History of Research Part 2: The Hexateuch Redaction in the Context of Contemporary Pentateuchal Research

HISTORY OF RESEARCH: PART I

Exod 20:18-20: Elohim institutes Moses as mediator to assuage the people’s fear

1.3 History of Research Part 2: The Hexateuch Redaction in the Context of Contemporary Pentateuchal Research

1.3.1 The Plenary Reception of (Revealed) Law and the Pentateuch

The second part of the History of Research delineates the major redactions of the Hexateuch (Gen–Joshua) and Pentateuch utilized in this study. They are pronouncedly diachronic and derive from European, largely German, scholarship.

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In view of the chasm that has developed over many decades between Continental and Anglophone scholarship—the latter moving away from diachronically driven, historical-literary based models—the task falls to the writer to include a apologia for their continuation. Key passages for the PRR are found in the Pentateuch and therefore require substantive engagement with recent research into the Pentateuch and Hexateuch. This applies particularly to studies that privilege its law codes.

1.3.2 Diachronic, Redaction-Infused Research Flourishes on the Continent

Although in some sectors biblical scholars are contemplating the end of source-critical research in the Pentateuch, Continental—and to a lesser extent Israeli

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—literary studies on the Hexateuch and Pentateuch that foreground diachronic approaches, especially tradition- and redaction-historical analyses, show few signs of retreat.

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This holds true especially for diachronic methods in which analyses of “sources” intersect with

139 Jeffrey Stackert, “The Holiness Legislation and Its Pentateuchal Sources: Revision, Supplementation, and Replacement,” in The Strata of the Priestly Writings Contemporary Debate and Future Directions (ed.

S. Shectman and J. Baden; vol. 95 of AThANT; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2009), 187-204, 187, n. 2, takes issue in general with the notion of multiple stages of textual development of the Pentateuch, which he attributes in particular to “recent European redaktionsgeschichtliche Schule,” and, in America, the work of Frank Moore Cross and his student Richard E. Friedman. Stackert in contrast maintains the compilation of pentateuchal sources was a process that “was accomplished by a single compiler.”

140 A notable exception is Knohl, Sanctuary. For recent dialogue between Israeli/Jewish and continental scholarship see the essays in S. Shectman and J. Baden, eds., The Strata of the Priestly Writings

Contemporary Debate and Future Directions (vol. 95 of AThANT; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2009). It has unfortunate that not all invited and completed papers by major European scholars were included in this volume.

141 Note the recent conference in Zürich: “The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research” http://egora.uni-muenster.de/fb1/pubdata/Pentateuchsymposium_Zuerich.pdf.

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intertextuality and reception history.

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Earlier source and redactional methods tended to leave behind a trail of textual dismemberments.

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Paying more attention to the living- tradition process or reception history, recent studies that acknowledge the contours of the

“great unities” within the Hexateuch and Pentateuch (e.g., the distinctive features of Genesis and Exodus, respectively) and indeed the Enneateuch

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(“nine books”), are proliferating. On the synchronic front, a salutary move toward subjecting modernist literary methods to a basic litmus test of diachronic viability and chronological feasibility can be detected in many lands.

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Discussions about ancient “histories” and historiography continue to enliven the field, with fresh insights filtering in from related disciplines.

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Numerous contrasts between ancient and modern literature present themselves as scholars hypothesize the origination and development of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch. That the ancient writers and redactors of these literary constellations allowed tensions, doublets, ambivalences, and oppositions to remain in the text indicates something of the gap between ancient notions ensconced in

142 See, e.g., the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception published by De Gruyter. Two volumes of a projected thirty have been published. Exemplary in this vein is Christophe L. Nihan, From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus (vol. II/25; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). The integration of synchronic approaches is invigorating continental studies. Representative in this vein is Eckart Otto, “The Pentateuch in Synchronical and Diachronical Perspectives: Protorabbinic Scribal Erudition Mediating Between Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code,” in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk (ed. E. Otto and R. Achenbach; Tübingen:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 14-35; idem, DPH, 266-70. Thomas Römer’s The So-called

Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (New York: T & T Clark, 2005), has been received well by both diachronic and synchronic “camps.”

