37 1.3.6 The Complexity of the Sinai Complex
1.3.11 The Hexateuch and Pentateuch Redactions
1.3.11.2 The Pentateuch Redaction (PentRed)
The Pentateuch redaction follows HexRed by some half a century, associates with Ezra’s mission to Jerusalem, deemphasizes the land, and separates off Joshua from the
Hexateuch. It rounds off its work not with the death of Joshua, as DtrL and HexRed would have it. Rather, Moses’ death concludes PentRed and closes the book of
Deuteronomy (34:10-12).
302“Mit Mose tritt nun die Sinaiperikope und mit ihr die Tora
298 Ibid.; cf. ibid., 23.
299 Achenbach resists the idea that HexRed functioned both as redactor and composer. He envisions Redaktion occurring largely during earlier, Bearbeitung during later, stages of textual development.
Differentiating PentRed and its revising of the Pentateuch from HexRed yields the following: the former emphasizes the centrality of Mosaic torah. This means that the book of Joshua, with its patent emphasis on the Torah, can be exploited in behalf of PentRed’s overall scheme. Further revision then follows that Achenbach assigns to theocratic tradents. This stage of Bearbeitung includes supplemental compositional activity that does not alter the existing structure created by the two main redactions.
Though he gives place for Achenbach’s theocratic revisors in the book Numbers, E. Otto envisions a school of Hexateuch redaction that continues the program instigated by HexRed. Israel’s entitlement to the Promised Land constitutes a key theme for this school. The later theocratic Bearbeiteren faced a very different set of circumstances in the fourth century than did the fifth century Hexateuch redactors (Achenbach, “gescheiterten Landnahme”, 92; idem Vollendung, 594-600).
300 Both Otto and Achenbach accept N. Lohfink’s hypothesis of a dtr account uniting the giving of the law and the conquest in Deut–Josh (cf. DtrL), but they date it later. Whereas Lohfink situates it in the Neo- Babylonian period, Otto and Achenbach see HexRed appropriating this narrative in the mid-fifth century.
301 Achenbach, “Story,”131-2.
302 Otto, DPH, 244-46. PentRed links up with the conception of DtrL (Deut 1–3; 28–29) and, like HexRed, accentuates the covenant conclusion and law promulgation at Sinai, the mountain of God, as the center of the Pentateuch. PentRed employs the technique of absorbing the source texts of the dtr source (DtrD) and then incorporating them into its own conception, a technique successfully applied already by HexRed.
PentRed thus inserts BC as Vorlage of the dtn law in Deuteronomy as well as a version of the Dec provided by the author of DtrD in the Sinai pericope; PentRed revises it, negotiating (vermittelt) CC, Dec, P, and Deuteronomy into H; PentRed again structures the Sinai Pericope using DtrD in source texts provided in
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als zentrales Heilsgut ins Zentrum des Pentateuch.”
303The literati responsible for PentRed also part company with HexRed respecting the division between elite altar priests and their levitical servants. PentRed looks to Exod 32:26-29 and views the Levites solely as clerus minor (as they appear in v. 26).
304In addition to reshaping the internal framework of the Hexateuch into a five-part corpus,
305PentRed effects a radical shift in emphasis from the leadership of Joshua
306to the interpretive role of Moses. The change is central to PentRed’s program, which Otto sees in full swing in Deuteronomy. Through PentRed the Zadokite priestly establishment
307achieves a major victory. Contra
Deut 5:9-10* as a covenant ratification narrative (Bundesschlußerzählung), which integrates the P cult- establishing-tradition (Kultgründungsüberlieferung) (ibid., 245f.).
303 “With Moses the Sinai pericope now steps into the center of the Pentateuch and with it the Torah as central salvific inheritance” (ibid., 246). In “Holiness Code in Diachrony and Synchrony” Otto summarizes the stages of development of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch as follows: “… during the exilic period two different works were written dealing with ‘Israel’s’ identity, each with its own narrative of ‘Israel’s’ origin:
the priestly P-code, from the creation (Genesis 1) to the Sinai-pericope; and Deuteronomy and its
Deuteronomistic connection with Joshua, from Horeb (Deuteronomy 5) to Joshua’s valedictory at Shechem (Joshua 23). In the postexilic period a Hexateuch from Genesis 1 to Joshua 24 was formed out of these divergent conceptions, because there could be only one narrative of ‘Israel’s’ identity. Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code contradicted each other not only on several items of cultic law, but even more decisively in their ideas of what constituted and integrated “Israel,” the genealogy of Abrahamic origin or the covenant at Mount Horeb and in the land of Moab. So the postexilic priestly scribes had to combine these two programmatic texts of D and P using methods that became the “cradle” of post-biblical Jewish exegesis. Out of Deuteronomy, which was connected with the Deuteronomistic book of Joshua, and out of the P source, they created a Hexateuch from Genesis 1 to Joshua 24 as a first step. This Hexateuch had its foundational pillars in Genesis 15 and Joshua 24, which were related to each other and out of which Joshua 24 formed the closing of the Hexateuch. In a second step, the book of Joshua was cut off, and a Pentateuch from Genesis 1 to Deuteronomy 34 was created” (ibid., 135-36). Cf. Ernst Ehrenreich, Wähle das Leben!
