekiel,” in Studies in the Book of Exodus: Redaction—Reception—Interpretation (ed. M. Vervenne; BETL 126; Leuven: Peeters, 1996) 209–24.

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in Ezek 20:4–5 with the presentation in J’s covenant to Abraham in Gen 15:7–21, 53 repeated to Isaac in 26:2–5, and again to Jacob in 28:13–17. I can see no reason whatever for attributing to P priority in the use of the promises to the three patriarchs over their occurrence in Exod 3–4.

“Let My People Go!” The Opening Salvo (5:1–6:1) If one brackets the P addition in Exod 6:2–7:13, then the continuity between 6:1 and what follows in 7:14 is quite clear and strongly suggests that the unit in 5:1–6:1 should be understood in close relationship to the plague narratives. But this is often not the case in recent literary analysis, as is seen in the study of Albertz, who wants to identify an old tradition behind this chapter that was only secondarily integrated into the larger whole in two stages. This effort by so many scholars at picking the unit apart has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the whole point of the author’s narrative. There is no point in reviewing all of the earlier proposals for and against the unity of this chapter, 54 but one typical example is perhaps instructive, as it seems to have influenced Albertz’s quest for an older tradition behind the present chapter. F. Crüsemann made the suggestion that what we have portrayed in this chapter is the social history of the Solomonic era with its institution of corvée labor in remarkable detail such that for him the author, J, could be accurately dated to the Solomonic age. He even went so far as to suggest that J was written as a protest against the Solomonic monarchy. 55 With the demise of J or at least the Solomonic date for J, efforts have been made to retain, in some vague way, an older tradition about such an experience of oppression within this chapter. However, as indicated above, the biblical portrayal of the Solomonic age has been completely discredited by archaeology, and the language of the account in 1 Kgs 9:15–22 is that of Dtr, so that any influence on the text of Exod 5 would have to be post-Dtr, that is, the late Exilic Period. Furthermore, Crüsemann overlooked the fact that in the Solomonic description of the building activity in 1 Kgs 5:27–32[13–18] the temple and palace were built of stone and wood, not brick, and this was typical for major public buildings and walls in the whole Palestinian region during the monarchies. In Babylonia, by contrast, the primary medium for construction of large buildings 53.  This is not the place to argue at length over the dating of Gen 15. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the notion of a migration from Ur of the Chaldeans, at the urging of a deity, to Palestine via Harran has a strong parallel in the migration of Nabonidus, a Chaldean and devotee of the god Sin of Ur, who migrated from Babylonia to Harran and then to the desert oases of Teima to establish a second capital and temple to Sin there. Such a connection would make no sense in the late Persian period. Furthermore, this migration of Abraham seems to be clearly reflected in J’s contemporary, Second Isaiah, in Isa 41:8–9. See my Abraham in History and Tradition, 23–26, 263–69. 54. See my earlier treatment in Life of Moses, 70–76. 55.  Crüsemann, Der Widerstand gegen das Königtum, 175–77.

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was brick. In Egypt, stone was used for the building of walls and buildings at Pi-Rameses, the capital of Ramesses, and much of it was reused for the building of Tanis by the 22nd Dynasty. However, in Pithom bricks were used in constructing large buildings and the great wall, as suggested earlier. The description in Exod 5, therefore, fits only one time-frame, that of the Exilic Period, reflecting building operations in both Babylonia and Egypt during that period, and no alternative has been proposed. Efforts to see a redactional modification in the unit 5:1–6:1 have been focused at the beginning (5:1–2) and the end (5:22–6:1). The challenge by Moses and Aaron, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go that they may hold a pilgrimage festival to me in the desert,’” is in the form of a typical prophetic utterance and is repeated with the same basic injunction later in the plague narratives, 56 and thus marks the beginning of this series. 57 Nevertheless, Albertz, following a number of scholars, points to the distinction between Yahweh as “the God of Israel” in 5:1 and “the God of the Hebrews” in v. 3. Because the title “God of Israel” is viewed as a Dtr designation, 58 it is assigned by Albertz to his redactor REX who belongs to the late Exilic Period. Albertz, likewise points out that the designation “God of the Hebrews” is used frequently in the plague narratives so that they are closely related to this “earlier” level of the narrative in 5:3–21. 59 However, against this suggestion is the fact that the phrase “God of the Hebrews” in the Plague narratives always appears within the framework of the prophetic speech formula replacing “God of Israel” with “God of the Hebrews,” yielding the new formula: “Thus says Yahweh, God of the Hebrews.” Consequently, it is clear that we are, in fact, dealing with the same author in 5:1 and 3, so that there must be another reason for this distinction in the two designations for deity. The reason for the shift in identity from “Israel” to the “Hebrews” is made clear in v. 2 by the question posed by Pharaoh, “Who is Yahweh, that I should heed his request and let Israel go?” The name Israel for the people of God is an ideological term that does not have reference to any political or social entity to which the Pharaoh can relate it. The kingdom of Israel belongs to the distant past so that the name Israel refers to a form of religious self-identity about which the Pharaoh can know nothing. His dealings are only with the group of foreign workers known as Hebrews. So Pharaoh denies the request and the deity who demanded it, and for this 56.  Exod 7:17, 26[8:1]; 8:16[20]; 9:1, 13; 11:4. 57. See Childs, Exodus, 105. 58. See Albertz, “Der Beginn,” 255, where he cites Josh 7:13, 19, 20; 8:30. 59.  Albertz’s proposal (“Der Beginn,” 253) that the author of the plague narratives was the one who knew of the earlier narrative in 5:3–19 and was the one who used it as an introduction to his stories, using some of the same language, such as the “God of the Hebrews,” in his plague accounts. He also is responsible, as redactor(?) for adding the connections in 5:20–21 to the earlier account, much as his later redactor did with 5:22–6:1. This suggestion completely ignores the connections of 5:1–2 with the plagues story as indicated above.

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reason Moses and Aaron now use the term the “God of the Hebrews.” Its use extends to all negotiations with the Pharaoh throughout J’s account of the plague narratives. Furthermore, the plagues constitute a long and painful process by which Pharaoh finally comes to recognize Yahweh and the “people of Israel” Exod 12:31–32. This theme is basic to the whole narrative of the plague account in J and cannot be relegated to a redactor. Concerning the ending of this first encounter with Pharaoh in 5:22–6:1, Albertz feels that the connection of vv. 22–6:1 with what precedes it in v. 21 and follows it in 7:14 is rather weak and prefers a direct connection between v.  21 and 7:14 as the original, with 5:22–6:1 as secondary. 60 I can see no merit in this much more abrupt transition. It is Moses who has carried out the mission given to him by the deity under considerable protest, in Exod 3–4, and the result has been a complete failure and he has been vilified by his own people. The model here is obviously the prophet Jeremiah, and like Jeremiah Moses makes his complaint. The remark that Moses “returned” (šwb) to Yahweh does not refer to a location on Sinai but to the prior dialogue with the deity in which he protested the calling and accuses the deity of complete failure. At the same time his appeal to Yahweh is an act of intercession on the people’s behalf. It is this shift to the new role of Moses as intercessor that is most significant in establishing continuities with the rest of J’s Moses story. 61

Conclusion What are we to make of this “new” methodology of the post–Documentary Hypothesis era, in which a number of tradition fragments of undetermined date were combined and augmented by a series of redactors to produce the present product? First, this method is presented in tacit disregard for the alternative modification of the Documentary Hypothesis presented here, which argues for a single pre-Priestly author, the Yahwist, writing within the genre of antiquarian history of the people’s origins and living within a particular sociohistorical environment—that of the Judean exiles in Babylon. J’s concern with the cult and priesthood is minimal because for those who were not priests that was not part of their life in a foreign land. Apart from a few annual festivals that could be observed in a very simple way, there were no temple, no sacrifices, and no functioning priesthood. Within these chapters in Exod 1–5, the author sets out to tell the story of the people’s sojourn in Egypt, expanding on the tradition reflected in Deut 26:5–9 and Ezek 20, using popular folktales, such as the theme of the 60.  Ibid., 256. 61. E. Aurelius, Die Fürbitter Israels. Eine Studie zum Mosebild im Alten Testament (ConBOT 27; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1988) 160–67; F. Ahuis, Der klagende Gerichtsprophet: Studien zur Klage in der Überlieferung von den alttestamentlichen Gerightspropheten (CTM 12; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1982) 52; Childs, Exodus, 106–7; Van Seters, Life of Moses, 75–76.

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exposed child who becomes a figure of destiny. In addition, the author lived within a community of foreign deportees in Babylon. The Babylonian rulers, as well as their Saite counterparts in Egypt, used foreign exiles as conscripts for corvée labor in their large building projects, so J could be writing from the personal experience of his own community. Having previously developed the promises of nationhood and land to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis, J looks back in Exod 1–5 to these promises to the fathers as a message of hope for the future. It is no wonder that Second Isaiah, the prophet of hope to the exiles, uses these themes by the Yahwist: patriarchal promises (41:8–10; 51:1–2; 54:1–3); the exodus from Egypt (52:11–12), and the wilderness journey (41:17–20), as the basis of his message to his Judean contemporaries in Babylon. 62 One has no difficulty reading J’s narrative, as reconstructed above, 63 as following in direct continuity with Gen 50:26 and preceding Exod 7:14, the beginning of the plagues. By contrast, the pieces of narrative attributed to P 64 do not form a consistent narrative but are all interpolations into the text and depend entirely on their context within the earlier source for their comprehension. Nevertheless, P too should be understood, not as a redactor or editor, but as the author of these interpolations with his own vocabulary, designs and theological program in the revision and modification of J’s text. By comparison with this view, the alternative “new” methodology has no author and therefore no story to tell, only editors. They belong to no particular age or sociohistorical context; they are in a very vague way part of two broad theological orientations, viewed as either Deuteronomistic or Priestly, that span very long periods of time. They edit by interpolating into the text, sometimes large blocks of material, at other times only single words or sentences, or they change the wording of the older account to suit their prejudices. By all the standards of editorial principles from ancient Greece to modern times, these changes in the text should all be characterized as textual corruptions. Furthermore, the pieces being combined by these editors are seldom if ever complete: “Keine dieser Vorlagen ist vollständig erhalten.” 65 Adopting this principle allows for endless fragmentation. These pieces are not just motifs or themes from folktales that could be used by an author ( J), but are treated by this method as though they were mere fragments originally derived from finished literary compositions. The end result of this redaction criticism is not to recover a work of ancient literature by a particular author, and therefore the text cannot be treated as such. The German term for this method, Redaktionsgeschichte, should presumably be rendered in English by “editorial history,” but that is 62. See my “In the Babylonian Exile with J,” 71–89. 63.  Exod 1:6, 7*, 8–22; 2:1–22; 3:1–4:18, 27–31; 5:1–6:1. 64.  Exod 1:1–5, 13–14; 2:23–25; 4:19–23; 6:2–7:13. 65.  “Der Beginn,” 259.

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a term applied by textual criticism to identifying textual corruptions in the manuscript history of the text, which is quite the opposite to what German scholars intend. How then are we to offer a coherent interpretation of all the bits and pieces of this Redaktionsgeschichte? This presumably is the whole point of the critical study of the text. Are we to view the history of the text as a process to a final canonical form of the text and subject it to some postmodernist or theological hermeneutic without further regard for the results of critical study? Or are we to focus on its “reception” history, which in early Judaism and Christianity almost always meant interpreting the text in bits and pieces? A notable exception was Josephus, who treated the Pentateuch and historical books as antiquarian history on the model of Dionysius’s Antiquities of Rome, and on that basis understood the coherence of the whole. The Yahwist’s narrative was indeed an early form of that genre of ancient historiography and the chapters Exod 1–5 are a part of that larger literary work.

Chapter 18

The Itinerary from Egypt to the Jordan River: A Study in J’s Historiography Introduction In the mid-20th century, there were two prominent German models for the development of the Pentateuch, at least in its early non-P stage. The one by G. von Rad was to view the Yahwist as a historian of the origins of Israel from Genesis to Joshua (a Hexateuch), based on the deuteronomic model of a Heilsgeschichte. 1 He understood this historian ( J) as making use of various earlier traditions in writing Genesis and incorporating a separate Sinai-Law tradition into the story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, but the work thus produced was a continuous narrative from beginning to end before any additions were made by the Priestly Writer. Unlike von Rad, Martin Noth developed a quite different model of composition, consisting of blocks of tradition that reflected distinct bodies of early preliterate traditions with very limited coherence between them which were collected in the earliest stages of Israelite literacy. 2 Both of these pentateuchal models by von Rad and Noth worked within the current Documentary Hypothesis and when this literary theory came under attack in the mid-70s, the result was a crisis in method. 3 The basis of the attack was twofold: (1) to date, the Yahwistic corpus to a post-D period and therefore undermine Noth’s scheme of the gradual preliterary accumulation of the Yahwistic corpus; (2) to reject the notion of one or more redactors and to view the Pentateuch as a series of stages in a supplemental growth of the Pentateuch attached to the Dtr corpus. 1.  Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs (1938); idem, Old Testament Theology, vol.1 (1962) 49. 2.  Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch (1948). 3. J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (1975); H. H. Schmid, Der sogennante Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung (1976); R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (1977). See also Van Seters, “Recent Studies on the Pentateuch: A Crisis in Method,” JAOS 99 (1980) 163–73.

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The result of this revolution in pentateuchal studies has led to two antithetical approaches. The one is to redate von Rad’s Yahwist as historian to a more appropriate date and try to understand his relationship to the preexisting DtrH, as well as to view the P corpus as a later expansion of J. The other approach is to give up on any J and revive Noth’s block model in another form, as well as to retain and indeed proliferate the use of redactors to explain how all of the bits and pieces of these “blocks” came together. Leaving aside the relationship of J in Genesis to what follows in Exodus as a separate issue and not relevant for the purposes of this study, the tradition about Israel’s origins in Egypt, their journey across the desert and their conquest of the promised land, all of these must be regarded as earlier than J or P because they are reflected in Deuteronomy (especially in the “little credo” of Deut 26:5–9) and in the account of Ezek 20. What is clear from Ezek 20 is that there is a desert journey which contains both the giving of laws and frequent acts of disobedience that bridges the departure from Egypt and the arrival in the promised land. Yet there is no Horeb/Sinai tradition in Ezekiel, which must be a secondary development, nor is there anything about the establishment of a tabernacle, a Priestly cultus, and ceremonial laws, even though Ezekiel clearly stands within the tradition of the Jerusalem priesthood. 4 In direct contrast to this “block” approach inherited from Noth, which splits the J corpus in Exodus–Numbers into many literary pieces, I believe that the suggestion of von Rad that the Yahwist was a historian has great merit and can be made to fit a much later period better than the one that he proposed. But it seems to me that the only way to decide between these two models is to discuss specific examples of features in the text and then to decide which pntateuchal model best accounts for them. This can be illustrated by means of a comparison of travel itineraries in J and P. 5

4.  This calls into question the recent tendency in pentateuchal studies to regard the literary development of the exodus story as extending in its early stages from the divine rescue in Egypt to their receiving the laws at Sinai, including the building of the tabernacle and the reception of the bulk of Priestly legislation as a completed literary corpus. According to this view it was only by means of a secondary extension of this work to include the wilderness tradition and the conquest of the land in a series of non-P and P additions that the present form of the Pentateuch/Hexateuch came about. Not only does this fly in the face of all of the non-pentateuchal evidence to the contrary, but it splits up both the non-P ( J) and P sources into numerous little pieces with no literary coherence. 5.  Van Seters, The Life of Moses, 153–64. See also G. W. Coats, “The Wilderness Itinerary,” CBQ 34 (1972) 135–52; G. I. Davies, The Way of the Wilderness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); idem, “The Wilderness Itineraries and the Composition of the Pentateuch,” VT 23 (1983) 1–13. It should be noted that both Coats and Davies emphasize the unified nature of the itinerary notices as part of a continuous series so that, with only a few exceptions they all belong to the same author. An earlier study of the Pentateuch itineraries may be found in Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition, 70–120. Although belonging to an older period of pentateuchal studies it contains many original and useful observations.

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The Use of Itineraries in Ancient Historiography Before we begin to examine itineraries in the Pentateuch it would be helpful to consider some examples in a few literary texts of the ancient world. It may be noted that itineraries are a common literary device used in Greek historiography, especially when it comes to the descriptions of military campaigns in those histories. A notable example of this is Xenophon’s Anabasis, in which he traces the route, in book one, of the march of Cyrus the younger and his army from Sardis in western Asia Minor eastward, all the way across Asia Minor and northern Syria to the Euphrates and down the Euphrates to the fateful battle field just north of the city of Babylon. Xenophon names both the larger regions through which they passed, that is, Lydia, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Cilicia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as well as the particular cities within these regions, and the number of stages and distances between them. At some locations, he mentions the time spent at the site and any significant event that took place there relating to their march. At others he cites a mythical or historical anecdote that took place at the site. It would appear from this that Xenophon is following a well established narrative tradition of combining the itinerary with the orderly presentation of events. This also agrees with the earlier extensive use of itineraries in Mesopotamia for a variety of purposes, but in particular in Assyrian royal inscriptions that feature military campaigns. 6 They can also be used as a structural device in finely crafted literary works such as Sargon II’s “letter to the god” in the late 8th century b.c.e. 7 As Oppenheim points out, the work is divided into 15 sections: “Twelve of the sections begin with the same phrase and even with the same word (ultu ‘from’): ‘I moved from GN and reached GN2′, and thus they are clearly meant to indicate the stages of a campaign. Most of them are just stereotyped as to their content: they mention cities, rulers, mountains, and countries without giving much detail; monotonously they report on victories and destructions.” 8 After the first four stereotyped stages, there is a major break dealing with the decisive battle in the campaign. This is followed by eight more itinerary stages and then a final lengthy section that deals with a crisis whose successful resolution forms the climax of the whole expedition. My purpose is not to point out the literary merits of this late 8thcentury b.c.e. work, but merely to call attention to the skillful use of itinerary as a literary device for structuring the narrative by a single gifted author. Itineraries are also common in Greek archaic or antiquarian historiography, which deal with the migration of the ancestors from one region to 6.  For a survey of the comparative material see Davies, Way of the Wilderness, 52–78. 7.  See A. L. Oppenheim, “The City of Assur in 714 b.c.,” JNES 19 (1960) 133–47; Van Seters, In Search of History, 64–66. For a translation of the text, see D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (vol. 2; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927) 73–99. 8.  “City of Assur,” 134.

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another, and in this form they are often associated with etiologies of place names. 9 This is the form that itineraries take in J in Genesis. 10 In Exodus– Numbers, J combines the genre of military itineraries with his archaic interest in the migration of the Israelites from Egypt and etiologies of place-names.

Migration out of Egypt We turn now to J’s itinerary from Egypt to the Land of Canaan as both an origin story of migration and a military conquest, a combination that was very common in antiquity. Indeed, population migrations during every period of human history frequently resulted in warfare between the migrating group and the inhabitants of the region to which they were moving. The first itinerary notices in Exod 12:37 and 13:20 are embedded in larger narratives (12:37–39; 13:17–22) that explain the nature of this migration out of Egypt. The first of these units begins in Exod 12:37a with the typical itinerary notice: “The Israelites traveled from Rameses towards Succoth.” It should be recognized that Rameses (Qantir) is the major city of the region of Goshen, so it is quite reasonable for the author to use it as a marker for the beginning of the journey. 11 (See fig. 1.) Nothing in the narrative indicates that Rameses was the capital city of the Pharaoh and in the time of J it certainly was not. Nevertheless, it was still a city of some significance. The reference to Succoth can be understood as either the name of the region in the eastern Wadi Tumeilat, or it can refer to the principle city of that region (Tell el-Maskhuta), which also went by its religious name, Pithom. 12 What is intended in 12:37b (“about 600,000 men on foot besides women and children”) is not an enumeration of the Israelite inhabitants of Goshen, but a description of the migration of an entire population of the future people or state. It is this people of Israel that will inhabit all the tribal regions in Transjordan and Palestine and the migration has this conquest and settlement in view. There is a curious remark in 12:38 about a group called ʿēreb who are said to have accompanied the Israelites and this is often rendered as a kind of non-Israelite mob (“mixed hoard”) but this is a rather wild guess with little support. 13 The term ʿēreb almost certainly means “Arabs,” and in fact the 9. See Dionysius, The Antiquities of Rome; E. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome; Van Seters, Prologue to History, 211–12; idem, “Is There Any Historiography in the Hebrew Bible? A Hebrew-Greek Comparison,” JNSL 28 (2002) 1–25. See pp. 143–163. 10.  Van Seters, Prologue to History, 199–200, 209–12. 11.  Note that in Gen 47:11 Goshen is called “the Land of Rameses.” 12.  For a discussion of the geography of the region and the reconstruction of the map see my “Geography of the Exodus,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham; JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 255–76. 13.  The term is used in Jer 25:20; 50:37; Ezek 30:5, all in military contexts where they could be understood as mercenaries or support troops of Bedouin warriors. In Ezek 30:5 the term is frequently rendered as “Arabs” and closely allied with Egypt.

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Figure 1.  Map of the eastern delta. region of Goshen was adjacent to, or part of, the province or nome of Arabia. There is a very long history in Egyptian antiquity, and down to the present day, of Bedouin with all of their animals traveling into and out of this eastern region through the Wadi Tumeilat, and even today these Bedouin are called ʿarab by the local farmers and villagers. It is also likely that the text intends us to understand that the animals belonging to the Bedouin, served as a source of supplies for the Israelites. Indeed, it was often the case that large armies on the move in antiquity had to rely on just such a source of supplies

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from Bedouin, especially in regions without much vegetation. That is the only understanding of the term that makes sense in this context. In Exod 12:39, we have a detail given within the context of this itinerary notice about the need for eating unleavened bread at the outset of the journey which provides an etiology for this practice in 13:4–10 as a constant annual commemoration of their departure from Egypt. To this is added in 13:11–16 a further obligation having to do with the redemption of the firstborn males by sacrifice as another way of remembering their deliverance from Egypt. After this interruption, the itinerary continues in 13:17–18 with an explanation of why God did not permit them to take the more direct route out of Egypt from Rameses along the coastal road to the Land of the Philistines, lest they immediately encounter hostility and turn back. So, instead, Yahweh led (‫ )נחה‬the people south along the eastern branch of the Nile and then up the Wadi Tumeilat, on the desert route toward the Red Sea (Yam Suph), which was in fact Lake Timsah. At this time in antiquity, the Red Sea extended all the way north through the Bitter Lakes to Lake Timsah and as far west into the Wadi Tumeilat as Tell el Maskhuta (Pithom). 14 The itinerary also adds the curious remark in v. 18b that the people went on their way “armed for battle” (‫)חמשים‬. This has puzzled scholars because it seems inappropriate, given their previous circumstances and the fact that they were moving away from any confrontation, either with the Philistines or the Egyptians; so some have attempted other renderings. However, the other occurrences of this term all suggest that it has to do with preparation for battle. 15 Massive migrations, such as envisaged here, invariably had this militaristic character to them. Furthermore, the occurrence of military terminology here lies in the fact that the genre of such itineraries derives from its regular use in reports of military campaigns, and this is the ultimate goal of their journey. As we shall see, this genre of the itinerary accounts for other militaristic features as well. The next leg of the itinerary in 13:20 is said to be from Succoth to Etham “on the edge of the desert,” which is somewhat confusing because the desert is only a short distance from both the northern and southern side of the eastern half of the Wadi Tumeilat. The route through the Wadi Tumeilat is itself called “the desert road” (v.  18), which ends at the Red Sea (Yam Suph). Necho’s fresh-water canal ran roughly east and west through the Wadi 14.  Van Seters, “Geography,” 256–64; idem, Life of Moses, 128–31. Pithom (Succoth) was only first built in the Saite period ca. 600 b.c.e. by Necho II in conjunction with the construction of a fresh water canal from the eastern branch of the Nile to Pithom and then on to the Red Sea (Lake Timsah). 15.  Num 32:17; Josh 1:14; 4:12; Jud 7:11. See also my Life of Moses, 144. There is a direct parallel between the crossing of the Jordan and the crossing of the Red Sea, and in the former case it is stressed that the fighting men of the eastern tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh were all present, “equipped for battle.”