143 Zenger, “Theorien,” 97f; Verwenne, “Current Tendencies,” 47; Jan Joosten, “La persuasion coopérative dans le discurs sur la loi: pour une analyse de la rhétorique du Code de Sainté,” in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 (ed. A. Lemaire; vol. 133 of VTS; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 381-98, 398, commends the synchronicity of rhetorical analysis, “qui refuse de démember le texte biblique.”

144 A single framework connecting the Enneateuch as one time independent assemblage has been very difficult to establish.

145 Cf. Verwenne, “Current Tendencies,” 28-30. Regarding the marriage of both diachronic and synchronic approaches: “The starting point of both approaches is a diplomatic or eclectic ‘final’ text taken as a meaningful composition. Literary criticism, then, is the synchronic analysis of this text according to the procedures of current general literature and, consequently, it does not concur with source criticism (diachrony). On the other hand, a literary critical study may reveal textual irregularities which can only be explained from a diachronic perspective (redaction criticism). Of course, painstaking analysis of the physical (text-criticism) and linguistic (grammar) form of the text is essential to both literary and redactional investigations.”

146 See, e.g., the respective studies of J. Gregory (church history) and P. Oakes (Greco-Roman historiography) in G. Brooke and T. Römer, eds., Ancient and Modern Scriptural

Historiography/L’historiographie biblique, ancienne et moderne (vol. 207 of BETL; Leuven: Peeters, 2007); Mark A. Christian, “Ancient and Modern Scriptural Historiography/L’historiographie biblique, ancienne et moderne (Review),” Transeuphratène 38 (2009): 170-77.

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culture-specific conceptions and modern perceptions of texts.

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This applies not only to the final form but also to the various stages of textual development.

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The number of works by non-European scholars recognizing both the connecting stages of growth of multi-teuchal texts within the developmental history of even larger textual “entities”

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and then integrate these entities into a cross-canonical model remains meager.

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It is hoped the present study will help remedy that situation.

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1.3.3 Legal Corpora in the Tanakh

Until relatively recently, the largely Christian enterprise of biblical scholarship

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has largely neglected the study of biblical law on its own terms, resulting in the

undertreatment of major law-blocks (e.g., Exod 20:22–23:33; Deut 12–26*; Lev 17–26;

cf. also Ezek 40–48).

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Happily, growing interest in these corpora is revitalizing

traditional approaches and fomenting new methods of reading and analysis. Researchers contemplate the independent existence of these legal collections early in their existence

147 Cf. Zenger, “Theorien,” 97; Christian, “Openness to the Other,” 567-608.

148 Erich Zenger, “Theorien,” 97-8.

149 Cf. Germ. Größe; Zussamenhang; French ensemble.

150 See the convenient summary of current, cross-canonical approaches in Anselm Hagedorn, “Taking the Pentateuch to the Twenty-First Century,” Expository Times 119, no. 2 (2007): 53-58); “the basis of the non- priestly Hexateuch is several independent individual traditions that had originally nothing to do with each other. After 720 BCE, these individual cycles were connected to form two (still independent) stories of Israel’s origin: Genesis 2–35 originally formed the primeval and patriarchal history, while Exod 2–Josh 12 formed the Exodus-Moses History” (ibid., 55-56).

The plagues in the Moses-Exodus history demonstrate familiarity with the concept known from Jer 25–

29 and Isa 40ff, viz., “daß Jhwh Herr über ausländische Herrscher ist” (Schmid, Erzväter, 274; cf. 143-52).

Each text shares the view that for Israel’s god to reign supreme over all other gods means that all humanity ultimately falls within the ambit of his care. The theme of socio-religious inclusivity thus traverses the tripartite borders of the canon.

151 The present study engages archaeology only tangentially in its treatment of the locus of the levitical priests; cf. Christian, “Priestly Power that Empowers,” 19-21 et passim.