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Tumeilat on the south side of ancient Succoth and into Lake Timsah. This means that the route from Succoth runs along the north side of the canal and then around the north side of Lake Timsah, the location of the city of Ismailiya today, and links up with the tract through the Sinai desert beyond. Etham should probably be located roughly at Ismailiya, a large flat marshy region even today. This, in J, then becomes the location of the deliverance at the sea that follows. 16 The Yahwist returns to the important theme of divine guidance in 13:21– 22 to explain about how Yahweh led (‫ )נחה‬the people on their journey from Rameses. He states that the deity did this by means of a theophany, in the form of a column of cloud by day and fire by night, which led them (‫)נחה‬. This theme of the column of cloud and fire as a vanguard theophany is expanded in the following episode of the encounter with the Egyptians at the sea into a form of protection from the enemy and eventually the Egyptians’ complete defeat (14:19–20, 24). Furthermore, the theophany is also identified with the “angel” of God and with the deity himself. The ingenuity of scholars to attempt to split all of these different expressions of divine guidance, protection and assistance into difference sources or redactions is not helpful. They are all intended as different expressions of the same reality and are used quite consistently in this combined way throughout J. 17 The important point here is that in Mesopotamian texts dealing with military campaigns, closely associated with the itinerary is the theme of a vanguard theophany, which leads the army and terrifies the enemy, thus ensuring victory. This theophanic element, therefore, should be taken together with the other militaristic features mentioned above, that of the accompanying Bedouin with their animal food supply (12:38) and the mention of the Israelites being “armed for battle” (13:18b). 18 In contrast to J, P does not have an itinerary as such, but instead seeks to modify and contradict, in 14:2–3, 9b, the details that are given it J. While in J the deity himself, by means of the vanguard theophany, has led the Israelites to their present position, P is apparently not satisfied with this presentation of the sea event at the northern end of the sea and now has the deity demand of Moses that the Israelites turn back to some point between Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes, in which they would be most vulnerable for a slaughter. Apart from the fact that this makes the deity completely contradict himself, it seriously muddles the route, because to get to this position one would need to cross another body of water, that of the fresh water canal that runs into Lake Timsah, which certainly existed in the time of the 16. Exod 14:5–7, 9aα, 10–14, 19–20, 21aβγ, 22a, 27aβb, 28, 30–31. Van Seters, Life of Moses, 128–34. 17.  See the extended treatment with documentation in ibid., 254–70. 18.  For other features of holy war within J’s sea event, see H. H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist, 94–97; also Van Seters, Life of Moses, 134–39.

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Priestly Writer. Furthermore, there is no suggestion here, or anywhere else in P of a vanguard theophany to lead the people on their journey or to protect them. The people move from one place to the next entirely at the command of Yahweh through Moses (Num 10:15–23), as they do in Exod 14:2–3. For the most part P is merely content to embellish the itinerary that is already supplied by J.

The Journey from the Red Sea to Sinai The itinerary in J for the journey from the Red Sea to Sinai consists of Exod 15:22–23aα, 27; 16:1a*; 17:1*; 19:2a and these are all part of a unified itinerary chain. 19 However, these references should not be construed as pointing to a distinct itinerary that was used by J as an independent source. 20 On the contrary, J is merely borrowing the genre as a way of unifying the various components of his narrative. In the segment from the Red Sea to Sinai, nothing is said about the guidance of the column of cloud, but instead it is Moses who leads them to Sinai. The reason for this omission may be twofold. First, Moses has already been informed that after the people’s departure from Egypt they are to be brought to mount Sinai as a further validation of Moses’ authority as the one sent to them by the deity (Exod 3:12) and this fits with the initial statement that it was Moses who now led the people from the Red Sea toward Sinai. Second, frequent reference to the column-cloud theophany would have made the special theophany of cloud and fire at Sinai anti-climactic. The itinerary begins in Exod 15:22–23 with the account of the Israelites’ movement from the Red Sea into the desert of Shur and during their threeday march they did not find any water. 21 There is, of course, nothing remarkable about this. However, when, at the end of this journey they do find a source of water it is bitter, and this is given as an explanation for the name of the place as Marah. This disappointment over the undrinkable water causes great distress, and leads to the episode of how the waters were sweetened. 22 This story is then used as the basis of a larger theme highlighting the role of Moses as intercessor on behalf of his people, which will dominate the whole of the desert tradition in J. 23 It should be noted that neither the itinerary 19.  Ibid., 155–56; Davies, “Wilderness Itineraries,” 2–3. 20. So Davies; cf. Van Seters, Life of Moses, 161–63. 21.  J uses this three-day trek into the desert elsewhere in the plagues story, Exod 8:23–24 (27–28); see also Num 10:33a ( J). 22.  The story could not be an etiology in the usual sense, in spite of its use of the formula “therefore the name of the place is called ,” if the water was no longer bitter in the time of the author. Nevertheless, the episode could be construed as a mnemonic device to “remember” the people’s wilderness experience; cf. G. W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness (Nashville: Abingdon, 1964) 47–53; Childs, Exodus, 266–68. 23.  On the dominance of this theme in J in Exodus–Numbers, see Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels.

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nor the etiology are independent traditions that have been combined by J. They are merely common genres employed by J to serve his larger narrative purpose. 24 This unit concludes with the next stop at the oasis of Elim (v. 27), where there is now a great abundance of water and pleasant shade. The next stage in the itinerary is the move from Elim to the Desert of Sin, and this becomes the scene of the next trial, a lack of food and the miracle of manna, matching the gift of water in the first stage. P has made substantial additions to this episode, including his embellishment of the itinerary formula. J’s version originally read simply “They departed from Elim and came to the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.” The intention of J’s version is to provide an etiology for the Sabbath, 25 whereas P has his own etiology of the Sabbath in his account of creation. This leads P to expand the account to make clear that the Sabbath already existed long before this event (Exod 16:22–26). The etiological notation for the next stop, in 17:1, has also been embellished in a fashion similar to that of 16:1. The original J version read “They departed from the Desert of Sin and encamped at Rephidim, and there was no water to drink,” similar in form to the arrival at Elim (15:27). There are no further additions by P in this account in 17:2–7, because P has decided to use this story in another context in Num 20:2–13. However, in taking over J’s story, which included etiologies for the place names of Massah and Meribah in the vicinity of Rephidim near Sinai, and by repeating the etiology of Meribah (Num 20:13) P has misplaced it in the region of Kadesh. 26 The battle against the Amalekites also takes place at Rephidim (Exod 17:8–16), and this too receives its historical marker. 27 The next stage in J’s itinerary is the move from Rephidim to the desert of Sinai (19:2). The embellishment by P in 19:1 is obvious, but v. 2 looks to be 24.  For a fuller discussion see my Life of Moses, 175–81. 25.  The original J version consists of Exod 16:1a, 2–3*, 4–7, 13b–15, 21, 27–31, 35a. The rest are P’s additions. For a discussion of his source division see my Life of Moses, 181–88. 26.  See ibid., 191–98. The dependence of P on J’s account is obvious for three reasons. (1) P does not make regular use of these etiologies, as does J, and the form of the etiology, which regularly uses the formula “he called the name of the place” or the like, is changed to “these are the waters of Meribah,” which does not suggest its origin but a reference to the previous episode in Exod 17:1–7. (2) The explanation for the name has to do with the people’s complaint, but the focus in Num 20:2–13 has shifted to the disobedience of Moses and Aaron, so that it does not fit what has gone before. (3) In the previous account (Exod 17) Moses is told to take the rod with which he struck the Nile and strike the rock to produce the water and he does so. In P’s account Moses is again told to take “the rod” for no apparent reason, and is then told to speak to the rock to get water, but when he uses the rod to strike the rock as before, he and Aaron are punished, even though it still produces water. This account hopelessly contradicts the earlier one. 27.  The visit of Moses’ father-in-law seems to be out of place (see 18:5) and should occur after the Israelites come to Mount Sinai. Its original location was just before their departure from Sinai in Num 10:29–36. Note that the parallel version of Exod 18:13–26 in Deut 1:9–18 comes at Horeb just before their departure.

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a little redundant with the double notice of encampment. I suspect that the original statement read: “They departed from Rephidim and came into the desert of Sinai . . . and there Israel encamped before the mountain,” which was immediately followed by Moses’ ascent of the mountain. Given P’s great concern for the people not approaching too close to the sacred mountain, he may have added the suggestion that they actually encamped “in the desert” some distance away. P frequently uses this place-designation elsewhere. Throughout this section from the Red Sea to Sinai, the itinerary in J no longer resembles a military march, but is much closer to that of a migration of their ancient ancestors. This becomes most evident in the use of etiology in the names of the various encampments as a means of remembering past events in the people’s history. There is also no need for the vanguard theme in this segment of the journey.

From Sinai to Kadesh There is in J no indication of the length of stay at Sinai as there is in P, apart from the duration of Moses’ time on the mountain. However, the departure from Sinai is anticipated by the reintroduction of the vanguard theme in Exod 33:2, “I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.” This has in mind the intended assault on Palestine from Kadesh in the south. The departure from Sinai is indicated by J’s itinerary notice in Num 10:33, which mentions a three day journey (cf. Exod 15:22), but the notice also introduces the “ark of the covenant” as a vanguard preceding the people to find the next location for the camp. This vanguard is then combined with the “cloud of Yahweh” (v. 34), which acted as a protection for them during their travels (cf. Exod 13:21–22; 14:19–20). Nothing has been said previously about the ark, which is merely assumed from Deuteronomy. Here, however, it is not just a container for the tablets of the law but acts as a symbol of a divine vanguard (Num 10:35–36) as it is with the divine cloud. The first episode during this stage of the journey in Num 11:1–3 does not mention their arrival because the location only becomes apparent through the etiology in v. 3 as Taberah. In a similar fashion, the next location where the people complain about their diet of manna and are given quails until it makes them sick (11:4–34) is likewise identified by an etiology as Kibrothhatta-avah. From here the people travel to Hazeroth, the location of the complaint by Aaron and Miriam over Moses’ Ethiopian wife (12:1–15). From Hazeroth, they then travel to the Desert of Paran. In the subsequent account of the spies in Num 13–14, it becomes clear that the specific location of the camp within this region is Kadesh (13:26). By comparison, in place of this detailed itinerary Deuteronomy merely has the people depart from Horeb and travel through the desert until they come to Kadesh (Deut 1:19), with no stops intervening and with the parallel

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account of the spies following. P likewise has an itinerary notice in Num 10:12, indicating the movement “by stages” from Sinai to the Desert of Paran (Kadesh) without mentioning any intervening places. These may be suggested by the reference to “stages,” but P makes no additions to any of these accounts in J. It is also somewhat curious that P should refer to the “Desert of Paran” as the stopping place, because he otherwise uses the term “Desert of Zin (‫ ”)צן‬in place of Paran. It would appear that P has merely taken over the terminology “Desert of Paran” from J in Num 12:16. This itinerary notice in P (Num 10:12) does not introduce the Spy Story but comes in the middle of a long and rather repetitious treatment of how these stages between stops were made (Num 9:15–10:10), the precise date of the departure from Sinai (v.  11) and the order of tribes in the march (vv. 13–28). In P, the cloud does not function as a vanguard but only as an indicator of the presence of the deity within the tabernacle as long as it is in the camp. Furthermore, the tabernacle and the sacred objects travel in the middle of the tribes and nothing is said about the ark as a vanguard. Perhaps P is merely presupposing what is said about it in vv. 33–36.

From Kadesh to Moab This last leg of the itinerary begins in Kadesh, Num 20:1, and there is no indication in either J or P that there was any change in location in the nearly 40 years between their residence in Kadesh in Num 13–14 and their final move toward the promised land. The opening remark by P in Num 20:1aα, “The Israelites entered the Desert of Zin in the first month,” is very puzzling, because there is no indication since their earlier arrival at Kadesh that they ever left it. Nor does the date “in the first month” have any meaning without a reference to the year. This statement of P is followed by the remark: “The people remained (‫ )ישב‬in Kadesh.” The question is: does this belong to P or J? In Deuteronomy, at the end of the Spy Story in Deut 1:46, we have the remark: “And you (the Israelites) remained (‫ )ישב‬in Kadesh a long time, the whole time that you remained there.” This suggests that J also ended his account of the Spy Story in the same way. This would also indicate that the notice of Miriam’s death and burial does not belong to P but to J. P never expresses any interest otherwise in Miriam, in contrast to J, where she plays a prominent role in Num 12. After his extensive additions in Num 15–19, P displaced J’s remark about this period of encampment in Kadesh, along with the burial of Miriam to the end of their stay and furnished it with a new introduction of their arrival modeled on the one in Num 12:16. The departure from Kadesh is conditioned by the refusal of Edom to allow the people to pass through their territory (Num 20:14–21), so that they had to take a more circuitous route. This means that the people departed from Kadesh and moved to Mount Hor, which is situated on the south side of Edom (Num 20:22). This links up with 21:4a, which mentions the depar-

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ture from Mount Hor and setting out toward the Red Sea (Aqabah). Here, J explicitly mentions the reason for this longer route, that is, to bypass Edom. It is true that the unit in 20:22–29 dealing with the death of Aaron has been greatly embellished by P for his own ideological reasons having to do with the succession of the high priesthood, but that was not a concern for J. Aaron is merely the brother of Moses and nothing more. It is likely that J simply stated that Aaron died at Mount Hor, as J did in the case of Miriam at Kadesh. One can reconstruct the statement: “So they departed from Kadesh and came to Mount Hor on the border of the land of Edom . . . and Aaron died there on the top of the mountain.” The continuation of this itinerary in 21:4a is obvious. From this point on, the style of the itinerary shifts into a form resembling a forced military march with few place-names, except for geographic markers. There is no specific location mentioned for the episode in Num 21:4b–9, only that it took place on route around Edom, which gave rise to their impatience and grumbling. The itinerary in 21:10–20 has been expanded by later additions with specific place names, but only vv. 12–13 belong to J and this leads directly to the campaign against Heshbon. The geographic markers now become the sites of military conquest at Heshbon, Jazer, and Edrei. The itinerary ends in the plains of Moab on the east side of the Jordan opposite Jericho, at which point the DtrH will take up the account of the conquest of the land.

Summary and Conclusion From this survey of J’s itinerary it is apparent that the author has constructed a clear and consistent itinerary from Egypt to the Plains of Moab as the framework of all the very diverse episodes in his account of Israel’s migration from their Egyptian oppression to their arrival at the border of the promised land. There is nothing comparable in P except for his embellishments of the J series from time to time when it suits his purpose. The occasional itinerary notation in P, such as in Num 20:1aα where his remark about the Desert of Zin is an obvious mistake, and P’s lengthy additions to J only tend to obscure the structure and character of J’s historiography. When this J corpus has been freed from its P additions it becomes a quite consistent and unified work which, along with J’s corpus in Genesis, is a remarkable example of antiquarian historiography and a prologue to the earlier work of the Dtr history. To suggest that in place of this carefully constructed itinerary one is to imagine that the work can be split up into several redactors all creating their own fragment of this itinerary for their particular addition, which, when put together, miraculously resulted in J’s itinerary, is just not reasonable and quite unprecedented. To remove this structure of itinerary as secondary is to create compositional chaos, whereas to accept it for what it is would be to recognize the author as a historian and his work as a remarkable

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literary accomplishment. That was the view of von Rad and the view that Hans Heinrich Schmid and I held in the 70s and 80s, and the one that I still advocate today.

Chapter 19

The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26 in Critical Debate Any scholarly approach to the understanding of the altar law depends very much on the initial orientation and scholarly presuppositions of the particular scholar involved and the method applied, even when there is a broad general commitment to the historical-critical principles of research. This is certainly the case with respect to the altar law of Exod 20:24–26 where the differences of opinion as to how to understand this law loom very large indeed. These differences have to do with whether one believes that the text has a long and complex literary history or is a literary unity as it stands, to what literary strand of the Pentateuch it belongs and how it is related to texts in the same or different strands that touch on the same subject, and what methodologies of literary, form, and textual criticism are most appropriate in the explication of the text. There has been a renewed interest in this law, which is reflected in a number of recent studies, and I will attempt to discuss some of them, especially as they relate to my earlier study. 1 In doing so I hope that the methodological issues that result in the corresponding differences will become apparent. Because one of these recent studies was done by Hans-Chrisoph Schmitt, I am happy to offer this one in his honor and for his consideration. The form-critical approach to the study of this law is best reflected in the work of Diethelm Conrad, who followed in the tradition of Albrecht Alt. 2 Alt had proposed that the Covenant Code included within it two types of laws from the prestate period, the casuistic laws inherited from the older Canaanite population and the apodictic laws, which were the contribution of the earliest stages of Israelite society. These laws were now overlaid in places with later accretions and the whole code was embedded in a later pentateuchal source. Conrad, following Alt, attempted to isolate the older Israelite law within Exod 20:24–26 by identifying three apodictic statements 1.  Van Seters, A Law Book for the Diaspora, 60–67. 2. D. Conrad, Studien zum Altargesetz, Ex 20:24–26 (Marburg: H. Kombächer, 1968); A. Alt, Die Ursprüngedes israelitischen Rechts, 1934. ET: A. Alt, “The Origins of Israelite Law,” Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. R. A. Wilson; Oxford: Blackwell, 1953) 79–132.

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in vv.  24aα, 25aβ, 26a: “An earthen altar you shall built for me; you shall not built it with hewn stones; you shall not ascend my altar by steps.” On the basis of this reconstructed form and the fact that the Covenant Code was thought to belong to the oldest stratum of the Pentateuch, the law was dated to the prestate period. This form-critical method of reconstructing ancient law as well as the attempt to find a stratum of oral tradition that goes back to a primitive period of history has now been judged to be highly suspect. 3 Nevertheless, it still strongly influences German scholarship and its approach to the history of biblical law, such that the altar law is regarded as having a very long literary history, and in this Hans-Christoph Schmitt is no exception. 4 He accepts Conrad’s reconstruction of the prestate law of the altar, although in an expanded form that no longer corresponds to the short apodictic statements, and he believes that it somehow found its way, in a revised form, into a postexilic collection of laws. Schmitt’s primary focus in his own recent study of the altar law, however, is to deal with the late additions to this ancient law, all of which he attributes to a late, post-priestly, Deuteronomistic redactor. Schmitt finds this same redactor at work throughout the Pentateuch and the one responsible for the latest edition of the whole historical complex from Genesis to 2 Kings. It is this larger thesis that governs his evaluation of the various additions that he sees in the altar law. Thus the prologue to the Covenant Code in Exod 20:22–23 and the ratification of the covenant in Exod 24:3–8 in their present form are attributed to his late-Deuteronomist and he looks for indications of the same hand at work in the altar law. Within Exod 20:24a Schmitt finds in the double accusative pairs: “your whole burnt offerings and your wellbeing offerings” and “your sheep and your cattle” evidence of a later addition, and because the same kinds of offerings are mentioned in Exod 24:5, which he considers as part of his late-Deuteronomist, they are attributed to him. There is, however, nothing particularly ungrammatical about the appositional construction, and it seems a little ironic to me to blame a late “editor” for creating a supposed grammatical problem that was then repaired by a still-late Samaritan “editor” by means of the insertion of the partitive min. Apparently, everywhere one finds similarities they are to be attributed to the same late redactor instead of speaking of a common author, the Yahwist, as I have done. Beyond this immediate context, Schmitt also notes the similarity between the construction of the altar in Exod 20:25 with that in Deut 27:5–7 and 3. See my discussion in A Law Book for the Diaspora, 9–14; also E. Gerstenberger, Wesen und Herfunft des “apodiktischen Rechts” (WMANT 20; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965). 4. H.-C. Schmitt, „Das Altargesetz Ex 20,24–26 und seiner redaktionsgeschichtlichen Bezüge,“ in “Einen Altar von Erde mache mir . . .” Festschrift für Diethelm Conrad zu seinen 70. Geburtstag (ed. J. F. Diehl, et al; Waltrop: Spenner, 2003) 257–67.

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Josh 8:30–31, but rather than seeing this as a case of the altar law of Exod 20:25 being dependent on the other two, Schmitt again attributes to his late-Deuteronomist only the language in Exod 20:25b that is directly parallel. Where the terminology differs, such as the use of gzyt, “hewn stones,” he makes this part of the original law. However, if an author, the Yahwist, is imitating texts found in another literary work, there is no reason why he must use exactly the same language to represent the same idea. There is simply no good reason to attribute the two parts of the verse in Exod 20:25 to different sources. There are many instances in which there is evidence of literary dependence between two texts but with some change in terminology. 5 Furthermore, if Deut 27:5–7 and Jos 8:30–31 are the work of a redactor who has made use of the altar law in Exod 20:25, then there is even less reason for a change in terminology between the two. However, the law to be written on the stones of the altar in Deut 27:5–7 and Jos 8:30–31 is Deuteronomy and not the Covenant Code, and it is hard to see a common authorship for both sets of texts. Furthermore, Schmitt wishes to assert that the late-Deuteronomist is later than P and he seeks to find evidence for this in the altar law, in spite of the fact that no priests are mentioned in this law, or in the whole of the Covenant Code, or its sequel in Exod 24:3–8. Schmitt points to the use of ḥll Piel,“to profane,” which is common in priestly literature, especially the Holiness Code, as one would except, but also in Ezekiel and other exilic and postexilic prophecy. If, however, one dates this text to the exilic period as part of the Yahwist’s work, there is nothing remarkable about the use of this verb in this period. In a similar manner, Schmitt argues that Exod 20:26b must also be post-P because it is concerned about the exposure of nudity by the one making the offering and points to a similar concern expressed in Exod 28:42. This comparison, however, points in quite the opposite direction, for if it was already the practice that the priests wore undergarments or breeches, as they did in the Persian period, there would be no need for the provision in Exod 20:26b. The law only makes sense before such a clothing practice was adopted. There is nothing in the law that can be clearly identified as influenced by P legislation. On the most controversial part of the law, Exod 20:24b, Schmitt accepts the text as it is in MT and attributes it to his late-Deuteronomist and the arguments of Christoph Levin, that this part of the law is dependent on Deuteronomy and not the reverse as was so often claimed. However, Schmitt sees the significance a little differently, emphasizing the close connection between this law and that of Exod 23:13, which is a prohibition against the invoking of the name of other gods. This is also taken in conjunction with the same concern in Exod 20:22–23 against the worship of other deities, so 5.  For multiple examples between the Covenant Code and the other biblical codes, see my A Law Book for the Diaspora.

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that the verb zkr Hiphil must be understood in the sense “I permit my name to be remembered.” What one would expect, however, is a form of the verb in the second person, “you invoke,” rather than the first person, “I invoke,” which is problematic and has created all the problems of interpretation. While Schmitt and I have much in common with respect to how we view the texts in Exodus, which I attribute to J and he attributes to his late redactor, as later than Deuteronomy, there are still some fundamental differences. I view the law of the altar as entirely the work of an author who has compiled the whole of the Covenant Code from various sources and has fitted it into his own composition of the Sinai episode as part of his larger history of Moses. Schmitt operates under the assumption of a final redactor who makes additions of varying length to earlier material throughout the whole of Genesis to 2 Kings, with little consistency in language or ideological perspective. The two methodological approaches are ultimately irreconcilable. 6 It might seem at first glance that the treatment of this law by Christoph Levin, 7 who also advocates an exilic Yahwist, would have more in common with my own approach, but this is not quite the case. To begin with, Levin’s Yahwist is an editor and not an author, with most of his work found in Genesis and very little in Exodus–Numbers, so that none of the Covenant Code or its immediate context belongs to his Yahwist. 8 According to Levin, the altar law has been displaced from its original place within the Covenant Code, perhaps from among the cultic laws in Exod 23:10–19, and placed at the beginning to match the law of centralization in Deuteronomy, which serves as its model. This new position of the altar law was also accompanied by an addition to the law in Exod 20:24b, which breaks the continuity of the description of the altar in vv. 24a, 25–26. The view that v. 24b is an addition has been argued by a number of earlier scholars; the question has always been how to understand the text. For Levin this must be interpreted as an addition that was made after the law of Deut 12. In keeping with this perspective, Levin compares v. 24b, “In every place where I make known my name,” ‫ בכל־המקום אשר אזכיר את־שמי‬with the statement in Deut 12:13, “In every place that you see,” ‫בכל־מקום אשר תראה‬, and notes the striking similarity with the wording, on the one hand, but also the completely opposite intention of the passages, on the other. The former allows for worship in every place, while the latter forbids it. In using this comparison, he is in agreement with B. Levinson, 9 but comes to quite a different 6.  For my larger critique of the redaction-critical method, see The Edited Bible. 7. C. Levin, “Das Deuteronomium und der Jahwist,” Fortschreibungen: Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (BZAW 316; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003) 96–110. 8. C. Levin, Der Jahwist (FRLANT 157; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993) 363–69. Nevertheless, the altar law becomes for Levin an example of the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Yahwist. 9.  B. M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 31. The discussion of Levinson’s position will be taken up below.

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conclusion as to its significance, because Levinson regards Deuteronomy as later than Exod 20:24 and therefore a rejection of the plurality of cult places, whereas Levin regards Exod 20:24b as the later text and therefore it is a rejection of the doctrinaire centralization of the cult of Deuteronomy. For Levin, the crisis of the exile necessitated the modification of such a centralization to accommodate new circumstances. 10 While I agree with Levin in viewing the text of Exod 20:24b as reflecting the Exilic Period, I have some difficulty in accepting his understanding of the expression, ‫אזכיר את־שמי‬. He understands the phrase to mean “I make known my name,” and associates it with the revelation of the divine name, as in the patriarchal stories. 11 However, it is a complete anomaly for this usage to be applied to the deity in such acts of self-revelation, whereas it is regularly used of someone invoking the name of the deity, so that what one would expect in this text is to have the verb in the second person, ‫תזכיר‬. 12 Furthermore, one notices that in the parallel text of Deut 12:13, which Levin and others cite, the verb is in the second person as an action engaged in by the worshiper. If this is the case for Exod 20:24b as well, then it is not particularly “anti-Deuteronomistic” but simply allows for the deity to be approached wherever a worshiper may happen to be, especially because of the exceptional circumstances of the exile. This is already contemplated in 1 Kgs 8:46–53, in the prayer of Solomon, which is simply viewed as a necessary qualification added to a text that obviously places great emphasis on the central importance of the sanctuary in Jerusalem. Indeed, in the conclusion of the prayer one finds the statement: “Let your eyes be open to the entreaty of your servant and of your people Israel, and hear whenever they call to you ‫( ”בכל קראם אליך‬v. 52, reb). This final phrase is usually construed in a temporal sense, but it could just as easily be understood in a spacial sense, “wherever they call to you” and would be the direct equivalent to the statement in Exod 20:24b, “Wherever you invoke my name” ‫בכל־המקם אשר תזכיר את־שמי‬. The whole context of both texts has to do with those who are in exile in foreign lands and without access to the temple. The basic perspectives of the texts are the same. Another recent treatment of the altar law is offered by Jeffrey Tigay, who presents a very different method and perspective. 13 Tigay argues for the 10.  So also already A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel, vol.1: Genesis und Exodus (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968) 346. 11.  Levin, “Das Deuteronomium,” 101–2. In this, he follows J. J. Stamm whose work will be taken up below. Levin makes much of the very similar perspective represented by the redactor of Exod 20:24b and the Yahwist of Genesis without offering any reason why they should not be viewed as identical. 12.  This emendation will be taken up in greater detail below. 13.  J. H. Tigay, “The Presence of God and the Coherence of Exodus 20:22–26,” in Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume (ed. C. Cohen et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004) 195–211.

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literary coherence, not only of the altar law in Exod 20:24–26, but also for the whole of the unit in Exod 20:22–26. It is this whole unit that serves as the introduction to the Covenant Code and he rejects the notion that Exod 20:22–23 is a secondary redactional link between the Covenant Code and its larger context in the Sinai pericope. However he limits his discussion of literary coherence to this unit of five verses and does not deal with its connection to the wider context. Tigay also views the whole of this unit as predeuteronomic without any discussion of the contrary view. Tigay brings two new methodological perspectives to his treatment of the altar law, which are worth considering here. The one has to do with the theme of divine presence, and the other with the narrative structure of the unit. Regarding the theme of the divine presence in Exod 20:22–24, Tigay summarizes the medieval Jewish commentators: “God’s speaking to Israel directly from heaven has shown the Israelites that they have no need of idols to serve as intermediary devices . . . to draw His presence to their midst and communicate with Him. Instead they are to make a simple earthen altar for sacrifice, and wherever He authorizes them to call on Him, He will personally come to them and bless them.” 14 Tigay acknowledges the close parallel between Exod 20:22 and Deut 4:36 regarding the deity speaking from heaven, and he must admit that the connection between God’s speaking from heaven and the prohibition against idols is explicitly spelled out in Deut 4:9–18, but is only implicit and assumed in Exod 20:22–23. However, he ignores the fact that this is the reason why scholars have argued that the latter text is dependent on the former. 15 To substantiate further the connection between idolatry and the theme of divine presence Tigay points out that in the religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt the cult statue plays an important role in bringing the divine presence to the worshipers in order to bless them, which is also the goal stated in Exod 20:24b. Hence vv. 23 and 24 belong together, but because idolatry is explicitly rejected in Exod 20:23, Tigay suggests that it is the altar that serves as a substitute religious symbol for the divine presence. That connection, however, does not appear to me to be so obvious. In Deut 4 the emphasis is on hearing the words of the law rather than seeing any image and nothing is said about an altar. Likewise, in Exod 24:3–8 the altar becomes incidental to the people’s reception of the Book of the Covenant after the deity has spoken to them through Moses. The altar and sacrifices play no role in the theophany itself. It does not identify the place of the encounter with the deity. Everything in Tigay’s position rests rather heavily on the argument of narrative structure. As Tigay points out, there is an interesting parallel between 14.  Ibid., 200. 15.  See E. W. Nicholson, “The Decalogue as the Direct Address of God,” VT 27 (1977) 422–33; E. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, 96 n. 222; Van Seters, A Law Book, 47–60.

The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26

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what is prohibited in Exod 20:23 and what is permitted in vv. 24–25 with the frequent repetition of the verb ‫עשה‬, “to make.” The prohibition has to do with the worship of other gods and the making of idols while permission is directed at the construction of altars, and from this Tigay concludes that the altar is understood “as the replacement for the idols.” 16 This, however, does not seem very plausible because in ancient Near Eastern religion generally altars and cult statues were closely associated with each other so that it is hard to see how the altar could become a substitute for the cult image. It seems much more a case of what is prohibited in the cult—the cult statues, and what is still permitted as necessary for the purpose of worship—the altar. Within the altar law itself, there is the contrast between what is permitted—an altar of stones, and what is prohibited—the use of hewn stones and of steps. There is also another contrast to which A. B. Ehrlich has called attention, 17 and that is the contrast between the silver and gold of the images in v. 23 and the mundane materials of earth and uncut stones of the altars in vv. 24–25. Considering the liberal use of gold, hewn stone, and carved wood in the Solomonic temple, as well as the bronze altar, the stark contrast between the materials mentioned here must be significant. Ehrlich sees in this difference a clear indication that the text reflects the situation of poverty and need of the Exilic Period. In any event, the multiple narrative contrasts between the two parts of the unit in Exod 20:22–26 and within the unit in vv. 24–26 cannot be fortuitous; they contribute to the unity of the whole. Regarding the problematic rendering of ‫ אזכיר את־שמי‬in Exod 20:24b, Tigay opts for the emendation to ‫תזכיר‬, as I have done also, based on the Peshitta and some targums and on the regular usage of the verb to mean: “to invoke” the name of the deity. This issue will be taken up again below. Tigay, however, wants to connect the act of invoking the name of the deity as closely as possible to the construction of the altar, but this is by no means certain. There are many instances in which the divine name is invoked without any reference to altar or sacrifice. If it could be shown that the divine presence is specifically associated with the altar, then Tigay may be able to make his case, but he has not done so. This brings us to some brief remarks about the theme of the divine presence in the larger context of the non-P ( J) source. 18 In Exod 32, which follows directly after Moses ascends the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the people demand the presence of gods to go before them on their journey and for this purpose they make the golden calf in direct violation of the prohibition in Exod 20:23. After it is built, they then set up an altar to this deity and offer the same kinds of sacrifices as indicated in Exod 20:24, presumably in the same location as the previous altar built by Moses. When Moses returns, 16.  Tigay, “The Presence of God,” 204. 17.  Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel, 1:346. 18.  Van Seters, Life of Moses, 319–60.

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he destroys the new cult image (nothing is said about the new altar), and then he intercedes on the people’s behalf, not at the previously built altar of Exod 24:4, but up on the mountain. This is followed in Exod 33 by a long discourse on the problem of the divine presence among the people, in the course of which the tent of meeting is made (Exod 33:7–11) as the means by which the deity will be present with his people throughout the wilderness journey after they leave the mountain. There is no reference to any altar associated with the tent, and no priest in its service. Implicit is the notion that the tent housed the ark, which is made quite explicit in other contexts. 19 In some of the encounters between the deity and his people in J, mention is made of the tent of meeting but in none of them is anything said about an altar. Nevertheless, it is the ark rather than the altar that is symbolic of the divine presence (Num 10:33–36). This is made especially clear in the Priestly source (Exod 25–31; 35–40) where the ark is placed beyond the veil in the most holy place, and the golden altar of incense is set before the ark, just as it would be before a cult statue, in addition to the bronze altar for sacrifice before the tabernacle entrance. Both altars are part of the portable furniture. It is the ark of the testimony, containing the tablets of the Law, and the tabernacle that are most closely associated with the “glory,” ‫כבוד‬, and mark the sacred place (Exod 40:34; cf 1 Kgs 8:6–11). In a recent review article dealing with my book A Law Book for the Diaspora, Levinson takes up the altar law in Exod 20:24, as a test case against my position, in which he offers an “immanent reading” of the text. 20 This is opposed to what is viewed as my rather prejudicial interpretation of the text from the perspective of a late exilic context and authorship. Of course, it is important to understand the perspective and viewpoint from which any scholar is trying to interpret a text, and in this regard Levinson’s own position is hardly neutral. His earlier study of this text constitutes a central place in his book on Deuteronomy, in which he assumes that the law in Exod 20:24 is earlier than Deuteronomy and attempts to show how the all-­ important law of centralization of worship at one altar in Deut 12 is to be understood as a reinterpretation of the altar law in the Covenant Code. 21 So his “immanent reading” here is an effort to defend the central thesis of his earlier book, which merely assumes the priority of the Covenant Code without argument. One can never escape entirely from the prejudice of defending a favored point of view, but one must not at the same time use another’s privileged position as the primary basis for interpreting, and therefore dismissing, 19.  See 2 Sam 6:17; 7:2, 6. 20.  B. M. Levinson, “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John Van Seters,” in In Search of Pre-exilic Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; London: T. & T. Clark 2004) 297–317. I will deal with the rest of this lengthy review in another place. 21.  Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, 23–52.

The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26

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the other’s arguments. Levinson is at least as vulnerable on this point as I am. It should also be pointed out that this one text is so short and ambiguous in its wording that an “immanent reading” could yield a large number of interpretations and it has therefore always been interpreted within a context of other texts and a variety of social settings. It is as much a matter of how one construes that context, as it is a matter of interpreting the text itself. First, let us address some points raised about translation and my rendering of Exod 20:24. Levinson’s primary objection to my translation is the fact that I construed the phrase ‫ ואת־צאנך ואת־בקרך‬as if the nouns were each introduced by a partitive ‫מן‬, as in Deut 12:21. Levinson points out that both the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan do read the text of Exod 20:24 with ‫ מן‬but rather than suggesting that this text may in fact be more original he states that they “embed Deuteronomy’s partitive construction into their rendering of the list of sacrificial animals in Exod 20:24a” 22 and strongly suggests that I have done the same thing. All of this is quite ingenious but also quite unnecessary. While most translations, including Levinson’s translation, render the appositional phrase as “your sheep and your cattle” and thus retain the ambiguity of what this means, it should be obvious that this cannot mean the sacrifice of “all your sheep and your cattle.” It must in fact mean sacrifices that are drawn “from your sheep and cattle.” There is, in fact, no difference in meaning between Exod 20:24a and Deut 12:21 on this point. One can, perhaps, illustrate this by comparing two parallel texts within the same unit in Deut 26:1–11. In v. 2 the text speaks of taking “some of the firstfruits of all the produce of the soil” ‫ מראשית כל־פרי האדמה‬but in the recapitulation in v. 10 we find simply “the firstfruits of the produce of the soil” ‫את־רשית פרי האדמה‬, which obviously means the same thing, even without the partitive ‫מן‬. It may still be the case that the author of Exod 20:24 borrowed the phrase ‫ מבקרך ומצאנך‬from Deuteronomy but rendered it in the appositional accusative to agree with the preceding pair of nouns. The focus of the whole law in Exod 20:24–26, however, is clearly on the altar, and this raises a number of issues that must be addressed. First, the emphasis of the law is specifically on the kind of altar that is to be built, including vv. 25–26, which Levinson completely ignores both in this study and in his earlier book. Any discussion of a comparison with Deuteronomy must address this simple fact, because Deuteronomy says nothing about the requirements of altar construction and scarcely mentions an altar at all (Deut  12:27). Second, one must ask about the context that is appropriate for the interpretation of this law. This not only includes the place that it has in the Covenant Code, but also the questions of who is speaking in this law and who is being addressed. Levinson is so completely focused on 22.  Levinson, “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition?” 299.

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interpreting v. 24b as an aspect of altar location, that these other questions are never addressed. In my own study I attempted to answer these questions, but Levinson has chosen to ignore that part of the discussion. Third, once these contextual questions have been addressed, then one must explain why the unit in v. 24b clearly interrupts the description of the kind of altar that is to be built. Most of the critical approaches since Wellhausen, including Levinson’s, treat v. 24b as closely bound up with a characterization of the altar as the locus of divine revelation, but this is not at all obvious. Let us begin with the first question: where do we find in biblical literature altars that are built specifically according to these instructions? Very little is said about altar construction in connection with the temple, with only vague allusions to a golden altar inside the temple (1 Kgs 7:48) and a bronze altar in the open court (1 Kgs 8:64). There is also the very elaborate altar proposed by Ezekiel for the future temple (Ezek 43:13–17). Apparently, there is no knowledge of any construction requirements as part of divine law in these cases, or they are in blatant violation of such a law. In Deut 27:5–8, Moses commands the people to construct an altar as soon as they enter the land and they are to build it according to specifications that match those of Exod 20:25. Again in Josh 8:30–35, Joshua is said to have built an altar of unhewn stone for the purpose of offering on it burnt offerings and wellbeing offerings. 23 The present MT text locates this altar at Mount Ebal, but we now know from the Qumran texts (4QJosha) that its original location was at Gilgal in the proximity of the Jordan as Moses had commanded. 24 Because both these texts are widely viewed as post-Deuteronomistic, or at least not at variance with Deuteronomy, they are certainly important for how we understand the law in Exod 20:24–26. Furthermore, we have the reference to an altar built by Zerubbabel in Ezra 3:2 for the purpose of offering burnt offerings and it was made according to the law of Moses, which must refer to this law. Apparently there is nothing in this law that is considered inappropriate for the postexilic context. Second, if this is a law or religious edict and part of a larger corpus of laws, then who is the author of this edict, what is his authority, and to whom is it addressed? There is no problem with the law’s speaker and recipient for Levinson when he deals with the parallel altar legislation in Deut 12, which begins with a clear introduction identifying Moses as the author and the laws that follow as given to the whole people in anticipation of their 23.  On the late dating of Deut 27:1–8 and Josh 8:30–35, see N. Naʾaman, “The Law of the Altar in Deuteronomy and the Cultic Site Near Shechem,” in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible. Essays in Honour of John Van Seters (ed. S. L. McKenzie et al.; BZAW 294; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000) 141–61. 24.  See E. Ulrich,” Our Sharper Focus on the Bible and Theology Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” CBQ 66 (2004) 5–6. Ulrich argues cogently for the original location of the altar building at the end of Exod 4, based on the Qumran evidence and the witness of Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities. The shift to Ebal represents a very late sectarian revision of the text.

The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26

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entrance into the promised land. The deity is consistently referred to in the third person. The obvious parallel to this introduction in Exodus is the introduction in Exod 20:22: “Yahweh said to Moses, thus you are to say to the Israelites, ‘You have seen that from heaven I have spoken with you.’” This is followed by two laws, the second of which is the altar law, in which the speaker is the deity, and the laws are addressed to the whole people. However, this short introduction in v. 22 immediately connects the laws with the preceding theophany and in doing so it raises the question of whether one must understand these two laws within the context of this composition. 25 Furthermore, as we have noted earlier, the wording of the introduction has lead many to believe that it is directly dependent on Deut 4:36, which would suggest that the law was formulated much later than the parallel altar law in Deut 12. Levinson may insist on limiting the discussion to his “immanent reading” and thereby avoiding all these difficult issues, but that cannot inspire confidence in his position. One cannot simply get around this problem by invoking a deus ex machina—the redactor—as responsible for this introduction, because the divine voice remains to be explained and becomes most important in his discussion of Exod 20:24b. Consequently, if this context is to be taken seriously, then the law speaks about the construction of the very first altar and every subsequent altar from the wilderness period onward. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that immediately after Moses returns to the people (Exod 24:3–8) he does build an altar and offer the burnt offerings and the wellbeing offerings in conjunction with the covenant ceremony. No other altar set up by Moses is mentioned in the rest of the non-Priestly J account, although presumably once the people set out from Sinai they would need one at each stage of the journey. No description of the altar in Exod 24:3–8 is given except to suggest that there were 12 standing stones next to it. Yet, as we have observed above, in the original version of the crossing of the Jordan, Joshua does build an altar of unhewn stones at Gilgal, together with the erection of 12 standing stones that have been taken from the Jordan to represent the 12 tribes of Israel ( Jos 4:19 and 8:30–35), just as we have it in Exod 24:4, the altar built by Moses. The law, at least as far as that presented in Exod 20:24a, 25–26 is concerned, and the altar set up by Moses for the purpose of ratifying the book of the Covenant, fit the parallel context in Joshua very well. Indeed, just as Moses writes the laws in a book and reads them to the people, so Joshua writes the laws of Moses on the stones of the altar and then reads them to all the people ( Jos 8:30–35). There is a very close literary relationship between the law of the altar (Exod 20:24–26), together with the covenant ceremony (Exod 24:3–8), and the altar set up by Joshua ( Jos 8:30–35; cf. Deut 27:1–8), which Levinson has quite overlooked. 26 As the law stands in Exod 20:24a, 25. See my Law Book, 47–53. 26. See ibid., 63–67. I have offered reasons for viewing the law of the altar in Exodus as later than both Deut 27 and Josh 8:30–35.

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25–26, it could encompass a succession of altars whenever the need for one arose and not necessarily at the same specific place, but that is also true of all the altars of Yahweh in DtrH before the building of the temple. Obviously, this could again apply to the situation after the temple’s demise. This brings us to the third and most thorny issue, how to understand Exod 20:24b. As the text now stands in the MT, it must be rendered: “In every place where I invoke (‫ )אזכיר‬my name, I will come to you and bless you.” This half-verse is difficult, both with respect to its awkward syntax and its anomalous use of the verb ‫הזכיר‬, and for this reason it has called forth an extensive volume of discussion, to which Levinson has added still more. In addressing this and other similar problems, two different methodologies are set in opposition to each other, the one using the principle of analogy, which emphasizes textual criticism based on the customary usage of the text, the other using the principle of anomaly, which emphasizes the special significance of unique readings for textual interpretation. These conflicting principles are as old as the textual scholarship of the Hellenistic period. 27 Levinson easily fluctuates between these two principles when it suits the purpose of his argument. Thus, he uses the principle of analogy to identify the phrase “and all the mišpatim” in Exod 24:3 as anomalous and assigns it to a redactor, 28 but in the case of Exod 20:24b with its awkward syntax and its anomalous use of ‫ הזכיר‬he uses the principle of anomaly. Levinson’s understanding of the meaning of ‫ אזכיר‬seems to be based primarily on the view of a number of authorities whose views he feels I have neglected, and chief among these appears to be the short study by J. J. Stamm. 29 So we will briefly look at his argument. In a few texts (Isa 12:4; 26:13; Ps 45:18), Stamm finds that the verb ‫ זכר‬Hiphil can mean “to make known” and he wants to apply this meaning to this text. This, he says, is especially clear in Ps 45:18, which states: “I shall declare your fame (‫ )אזכירה שמך‬through all 27.  See R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) 202–3, 245. 28.  “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition?” 281–83. It should be noted that the ancient editors of Alexandria used this same principle of analogy to identify additions in the text and to athetize them as corruptions; they themselves did not make any additions to texts. 29.  J. J. Stamm, “Zum Altargesetz im Bundesbuch,” TZ 1 (1945) 304–6. Levinson (“Is The Covenant Code an Exilic Composition?” 302–3) also lists the works by H. Eissing, W. Schottroff, S. D. McBride, P. A. H. de Boer, and T. N. D. Mettinger, but he himself does not discuss any of them in this article. In his book Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, the only one of these that he mentions in his discussion of this altar law is Mettinger (p. 31, n. 17). In fact, Mettinger’s only comment on the law is very short. In a footnote, he merely appeals to the article of Stamm for justification in preferring the first person form in the MT to that of the second-person in the Peshitta. See T. N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth (ConBOT 18; Lund: Gleerup, 1982) 126. These other scholars also merely cite Stamm as having settled the matter regarding this text and add nothing new. Likewise for Schmitt and Levin, cited above.

The Altar Law of Exodus 20:24–26

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generations; therefore nations will praise you for ever and ever” (reb). This remark is made by the psalmist regarding his song in honor of the king, although nowhere in the psalm is the name of the king actually mentioned. Stamm argues that by way of analogy this meaning can apply to Exod 20:24b in which it is no longer the human who declares the name of the deity (or king), but the deity himself. The analogy, however, breaks down because this text, like all the others, points to the subject or worshiper invoking the name or fame of the king or deity, so that it actually supports the emendation to the second person, ‫תזכיר‬. One could also cite a closely related text, that of Ps 72:17: “May his name (‫ )שמו‬endure forever, his fame (‫ )שמו‬continue as long as the sun! May men bless themselves by him, all nations call him blessed!” (rsv). Invoking the name of the king in a prayer can bring blessing on those who do so whenever and wherever they may be. 30 Thus, it can be said, from the point of view of the king or deity: “Wherever you invoke/declare my name, I will come to you and bless,” just as we have it in the Syriac version of Exod 20:24b. Consequently, Stamm and all those who have depended on his argument have not made their case by citing these texts, which all support emending the MT to the second person. The verb zkr, “to remember” simply cannot be made, in one of its forms, to mean its opposite: “to reveal the hidden identity” of the deity at a particular cult place. Levinson begins the defense of his own position by setting forth the textcritical evidence for the MT reading ‫ אזכיר‬in great detail and conveniently lists all of the texts for comparison. There can be no doubt that the majority reading of the textual witnesses point to a text containing ‫אזכיר‬, and this is the case for the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Targums Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan. But as textual criticism has long known, the majority is not always correct. 31 In looking through all of the witnesses supporting the MT, what is clear is that they seem to have had considerable difficulty in understanding this reading of the text and proposed quite unlikely interpretations of it. Not one of them suggests that it refers to a theophany! The Samaritan text ‫ במקום אשר אזכירתי‬makes it refer to the previous tenth commandment of the Decalogue requiring the building of a temple on Mount Gerizim. The Septuagint associates the first clause of v. 24b with the preceding unit so that the altar is to be built “in every place where ἐπονομάσω my name there” and then introduces a καὶ to separate the last two elements from this clause. The problem, however, is how to understand the verb ἐπονομάσω as a rendering for ‫אזכיר‬. Levinson translates it as “I proclaim” 30.  This royal theme was also extended to the patriarchs (Gen 12:3). For a discussion of this, see my Prologue to History, 252–55. 31.  The great Richard Bentley in the 18th century recognized the limitations of textual criticism in establishing the correct reading of a text and introduced conjectural emendation based on a kind of “divination,” and biblical scholars have used it liberally ever since. See my Edited Bible, 124–29.

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in the same way that he renders the MT and thereby implies that the LXX is the direct equivalent of the Hebrew. But only in this one place is the verb ἐπονομάζειν used for any form of the verb ‫זכר‬, which is regularly rendered by ἀναμιμνήσκειν. The verb ἐπονομάζειν is most often used as the equivalent of ‫קרא‬ + ‫ שם‬in the sense of giving a name to a person or place and in one particular instance, Deut 12:5, it is used to render the phrase “to set his name there,” as the equivalent of the verb ‫שום‬, “to set.” Levinson also acknowledges that “The translator in effect reads the requirement of Deuteronomy 12 . . . back into the altar law of Exodus.” 32 For Levinson the motivation for doing so was entirely ideological, but in my view it was more likely that he struggled to interpret a difficult text on the basis of one that he more clearly understood. What is quite remarkable is the fact that the Targums Onqelos and Jonathan did exactly the same thing, at least in terms of the verb ‫אזכיר‬, understanding it with reference to the same texts in Deuteronomy. 33 Consequently, even though all these textual witnesses had the same text as the MT they could not come up with a rendering of it that was in any way directly related to a use of the verb ‫ זכר‬in the sense of “I proclaim.” With respect to the minority textual tradition, the Peshitta, the Fragment Targum and Neofiti, in which the text reflects a Hebrew, ‫תזכיר‬, the matter is quite different. The idiom “to invoke the name of a deity,” is clearly understood and expressed. Levinson must assume that the change in each case was done for ideological reasons, but there is no reason to believe that this was the case. It is possible that at some point a scribe corrected the text to conform to the standard Hebrew idiom, as a careful editor might do, but even this is not necessary. It is entirely prejudicial to suggest, as Levinson does, that the texts merely reflect a common exegetical tradition. What is much more likely is that they reflect a common textual tradition and one that removes the most difficult problems for understanding the text. It should be noted that there is no difference among any of the textual witnesses as to how the last part of the text is to be understood. All are consistent in seeing in the remark about the deity’s coming as having to do with the divine presence among his people in one form or another. If the minority reading is the preferred text, then how are we to account for the corruption of the text in the majority textual tradition. There is, in fact, no great mystery to this because it could be a simple scribal error, namely, the change of person in one part of the text to make it conform to the use in the rest of the text. Thus, a scribe inadvertently changed the second person in the first verb of the series to conform to the use of the first person in the second and third verbs. 34 When all is said and done on the 32.  Levinson, “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition?” 308. 33.  Ibid., 309 n. 63 points out that both Onqelos and Jonathan assume the rendering in Deut 12:5, exactly the same as does the LXX. 34.  Tigay also suggests that it could be a case of scribal “confusion of ʾalep and taw in the old Hebrew script” (“The Presence of God,” 204 n. 29).