152 This is to be contrasted with Rabbinic scholarship. The works on biblical law by Jewish biblical scholars such as David Daube, Jacob Weingreen, Moshe Weinfeld, Baruch Levine, and Jacob Milgrom have helped set the standard that others have followed. Römer acknowledges Milgrom’s work on Leviticus in particular:

“Du côte juif, il faut mentionner les nombreuses études et l’important commentaire de Jacob Milgrom qui ont largement contribué à faire du Lévitique un champ d’investigation tout à fait important” (Thomas C.

Römer, “De la périphérie au centre: Les Livres du Lévitique et des Nombres dans le débat actuel sur le Pentateuque,” in Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense LV–The Books of Leviticus and Numbers (ed. T. Römer;

Leuven, 2008), 10. Yehezkel Kaufman’s work on biblical law—in the midst of his vast coverage of ancient Israel in toto—probably merits its own category.

153 Notable exceptions include Norbert Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5-11 (vol. 20 of AnBib; Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 1963); J. Halbe, Das Privilegrecht Jahwes Ex 34, 10-28 (vol. 114 of FRLANT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975);

Alfred Cholewínski, Heiligkeitsgesetz und Deuteronomium: Eine vergleichende Studie (vol. 66 of AnBib;

Rome: Biblical Institute, 1976).

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and the process by which they later found incorporation into a “book.” To be considered are the various roles played by law blocks within the developmental history with respect to individual laws that boast membership within a larger compendium (e.g., “Mosaic law” in Tob 6:13

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) or a sefer within the larger entities such as the Pentateuch, Hexateuch, Enneateuch, Dekateuch (“ten books,” including Ezra-Nehemiah

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), even within the Tanakh entire.

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Sometimes mere references or allusions to revealed tôrôt in books lacking law blocks factor significantly in the macro-analyses of the codes.

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This is often the case in post-redactional Bearbeitungen, revisions or additions that usually neither alter the structure of a given pericope nor juxtapose independent units. For example, although the so-called Deuteronomistic History (Josh–2 Kings) does not itself contain sizable legal corpora, it has through decades of analysis piqued scholars’ interest for its sophisticated integration of law and legal themes, generally thought to have emanated from D (= Deut 12–26*).

The incorporation of these dtn/dtr (and sometimes post-dtr

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) laws into the Former Prophets (cf. R. Smend Jr.’s notion of DtrN

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), whether overtly or by means of allusion, may owe to P’s preoccupation with the development of sacral institutions within its historical schema.

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Although a potentially bewildering enterprise, plotting the developmental paths of biblical legal corpora remains integral to the study of the Pentateuch. Otto may thus be correct in asserting “nur eine in das Gerüst der

Fortschreibungsgeschichte der Rechtssammlungen eingehängte Literaturgeschichte des Pentateuch führt zu verläßlichen Ergebnissen.”

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154 Christian, “Reading Tobit.”

155 Cf. Knauf, Josua, 22.

156 Even within the large(est) textual entities, the order of books and period in which they entered les ensembles has been subjected to thorough reappraisal. See especially Schmid, Erzväter.

157 Cf. the weight Lohfink and Moenikes place on the first ascription of torah to Moses in the secondary passage 2 Kgs 23:25 (on which see Chapter One).

158 Post-dtr traditions often date to around the time of the formation of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch. This will be made clear as we proceed through this study.

159 N stands for Grk. nomos.

160 Schmid, Erzväter, 165, n. 662. Depending on one’s chronological placement of P, it could have either (a) furnished the presetting for the outlook of Dtn* in the Zusammenhang of the historical books, or (b) been inspired by this intertwining (Ineinandergreifen; ibid.).

161 “Only a literary history of the Pentateuch interlocked in the frame of the Fortschreibung history of the law collections leads to reliable conclusions” (Otto, DPH, 265; cf. Reinhard Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora. Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Numeribuches im Kontext von Pentateuch und Hexateuch [vol. 3 of BZAR; Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2003], 31, 33 et passim).

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