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matter of text-critical arguments, however, this will do little to settle the question of the original text. Levinson turns next to the meaning of the text of Exod 20:24b itself and suggests that ‫ אזכיר את־שמי‬is to be understood as “the deity’s proclaiming his own name in a theophany” for the purpose of identifying that place as a holy site. Now it must be noted at the outset that there is no place in the Hebrew Bible where this terminology is ever used in connection with a theophany or with the revelation of the divine name. Indeed, the meaning of the phrase as “I proclaim my name” is just guess work, so its association with all of the texts that speak of the revelation of the divine name is a completely circular argument. 35 Second, many of the instances in which the divine name is revealed do not fit his scheme very well. Thus, in Gen 15:7, the statement “I am Yahweh” appears in the middle of the dialogue between Yahweh and Abraham as part of a larger formula that imitates similar confessional formula in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code. It is followed in due course by a rather special covenant-making ceremony but nothing is said about an altar or the place where the event occurred. The same thing may be said about the revelation in Gen 17:1 in which the deity appears under a different name, “I am El Shaddai,” as P’s introduction to his covenant narrative and his own theology of revelation. Nothing is said about any altar or sacrifices. There are many instances in which the deity appears to the patriarch where the name of the deity is not announced. By contrast, in Gen 12:6 Yahweh appears to Abraham, without announcement, to issue a divine promise of land, and after the revelation Abraham builds an altar to the deity at that place. However, he then moves on to Bethel (Gen 12:8) and builds another altar to the same deity without any theophany there and at this place he “calls upon the name of Yahweh.” It is to this altar in Bethel, not to the one in Shechem, that he returns in Gen 13:3–4. After an interval when Lot has departed from him the deity appears to Abraham, presumably at Bethel, but then Abraham departs from there and moves to Hebron and builds yet another altar (13:18). It is only much later (Gen 18) that the deity appears to him in Hebron, but nothing is said about any altar or sacrifices. Indeed, the altars seem to be primarily places of prayer and of dialogue with the deity; Gen 46:1, which mentions sacrifices, is a rare exception. The pattern of divine instruction and altar-building in Gen 22 hardly fits the subject in Exod 20:24 and needs no further comment here. In the Isaac story, Yahweh does appear to Isaac at Beersheba and reveal himself as Yahweh, the God of Abraham, and gives him his blessing (Gen 26:23–25). Subsequent to this, Isaac builds an altar there and “called on the name of Yahweh,” but without sacrifice. This was not the first divine appearance and it has much more to do 35.  Levin (“Deuteronomium und Jahwist,” 101–2), building on earlier studies, also makes reference to many of the same texts as Levinson, so this discussion applies to him as well. In Levin’s case, however, the parallel texts in Genesis belong to his exilic Yahwist.

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with a continuation of the theme of divine promises to the patriarchs than the identification of holy sites. Up to this point all of the theophanies, whether they announce the divine name or not, have to do primarily with the theme of the divine promises and their transmission through the line of the patriarchs to their offspring, not to the discovery of sacred places, which seems entirely incidental and secondary. The one exception to this appears to be in the story of Jacob in Gen 28:10–22. This story seems to be an attempt to associate the patriarch, Jacob, with the sacred place of Bethel by means of a rather remarkable event that took place there. After the event, which consisted of a dream of angelic beings, he sets up a pillar of stone as a marker of the future location of the place as the “house of God” (Bethel). Nothing is said about an altar or sacrifices at this point (see also Gen 35:14–15). In this case the revelation of the name of “Yahweh the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac” serves as an introduction to the theme of the divine promises, just as we have it in the previous stories, and not as part of the original story about the revelation of the sacred place. 36 Throughout the rest of the Jacob story, the God of Bethel simply becomes identified with the God of the patriarchal promises. Many years later, when Jacob returns to the promised land he is told by God to go to Bethel and build an altar to the deity who had appeared to him and does so, but without mention of sacrifice (Gen 35:1–7). Finally, in the course of his journey to Egypt he pauses at Beersheba to offer sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac, undoubtedly at the altar which Isaac had made, and the deity appears again to him as the God of his fathers, and repeats the divine promises. The point of all these theophanies is that while they may be associated with sacred places at which altars and sanctuaries are subsequently built, they need not be, and most of the examples in Genesis suggest that there is no necessary connection between the two. Thus, even if the phrase ‫אזכיר את־‬ ‫ שמי‬does mean “I proclaim my name,” and that is very doubtful, there is no necessary connection between that act by the deity and the building of the altar. In the one example where this could be argued, Gen 28:10–22, Jacob only builds an altar at Bethel many years after the event and then only as a response to another divine command to do so. The theophany at Sinai in Exod 3–4, with the revelation of the divine name, does not lead to any altar construction or sacrifice. In fact, in all of the parallels displayed in table 9 of Levinson’s article, 37 none of the other texts use the same terminology or say anything about altars. Furthermore, it is in the last part of Exod 20:24b “I will come to you (‫ )אבוא אליך‬and I will bless you,” that one has a reference to the promise of divine presence. But how can this be stated as subsequent to a remark that is understood as already signifying the divine presence? One 36.  On the literary history of this text see my Prologue to History, 288–306. 37.  Levinson, “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition?” 314.

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would certainly expect the sequence: the coming or appearing of the deity, his declaration of his identity and then his blessing. Or one might expect the statement: “In every place where I have appeared to you [that is, to the forefathers] I will come to you and bless you.” That would at least fit the Genesis evidence better. It is the present sequence that makes no sense and has forced so many strained efforts, both ancient and modern, to get around this problem. In spite of the many references in Genesis cited above to the contrary, Levinson insists that “the deity ‘comes to’ (‫ )בא אל‬the celebrant at the altar in the context of sacrifice, where he grants blessing.” 38 What does Levinson mean by the phrase “in the context of sacrifice”? Does the sacrifice come after the revelation of the name but before the deity “comes” to give his blessing? One can reconstruct no sequence of events from the present MT text that makes any sense. Furthermore, there are many references to the deity coming to the patriarchs and offering them blessing without any mention of an altar or sacrifice, before or after. Levinson has created a totally artificial context, with a little help from Wellhausen, by which to understand this text. This is hardly an “immanent reading” of the text. Starting with the minority text tradition of Exod 20:24 in which the verb ‫ תזכיר‬is used, there is no difficulty whatever with the way these versions understand the text. The idiom of the worshiper invoking the name of the deity is standard and even occurs elsewhere in the Covenant Code (Exod 23:13). The sequence of verbs is completely intelligible and is presupposed in so much of the Psalter. It is, of course, quite possible that such an invocation can take place in a sanctuary and before an altar, but nothing in the syntax of this text requires that such must be the case. The text recognizes that cult places can be established, but it does not limit worship and prayer to such places. What the syntax of the text clearly suggests is that Exod 20:24b constitutes a kind of parenthetical qualification of the altar law as a whole. In effect it states: “You may build a simple earthen altar for your sacrificial offerings (although anywhere you invoke my name [in prayer or praise] I will come to you and bless you); and if you wish to build it of stones . . .” As in the earlier discussion of Stamm’s argument, I can find nothing against this understanding of the text. Does this understanding of the text make sense in the Exilic Period? I think that it does. The temple is in ruins with little hope of any sudden restoration. It is possible that the text recognizes the rebuilding of at least a simple altar for sacrifice. It may also be that the Yahwist recognizes the legitimacy of Bethel. This seems to be reflected in the many references to Bethel in Genesis, especially in the Jacob story. Bethel continued to be an important cult place in the northern Judah-Benjamin region, in spite of Deuteronomy, by means of associating the God of the patriarchs with this place. 39 The same 38.  Ibid., 313. 39. J. Blenkinsopp, “The Judean Priesthood during the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods: A Hypothetical Reconstruction,” CBQ 60 (1998) 25–39. Blenkinsopp makes a

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may apply to the worshipers of Yahweh at Shechem and Mount Gerizim. 40 But, even if such cult places were not possible for those in exile, this did not preclude a form of worship in which God’s people could still invoke the name of the deity and experience his presence and his blessing. strong case for the importance of the Bethel sanctuary in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. 40.  See G. N. Knoppers, “Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Zion: A Study in the Early History of the Samaritans and Jews,” Studies in Religion 34 (2005) 309–38, esp. 325–27. See also Naʾaman, “The Law of the Altar in Deuteronomy,” 156–61, who argues for the postexilic legitimization of the cultic site near Shechem in biblical literature in opposition to cultic centralization in Jerusalem.

Chapter 20

The Tent of Meeting in the Yahwist’s Sinai-Wilderness Story: A Test Case Introduction Within the last two decades the division of sources in the literary-critical study of the Pentateuch has taken a radical shift, resulting in a great proliferation of literary strata and redactors far beyond that in the heyday of the Documentary Hypothesis. Every time some flaw or weakness is identified in this new literary evaluation, a solution is created by yet another source or redactor, under the pretense of scholarly sophistication. What once seemed so obvious to biblical critics for so many years is now easily dismissed by this new mode of analysis. A case in point is the very brief and simple account of Moses setting up the Tent of Meeting (ʾōhel môʿēd) in Exod 33:7–11, attributed to J, as compared with the very elaborate account of the planning and construction of the tabernacle (miškān) by the Priestly Writer, who also calls it the Tent of Meeting. For a long time it was assumed that the account in Exod 33:7–11 belonged to a pre-Priestly source, either J or E, and that the story of the tent went back to an older (oral) tradition. 1 But more recently there has been a strong tendency among pentateuchal critics to assign a large part of the non-P corpus of texts to a time or times later than P, and this particular text has been assigned to a post-P period, thus making it dependent on and derived from the P description of the tabernacle. However unlikely or implausible such a suggestion might appear to be, it cannot be quickly dismissed because so much has now been made to hang on this remarkable claim. If this claim for a late date for non-P’s ( J’s) Tent of Meeting can be shown to be false, then the whole edifice on which this new redactional history of the Pentateuch has been constructed will be in serious jeopardy. 1.  See M. Noth, Exodus, 254–56. Noth regards it as an old pre-Priestly, pre-Deuteronomistic oral tradition, going back to a pre-settlement period and therefore pre-J. See also T. B. Dozeman, Commentary on Exodus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) 723–27. Cf. Childs, The Book of Exodus, 589–93. While Childs accepts the view that the passage reflects an old tradition, he nevertheless gives much more weight to its place within its present context.

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How did this fundamental shift come about, in which a large part of the non-P material in the Pentateuch was dated later than P? It would appear that its roots lay in an attempt to reevaluate theologically the significance of the Law (Torah) within German Christian biblical scholarship, in comparison with the Torah’s role in Judaism. This can be seen especially in the work of Frank Crüsemann, 2 who identified a theological problem between the Jewish and Christian understandings of biblical law in terms of the Christian emphasis on moral law and covenant as primary over against the ceremonial aspects of Torah preserved in Judaism. 3 By relegating the ceremonial law of the P code to the late Persian period and viewing it as a corruption of Torah in that period, German Christian scholars were accused by Crüsemann of anti-Semitism. 4 He felt that one way to remove this stigma was to show that P was not necessarily the final addition to the Pentateuch, but that there were substantial non-P additions made to the Torah that were later than P. Ever since the work of Yehezkel Kaufmann, History of the Religion of Israel (1960), which argued against Wellhausen and others that the P document was older than Deuteronomy, conservative Israeli and American Jewish scholarship had defended Kaufmann’s position on largely ideological grounds. It was in the interest of some theological accommodation of Christian attitudes toward the Torah of Judaism that Crüsemann endeavored to find a substantial stratum in the Pentateuch later than P, and this non-P stratum he would then label as “Deuteronomistic,” regardless of its lack of Deuteronomistic content. With the late post-D dating of J by H. H. Schmid and me and the renaming of this stratum as KD by Erhard Blum, it was not hard for Crüsemann and others to seize on this corpus for their ideological purposes. Hence the whole redactional process in the development of the Pentateuch became much more complicated. Indeed, in contrast to the older scholarship that was inclined to regard P as the final redactor of the Pentateuch, Crüsemann invented a new non-P Pentateuchal Redactor (PentRed) and ascribed various texts of this PenRed and Deuteronomy to this Deuteronomistic redactor. Eckart Otto later adopted and expanded the additions of PentRed far beyond those of Crüsemann, 5 and it has increased steadily ever since. For example, Crüsemann understood the whole of the unit in Exod 32–34 as 2. F. Crüsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), translated from the German 1992 edition. 3.  Ibid., 1–16. 4.  Ibid., 4. He especially attacked Martin Noth’s study, Die Gesetze im Pentateuch (1940) as supporting anti-Semitism. In my view, this is quite unwarranted vilification. 5. E. Otto, “Die nachpriesterschriftliche Pentateuchredaktion im Buch Exodus,” in Studies in the Book of Exodus (ed. M. Vervenne; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996) 61– 111. Otto’s arguments for a later date for non-P texts in Exodus are basically theological and ideological and pushed Crüsemann’s program with great vigor. Cf. my “Is There Evidence of a Dtr Redaction in the Sinai Pericope (Exodus 19–24, 32–34)?” in Those Elusive Deuterono-

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an early 8th century composition, which consisted of the oldest form of the Sinai Law in 34:11–26. For him, however, his code was ritualistic in character and yet it was older than the Decalogue, which he attributed to a much later source. Otto modified this position by regarding only a part of the law code in 34:11–26 as belonging to a very small pre-P document, while relegating the rest to a Deuteronomistic PentRed. Otto was building on the older documentary analysis of P, which had been split into a basic P (Pg) and a P supplement (Ps), but with further proliferation of this distinction into multiple redactions. It was also suggested that P’s document originally ended with the Sinai tradition in Leviticus so that any references in the non-P ( J) narrative in Numbers must be later than P and part of PentRed. Once one accepted this new understanding of P and non-P, no further argument was apparently necessary. Given the ideological and theological foundations for the invention of PentRed by Crüsemann, which was never very far from the surface in much of German scholarship, the problematic character of this approach becomes obvious. However, such ideological considerations do not belong in the critical evaluation of texts and should be studiously avoided. For example, the labeling of non-P texts as D (Deuteronomistic) is purely an ideological marker as over against the Priestly texts and has nothing to commend it on critical grounds. By contrast, the designation Yahwist is completely neutral; it says nothing as to the date of the text and its relationship to any supposed Deuteronomistic movement. 6 It may be investigated entirely on its own terms, and for this reason I will continue to use this terminology here. 7 Furthermore, given the very controversial basis regarding what belongs to the P corpus and its limits within the Pentateuch/Hexateuch, and the divisions of the P corpus into numerous redactions, a priori arguments based mists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. L. Schearing and S. Mackenzie; JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 160–70. 6.  For a critique of the so-called Deuteronomistic movement, see N. F. Lohfink, “Was there a Deuteronomistic Movement?” in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. L. Schearing and S. Mackenzie; JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 36–66. 7.  The argument against using the designation J for the non-P corpus is that it presupposes the source E of the documentary hypothesis, and once one has given up the documentary hypothesis, this terminology is no longer valid. This argument, however, is quite spurious, and that for two reasons: (1) In the past a number of scholars have questioned the existence of a separate E source; see Voltz and Rudolph, Der Elohist als Erzähler: Ein Irrweg der Pentateuchkritik?; Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition; idem, “Reexamining the Foundations,” JBL 84 (1965) 1–19; Mowinckel, Erwägungen zur Pentateuch Quellenfrage. But they continued to use the designation J as distinct from P long before the new nomenclature was introduced. (2) The use of D and P also derives from the older theories of source division, but they are still used in the contemporary practice of literary criticism. The use of D for both Deuteronomy and the non-P corpus of Genesis to Numbers is particularly confusing. It is a case of ideology trumping common sense.

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on these considerations alone tend to be completely circular and are of no consequence in this discussion. 8 Thus, when I refer to P below, I am using the term to designate the whole P corpus in the same way that my non-P references in Exodus–Numbers refer to J. For the purposes of this study, the differences between J and P are quite consistent throughout and there is no need to debate the multiple divisions into which both of these sources have been divided. In support of this new PentRed, it has recently been proposed that both the Priestly and non-P material in the book of Numbers should be viewed as secondary to Exodus–Leviticus and that Exod 33:7–11 be viewed as an addition to Exodus for the purpose of providing a link between the combined corpus of Genesis –Leviticus and Numbers. Indeed, Rainer Albertz, in support of this proposal, has suggested that Exod 33:7–11 may be regarded as a “key text for the reconstruction of the redaction history of the Pentateuch.” 9 This text is “key” in two respects. First, Albertz believes the text can be shown to be later than the P presentation of the construction of the tabernacle in Exod 25–31 and 35–40, and therefore prove the existence of a non-P stratum that was later than P; and second, it would explain the way in which the book of Numbers, understood as a late addition to Exodus–Leviticus, was connected with the earlier corpus. However, the arguments set forth for proving that Exod 33:7–11 is later and dependent on P are primarily circular and can just as easily be turned in the reverse direction with no resolution possible, and I see no point in engaging in such an exercise. Instead, in order to challenge this view and all that it entails for pentateuchal criticism, I will proceed with a step by step analysis, using wherever possible external reference points as controls, most of which have been completely overlooked in the prior discussion of the unit in the Exodus tradition. This is because so much of the debate has been directed against the older understanding of the pentateuchal sources, which are no longer relevant for this discussion.

The Tent of Meeting in J and the Dtr Tradition As I have argued for the last 40 years, the J corpus of texts in the Pentateuch is to be dated to the Exilic Period after the DtrH, 10 with the result that there is no need to deal with all of the past speculation about an early tent 8.  For my survey of P, see Van Seters, The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary, 80– 86, 160–89. 9. R. Albertz, “Ex 33,7–11, ein Schlüsseltext für die Rekonstruktion der Redaktionsgeschichte des Pentateuch,” BN 149 (2011) 13–43. I wish to thank Albertz for sharing a prepublication copy of this article with me. For the contrary view of Exod 33:7–11 within the pre-Priestly composition, see Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, 61–64, 72–88. 10. J. Van Seters, “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” VT 22 (1972) 448– 59; idem, Abraham in History and Tradition; idem, Der Jahwist als Historiker See also H. H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist.

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tradition of Bedouin encampments. 11 Already in DtrH there is an obvious explanation for this tent. In the story of David in 2 Sam 6–7, frequent mention is made of a tent that was used to house the ark and the suggestion is offered that this had been the practice since the time when Yahweh brought Israel out of Egypt until David’s own day. Indeed, J even borrows the same wording in Exod 33:7a that one finds in 2 Sam 6:17a, which reads: “They brought the ark of Yahweh and set it down in its place within the tent (hāʾōhel) that David had set up for it (nāṭâ lô).” The parallel text in Exod 33:7 reads, “Moses would take the tent (hāʾōhel) and would set it up for it (nāṭâ lô) outside the camp and a great distance from the camp.” The fact that J has inadvertently copied both the article on “the tent” and the phrase “for it” (lô), that is, the ark, after the verb “set up” (nāṭâ) clearly shows the dependence of J on the David story. This tent in 2 Sam 6:17 is the same tent that is mentioned in 2 Sam 7:2 and in the divine speech in v.  6. 12 Furthermore, in the original Dtr version of this account of the restoration of the ark in 2 Sam 6:2–3a, 5, 15, 17–19 there are no priests associated with this tent. 13 There can be little doubt that J got the notion of a need for a tent to house the ark from Dtr and extended its use to make it the place where the deity could meet with Moses on behalf of the people after they left Sinai. It is otherwise a completely noncultic institution and owes nothing to the P uses of the tabernacle. It is very clear that J derives from Dtr the understanding that the tent represents the divine presence among his people. Now Albertz makes much of the fact that there is no mention in J prior to Exod 33:7 of any divine instruction to Moses about setting up the Tent of Meeting and much speculation in the past about the possibility of part of the account being lost. This concern is based entirely on the presence of such divine instruction in P. But if J is dependent on 2 Sam 7, as I have argued, there is no instruction to David about setting up a tent for the ark. Indeed, there is no divine instruction to Solomon about how to build the temple. Solomon, in fact, hires a foreign temple-building expert to oversee the job (1 Kgs 7:13–14). So why should one expect the J account to have any set of prior instructions about the tent? If the tent in J is derived from Dtr’s notion of a temporary housing for the ark as it moved from place to place, then what in the D/Dtr tradition could have inspired this shift in its use to serve as a meeting place between Moses and the deity? 14 The answer lies in Deut 5:24–31 in which, after the 11. Cf. Noth, Exodus, 255. 12.  Nor does Albertz’s attempt to exclude 2 Sam 7:5b–8aα from the narrative stand up to close scrutiny. See my Biblical Saga of King David, 241–56. 13.  On the reconstruction of this Dtr text, see Van Seters, Biblical Saga, 233–41. 14. We can safely rule out the reference to the Tent of Meeting in 1 Kgs 8:4 as part of a very late priestly addition, probably based on 2 Chr 5:5, because it is the Chronicler that established the continuity between the P Tent of Meeting with all of its furnishings in

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terrifying theophany at Horeb, the people request that Moses henceforth speak with Yahweh in private and afterwards he can communicate the deity’s demands to the people. Yahweh approves of this plan and commands that the people return to their tents while Moses receives further instructions from the deity throughout the rest of their journey. However, nothing is said about exactly where or how this subsequent communication takes place after Horeb. Consequently, in his narrative J simply makes two obvious assumptions; first, that it will take place at the tent that houses the ark and second, that it will be by means of a moveable theophany that periodically appears at the tent. This then will be the Tent of Meeting that fulfills the requirements demanded by the remarks in Deuteronomy. 15 It has also been argued that the setting up of the Tent of Meeting in 33:7– 11 does not fit very well with the resumption of a long dialogue between Moses and the deity in vv. 12–17. This, however, overlooks a significant detail in the narrative, which is an important difference between the account of David setting up the tent for the ark and the similar action of Moses. David has already set up the tent for the ark before the encounter with the deity through the prophet, whereas J carefully construes all of the verbs in 33:7–11 in the imperfect tense, which is both frequentative and future to indicate that the actions described took place after the discourse with the deity and have to do with the period of the journey after the people depart from Sinai. In this sense, it presupposes the result of the dialogue in 33:12–17. 16 Furthermore, there may be another explanation for this arrangement. In a careful study of the role of Moses as “intercessor for Israel,” Erik Aurelius points out the very close literary relationship between Exod 33:12–17 and 2 Sam 7. 17 This may be found in the specific language and themes both in the remarks of the deity to David in the oracle in 2 Sam 7:5–16 and in David’s prayer that follows in 2 Sam 7:18–29, on the one hand, and in the corresponding remarks by Moses and the deity in Exod 33:12–17, on the other. There is the same play on the verb “to know” (‫)ידע‬, knowing the names of David and Moses, and the deity’s making known his ways or plans to David and Moses. There is the frequent reference to Israel as God’s people (‫)עם‬ and the contrast between God’s people and others nations (‫)גוים‬. There is also the important theological theme of giving the people “rest” (‫ )נוח‬from their enemies (Exod 33:14; 2 Sam 7:1, 11). From these and other similar linExod 25–31, 35–40, and the Solomonic temple (2 Chr 1:3–6). The text in 1 Kgs 8:4 makes no sense, especially as all of the vessels for the Temple were made by Solomon and placed in the Temple before the ark was finally brought from the tent in the City of David and placed there. Cf. Dozeman, Exodus, 723–27, esp. p. 725. 15.  In J, there seems to be a certain ambiguity about the extent to which the ark represents the divine presence among his people, as in 2 Sam 7. Yet God does not communicate with his people by means of the ark, but by other means, through visions and theophany. 16.  Dozeman (Exodus, 723–27) completely ignores this feature of the narrative and actually treats it as something that took place prior to the Golden Calf episode! 17.  Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels, 109–11.

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guistic features, Aurelius concludes: “Die terminologischen und thematischen Beziehungen sind Grund genug, eine herkunftsmässige Verwandtschaft zwischen Ex 33:12–17 und 2 Sam 7 einschliesslich der spätdeuteronomistischen Bearbeitung anzunehmen.” 18 It seems clear, therefore, that J is heavily dependent on 2 Sam 7 for his construction of the unit in Exod 33:12–17. When we put this conclusion about the dependence of Exod 33:12–17 on 2 Sam 7 together with the observation that the statement about Moses setting up a tent in Exod 33:7 is also dependent on 2 Sam 6:17 and 7:1–6, this has important consequences for our understanding of Exod 33:12–17. First, it is clear that the whole of this text must be understood as a unity. It cannot be split up and assigned to different redactors. Second, it also helps us to understand the way in which J shaped the sequence of dialogue and event in this chapter. The dialogue between Moses and the deity in Exod 33:1–5, followed by the actions in vv. 6 and 7–11 seem clear enough. The additional dialogue between Moses and the deity in 12–17, after the remarks about the Tent of Meeting follow the same sequence as found in 2 Sam 6–7 where David first sets up the tent, and this is then followed by similar discussion of the same theological themes in the same sequence, as we find them in the Nathan oracle and in David’s prayer. This places the date of the whole unit in Exod 33:1–17 after the Dtr History as its most important source but with no trace of any dependence on P for its content. 19

The Theophany in J and in Deuteronomy Because the Tent of Meeting involves a theophany we must consider the larger context of this theophany in the rest of J and in D, especially as it has to do with communication between the deity and Moses. In Deut 5:4–5, the theophany is connected with blazing fire, and in vv. 22–25 this is combined with the cloud and thick darkness and a loud voice or sound, as the voice of God. Deut 4:11–12 picks up this theme of theophany and refers to the same basic elements of fire accompanied by the cloud and darkness, but with special emphasis on hearing a voice (qôl) but seeing no form. This theme of a voice speaking out of the blazing fire is picked up again in vv. 33 and 36. Deut 9:10, 15; 10:4 again refer to the words spoken on the mountain out of the midst of the fire. It is important to note that there are two distinct theophanic elements in the D tradition that are not entirely compatible. The one is the brilliant blazing fire and the other is the cloud and darkness. One might have expected smoke to accompany the fire but not a dark storm cloud. 18. Ibid., 110. Aurelius’s characterization of this Deuteronomist as “late” is based on the notion of a DtrN, which is not my concern here. What is important is the fact that J is dependent on Dtr’s presentation of the David tradition. 19.  The kind of ideological speculation that regards the Tent of Meeting in Exod 33:7–11 as a correction of the Priestly Tent of Meeting and offered without any comparative control, may be seen in Otto, “Die nachpriesterschriftliche Pentateuchredaktion,” 91–92.

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The account of the theophany by J in Exod 19:9, 16 mentions the thick cloud accompanied by lightning and thunder which makes the storm element quite clear, but the actual descent of the deity is presented with smoke and fire similar to volcanic eruption, with the mountain quaking (v. 18) and both are combined in 20:18. Thus, both the storm and the fire theophanies are present in combination, just as in Deuteronomy. However, a third element is added to these in 19:16, 19; and 20:18, with the sound (qôl) of the shofar, and it would appear that it is this that corresponds to the voice (qôl) of the deity. It is clear that it was this sound that the people heard and that made them afraid and caused them to identify it as the voice of God. They did not actually hear the words, as in Deut 5. In sharp contrast to the presentations of Deuteronomy and J, P in 19:20–20:17 says nothing about these theophanic elements. However, in P’s description of Moses’ return trip up the mountain (Exod 24:15b–18a) P mentions that the cloud covered the mountain and a consuming fire as the kabod was at the top of the mountain. This has now become stereotype phraseology that P will also apply to the tabernacle (Exod 40:34–38; Num 9:15). What should be clear at this point is that J is closely related to and dependent on the Deuteronomy tradition of the Horeb theophany, but owes nothing to P.

The Tent of Meeting and the Vanguard Theophany Motif in J Concerning J’s Tent of Meeting, the situation is more complicated because the theophany is now related to a tent that moves from place to place and not to a fixed sacred location, such as Mount Sinai or Horeb. The notion that the deity could take the form of a moveable theophany that served as a “vanguard” for the people in their travels, leading them to their appointed destination, plays an important role in J although it is not part of the deuteronomic tradition. In Deut 10:11, it is Moses who is commanded to lead the people to the promised land in order to take possession of it and no theophanic vanguard is involved. This vanguard form of theophany in J is expressed most clearly in the account of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and in the crossing of the sea (Exod 13:21–22; 14:19–20, 24). We are told very clearly that Yahweh led the Israelites out of Egypt on a quite precise route toward the Red Sea and that this guidance took the theophanic form of a column of cloud by day and fire by night. At the same time, the theophany provided protection for the Israelites in their encounter at the sea and was the means by which the deity terrorized the enemy so that they panicked and fled into the returning waters of the sea and were drowned. It is clear throughout the account in J that the deity is active within the theophany. 20 There is here the same combination of cloud and fire as with J on Mount Sinai. Here, however, it is not associated with a sacred site but 20.  For a discussion of the source division see Van Seters, Life of Moses, 128–34.

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with the theme of the deity as providing a victorious vanguard for the forces of Israel. It should be noted that the column of cloud and fire is distinctive of J and there is no such vanguard theme used in P. Instead P uses a quite different tradition of splitting the sea through the use of Moses’ rod. In J’s treatment of the travels from the sea to Mount Sinai there is no explicit reference to the vanguard theme, because there is no further prospect of an encounter with the Egyptians or any other military threat. As we shall see below, this military aspect is essential to the vanguard theme. Another form of the theophany that is mentioned is that of the “angel” (malʾak), which is also a vanguard motif and which is clearly identified with the column of cloud. In the past there have been efforts to ascribe this “angel” figure to some distinctive source or editor, but I see no justification for doing so. The angel as a way of representing a divine encounter with humans was a common tradition in religious literature, and it is J who makes the connection between the angel and the theophany of divine presence. This identification can also be seen in the account of Moses at the burning bush on Sinai in Exod 3:2–3, where the angel and the flame of fire are combined and then identified as the deity. 21 The angel as vanguard is also mentioned in Exod 23:20–23, 22 again in combination with guidance and with bringing victory over the enemy, and this same theme is repeated in Exod 32:34; 33:2. 23 Consequently, within the Pentateuch all of the theophanic vanguard examples, whether it is the column of cloud and fire or the angel, belong to the same source, the J author. 24

Comparison with Near Eastern Traditions of Theophany Where do these notions about theophany come from? There are two basic forms of theophany presented in the literature of the ancient Near East. 25 21. See Van Seters, Life of Moses, 36–41. As I have tried to show, pp. 37–38, the angel of the burning bush episode is modeled on the divine warrior of Josh 5:13–15. See also the extended treatment of Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist, 78–92. This makes it quite clear that throughout J in Exodus the angel is intended as a vanguard warrior figure. 22. See my discussion in A Law Book for the Diaspora, 72–76. 23.  See also Deut 1:33 as part of the vanguard theme in vv. 30b–33, which is a later addition by J or in the tradition of J. See Van Seters, Life of Moses, 372. However, there is clearly little similarity between J’s vanguard theme and the use of the mal’ak in Jud 2:1–5, and this text should not be included in the same group as the others. 24.  It is significant that Second Isaiah, a contemporary of J also makes use of this vanguard motif, most notably in Isa 52:12 in its depiction of the Jews’ imminent departure from Babylon, which directly parallels this use in J’s version of the departure from Egypt, Exod 13:21–22; 14:19–20. For a discussion of J’s relationship to Second Isaiah, see my “In the Babylonian Exile with J: Between Judgment in Ezekiel and Salvation in Second Isaiah” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-exilic Times (ed. B. Becking and M. C. A. Korpel; OtSt 42; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 71–89. 25.  See especially J. Jeremias, Theophanie: Die Geschichte einer alttestamentlichen Gattung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965); T. W. Mann, Divine Presence and Guidance

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In one it is the deity who comes in great pomp and solemn procession on a cherubim throne to take up his or her abode in a newly built or refurbished temple, often celebrated in hymnic literature. 26 In the West-Asian tradition this is most often represented in the cloud and storm tradition, together with sacred mountains, as reflected in the Sinai pericope (Exod 19:16–19; 20:18–21). A second form of theophany is reflected in the concept of the “glory” (kābôd), a luminous cloud as presented in the dedication of the Solomonic temple in 1 Kgs 8:10–11, or as a blazing and consuming fire. In the Mesopotamian tradition the theophanic imagery is more often that of a terrifying and blazing splendor in the form of a divine “vanguard,” often associated with military campaigns, in which the gods, especially the warrior goddess Ishtar and the sun god Shamash, are said to go before the advancing army leading the troops and by their terrifying splendor resembling fire they throw the enemy into a panic. 27 What we see in J is the combination of the traditional western black storm cloud that envelopes the god, combined with the eastern tradition of the blazing brilliance of fire, and these are used by J to reflect both the coming of the deity to a sacred site, as in the divine appearances at the burning bush and the later theophany at Sinai, and in the vanguard motif of the angel/column of cloud and fire that goes before the Israelites on their journey out of Egypt and toward the promised land. Associated with the Mesopotamian vanguard theophany are the standards of the gods that accompany the army, and, like the ark in the biblical tradition, 28 these are kept in a tent. When the standard is borne before the marching army, then the theophany appears and leads them to victory. This is the imagery that lies behind all of these J texts, including the Tent of Meeting, which uses the column of cloud for the theophany. Even the suggestion that it is Joshua, a military commander and not a priest, who is the one that remains in the tent, comes from this military context of theophany. All of these elements are present within the unit in Exod 33:1–17 and make the whole of it intelligible as a unit, as indicated below.

The Relationship of the Tent of Meeting to Its Immediate Context First and foremost, it is important to note that the Tent of Meeting in Exod 33:7–11 is not the location of the usual cultic activities associated with in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). See also my Life of Moses, 254–70. 26.  The obvious example of this is the Canaanite storm god Baal, whose throne is on Mount Saphon on the north Levantine coast. There are echoes of this tradition in Pss 24 and 48. 27. For the mid-first-millennium Mesopotamian examples, see E. Cassin, La spendeur divine (Paris: Mouton, 1968) 65–82; Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, 144 (in the prayer to Shamash). 28.  See 1 Sam 4:3–9; 2 Sam 11:11.

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temples. It is not a portable sanctuary and there is no priesthood or liturgy for J in the wilderness, and none associated with the tent in any of the episodes in which it is involved. In fact, there are no priests or cult in J during the desert period and only a very limited liturgical calendar in the law codes to be in force only when they finally live in the promised land. 29 Nor is the primary function of the tent the housing of the ark, though it may be implied by the references to the ark in other contexts. 30 However, the Tent of Meeting does relate directly to the theme of the presence of the deity with his people and the way in which that presence will be manifest in a theophany. This is precisely what the dialogue between Moses and the deity in the immediate context in Exod 33:1–3, 12–17 is all about. In 33:1–3, the deity commands the people to proceed to the promised land, and they will be guided to this region by Yahweh’s “messenger” (malʾak) who will be the deity’s agent to drive out the former inhabitants in the conquest of the land. Indeed, this “messenger” is very closely identified with the presence of Yahweh himself. The theme of the malʾak as both a guide for the Israelites and the one who brings victory over their enemies is also associated with this same function in the column of cloud in the account of the departure from Egypt, as we have seen above. Consequently, the presence of Yahweh as vanguard of his people is manifest by the theophany of cloud and fire, just as it is on Mount Sinai (19:16– 19; 20:18–21). From this it is clear that there is always a serious threat of destruction associated with this theophany, which can “burn up” those in close proximity to it if they do anything that displeases the deity. For this reason Yahweh tells Moses that he cannot go up to the promised land among the people, because of their habitual obstinacy that invokes the divine anger (33:3, 5). All of this clearly relates to the idea that the tent is to be set up during their future journey away from Sinai, not in the center of the camp but at a considerable distance from it, and just as on Mount Sinai, Moses will be able to meet with the deity and receive communications from him there, while the people witness this event from a safe distance. 31 This is also in complete agreement with the remarks in Exod 20:18–21 (cf. Deut 5:22–27). The dialogue with the deity in Exod 33:12–17 seems to resume the dialogue in 33:1–3 that has been interrupted by the remarks in both vv. 4–6 and 7–11. Moses insists that the deity’s promise to go before the people and not with them is not enough. He must have constant and direct access to the deity so 29.  Exod 20:22–23:33; 34:11–26. 30.  Why else would Joshua be given the role as guardian and keeper of the tent (v. 11b) if the account did not assume the presence of the ark. Cf. the role of the young Samuel as guardian of the temple that housed the ark, in 1 Sam 3. 31.  This has nothing to do with any notion about the region outside the camp being unclean and taboo and therefore not accessible to priests, as Albertz suggests. There is no discussion anywhere about such taboos and no priests in the J source. That is a red herring.

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that he may know Yahweh’s plans, and unless the deity actual travels with them no one will recognize that they are Yahweh’s people. This request is granted according to the arrangement that has already been anticipated in the previous unit in 33:7–11 concerning the Tent of Meeting. At the same time vv. 12–17 also anticipate the covenant renewal in chap. 34. The literary unit in 33:1–17 constitutes a quite consistent and unified whole and should not be split up into multiple sources. 32

The Relationship of the Tent of Meeting in J to the Tabernacle of P In order to establish the relationship of J’s Tent of Meeting to the P tabernacle, we must examine this comparison on a number of important points. First, as we have seen above, J’s starting point was David’s simple tent for the ark, and this tradition was traced by Dtr back to the time of the wilderness (2 Sam 7:5–6). The tent was set up without priesthood, ritual or cult and this simplicity is continued by J. The Priestly Writer certainly knew the David tradition of the tent in the wilderness containing the ark, but his tabernacle was modeled entirely after the Solomonic temple, and this undercut the whole point of David’s simple tent for the ark. However, Dtr in 2 Sam 7:6 uses the phrase “in tent and in dwelling place” (bĕʾōhel ûbĕmiškān), with the meaning of “in a tent as a dwelling,” as distinct from a “house” (bayit) of cedar, that is, a temple. In a somewhat bizarre fashion, P has understood “tent” and “dwelling place” or “tabernacle” as two different entities, so he has the Israelites build a tabernacle largely of acacia wood that he then covers with a tent, the Tent of Meeting (Exod 36:14–38). Because the temple in Jerusalem could often be referred to as the dwelling place (miškān) of Yahweh, the use of the Solomonic temple as model was not difficult for P to make. Second, P’s purpose was to establish a firm continuity between the temple, its priesthood, and its cult with the giving of the Torah in the time of Moses. There could not be such a complete staff of priests and huge cultic apparatus without a traveling temple, no matter how unrealistic such a presentation may have been. The establishment of a priesthood and full cultic ritual by Moses was not possible without the tabernacle. It is difficult for me to see how a post-P writer could completely dismiss this elaborate presentation of the tabernacle, its entire priesthood and daily cult, and return to the more original notion of a simple tent in the desert with only a young nonpriestly attendant resident in the tent, and to think that all of this could be done in just 5 verses! Third, once the tabernacle is set up at Sinai, then subsequent instructions may be given to Moses at the tabernacle, but this is not the primary function of the tabernacle, as it is with J’s tent. Just how this meeting between 32.  See also Childs, Exodus, 589–93.

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Moses and the deity is accomplished at the tabernacle is left very vague. Because all of the instructions and regulations in Leviticus and Num 1–9 take place at Sinai, the meeting between Moses and the deity could also happen on Mount Sinai itself (Lev 25:1; 26:46; 27:34). It would appear that in the Holiness Code, all of the laws were given on Mount Sinai!  33 Consequently, the primary function of the Tent of Meeting in J is fundamentally different from that of the tabernacle in P, even though P makes use of the same terminology—“Tent of Meeting.” In P, it is made to bear an entirely different meaning. To this we will return below.

The Theophany in P The treatment of the theophany in P is also quite different from that of J. Nowhere does P speak of the column (ʿammûd) of cloud as in J’s vanguard motif. In fact, there is no vanguard motif in P as there is in J, only the theophany associated with the tabernacle, treated as a temple and therefore the abode of the deity. This means that J could not have derived any of his use of the vanguard motif from P. This also applies to J’s theophany on Mount Sinai, treated as the deity’s coming to a sacred place, which is dependent on Deuteronomy but owes nothing to P. Even in P’s remarks about Sinai in Exod 19:20–23 there are no references to a theophany, only the concern to treat Mount Sinai as sacred space, like a temple. In 24:15b–18a, P does describe the theophany as a cloud that covers the mountain at the same time that the “glory” (kabod) like a blazing fire was at the top of the mountain. Moses on the mountain top was also enveloped in the cloud. This makes it clear that the cloud is distinct from the theophany itself. The cloud in P has little in common with the West Asian theophanic tradition. When the tabernacle is complete, then the cloud descends, as it did on the mountain and covers or settles on top of the tabernacle, while the kabod as fire fills the tabernacle and it is this divine presence that prevents Moses from entering it (Exod 40:34–35). 34 This completely reverses the positions of the deity and Moses respectively in J’s presentation of the tent, in which Moses is inside the tent whenever the deity appears in the column of cloud outside the tent. The theophany in P is followed by a brief explanation that whenever the tabernacle was set up in the middle of the camp, the cloud would cover it during the day and the kabod as fire would be within it at night. In Num 9:15–23 the explanation of the cloud is expanded to suggest that at night the cloud becomes luminous as fire, but this is distinct from the theophanic function of the kabod as blazing fire within the tabernacle. 33.  It is entirely likely that the Holiness Code of Lev 17–26 knew nothing of any tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. 34.  This also seems to contradict the divine instructions in Exod 25:22, which necessitate that Moses be inside the tabernacle.

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The primary function of the external cloud is to indicate the presence of the deity within the tabernacle, but only while the tabernacle was set up in camp. Both are constantly present the whole time that the people are not traveling, so that these elements are commonplace throughout their many years in the wilderness. It is clear that P has taken over the theophany elements in a modified form from J. The cloud element so important in J’s theophany, merely becomes the external indicator of the divine presence, in which the blazing fire element (from the Mesopotamian tradition) becomes the kabod within the tabernacle itself. This presentation of the theophany of cloud and fire in P, however, is problematic. While the cloud over the tabernacle could be clearly seen during the day and as a luminous cloud at night, the kabod as blazing fire in the tabernacle is quite distinct from the cloud and could only be seen as a theophany on certain occasions as blazing forth from the entrance of the tabernacle, often in divine judgment or threat (Lev 10:2; Num 14:10; 16:19; 17:7[16:42]; 20:6). And what does it mean that the cloud did not depart from over the tabernacle as long as the people remained in the same place? It seems clear that P has attempted, without success, to adapt the vanguard theophany of cloud and fire in J to P’s stationary conception of the Tent of Meeting as a semipermanent sanctuary. Furthermore, in J the appearance of the column of cloud at the Tent of Meeting is always a very special event, but only occasionally does P attempt to make the theophany of fire in the tabernacle a special event. Thus, during the inauguration of the priesthood of Aaron at the entrance of the tabernacle, after all the sacrifices have been made, the kabod appeared to all the people in the form of the fire that came out of the tabernacle and consumed all of the sacrifices (Lev 9:22–24). However, it is not clear how this kabod theophany can be related to the fire that is in the tabernacle every night. And how exactly do the priests carry out their daily functions within the tabernacle if it is filled constantly with the kabod, as indicated by the cloud that is constantly over the tabernacle? Furthermore, at night the cloud over the tabernacle appears as luminous as fire, but at the same time there is the fire of the kabod every night in the tabernacle (Num 9:15–23). This nocturnal fire is a “blind motif” that has been taken over from J with no obvious purpose. Nor is this stationary theophany of cloud and fire in P ever used as a vanguard for the people, except possibly in Num 9:17b where it states that “in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people set up camp.” But of course the cloud could only settle down after the tabernacle was set up, because it always came down on top of the tabernacle. When the deity commands them to move, the cloud is lifted and they proceed until they are commanded to encamp and then the cloud returns. But the cloud does not act as a vanguard to guide them on their journey as it does in J. Its entire function is merely to identify the tabernacle as the abode of the deity. The people break camp or set up

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camp only at the command of the deity through Moses. From all of this, the direction of dependence of P on J is obvious. P’s makeover of the vanguard motif in J just cannot be made to work.

The Theophany in P and in DtrH Compared The Priestly text in Exod 40:34–35 also deserves some comparison with the dedication of the temple in 1 Kgs 8. In this description of transporting the ark with great ceremony from the tent in the city of David in order to place it in the new temple built by Solomon, no sooner had the priests placed the ark in the temple between the cherubim and under their outstretched wings, and come out again when “a cloud filled the house of Yahweh, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, because the glory (kabod) of Yahweh filled the house of Yahweh” (vv.  10–11; see also 2 Chr 5:13b–14). Here the cloud itself which is inside the temple is the theophany and the equivalent to the kabod. It is also clear that this theophany was a one-time event in which the priests were only temporarily excluded from service in the temple, and it was only intended to mark the arrival of the ark to its appropriate and permanent resting place. It is also clear that the ark is intended to replace the throne of the deity in the other Near Eastern traditions of temple dedication. The theophany is never mentioned again by Dtr. 35 However, it has long been recognized that there are serious problems with this presentation of the ark and the theophany in this unit in 1 Kgs 8:1–11, because much of it is so completely out of character with Dtr. 36 There is a good deal of Priestly language throughout this unit, which is not otherwise used in Dtr, which makes the non-Dtr references to the cloud and the kabod also suspect. Thus, there is the specific dating of the event (v. 2), which is typical of P’s style. The “Tent of Meeting” with all of the sacred vessels that were in the tent, which corresponds to P’s tabernacle, are brought up as relicts, even though all the new furnishings of the temple were already installed in the temple. The description of the ark and its placement in the temple has been greatly embellished in vv. 7–8, similar to that found in Exod 25:13–15, 20. In particular the poles are said to protrude out of the debir, which presupposes a veil at the entrance, as it is in 2 Chr 3:14, and not the doors in 1 Kgs 6:31–32. Consequently, there is every reason to believe that the theophany of 1 Kgs 8:10–11 is a late priestly embellishment that made use of the account in 2 Chron 5:13b–14, as well as the other priestly details 35.  However, it takes on a quite different form in prophecy in Isa 6 and the visions of Ezekiel. 36. This matter has been discussed in considerable detail by McCormick, Palace and Temple: A Study in Architectural and Verbal Icons, 168–90, esp. pp.  172–83. My abbreviated analysis follows that of McCormick.

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from Chronicles. Furthermore, the Priestly revision in 1 Kgs 8:10–11 can only make the theophany a one-time event, and it has also placed both the cloud and the kabod within the temple, so that nothing is to be seen from the outside. This placement of the cloud inside the temple could be a concession to the remark in v. 12 that Yahweh dwells in “thick darkness.” The usual mode of presentation for P in Exodus–Leviticus is to place the cloud over the tabernacle and the fire within it. When the cloud first descends on the tabernacle, the cloud covers it while the kabod fills it, and this is the relationship of these two elements throughout the whole desert period. Nothing is said about the exclusion of Aaron and the priests at this point, because they are not consecrated to serve in the tabernacle until much later. Only Moses is mentioned, as if to suggest that he is henceforth excluded from the tabernacle by the presence of the kabod of Yahweh within it. To confirm this arrangement, Lev 1:1 immediately follows with the statement, “Yahweh summoned Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying . . .” From this point on P largely ignores or assumes this location in the introduction of divine speeches. Nevertheless, in the few instances where the presentations of instructions and divine law are given, the locations are varied and contradictory, and with little reference to any theophany. Thus, Num 1:1 begins by stating that Yahweh spoke to Moses “in the Tent of Meeting,” not “from the Tent of Meeting” as in Lev 1:1. The Holiness Code in Lev 25:1; 26:46 (cf. also 27:34; Lev 7:38) seem to suggest that the laws were all given on Mount Sinai itself and not at the Tent of Meeting. Again, quite a different view is suggested in Exod 25:21–22, in which the simple ark of the Deuteronomist has become a cherubim throne for the deity, so common in Near Eastern iconography. Here the deity explicitly states to Moses: “There I will meet (yʿd ) with you, and from above the covering, from between the two cherubim that are above the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you of all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel.” This meeting can only take place within the inner sanctuary. What is most significant by its absence is the fact that the tabernacle is not identified as the Tent of Meeting here in spite of the fact that the verb yʿd is used to describe this meeting between Moses and the deity, and there is no reference to a theophany of fire. This suggestion of Moses’ location within the tabernacle is picked up again in Num 7:89 in a text that is completely isolated from its context: “When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Yahweh, he heard the voice (haqqôl) speaking to him from above the cover that was over the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him.” Again, there is no suggestion in this text of the cloud or fire theophany, nevertheless the reference to “the voice” or “the sound” seems to be reminiscent of God’s voice in the Sinai theophany in Exod 19:19 ( J) where God speaks to Moses “in a sound” (běqôl), and this theme is also developed at great length

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in Deut 4, as noted above. In P this theme is shifted from Mount Sinai/Horeb to the tabernacle itself, and it is only Moses who hears this sound and not the people, so the whole point of the argument in Deut 4 about only hearing a voice from heaven and not seeing an image is lost in P. In Lev 16:2, which has to do with Aaron’s appearance in the holy place beyond the veil on Yom Kippur, there is a direct reference to the deity appearing in the cloud above the covering of the ark, and in v. 13 there seems to be an identity between the theophanic cloud and the cloud of smoke produced by the burning incense that Aaron takes into the holy place. This seems to contradict all of the other references to the cloud in P which places the cloud over the tabernacle as a whole.

The Theophany in Ezekiel and in J and P Compared This is not the place to enter into a full discussion of theophany in the biblical tradition. Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider briefly the prophet Ezekiel, because he has much to say about the subject and he stands within the priestly tradition and therefore deserves some comparison with P. As with P, Ezekiel constantly speaks about the theophany as the kabod of Yahweh, and he also associates this kabod with the temple. The fullest account of this theophany is in Ezek 1:4–25, and the subsequent references to the kabod are intended to be merely summary versions of this one. The description begins in v. 4, not with the temple but with a great storm cloud that comes out of the north and this is combined with a dazzling brightness of flashing fire and gleaming bronze. After the elaborate treatment of the chariot-throne with its winged creatures, a human figure is described in terms of fire and gleaming bronze, as in the initial scene (vv. 26–28). This reflects the combination of the brightness and fire with the cloud in v. 4 and this combination is also found in 10:4. It seems to me that we have here a presentation of theophany, combining the West Asian tradition of the storm cloud with the Mesopotamian tradition of fire and brilliance, which is much closer to J than it is to P. The human figure also suggests the malʾak notion of J more than anything in P. This initial theophany in Ezekiel, however, does not take place at a sacred location but in a vision in Babylonia in connection with Ezekiel’s original calling. Later, in chap. 8, there is a vision of a strange angelic, luminous like figure who transports the prophet to Jerusalem into the presence of the deity in the temple, identified as the same vision of the kabod of God that he had in Babylonia. After a tour of the city and the temple courts by his guide (chaps. 8–9), Ezekiel sees the cherubim throne, but now the cloud fills the inner court and the temple itself along with the brilliance of the kabod of Yahweh (10:3–4). In addition there is a strong emphasis on the voice (qôl) of the deity v. 5). Here the cloud theophany filling the temple and identified

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with the kabod is virtually identical in phraseology with 1 Kgs 8:10–11. It is true that much is made in Ezekiel of a great chariot throne and cherubim, but no connection is made between this and the ark. In P, both of these elements become combined in the most holy place of the tabernacle. J plays down any connection of the deity’s presence with the ark because it has a constant presence with the people whereas the column of cloud does not. If we try to say something about the history of these theophany traditions, we may observe that Ezekiel seems to associate the kabod in the temple with a portable (?) throne in the inner sanctuary, but says nothing about the ark, whereas Dtr places all of the emphasis on the ark and says nothing about any throne. However, the cherubim placed on either side of the ark in the inner sanctum (1 Kgs 8:6) seem to reflect an older throne tradition, and the Priestly embellishment in vv. 7–8 make this much more obvious. Ezekiel says nothing about a theophanic encounter at Horeb/Sinai in Ezekiel 20. It is Dtr in Deut 4 and 5 and J in Exod 19 and 20 who carry over the basic features of cloud, fire and the sound of God’s voice reflected in Ezekiel to the Horeb/ Sinai theophany, while J has only a modified version of this associated with the Tent of Meeting. P’s treatment of theophany seems actually to stand farthest from Ezekiel in his presentation of theophany, because in P the West Asian storm theophany of a thunder cloud is very weakly represented in the cloud that covers the tabernacle.

The Function of the Tent as a Meeting Place in J and P We come now to the central question of whether J depends on P or P on J for the designation “Tent of Meeting.” 37 We have already seen above that J rests heavily on Dtr for his notion of the idea of a tent for the ark, as symbol of the divine presence in the wilderness. It is Moses in J, however, who gives to this tent the designation “Tent of Meeting” which is then explained by two different activities that take place at this location. The first is the simple function of the tent as a place of prayer. Anyone who was inclined to “seek Yahweh” would then go out to the Tent of Meeting for this purpose. This has led some scholars to surmise that the unit reflects an old tradition about a special oracular tent, but this sort of speculation is quite unnecessary. It merely refers to a very common practice of a person going to a local sanctuary in order to make a personal request of the deity, “to seek Yahweh” or “to seek the face (that is, the presence) of Yahweh.” 38 This activity identifies the Tent of Meeting as a portable sanctuary. However, no theophany is required 37.  This seems to be the most important point in Albertz’s argument for the priority of P. 38.  Examples of these prayers spoken of as “seeking Yahweh” are very numerous in the book of Psalms, for example, Ps 27:8. This may also be reflected in the example of Hannah’s prayer in the sanctuary in Shiloh, 1 Sam 1:9–18. One of Moses’ functions in Exod 18:15 is

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in this activity. The second function concerns those special occasions when the deity meets with Moses in a column of cloud at the door of the tent, while Moses is inside the tent itself. All the people view this event at a distance and do not themselves participate in this encounter. These meetings are exceptional and only occur on very solemn occasions. Nothing is said about the ark in the tent as symbol of the divine presence, and in this respect J goes beyond Dtr in a significant way. The Priestly Writer interprets the tabernacle as a Tent of Meeting in an entirely different way. First of all, he has the deity give instructions to Moses on the mountain for 40 days on the construction of a “dwelling place” (miškān) at Sinai in elaborate detail. Its primary purpose is as a sanctuary (miqdāš) in which the deity is to reside in great splendor during the rest of the desert journey, including the two-year stay at Mount Sinai itself (Exod 25:8). This sanctuary houses the ark, taking over the Dtr tradition, but now the ark serves primarily as the throne for the deity in a special chamber of the tabernacle (vv.  10–21). It is here that Moses is to meet (yʿd) with the deity to receive all of Yahweh’s commands for the people (v. 22), although it is not called the Tent of Meeting at this point, as one might have expected. The shift from the deity’s periodic appearance in J to semi-permanent residence in a sanctuary in P now changes the whole understanding of the tent. Consequently, once the tabernacle is built then Moses meets with the deity, either at the entrance or within the sanctuary itself to receive most of the laws while they are still at Sinai for two years, with some additional laws at Kadesh (Num 15–19). Now the way in which the sanctuary becomes a “Tent of Meeting” for the people as a whole is through the daily morning and evening sacrifice (Exod 29:42–46): “This is to be a perpetual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the Tent of Meeting before Yahweh, where I will meet with you (plural, the Israelites), to speak there to you (singular, Moses).” Here P has given a new interpretation to both aspects of the Tent of Meeting in J. Any kind of priestly activity that took place at the entrance of the tabernacle could be construed as an occasion of the deity “meeting” with his people, from which the lay were excluded. This interpretation was then applied in perpetuity to all future temples, that is, the Second Temple in Jerusalem. This kind of explanation for the term looks surprisingly like midrash. There must be an important reason for P’s application of this name to the tabernacle, namely, to supplant J’s Tent of Meeting with the tabernacle/ temple along with its priesthood and cult. P uses (1) the constant repetition of the term Tent of Meeting; (2) the insistence on the deity as being in the midst of the people, and not distant from them, throughout P’s discourse on the to receive the people when they “inquire (drš) of God,” which is parallel to “seeking (bqš) God.”

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tabernacle; (3) the emphasis on meeting with the people on a constant and daily basis in perpetuity, while limiting his meeting with Moses primarily to the giving of the law during the two years at Sinai. All this P does in order to overwhelm and contradict J’s brief statement on the function of the Tent of Meeting. To suggest, as some scholars do, that J’s very brief description of the Tent of Meeting was intended to undermine this very extensive treatment by P is simply not plausible.

The Role of Moses at the Tent of Meeting in J In Deuteronomy, the role of Moses begins at Horeb when he and the people together hear the 10 words declared to them by God from the mountain (Deut 5). These constitute the laws of the Decalogue that are written on the stone tablets and become the terms of the covenant at Horeb. Following this dramatic and terrifying experience of the theophany, Moses alone becomes the recipient and mediator of all the subsequent laws, which are written in a book and constitute the basis of a final covenant in the land of Moab (Deut 28:69[29:1]). In addition to this instruction in the law and admonition to obedience, Moses also acts as intercessor and mediator before God on behalf of the people while they were still at Horeb to avoid their complete destruction when they committed their great sin in their worship of the molten calf (Deut 9). J modifies this view of Moses’ role by having the deity dictate to Moses the whole Law at Sinai, which is then written in a “Book of the Covenant,” and to which the people then swear obedience (Exod 20:21–24:8). The deity writes a summary of this Law on stone tablets and this is reflected in the shorter version in Exod 34:11–26. That is the end of Moses’ function as law-giver. Thus, the Tent of Meeting did not have this purpose of receiving additional laws as suggested by Deuteronomy’s second covenant. The other role of Moses as the leader of his people is to act as intercessor on their behalf, not just at Sinai, as in Deuteronomy, but also on other occasions during their various episodes of murmuring against God. 39 The extension of this role is most obvious when one compares the people’s rebellion at Kadesh in Deut 1:26–40, where Moses admonishes the people but does not plead with the deity on their behalf. By comparison, J has Moses plead with the deity not to destroy the people but to forgive them (Num 14:13–19), using the same form of petition as that used at Sinai after the golden calf episode. This second prayer of intercession is set within the context of the theophany at the Tent of Meeting, establishing continuity in this role between Sinai and the Tent of Meeting. In P, the primary role of Moses at the Tent of Meeting is to receive the ceremonial and cultic laws and taboos having to do with the proper worship at the sanctuary, and these are given in great detail. By contrast, within the 39.  Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels.

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laws of the Holiness Code (Lev 17–26), there are those that correspond most closely with Covenant Code of J (Exod 21–23) and with those in the code of Deut 12–26, but these are said to be given on Mount Sinai and intended for life in the promised land. This has been augmented with later Priestly material (Lev 17; 21–22; 24), in which one finds references to the Tent of Meeting, which seems to contradict the reference to Mount Sinai. There are strong reasons to believe that this earlier Holiness Code follows D and agrees with J in associating all such laws with Mount Sinai and originally knew nothing about a Tent of Meeting. 40 However, the point is that the original scheme of J was for Moses to receive all the necessary laws at Sinai for their future life in the promised land and then after their departure from Sinai, Moses would receive all the future divine guidance and instruction for their journey, at a tent set up some distance from the camp. And because the people were inclined to be rebellious and difficult, Moses would also use the Tent of Meeting as a place of mediation and intercession on the people’s behalf. P has transformed this clear and simple scheme by turning the tent into an elaborate portable temple at the heart of the people’s life in the wilderness and the means by which all of the cultic institutions of the temple are made a part of the Mosaic legislation. The very uneven and often contradictory nature of this massive addition suggests a long and complex process by which this supplementation was made.

The Tent of Meeting in the Rest of J From what we have seen above, it is quite clear that the brief description of the Tent of Meeting in J is closely related to what has gone before it in this source, particularly as it is related to the theme of theophany. The author has been remarkably consistent in comparison with the P source, where there is a high level of inconsistency. This consistency of J is likewise apparent in what follows in this author’s work regarding the Tent of Meeting, and the unit in Exod 33:7–11 is indispensable for understanding the context and certain important elements in these later episodes in J. One might regard the first allusion to this Tent of Meeting to be found in Exod 34:34–35, and indeed, I did so understand it earlier, 41 but this sort of identity is problematic for two reasons. First, the language of the preceding text in vv. 29–33 is dominated by P terminology. Second, the terminology in v. 34 itself does not actually correspond with that of 33:9, which indicates that Moses was in the tent when the column appeared at the entrance, but this is different from 34:34 which states: ‫ובבא משח לפני יהוה לדבר אתו‬, “wherever Moses would go in before Yahweh to speak with him,” which suggests that the communication took place entirely within the tent. It further suggests that when Moses would 40.  For the relationship of the Holiness Code to the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy, see my Law Book for the Diaspora. 41.  Life of Moses, 356–60; cf. Childs, Exodus, 609–10.

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come out of the tent ‫ודבר אל־בני ישראל את אשר יצוה‬, “he would report to the Israelites what he had been commanded.” None of this fits the description of these encounters in 33:9–11, which knows nothing of any further laws or regulations given at the Tent of Meeting. However, in Exod 25:22, dealing with a description of the ark, the text presupposes that Moses will enter the tabernacle and approach the ark with its cherubim and it states, ‫ונועדתי לך‬ ‫ את כל־אשר אצוה אותך אל־בני ישראל‬. . . ‫“ שם ודברתי אתך‬there I will meet with you, and speak with you . . . concerning everything that I command you to [to say] to the Israelites.” What is anticipated in both this text and in 34:34 is that in the future meetings of Moses in the tabernacle/Tent of Meeting the deity would communicate through Moses all the subsequent Priestly Torah reflected in Leviticus-Numbers. By contrast, in J no further commandments are given at the Tent of Meeting. 42 Consequently, in J it is only after the Israelites’ departure from Sinai that we begin to get allusions to the divine theophany at the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.  In the short episode in Num 11:1–3, when the people complain about their hardships, we read about Yahweh’s response in anger which caused the fire of divine wrath to blaze out and consume “some of the outer perimeter of the camp.” This remark, in isolation, is rather curious, but it relates directly to the statement in Exod 33:3, 5 where the deity informs Moses that if he went in the midst of the people he would consume them, for they are a stubborn people. It is for this reason that the Tent of Meeting is set up outside the camp and at some distance from it. But in the first instance of complaining after Sinai in Num 11:1 the blaze of this divine wrath still reaches the outer edges of the camp, as if to illustrate the need for the location of the Tent of Meeting in Exod 33:7 as far from the camp. By comparison with P’s tabernacle, such a statement about consuming the outer perimeter would never fit P’s location of the Tent of Meeting in the center of the camp because it would mean that all of the people would have been completely destroyed. It is inconceivable, therefore, that a “Pentateuchal Redactor” would have added such a statement in Num 11:1, knowing that a destructive fire emanating from the tabernacle at the center of the camp to its perimeter would have killed everyone in it (cf. Lev 10:1–2). 43 Num 11:1 must have preceded the P addition. 42.  This analysis goes directly against that of Albertz, “Moses as Mediator of Divine Salvation: The Late Exilic Book of Exodus (Exod 1–34*),” Enigmas and Images: Studies in Honor of Tryggve N. D. Mettinger (ed. G. Eidevall and B. Scheuer; ConBOT 58; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011) 53–72. Contrary to his discussion, the text in Exod 34:29–35 has nothing to do with Moses role as mediator, and everything to do with Moses as law-giver in the P tradition as made clear by the parallel in Exod 25:22. This, however, is related to a much larger discussion that cannot be included here. 43.  Commentators on Num 11:1–3 focus primarily on the role of Moses as mediator, by which the damage is limited to only the edge of the camp, as illustrative of the warning about divine anger in Exod 33:3, but they give no attention to the topography of the scene

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In Num 11:10, this threat of divine anger arose again because of the people’s complaining about their food, but this time it adds a description of the people weeping, “every man at the doorway of his tent.” This recalls the same phrase in Exod 33:8, which states that whenever Moses went out to the Tent of Meeting all of the people stood “each at the doorway of his tent.” After Moses makes his own complaint about the burden of leadership, Yahweh tells him to gather seventy elders of the people at the Tent of Meeting and they will be especially equipped for leadership by being endued with some of Moses’ spirit. This is what happens the next day (vv. 24–25) with the elders gathered around the Tent of Meeting at the time when the theophanic cloud descends and Yahweh speaks to Moses. But how is an ancient reader to know that the Tent of Meeting is not the one in the center of the camp (P) but some distance away from it ( J)? What follows in vv. 26–30 makes it clear that the Tent of Meeting is some distance from the camp, and the rest of the particulars of this episode are likewise dependent on the description of Exod 33:7–11. They make no sense if the Tent of Meeting is in the center of the camp. However, assigning this text to a post-P redactor would mean that once again a “PentRed” would have to assume that the reader would ignore all of P’s many references to the Tent of Meeting in the center of the camp and somehow recall this one short text in J. This episode in Num 11:4–35 also reinforces the idea that all of the dialogues between Yahweh and Moses during the wilderness journey took place at the Tent of Meeting, whether this is explicitly stated or not. Unlike the vague statement in Deut 5:30–31 in which Moses is told to stand close to the deity while the people remain in their tents for fear of the divine splendor, J makes quite explicit where and how all of these dialogues between Moses and the deity took place at the Tent of Meeting. It is only the large blocks of P’s additions and the placing of the Tent of Meeting in the center of the camp that have obscured this fact. No author of these non-P episodes could take such assumptions for granted if these non-P references and allusions to the Tent of Meeting were additions made to the P corpus and not composed prior to it. The episodes in Num 11 must have followed very soon after Exod 33–34 and the subsequent departure from Sinai. The scene in Num 12 is a little different in that it is now a case of a complaint by only two persons, Miriam and Aaron, the siblings of Moses. Here, Yahweh suddenly addresses all three to “come out” to the Tent of Meeting, which is presumed to be outside the camp. Then, when all three come to the Tent of Meeting, the deity appears in the theophany of the column of cloud at the door of the tent and addresses all three on this occasion. The details of the Tent of Meeting again conform entirely to those of J and not to in Num 11:1, which requires precisely those details in Exod 33:7–11 and illustrates why these two texts go so closely together. Cf. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, 135; Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels, 143–46.

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those of P. Furthermore, apart from the special circumstances of this episode in Num 12, Aaron has no association with the Tent of Meeting comparable to his role in the tabernacle in P. By contrast, the theophany at the Tent of Meeting in Num 14:10b within the larger J narrative is more difficult to evaluate, because in this case P has made a number of additions to the base account of J throughout Num 13–14. Here the language in 14:10 is clearly not that of J but P, similar to P in 16:19. In these texts Yahweh meets with all the people of Israel or the whole the congregation at the Tent of Meeting. In both cases P is imitating J but with his own distinctive language and understanding of the Tent of Meeting. Consequently, throughout the J narrative in Num 13–14 the regular scenario of Moses meeting with the deity at the Tent of Meeting is just assumed. A final reference to the Tent of Meeting in J is to be found in Deut 31:14– 15. Here the description of the deity summoning both Moses and Joshua to the Tent of Meeting, so that Joshua may be commissioned to succeed Moses, is just as one would expect from both Exod 33:7–11 and the story of the commissioning of the 70 elders in Num 11:16–17, 24–25. Because this J unit in Deut 31:14–15 is a late addition to Deuteronomy and at considerable distance from his earlier episodes, J makes a special point to repeat the essential details, with Moses and Joshua in the tent and the column of cloud at the door of the tent. The whole unit in Deut 31:14–15, 23, along with its sequel in J’s additions to chap. 34, forms the transition of J’s history to the Dtr story of Joshua. Finally, one cannot imagine a post-P writer composing a few brief remarks about his Tent of Meeting in Exod 33:7–11 and planting them is such a contradictory way in the middle of this elaborate description of the building of the tabernacle. Then after many pages by P about this Tent of Meeting in the middle of the camp in Leviticus and Numbers, this late redactor adds a few stories in which he makes several vague allusions to his Tent of Meeting outside the camp in Exod 33:7–11 and assumes that the reader will completely ignore everything that has been written about the Tent of Meeting between that point and Num 11:1. This sort of literary reconstruction is simply not credible. Indeed, it is clear that there was nothing between the end of Exod 34:28 and Num 10:29, and it is only on these terms that the references and allusions to the Tent of Meeting in J in the book of Numbers make any sense.

Conclusion This “key text” of Exod 33:7–11, as Rainer Albertz likes to call it, clearly demonstrates to my mind that the Yahwist is a carefully composed and unified whole. All the efforts to fragment it into numerous pieces and assign these bits to “redactors” destroy this very important literary work and render it rather meaningless. This is what happened earlier to the Documentary Hypothesis when it was combined with the Martin Noth’s form-critical and

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tradition-historical block model in the interests of recovering ancient preliterate traditions, prior to the earliest literary form dating, as he thought, to the time of Solomon. 44 Once J was identified as a post-Deuteronomic composition, this undermined both the Documentary Hypothesis and Noth’s block model, along with all of the obsolete redactors. Recent efforts to salvage both the block model and the redactors in a new form of literary criticism have only made matters worse. Instead of assigning each individual feature of the J narrative to a distinct redactor, such as a malʾak redactor or a Tent of Meeting redactor, one should endeavor to discover the essential unity and coherence of the literary work, and out of this try to ascertain the place of this work in the larger literary history. There can be no doubt that for some of his composition the Yahwist did make use of prior traditions, some of them known through the earlier biblical literature or from foreign literary sources, others quite unknown. 45 This great diversity of sources can give rise to some narrative unevenness in the text of the author, but it is a little rash to think that we can reconstruct all of these prior traditions with any certainty. As I have tried to show in this test case, however, we can see how J made use of the Deuteronomistic material, and this is typical of his methods elsewhere in his work. He also made use of the prevailing notions of theophany of his day and construed this feature in his story quite differently from both D/Dtr before him and P after him. All of these features can be controlled by careful examination of the comparative examples and not merely assigned to fictitious and uncontrollable redactors. As I have tried to show in the above list of arguments, it is entirely unreasonable to place the Priestly tabernacle earlier than the Yahwist’s Tent of Meeting within the composition of the Pentateuch, and once this is admitted then all of the J (non-P) material in Numbers is also earlier than P. So these five verses in Exod 33:7–11 are indeed a test case for the current literary criticism of the Pentateuch. 44.  Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions; cf. Van Seters, Edited Bible, 265–76. 45.  Scholars, including Martin Noth, seem to have no difficulty in assuming that Dtr had numerous sources at his disposal in the construction of his history. All of the antiquarian historians of Greece had multiple sources (Van Seters, Prologue to History, 24–103). Why cannot J be viewed in the same way?

Chapter 21

Deuteronomy between Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History Introduction: The Current State of the Problem The problem of how Deuteronomy relates to the Pentateuch, on the one hand, and to the book of Joshua, on the other, can be seen most clearly in the way in which the issue was posed between G. von Rad, with his support of a Hexateuch, and M. Noth, with his reconstruction of a Deuteronomstic History from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings and with the Pentateuch being reduced to a Tetrateuch. The notion of a Hexateuch arose out of the Documentary Hypothesis and is based on the observation that the accounts of the pentateuchal sources J, E, D, and P, are not complete without the narration of the conquest of Joshua. This is the position that von Rad defended, and he insisted, against Gunkel and others, that this basic compositional structure from creation to the conquest of the land was the work of a historian and author, the Yahwist, and not the result of an accidental traditiohistorical process. Noth’s construction of a similar history, the DH, from Deuteronomy to 2  Kings, however, put advocates of the Hexateuch such as von Rad on the defensive. Noth solved the problem of the conflicting histories by reducing the Pentateuch (that is, the Tetrateuch) to blocks of tradition based on themes that came together through a nebulous traditiohistorical process, which reduced the author, the Yahwist to insignificance. The subsequent connections between the Tetrateuch and the DH were all explained by endless Deuteronomistic and Priestly redactors, thereby creating a de facto redactional Hexateuch. 1 Revisions to pentateuchal criticism in the 70s, which called into question the classical Documentary Hypothesis, have led to two basic options concerning the problem of the Hexateuch. One approach is to continue Noth’s Author’s note: This paper was presented at the Pro-Pent conference, held at Hammanskraal, South Africa, on 30 August–2 September, 2002. 1.  See my Edited Bible, 256–82.

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notion of tradition blocks (but without sources J and E) and his use of redactors who put the blocks together. This approach is primarily concerned with the interconnections of the themes of the Pentateuch rather than sources but may also be extended to include the theme of Joshua’s conquest as a quasi-Hexateuch. This is the approach used by Rolf Rendtorff and followed in modified form by Erhard Blum, Konrad Schmid, 2 and others cited below. The other option is to follow the direction of von Rad in asserting the primacy of authors, such as the Yahwist, but to construe the relationship of such pentateuchal authors to the DH as that of supplementation. 3 Thus, J (non-P) and P in the Tetrateuch are later than Deuteronomy and the DH and represent an expansion of that corpus into the more remote past. These two approaches are completely incompatible. The problem with the Documentary Hypothesis is not the multiplicity of sources or authors in the Pentateuch, for which there is abundant evidence. The problem is with the whole notion of redactors as a literary explanation for their combination. This is the fundamental fallacy of 19th century literary criticism that after two centuries is still perpetuated in redaction criticism in biblical studies today. Most of the criticism directed against the Documentary Hypothesis by Rendtorff and others is, in my view, completely misguided and has done more damage than the older views of pentateuchal studies. That is also my fundamental disagreement with Eckart Otto and his understanding of the relationship of Deuteronomy to the Pentateuch. This may best be illustrated by a particular example taken from a recent critique of my work by Otto. 4

P’s Relationship to Deuteronomy In his objection to my supplementary approach to the relationship of P to Deuteronomy, Otto raises a question concerning the lack of Priestly additions to Deuteronomy, which he considers a problem for my view. This, of course, is the same argument used by Israeli and Jewish scholars for any late dating of P and who therefore want to date P earlier than D. Otto now deems it convenient to use as an argument for his own purposes to support his redaction criticism of Deuteronomy. In my view, the additions of both J and P to D and DH were minimal for obvious reasons. They had the chance to say what they wanted to say in Genesis–Numbers and there was little left to add except to comment on the last days of Moses’ life. P did make a big addition to Joshua, and that caused Noth much difficulty, so he had to delete 2. R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (1977); E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (1984); idem, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (1990); Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus (1999). 3.  Van Seters, The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary, 58–86. 4. E. Otto, “Forschungen zum nachpriesterschriftlichen Pentateuch,” ThR 67 (2002) 130–34.

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Num 26 and 27:1–11; parts of chaps. 32 and 33–36 from P and assign it to a redactor. Once that expedient was introduced there was no stopping the invention of multiple redactors. Against my view that Exod 19–20 depends on Deut 4–5, Otto takes over the view of Fishbane that Deut 4 is a midrashic interpretation of Gen 1. 5 For Fishbane D is later than P, and virtually the whole of D is an inner-biblical interpretation of both the Covenant Code and P. But is Deut 4:16b–19a a “literal quotation” of Gen 1:14–27, 6 or an “explicit aggadic adaptation.” 7 Certainly not! The language is quite different. The series “all the animals that are on the earth,” “all winged birds that fly in the sky,” “all reptiles that creep (‫ )רמש‬on the ground,” “all fish that are in the sea” (v. 17), is very similar to the series used by J in the Flood Story (Gen 6:7), except that the fish are excluded for obvious reasons. Otto also mentions the P phraseology in 4:25, using ‫ ילד‬in the Hiphil and ‫ ברא‬in 4:32. But why must these be evidence of P use? The word ‫ ילד‬in the Hiphil is also used in a very similar way in Deut 28:41, but this text according to Otto is 7th century D. 8 And ‫ ברא‬is also used by J in Gen 6:7 in a very similar manner. Before we invoke yet another redactor to solve this problem, let me hasten to mention that ‫ ברא‬appears several times in Second Isaiah, J’s contemporary, according to my view. Now Fishbane makes much of this use of ‫ ברא‬and sees Second Isaiah as also commenting on Gen 1. 9 Does Otto advocate this solution, or would he like to see a post-P redactor in Second Isaiah? My own solution, which is that both J and Second Isaiah are a little later than, and dependent on, Deut 4, is too simple for Otto, but I will stick to it nevertheless.

Comparison between Parallel Texts in D and J (Non-P): Earlier Studies Deuteronomy presents itself as a recapitulation of events that have taken place prior to the arrival of the Israelites in the plains of Moab under the shadow of Pisgah and opposite Jericho. It is assumed by most biblical readers that the references to prior events have to do with those that are now reflected in the Tetrateuch from the time of the giving of the Decalogue at Sinai/Horeb to the eve of the conquest under Joshua, and many scholars have uncritically followed this same assumption. Already 30 years ago, I attempted to show that the account of the conquest of the kingdoms of Sihon and Og in Num 21 is not the source for Deuteronomy but the reverse. 10 In 5. M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 321–22. 6.  Otto, “Forschungen,” 132. 7.  Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 321. 8. E. Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in Juda und Assyrien (BZAW 284; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999) 64–69. 9.  Biblical Interpretation, 322–26. 10.  “The Conquest of Sihon’s Kingdom, A Literary Examination,” JBL 91 (1972) 182–97

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the years that followed I have won some support for this view. 11 But these conquest narratives of Num 21 are not just a later addition to the J (= nonP) narrative. I have subsequently argued that all of the parallel narratives in Deuteronomy are the sources of those in Exodus–Numbers. 12 Starting with the Sinai theophany in Exod 19–20 and its parallel in Deut 4–5, the golden calf episode of Exod 32 with its sources in Deut 9 and 1 Kgs 12, the story of the spies and the aborted invasion from the south in Num 13–14 and its counterpart in Deut 1:19–46, the final trek from Kadesh to the plains of Moab, including the conquest of the eastern territories in Num 20–21 and their parallel in Deut 2–3, the distribution of the eastern regions in Num 32 and their parallel in Deut 3:12–22. In each of these cases, close scrutiny demonstrates that Deuteronomy contains the older version of the episode in question. Furthermore, the clear, tightly crafted sequence of events in Deut 1–3 has been broken up and interspersed with many other episodes, such as murmuring episodes and the Baalam story by the author of Numbers ( J), such that it is hardly conceivable that Dtr could have extracted his narrative from J and discarded the rest. Any serious discussion of the relationship of Deuteronomy to the Pentateuch must begin with a thorough treatment of these parallel narratives, but with a few exceptions, 13 this has still been largely neglected. Because I have dealt with this subject at length in previous publications I will not repeat them here. Instead, I will focus on the final scene of Moses’ death in Deut 34.

The Final Scene of Moses’ Death in D, J, and P: Deuteronomy 34 A recent proposal by Thomas Römer and Marc Brettler argues for a “hexateuchal redactor” who is presented as competing with a “pentateuchal redactor.” 14 Key to this discussion is their understanding of Deut  34 and Josh  24. In this they follow a suggestion by Erhard Blum who identified Josh  24 as the work of a hexateuchal redactor, as distinct from his pentateuchal “compositions” KD and KP. 15 Blum goes so far as to identify the “Book of the Torah of God” in Josh 24:26 as a reference to the hexateuch, a 11.  J. M. Miller, “The Israelite Journey through (around) Moab and Moabite Toponymy,” JBL 108 (1989) 577–99; H. C. Schmitt, “Das Hesbonlied Num 21:12a b–30 und die Geschichte der Stadt Hesbon,” ZDPV 104 (1988) 26–34; K. A. D. Smelik, “Een vuur gaat uit van Chesbon,” Amsterdamse Cahiers 5 (1984) 61–109. 12.  Van Seters, Life of Moses (1994). 13.  Rose, Deuteronomist und Jahwist. 14. T. Römer, and M. Z. Brettler, “Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,” JBL 119 (2000) 401–19. 15.  Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, 364–65; idem, “Der kompositionelle Knoten am Übergang von Josua zu Richter. Ein Entflechtungsvorschlag,” Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift C. H. W. Brekelmans” (ed. M. Vervenne and J. Lust; BETL 133; Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 194–206.

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redefinition of the Heilsgeschichte. This seems to stretch the meaning of the phrase, “the Book of the Torah of God,” which rather refers back to the preceding covenant with its statutes and ordinances in v. 25. (See the parallel in Josh 8:30–35.) Nevertheless, the primary argument for the hexateuchal redactor, as taken up by Römer and Brettler, is the proposal that Josh 24 was composed as a concluding statement of the Hexateuch, to create a break with the time of the judges. To focus clearly on this issue we need also to bracket Judg 1:1–2:5 as an interruption in the continuity of DH. The original history, therefore, went from Josh 23 to Judg 2:6–10. So Josh 24 is also an addition, but at an earlier level than Judg 1:1–2:5 because it still maintained this continuity with Judges in vv. 28–31. The only serious interruption, then, is vv. 32–33. But v. 33 recounting the death and burial of Eleazar, the high priest, is a priestly addition because for P Eleazar must be viewed as the equal of Joshua and be treated in the same way with a burial site. This leaves only v. 32, the remark about the final burial of Joseph’s bones, as a possible break in the continuity between Joshua and Judges. Its purpose is to make clear a connection back to the patriarchal age. The theme is linked to J’s ending to the Joseph story in Gen 50:24–26, and the transport of Joseph’s bones at the time of the exodus in Exod 13:19. In this last case, the mention of Joseph’s bones does not seriously interrupt the sequence of events in Exod 13:18–22 and there is, likewise, no reason to regard Josh 24:32 as a deliberate attempt to break with what follows and close the Hexateuch. Furthermore, if Josh 24 was not intended to be continued in Judges, then why include the remarks in v. 31, “Israel served Yahweh all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua,” which has to do with the period following Joshua’s death and which is continued in Judg 2:10ff. as the original sequence of DH? (The rearrangement of the text in Judg 2:6–9—a resumptive repetition of Josh 24:28–31—was necessary to fit Judg 1:1–2:5 into its present position.) The content of Josh 24 not only points to the past history of the people up to the time of Joshua’s death but it also anticipates the future history of the people. The long dialogue between Joshua and the people about their future commitment to serving Yahweh raises the question how long would the people remain faithful to Yahweh? Do we have any indications of a connection between this theme in Josh 24 and what follows in Judges? In Judg 6:7–10, we have a unit that is often characterized as Dtr, but an obvious problem with it is that it appears somewhat redundant and intrusive between vv. 6 and 11, which is the Dtr’s account of Gideon’s call. Verses 7–10 includes some of the same themes of Israel’s rescue from Egypt, and so on, so scholars have described 6:7–10 as “late” Dtr. But a close examination reveals the fact that it has vocabulary and themes that are not typical of Dtr. 16 For instance, this 16. U. Becker, Richterzeit und Königtum: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Richterbuch (BZAW 192; Berlin: de Gruyter. 1990) 144–45.

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would be the only place in Dtr where ‫ גרש‬is used to speak of Yahweh “driving out” the prior inhabitants, in contrast to the usual Dtr theme of extermination. But this reference to “driving out” the prior inhabitants corresponds to the usage in Josh 24:12 (and other J passages, Exod 23:28–29). There is also the notion about “worshiping the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell”( Judg 6:10). This is not the usual way in Judges–Samuel of expressing the objects of the people’s apostasy. The forbidden gods are the Baals and the Ashtoroth of the peoples who live in the neighboring lands, whereas the Amorites along with their gods have been wiped out in DH! The language in Judg 6:7–10 conforms directly to that of Josh 24. The obvious point of this little unit is to link the Judges period with Joshua’s warning about apostasy and their serving “the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” There is no reason to doubt that both texts are by the same hand. Consequently, there is no literary basis for a Hexateuch. Let us now go back to Deut 34, in which it is claimed by Römer and Brett­ler that there are two competing endings, one by a pentateuchal redactor and one by the hexateuchal redactor. I basically agree with them about the DH version of Moses’ death and burial on Mount Pisgah in vv. 1a*, 5–6, which leaves us with two other levels in the text. The disagreement that I have with Römer and Brettler is that they attribute the additions of 34:7–9 to a hexateuchal redactor and vv. 1b–4*, 10–12 to a pentateuchal redactor. But it is not clear to me what objective criteria can be used to make such attributions because the division of texts seems to largely follow the older source attributions to J and P, which are now converted into redactors. Comparison with the views of Blum on these verses is instructive. While Blum does not offer an analysis of the whole chapter, he does ascribe vv. 7–9 to his KP (= P) composition, mainly on the strength of the Priestly connections of v. 9 with Num 27:18–23, and he ascribes vv. 10–12 to his KD (= J). 17 In the latter case, he sees a strong interconnection with a “complex bundle of cross-references” of texts (Exod 33–34; Num 11–12; Deut 31:14–15, 23) that he ascribes to KD. On the one hand, Blum seems to attribute to KD in 34:10–12 the function of marking the conclusion of the “Book of the Torah” of Moses and setting it off from what follows. 18 This would support Römer’s and Brettler’s notion of a pentateuchal redactor. On the other hand, the close connection of these verses with the preceding installation of Joshua in Deut 31:14–15, 23 in KD makes a connection with the following Joshua story. 19 The function of both the KP and KD additions, therefore, is to tie these compositions to the DH as a whole. 20

17.  Blum, Studien, 76–88, 227. 18.  Ibid., 88. 19.  Ibid., 110–11. 20.  Ibid., 227.

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An alternate solution to the problem of the Hexateuch is to date the pentateuchal sources J and P as later than DH and view them as a supplement to it, in which case there is no need for a Hexateuch. Elements of P and non-P (= J) may be found in Deuteronomy and Joshua, but they function as cords to tie their early histories into the national tradition (DH). This alternative of a “supplementary hypothesis,” which I have long advocated as an answer to the Documentary Hypothesis, has not really been addressed by these redactional schemes. Consequently, my own division of the layers in Deut 34 is to apply the language criteria of the J and P sources to the non-Dtr texts. 21 First, let us consider P. Verse 9, the description of Joshua’s qualities as Moses’ successor, is an obvious P intrusion that relates back to Num 27:18–23. There is also a P gloss in v. 1, which locates Pisgah more precisely, and another addition in v. 5 “according to the word of Yahweh,” which creates a link with Deut 32:48–52 (P). Nothing else is Priestly in Deut 34. The major addition is by J. The description of the land and the patriarchal promise in 1b–4, and the rest of the remarks about Moses in vv. 7–8 and 10–12 all belong to J and make a good fit with the non-P materials in the Pentateuch. The age of Moses at his death (v. 7), which imitates 31:2, is in J’s style similar to that of Joseph in Gen 50:26, not in P’s style. The mourning for Moses is like the mourning for Jacob in Gen 50:3–4 ( J). P imitates this in Num 20:29 in the case of Aaron’s death but in a different style. The remarks about Moses speaking with the deity face to face correspond most closely with Exod 33:11 and Num 12:6–8 ( J). These texts are closely related to the “tent of meeting” texts (Exod 33:7–11; Num 11:16–17, 24–30; 12:1–8) so that it is this same J source that is responsible for the commissioning of Joshua in Deut 31:14–15, 23, which makes a link with the conquest of Joshua that follows. The links back to the earlier texts in J that highlight the role of Joshua are obvious. Thus, the Dtr core in Deut 34 that makes the transition from the time of Moses to Joshua has been supplemented by J’s final recollection of the patriarchal promises in Deut 34:1b–4, Moses’ age at death and the period of mourning in vv 7–8, and an obituary in vv. 10–12, to which P also adds a few glosses. The fact that the author, whom I am calling the Yahwist, chooses to end his life of Moses with a short obituary in Deut 34:10–12 does not mean that he has created a structural ending to his corpus, a deliberate break with what follows. If one takes the work as a whole, then so much in it points beyond the time of Moses to the conquest that follows. It is the scholarly search for a literary explanation for the Pentateuch in the form of redactors corresponding to a notion about the Torah’s canonization in the Persian period (in the form of the present Pentateuch) that is at fault. There is no good evidence for such a canon in the Persian period. And what is even more 21. See my Life of Moses, 451–56.

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problematic is searching for a literary explanation for the scholarly construction of the Hexateuch, the brainchild of the Documentary Hypothesis. The Hexateuch is a scholarly fantasy, and all the redactors invented to support it are likewise mere fantasies of scholarly ingenuity.

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Index of Authors Ahuis, F.  287 Albertz, R.  267, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 324, 325, 331, 338, 342, 344 Albright, W. F.  5, 116 Alcibiades  147 Alt, A.  303 Aristotle  147, 155, 156 Attridge, H. W.  23, 24 Aurelius, E.  287, 297, 326, 327, 340, 343 Barr, J.  143, 144, 145, 155, 157 Beaulieu, P.-A.  229, 330 Bechtel, L.  238 Becker, U.  350 Bentley, R.  315 Berlin, A.  235 Blenkinsopp, J.  319 Blum, E.  9, 11, 45, 134, 190, 215, 216, 235, 248, 251, 258, 262, 263, 267, 269, 281, 308, 322, 324, 343, 347, 349, 351 Boer, P. de  8, 314 Brettler, M. Z.  258, 349, 350, 351 Broadman, J.  159 Burkert, W.  135, 152, 159 Carr, D. M.  183, 196, 200, 251, 274 Cassin, E.  330 Childs, B. S.  162, 187, 279, 280, 281, 286, 287, 297, 321, 332, 341 Clark, W.  165, 166, 199 Coats, G. W.  247, 248, 251, 291, 297

Conrad, D.  303, 304 Crüsemann, F.  133, 134, 251, 285, 322, 323 Cryer, F. H.  212 Culley, R. C.  281 Dalley, S.  208 Davies, G. I.  291, 292, 297 Dietrich, W.  246, 248, 249, 251 Dionysius  14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 57, 132, 148, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 289, 293 Dozeman, T. B.  132, 178, 190, 192, 320, 321, 326 Ehrlich, A. B.  307, 309 Ehrman, B. D.  170 Eissfeldt, O.  6 Eissing, H.  314 Evelyn-White, H. G.  25 Fewell, D.  235, 240 Finkelstein, I.  277 Finley, M. I.  147, 156, 161 Fishbane, M.  348 Fohrer, G.  6 Fox, M. V.  247, 254, 255 Fritz, K. von  146, 161 Fritz, V.  193 Gabba, E.  22, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 292, 293 Gerstenberger, E.  304 Gertz, J.  178, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188 Goodenough, E.  65 Gould, J.  151, 152, 154 Grene, D.  150 Gressmann, H.  56, 62, 168

365

366

Index of Authors

Gunkel, H.  3, 4, 5, 6, 14, 18, 28, 30, 42, 56, 144, 159, 168, 171, 174, 193, 203, 215, 218, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225, 233, 267, 268, 346 Gunn, D.  235, 240 Ha, J.  231 Heidel, A.  20, 23 Herodotus  143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 167, 276, 278 Holladay, J. S.  56, 276 Hölscher, G.  7 Homer  15, 146, 148, 151, 152, 154, 156, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 181 Hornblower, S.  147 Humphreys, W. L.  246, 264 Immerwahr, H. R.  149, 154 Jeremias, J.  329 Josephus  14, 46, 90, 127, 132, 148, 149, 153, 289, 312 Kaiser, O.  222 Kebekus, N.  249 Keel, O.  82 Knoppers, G. N.  320 Koch  175 Lambert, W. G.  208, 212 Lateiner, D.  151, 152 Lemche, N. P.  212 Lesky, A.  181 Levin, C.  164, 175, 176, 177, 182, 304, 305, 306, 307, 314, 317 Levine, J.  165 Levinson, B. M.  306, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319 Livy  57, 157, 160, 161, 162

Lohfink, N. F.  323 Luckenbill, D. D.  292 Lust, J.  284 Mann, T. W.  329 Mayer, W. R.  209 McBride, S. D.  314 McCormick, C. M.  98, 335 McKane, W.  173, 222, 247 McKenzie, S. L.  250 Meinhold, A.  253, 254, 255, 256 Mettinger, T. N. D.  314 Millard, A. R.  208, 212 Miller, J. M.  349 Momigliano, A.  145, 146, 148 Mowinckel, S.  7, 164, 194, 323 Myres, J. L.  153 Naʾaman, N.  312, 320 Nicholson, E.  14, 91, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 163, 308 Niemeier, W-D.  159 Noth, M.  6, 7, 9, 10, 133, 144, 168, 173, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 187, 246, 247, 261, 268, 269, 290, 291, 321, 322, 325, 344, 345, 346, 347 Oden, R. A.  23, 24 Oppenheim, A. L.  292 Otto, E.  164, 174, 175, 176, 177, 322, 323, 327, 347, 348 Pearson, L.  16, 147, 153, 161 Pfeiffer, R.  314 Philo  23, 24, 90, 256 Pindar  15 Polybius  14, 148, 152, 153, 154, 160 Pury, A. de  42, 43, 132, 235

Index of Authors Rad, G. von  5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 133, 144, 145, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 188, 189, 200, 233, 244, 245, 246, 247, 268, 269, 290, 291, 302, 346, 347 Redford, D.  8, 9, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 244, 245, 246, 247, 253, 254, 255, 258, 265, 266, 276, 277, 279 Rendtorff, R.  9, 10, 11, 175, 179, 180, 182, 189, 215, 216, 244, 268, 269, 270, 271, 290, 347 Römer, T.  127, 178, 179, 180, 258, 270, 284, 349, 350, 351 Romm, J.  151, 155, 156 Rose, M.  9, 225, 235, 269, 329, 349 Rouillard, H.  116 Rudolph, W.  7, 323 Schmid, H.-H.  9, 10, 11, 179, 180, 215, 225, 244, 269, 290, 296, 302, 322, 324 Schmid, K.  132, 178, 182, 183, 184, 185, 192, 219, 231, 258, 259, 260, 261, 272, 273, 347 Schmidt, W. H.  281, 282, 283 Schmitt, H.-C.  251, 265, 303, 304, 305, 306, 314, 349 Schorn, U.  235, 265 Schottroff, W.  314 Schulte, H.  7 Shakespeare, W.  171 Silberman, N. S.  277 Ska, J-L.  164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179, 193, 205, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234 Skinner, J. A.  5, 28, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204 Smelik, K. A. D.  349 Smend  175 Sparks, K. L.  61, 250

367

Spawforth, A.  147 Stamm, J. J.  307, 314, 315, 319 Sternberg, M.  235, 242 Tengström, S.  30 Thackeray, H. St. J.  148 Thomas, R.  146 Thompson, T. L.  9, 244 Thucydides  16, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 162 Tigay, J. H.  306, 307, 308, 309 Timm, S.  116 Uehlinger, C.  253, 255, 256, 257, 258 Ulrich, E.  312 Van Seters, J.  8, 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32, 41, 45, 47, 49, 73, 74, 77, 86, 87, 98, 104, 116, 119, 125, 129, 131, 133, 134, 138, 143, 145, 153, 157, 158, 159, 161, 164, 165, 168, 172, 178, 179, 180, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 193, 194, 201, 208, 209, 215, 216, 217, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 228, 229, 233, 244, 248, 249, 258, 259, 260, 262, 265, 268, 270, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 282, 283, 285, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 303, 304, 305, 306, 308, 309, 313, 314, 315, 318, 324, 325, 328, 329, 330, 341, 345, 346, 347, 349, 352 Veyne, P.  146, 160 Voltz, P.  7, 323 Wagner, N. W.  8, 9 Walbank, F.  152, 153 Wellhausen, J.  3, 5, 7, 10, 31, 169, 182, 189, 193, 195, 196, 312, 319, 322

368

Index of Authors

Westermann, C.  28, 30, 32, 193, 195, 204, 215, 218, 235, 247, 248, 264 West, M. L.  14, 16, 22, 25, 31, 125 Wette, W. M. L. de  124, 168 Williamson, H. G. M.  217

Willi-Plein, I.  246, 247, 262, 280 Winnett, F. V.  7, 8, 9, 11, 45, 134, 186, 194, 269, 282, 291, 323 Wolf, F.  168, 181 Wood, H.  153

Index of Scripture Genesis 1  348 1–3  129 1–11  4, 11, 28, 32, 193, 195, 204 1:1–2:4  85 1:2  21 1:14–27  348 1:21–25  205 1:22  261 1:26  29 1:26–28  209 1:28  213, 261 1:30  203 1:31  203 2–3  18, 194 2:4–3:24  18 2:4–4:26  209 2:5  21 2:7  19, 199 2:10–14  158 2:19–20  200 2:24  237, 238 3:17–19  23 3:19  19 3:20  21 4  24, 31, 194 4–5  31 4:1  21, 26 4:17–26  30, 33 4:25  26 4:25–26  23, 31 4:26  194 5  29, 31, 210, 212 5:1  203 5:22  203 5:24  203 5:29  23, 24, 31

Genesis (cont.) 5:32  30, 31, 203, 204 6–8  24, 192, 193, 218, 219 6:1–4  24, 125 6:1–8  204 6:5  209 6:5–7  25, 198 6:5–8  26, 197, 214 6:6  237 6:6–8  198 6:7  199, 348 6:8  195 6:9  195, 203 6:9–12  197, 207 6:10  198, 206, 212 6:11  198 6:11–12  196, 198, 203, 212 6:13  195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 204 6:13–16  26, 196 6:14–16  199 6:17  198 6:17–21  204, 207 6:18  28, 204 6:18–21  26, 205 6:18–22  34, 195 6:19  198 6:21  212 6:22  26, 195, 205 7:1  130, 195, 196, 201, 206 7:1–5  26, 199, 205 7:2–4  206 7:6  199, 207, 212 7:6–9  205

369

Genesis (cont.) 7:7  26, 199, 201 7:7–9  26, 205 7:8  199, 205 7:8–9  199, 207 7:9  26, 195 7:10  26 7:11  199, 207, 212 7:12  26, 201 7:13  205, 206, 212 7:13–16  34, 195, 205 7:13–21  199, 207 7:15  199 7:15–16  198 7:16  26, 195, 199 7:17  26, 199 7:21  198 7:22  200 7:22–23  26 7:23  199, 200 7:24  199, 207, 212 8:1  26, 195, 200, 201 8:1–2  206 8:1–4  26 8:2  212 8:2–6  207 8:3–5  206, 212 8:4  212 8:6  26, 212 8:6–12  201 8:6–13  26 8:7  261 8:13  206, 212 8:13–14  207 8:15  26, 195, 206 8:15–16  26, 201

370 Genesis (cont.) 8:15–19  201 8:17  201, 207 8:18  26, 201 8:19  201, 207, 213 8:20–22  26 9  28 9:1  260, 261 9:1–17  206, 212 9:3  205 9:7  260, 261 9:8–17  28, 204 9:9  204 9:11  198 9:15–17  198 9:18  26, 210 9:18–19  24, 30, 211 9:18–27  214 9:20  23 9:20–21  24 9:20–27  211, 212 10  30, 125 10–11  31 10:1  30, 203 10:2–5  15 10:9–11  264 10:21–25  31 10:21–30  31 10:31–32  32 10:32  30 11  31 11:1–9  125 11:10  203 11:10–26  31 11:22–23  31 11:26  31, 219 11:27  35 11:27–29  135 11:27–31  35 11:28–31  228 11:32  219 12–13  32 12–36  8, 218, 235 12–50  258 12:1–3  35, 118, 134

Index of Scripture Genesis (cont.) 12:1–5  228 12:1–20  38 12:2  186 12:2–3  226 12:3  119, 315 12:4  219, 224 12:4–5  219, 220 12:5  231 12:6  37, 48, 237, 317 12:6–7  36 12:7  41 12:8  317 12:10  257 12:10–20  134, 238 12:16  40 13:1–4  37 13:3–4  317 13:6  231 13:7  237 13:9  37 13:10  197 13:12  200 13:14–17  223 13:16  118, 227 13:18  37, 41, 317 14  223 14:11–12  223 14:16  223 14:20  223 14:21  223 15  7, 11, 37, 59, 122, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 285 15:1  221, 223, 226 15:1–6  224, 228 15:5  40, 226 15:6  130, 223, 224, 227, 228 15:7  229, 317

Genesis (cont.) 15:7–20  37, 223 15:7–21  233, 285 15:8–20  40 15:13–16  54, 229, 230, 232 15:15  231, 232 15:16  229 16  224 16:3  38, 219 16:16  38, 219 17  217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 225, 232, 233, 234, 283, 284 17:1  218, 219, 220, 227, 283, 317 17:1–21  220 17:4  220 17:4–6  227 17:17  226 17:17–19  220 17:22  220 17:24–25  219 18  224, 317 18–19  218, 219 18:1  219, 220 18:1–15  38, 220 18:16–23  200 18:16–33  38, 224 18:17–32  227 18:18  186, 260, 261 18:19  130 18:23–28  196 18:28  197 18:33  220 19  37 19:1–38  38 19:13–14  197 19:29  197, 200 20  38, 134, 135, 136 20:7  135 20:11–13  134 20:17  135

Index of Scripture Genesis (cont.) 21:1–3  38 21:4–5  38 21:5  219 21:6–7  38 21:8–21  43 21:22–24  241 21:22–34  38, 41, 134, 136 21:27  241 21:32  241 22  317 22:3  224 22:11–12  219 22:15–18  219 22:16–18  40 22:18  40 23  39 24–26  264 24:34–49  52, 265 25  42 25–36  250 25:7  219 25:8  231, 232 25:8–9  231 25:11  39 25:11–28  43 25:19–33  23 25:21  39 25:21–34  41, 42, 43 25:26  43 25:28  43 25:29–34  43 26  190 26:1–5  40 26:1–11  134 26:2–5  285 26:3–5  40 26:5  40 26:6–11  238 26:12–16  186, 187 26:13  41 26:15  41, 136 26:16  261 26:17–33  41

Genesis (cont.) 26:18  136 26:23–25  317 26:24  259, 260 26:26–31  241 27  122 27–33  42 27:35  237 27:36  43 27:46–28:9  44 28–32  249 28–35  247 28:1–4  189 28:4  284 28:10–22  36, 41, 44, 48, 317, 318 28:11–12  45 28:12–17  219 28:13  259, 260 28:13–17  285 28:14  188 28:16–19  45 28:18  212 29  62, 280 29:1  45 29:4  45 29:31–30:24  46 30:21  238, 248 30:22  200 30:30  188 30:43  188 31:3  45, 46 31:11  262 31:13  45, 46, 48, 119, 261, 262 31:17  263 31:17–18  183 31:18  231, 237 32:2  46 32:10  190 32:10–13  45, 47 33:18–20  238 33:19  265 33:43–54  45

371 Genesis (cont.) 34  46, 47, 235, 238, 240, 243, 248 34:1–4  47 34:2  239 34:6–8  47 34:11–14  47 34:19  47 34:25–26  47 34:27–29  242 34:29  242 34:30–31  47 35:1  48, 119, 190 35:1–7  45, 48, 49, 318 35:2  241 35:3  48 35:5  240 35:5–7  48 35:9  221 35:9–13  189 35:11  261 35:14  212 35:14–15  318 35:16–20  249 35:22  240 35:29  231 36:6  237 36:12  284 36:28  219 36:31–34  263 37–50  8, 244, 246, 247, 264 37:1  257 37:1–2  182, 183 37:2  183 37:5–45:8  249 37:9–11  248 37:25–28  50, 51, 266 38  51, 125, 249, 252 39:1  50 40–41  50, 252, 255 41:46  256, 257

372 Genesis (cont.) 41:50–52  51, 264, 265 41:54  257 42:9  155 42:22  265 43:1–7  223 43:3  265 43:14  265 43:16  265 43:26–34  52 43:27–28  52 43:44  51 44:1–5  223 44:18–34  52, 54, 265 45:1  266 45:1–3  52 45:1–6  51 45:1–15  51, 185 45:3  52 45:4–5  266 45:4–6  52, 260, 264, 266 45:4–11  54 45:5–9  155 45:7  255 45:10  250 45:12–14  266 45:12–28  51 45:19–21  183 45:21–28  53 45:27  248 45:28  53, 262, 263 46:1  317 46:1–4  53, 250, 258, 259 46:1–5  259, 262 46:2  219, 260 46:2–4  189, 190 46:3  48, 53, 259 46:3–4  258, 259 46:4  53, 265 46:5  51, 53, 261, 262, 263

Index of Scripture Genesis (cont.) 46:6  53, 230, 231 46:6–7  256, 257 46:6–27  263 46:7  248 46:8–27  256, 257, 274 46:15  248 46:26–27  274 46:28  51, 263 46:28–47:4  53 46:28–47:12  251 46:29–30  51, 263 46:31–34  51 47:1–4  263 47:1–6  51 47:5  51, 263, 266 47:5–6  53, 255, 263 47:6  262, 263, 264 47:7–10  257 47:7–11  182 47:9  182, 183 47:11  251, 264, 293 47:11–12  51, 53, 255, 263, 266 47:13–26  50, 246, 252, 254, 255 47:27  237, 250, 251, 258, 259, 261, 264 47:27–28  258, 259 47:28  257 47:29–31  51, 264 48:1–2  51, 54, 265 48:3–6  182 48:3–7  54, 257 48:8–14  51 48:8–21  265 48:8–22  54 48:17–19  51 48:20–22  51 48:21–22  258 49:1  183, 256, 257, 258 49:3–4  240

Genesis (cont.) 49:5–7  240 49:8–11  250 49:29–33  183, 256, 257, 258, 264 49:33  231 50  260, 273, 274 50:1–7  51, 264 50:1–11  54, 184, 257, 258 50:3–4  352 50:7–8  185 50:8  250, 251 50:9  264 50:9–11  51 50:12–13  183, 256, 257, 258, 264 50:13  184 50:14  51, 54, 257, 258, 264 50:14–24  274 50:15–21  54, 252, 263, 264 50:17  190 50:19–21  155 50:20  185, 259, 260 50:21  237, 238 50:22  50 50:22–23  51, 272, 273 50:22–26  249, 250, 274 50:23  51, 265 50:24  265 50:24–25  54, 265 50:24–26  185, 257, 258, 274, 350 50:25  261 50:25–26  75 50:26  50, 51, 60, 273, 274, 287, 288, 352

Index of Scripture Exodus 1  118, 252, 253, 259, 260, 262, 264, 269, 270 1–2  186 1–5  57, 267, 287, 288, 289 1–14  130 1–34  342 1:1  274 1:1–5  257, 260, 261, 272, 273, 274, 288 1:5  257, 274 1:6  268, 269, 273, 274 1:6–7  271, 274 1:6–8  263, 264 1:6–9  60 1:6–22  288 1:7  40, 184, 259, 260, 261 1:7–12  188 1:8  60, 268, 269 1:8–12  260, 261 1:9  186 1:9–12  275, 278 1:10  277 1:11  55, 275, 276, 280 1:12  188 1:12–13  261 1:13–14  259, 260, 288 1:14  278 1:15  273, 281 1:15–2:22  281 1:15–2:23  278 1:15–21  272, 280 1:15–22  260, 261 1:20  261, 273 1:20–21  273 1:22  279 2:1–10  61, 272, 279 2:1–22  288

Exodus (cont.) 2:11–15  275, 278, 280 2:15–22  280, 282 2:18  282 2:22  102, 281, 282 2:23  184, 280, 281 2:23–25  282, 283, 288 3  260, 265 3–4  11, 107, 226, 272, 284, 285, 287, 317, 318 3:1  63, 282 3:1–4:17  63, 281, 283 3:1–4:18  287, 288 3:1–6  63, 190 3:2–3  329 3:4  259, 260 3:6  189, 190, 259, 260, 269 3:6–8  270 3:8  269, 270 3:12  83, 297 3:13–4:17  63 3:13–15  63 3:15  260 3:15–16  130, 269 3:16–17  269, 270 3:18  67 3:19–20  68 3:19–22  73 3:27–31  288 4  312 4:1–9  71, 228 4:5  269 4:14–16  72, 282 4:18  62, 282 4:18–31  66 4:19  281, 283 4:19–20  278, 281, 283 4:19–23  283, 288 4:19–26  67, 282

373 Exodus (cont.) 4:20  282 4:21  283 4:22–23  283 4:24–26  282 4:27  282 4:30–31  71 4:31  228 5  276, 277, 285, 286 5:1  67, 286 5:1–2  286 5:1–6:1  285, 286, 288 5:1–21  275, 278 5:2  69 5:3  286 5:3–19  286 5:3–21  286 5:4–5  280 5:5  261 5:20–21  286 5:21  237 5:22–6:1  286, 287 5:22–23  68 6  12 6:1  68, 69, 285 6:2–3  220, 283 6:2–7:13  285, 288 6:2–8  189, 283, 284 6:2–27  72 6:3  220, 221 6:3–4  220 6:28–7:7  72 6:30–7:2  72 7–11  72 7:2–4  72 7:3  283 7:8–13  72 7:9  283 7:14  68, 283, 285, 287, 288 7:14–18  68 7:17  286 7:19–22  72 7:20–21  68

374 Exodus (cont.) 7:23–24  68 7:25–29  69 7:26  286 8:1–3  72 8:2  69 8:4–11  69 8:11  283 8:12–15  72 8:16  286 8:16–28  69 8:18  53 8:23–24  297 8:28  283 9:1  286 9:1–7  69 9:7  283 9:8–12  72 9:13  286 9:13–21  69 9:23–34  69 9:26  53 9:29–30  130 9:34  283 10:1  71, 283 10:1–11  69 10:13–19  69 10:24–27  69 10:27  283 10:28–29  69 11:1–8  69 11:2–3  73 11:4  286 11:8  69 11:9  71 11:9–10  283 11:10  283 11:30–32  69 12–13  73 12:1–28  73, 132 12:7  278 12:29–32  69 12:29–36  73 12:31–32  287 12:33–39  73, 230

Index of Scripture Exodus (cont.) 12:34  73 12:35–36  73 12:37  74, 293 12:37–39  293 12:38  293, 296 12:39  73, 295 12:48  241 13:3–10  73 13:3–16  100 13:3–22  73 13:4–10  295 13:5  270 13:11–16  295 13:17–18  74, 295 13:17–22  74, 293 13:18  296 13:18–22  350 13:19  264, 265, 350 13:20  293, 295 13:21–22  89, 296, 299, 328, 329 13:21–26  100 13:27–22  230 14:1–4  77 14:2–3  296, 297 14:5–7  76, 296 14:8  71 14:9  296 14:9–14  76, 296 14:19–20  89, 296, 299, 328, 329 14:19–22  296 14:19–25  76 14:21  200 14:21–25  230 14:24  296, 328 14:27–28  76, 296 14:30–31  76, 296 14:31  228 15  76 15:22  299 15:22–23  297 15:22–26  135 15:27  297, 298

Exodus (cont.) 16:1  297, 298 16:1–7  79, 298 16:13–15  79, 298 16:21  79, 298 16:22–26  298 16:27–31  79, 298 16:35  79, 298 17  101, 230 17:1  80, 297, 298 17:1–7  298 17:2–7  298 17:6  96 17:8–15  81 17:8–16  298 18  101, 102, 281, 282 18:1  102 18:3–4  282 18:5  102, 298 18:13–26  298 18:15  338 18:27  101, 103 19  83 19–20  338, 348, 349 19–24  83, 258, 322 19:1  298 19:2  83, 101, 297, 298 19:5–6  118 19:9  328 19:16  87, 328 19:16–19  330, 331 19:18  87 19:19  328, 336 19:20–20:17  328 19:20–21:17  84 19:20–23  333 20:1–17  85, 233 20:2  229 20:18  84, 328 20:18–21  330, 331 20:21  87 20:21–24:8  340 20:22  87, 308, 313

375

Index of Scripture Exodus (cont.) 20:22–23  304, 305, 308 20:22–23:19  233 20:22–23:33  85, 86, 331 20:22–24  308 20:22–26  307, 308, 309 20:23  308, 309 20:24  88, 130, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319 20:24–26  91, 303, 308, 311, 312, 313 20:25  304, 305, 312 20:25–26  313 20:26  305 21–23  128, 341 22:15  47, 239 22:15–16  239 23:10–19  306 23:12  101 23:13  305, 319 23:16–19  101 23:20–21  96 23:20–23  329 23:20–33  89, 100 23:23  270 23:28  270 23:28–29  351 24:3  314 24:3–8  86, 91, 233, 304, 305, 308, 313 24:4  310, 313 24:5  92, 304 24:9–11  92 24:15–18  328, 333 24:18  93 25–31  132, 310, 324

Exodus (cont.) 25:8  339 25:13–15  335 25:20  335 25:21–22  336 25:22  333, 342 25:31–39  64 28:42  305 28:69  86 29:42–46  339 31:18  93 32  93, 309, 349 32–34  258, 322 32:1–6  94 32:11–14  96 32:13–14  226 32:20  96 32:34  96, 329 32:35  96 33  96 33–34  343, 351 33:1–3  331 33:1–5  327 33:1–7  332 33:1–17  327, 330 33:2  299, 329 33:2–3  270 33:3  97, 106, 331, 342 33:5  331, 342 33:7  99, 325, 327, 342 33:7–11  98, 105, 122, 310, 321, 324, 326, 327, 330, 332, 341, 343, 344, 345, 352 33:8  343 33:9  341 33:9–11  342 33:11  352 33:12–17  326, 327, 331 33:14  326

Exodus (cont.) 33:16  118 33:17  100 33:18–21  99 33:18–23  96 34  267 34:1  100 34:1–3  100 34:1–28  100 34:5–9  131 34:11  270 34:11–26  323, 331, 340 34:28  344 34:29  101 34:29–35  342 34:34  341, 342 34:34–35  341 35–40  132, 310, 324 36:14–38  332 40:34  310 40:34–35  333, 335 40:34–38  328 41:8–10  288 41:17–20  288 51:1–2  288 52:11–12  288 54:1–3  288 Leviticus 1:1  336 7:38  336 8–9  92 9:22–24  334 10:1–2  342 10:2  334 16:2  337 17  341 17–26  333, 341 21–22  341 24  341 25:1  333, 336 25:38  229 26  70, 89

376 Leviticus (cont.) 26:14–33  70 26:46  333, 336 27:34  333, 336 Numbers 1–9  333 1:1  336 7:89  336 9:15  328 9:15–10:10  300 9:15–23  333, 334 9:17  334 10:11–28  104 10:12  300 10:15–23  297 10:28  101 10:29  344 10:29–32  101, 103, 282 10:29–36  298 10:33  297, 299 10:33–36  104, 310 10:35–36  299 11  79, 83, 103, 343 11–12  351 11:1  342, 343, 344 11:1–3  105, 299, 342 11:4–34  106, 299 11:4–35  343 11:10  343 11:16–17  122, 344, 352 11:24–25  111, 122, 344 11:24–30  352 12  107, 300, 343, 344 12:1–8  352 12:1–15  299 12:6–8  352 12:8  99 12:9–15  135 12:16  300

Index of Scripture Numbers (cont.) 13–14  111, 138, 299, 300, 344, 349 13:1–2  138 13:3  108, 137 13:4–17  138 13:17–20  108, 137 13:21  112, 138 13:22–24  108 13:25  138 13:26  299 13:26–28  108 13:27  137, 270 13:29  270 13:30  137 13:30–31  108 13:32–33  138 14  109 14:1–4  108 14:5  139 14:5–10  138 14:8  270 14:10  334, 344 14:11  228 14:11–25  108 14:12  260, 261 14:13–19  340 14:14  99 14:26–35  120 14:26–38  138 14:39–45  108 14:45  109 15–19  300, 339 16  110 16:13–14  270 16:19  334, 344 16:32  231 17:7  334 20  109 20–21  349 20:1  110, 112, 113, 300, 301 20:2–13  81, 298 20:6  334

Numbers (cont.) 20:13  298 20:14–21  112, 300 20:22  300 20:22–23  113 20:22–29  301 20:29  352 21  348, 349 21:4  113, 300, 301 21:4–9  135, 301 21:10–20  301 21:12  349 21:12–13  113 21:21–31  114 21:33–35  114, 116 22  187 22–24  116 22:1–20  118 22:6  261 22:20  117 22:35–41  118 23  118 23:9  118 23:10  118 23:19  119 24:1–13  118 24:3–9  119 24:13  118 24:14–24  118 24:25  118 25:6–18  242 26  348 27:1–11  348 27:18–23  351, 352 30  241 31:1–20  242 31:7–11  241 31:8  118, 119 31:9  237 31:16  118 32  119, 349 32:1–9  120 32:2  120 32:13–42  120 32:17  295

Index of Scripture Numbers (cont.) 32:28  120 32:30  237 32:41–42  158 Deuteronomy 1:5  167 1:6–8  136 1:7  122 1:9–15  107 1:9–18  101, 102, 106, 298 1:16–17  103 1:19  136, 299 1:19–30  136 1:19–46  108, 138, 349 1:26–40  340 1:29–30  137 1:32  228 1:33  329 1:34–35  136 1:36  138 1:37  138 1:37–38  137 1:39–45  136 1:40  109, 113 1:46  109, 112, 300 2–3  112, 349 2:1  109 2:1–8  113 2:10–12  158 2:16–19  113 2:20–23  158 2:24–37  115 2:30  71 3:1–17  116 3:12–20  119, 120 3:12–22  349 3:14  158 3:26–28  137 3:27  122 4  86, 87, 308, 337, 338, 348 4–5  83, 348, 349

Deuteronomy (cont.) 4:9–18  308 4:11–12  327 4:16–18  199 4:16–19  348 4:25  348 4:30–31  70 4:32  348 4:36  308, 313 4:38  261 5  85, 232, 328, 340 5:4–5  327 5:6  229 5:6–21  85, 233 5:22–27  331 5:24–31  325 5:30–31  343 6:3  270 7  89 7:1  241, 261, 270 7:1–3  241 7:3  241 7:7  242 7:15  68 8  80 8:15  81 9  95, 340, 349 9–10  95 9:1  261 9:8–9  95 9:8–21  94 9:9–29  93 9:10  95, 327 9:11–17  95 9:14  261 9:15  327 9:16–17  232 9:18–19  95 9:20  95 9:21  81, 95 9:22–24  95 9:25–29  94 9:26–29  95, 96 9:27  95 10:1–5  95

377 Deuteronomy (cont.) 10:4  327 10:5  101 10:6–9  95 10:10–11  95 10:11  328 10:15  242 11:2–7  110, 138 11:3–6  110 11:4  77 11:6  110 11:6–7  231 11:9  270 11:23  261 11:30  48 12  88, 306, 310, 312, 313, 316 12–26  341 12–28  85, 86, 91, 233 12:5  316 12:13  306, 307 12:21  311 12:27  311 16:18–20  103 17:8–13  103 20  241 20:10–15  242 20:17  270 21:10–14  242 21:14  238 22:20–21  239 22:24  238 22:28  239 22:28–29  239 23:5  118 26:1–11  311 26:5  40, 249, 250, 260, 261, 262, 270, 271 26:5–9  186, 270, 271, 277, 278, 287, 290, 291 26:6–8  271 26:9  270

378 Deuteronomy (cont.) 26:15  270 27  313 27:1–8  312, 313 27:3  270 27:4  170 27:5–7  304, 305 27:5–8  312 28  89 28:15–68  69 28:41  348 28:60  68 28:69  232, 340 29:12  91 31  121 31:2  352 31:7–8  121 31:14–15  344, 351, 352 31:20  270 31:23  344, 351, 352 32:48–52  122, 352 33:1–3  96 33:8–11  96 34  121, 122, 349, 351, 352 34:1–4  352 34:7–9  351 34:10  99 34:10–12  351, 352 Joshua 1:4  229, 270 1:12–18  121 1:14  295 3–4  76, 116 3–6  99 3:10  270 4:12  295 4:16  77 4:19  313 4:23–24  77 5:6  270 5:13–15  64, 328, 329

Index of Scripture Joshua (cont.) 5:20  91 7:13  286 7:19–20  286 8  82 8:30  286 8:30–31  305 8:30–35  312, 313, 350 11:20  71 14:4  237 22:9  237 22:19  237 23  265, 350 24  350, 351 24:12  351 24:26  48, 349 24:28–31  350 24:32  75, 264, 265, 350 Judges 1:1–2:5  350 2:1–5  329 2:6–9  350 2:6–10  264, 265, 350 2:8–10  60, 189 2:10  350 4:11  103 6  280 6:7–10  350, 351 6:10  351 7:11  295 8:32  231, 232 9:37  48 11  114, 115 11:19–22  115 Ruth 2:13  238 1 Samuel 1:9–18  338 2:13–17  91

1 Samuel (cont.) 3  331 4:3–9  330 6  98 7  82 7:12  82 8  111 10:2  49 12:3  111 30  78 2 Samuel 5:2  64 6  98, 245 6–7  325, 327 6:2–3  325 6:5  325 6:15  325 6:17  98, 310, 325, 327 6:17–19  325 7  221, 226, 325, 326, 327 7:1  326 7:1–3  221 7:1–6  327 7:2  310, 325 7:5–6  332 7:5–8  325 7:5–16  326 7:6  310, 332 7:11  326 7:18–29  326 11:11  330 13  240, 249 17:14  155 20  243 1 Kings 2  245 5:27–32  285 6:31–32  335 7:13–14  325 7:48  312 7:49  65

379

Index of Scripture 1 Kings (cont.) 8  335 8:1–11  335 8:4  325, 326 8:6  338 8:6–11  310 8:10–11  330, 335, 336, 338 8:33–53  70 8:46–53  307 8:64  312 9:15–19  277 9:15–21  61, 276 9:15–22  285 9:20–21  277 11:14–22  62 12  349 12:1–20  154 12:26–32  49, 94 19:9–13  100 2 Kings 12:9  237 18:4  113 23:1–3  91 23:11–12  95 24–25  228 2 Chronicles 1:3–6  326 3:14  335 5:5  325 5:13–14  335 Ezra 3:2  312 Nehemiah 9:7–8  217, 234 9:8  224 Psalms 3:4  223 7:11  223 18:3  223

Psalms (cont.) 18:31  223 18:36  223 24  330 27:8  98, 338 28:7  223 33:20  223 45:18  314 48  330 59:12  223 72:17  226, 315 84:10  223 84:12  223 89  221 89:19  223 115:9–10  223 115:36  223 119:114  223 144:2  223 Proverbs 3:18  20 11:30  20 13:12  20 15:4  20 Isaiah 6  335 7–8  70 7:3–9  70 7:10–17  70, 71 8:1–4  71 8:1–8  70 12:4  314 26:13  314 35:4  222 40:5  198 40:5–6  197 40:9  222 40:9–10  223 41:8  221, 227 41:8–9  36, 285 41:8–10  222 41:10  222 41:13–14  222

Isaiah (cont.) 42:5  48, 119, 259 43:1  222 43:5  222 43:10  228 43:12  48, 119 43:16–19  230 44:2  222 44:28  61 45:1–7  61 46:9  48 46:12  119 47  33 48:18–19  227 48:21  230 49:26  197, 198 51:1–2  227 51:2  221 51:10  230 52:11  48 52:11–12  230 52:12  89, 329 53  107 54:1–5  188 54:4  222 63:11–14  230 63:16  226, 230 66:16  197, 198 66:23  198 66:23–24  197 66:24  198 Jeremiah 7:1–15  70 11:1–17  70 12:12  198 17:19–27  70 18:5–12  70 18:19–23  111 19:1–15  70 25:20  293 25:31  197, 198 26:1–6  70 30:10  222 32:17  198

380 Jeremiah (cont.) 32:27  197 34:18–19  233 35:12–17  70 43–44  256 44:29  71 45:5  197, 198 46:27–28  222 48:45–46  115 50:37  293 51:13  197 Ezekiel 1:4–25  337 7  197 7:2–6  197 10:3–4  337 10:4  337 14:8  71 14:12–20  38 14:14–20  227 16:3  125 18  227 20  76, 96, 232, 272, 277, 278, 291, 338

Index of Scripture Ezekiel (cont.) 20:2–8  66 20:4–5  285 20:5  230, 250, 272, 273 20:5–6  271, 284 20:5–8  126 20:6  137 20:10–13  80 21:4  197, 198 21:9–10  197, 198 21:30  197 21:34  197 28:1–10  20 28:12–19  19, 20, 125 28:13  19 28:16  20 30:5  293 33:12–22  227 33:23–24  217, 220 33:24  125, 221, 229 35:5  197 43:13–17  312

Hosea 2:16  238 8:6  93 11–12  250 11:1  126 11:8  223 12  125 12:4  43 12:4–5  47 12:14  58 Joel 3:1  197, 198 Amos 2:19  126 3:1  126 6–7  69 7:9  40 7:16  40 8:2  197 9:7  126, 128, 158 Zechariah 2:17  197