Deuteronomium 30 als hermeneutischer Schlüssel zur Tora (vol. 14 of BZAR; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 11 and n. 42.
304 Achenbach, “Die Tora und die Propheten,” 37.
305 Analogous in some respects are the sub-corpora within the psalter (e.g., the so-called “Davidic psalters”
3–41; 51–72; 138–145), which give indication of repeated efforts to subdivide the Psalms; see, e.g., Klaus Seybold, Introducing the Psalms (trans. R. G. Dunphy; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 18f.
306 The inclusion of the commissioning of Joshua at the end of Deuteronomy (31:14f, 23) is the handiwork of PentRed (Achenbach, “Die Tora und die Propheten,” 39, n. 39).
307 In a recent essay Otto asserts that “on a societal-institutional level the formation of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch was the result of the postexilic integration of Aaronides and Zadokites” (“Holiness Code in Diachrony and Synchrony,” 137, n. 11), though such integration goes unexplained. More compelling is his statement in DPH (263, n. 86; here he argues against the notion that diverging conceptions of P and Deuteronomy somehow stand “literarisch unvermittelt nebeneinander”) that the Aaronide concept of P finds integration into Zadokite theology” (“Vielmehr spiegelt sich in Hexateuch- und Pentateuchredaction die Integration des aaronidischen Konzepts der Priesterschrift in zadokidischer Theologie wider”). In this instance Otto furnishes helpful terminological clarification: integration does not mean compromise, but rather an “Eingemeindung …, die sich auch darin zeigt, daß die dtr Konzeptionene von DtrD und DtrL den Ton in der Hexateuch- und Pentateuchredaktion angeben” (ibid.). Note that both of these statements appear in footnotes. Later in “Holiness Code in Synchrony und Diachrony” he hints at the audience factor in the authorship equation: “the difference between a priestly Leviticus and a ‘secular’-sounding Deuteronomy is not a matter of authors of priestly and non-priestly circles but of the addressees in the narrative of the
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HexRed’s emphasis on the land (inherited through DtrL), PentRed, which lines up with Golah ideology and theology, believes that God reveals torah outside of the Promised Land. In addition, Israelites need not live within the borders of Israel as long as they follow the universal torah intermediated by Moses. Whereas HexRed formed the Sinai pericope without H, Otto argues a disputed thesis that PentRed introduced H as its primary supplement to the Pentateuch
308; the addition of H to the Pentateuch contributes towards PentRed’s fundamental goal of underscoring the significance of the Sinai pericope for conveying the central revelation of YHWH to Moses.
309As for PentRed’s view toward integrating the alien, whereas the רג is accepted, the י ִרְּכָנ (e.g., Deut 17:5; cf.
רָכֵנ־ןב) is not (contra HexRed). Neither HexRed nor PentRed accepts the רז. Another Tendenz of PentRed shows itself in the wilderness wandering, which comes to be placed under a general point of view of the rebellion and murmuring against YHWH and his mediators Moses and Aaron.
310Following Otto, Achenbach argues that PentRed’s modification of H with Lev 18:1- 6
311may indicate a literary if not authorial connection between Dtr and the authors of H,
312who share affinities with the Zadokite-Levite authors of Ezekiel. Here though we should avoid the circular argumentation based on the premise that Zadokite priests authored Dtr, which has yet to be satisfactorily demonstrated.
We should mention a couple of points in the present connection regarding Achenbach’s hypothesis of fourth-century BCE theocratic revisions (theokratische
Pentateuch” (p. 48). The present study seeks to move this discussion forward in hopes of offering a more satisfying hypothesis of the authorship legal texts, legal and “didactic” narratives in the Enneateuch. The wisdom tradition should some say in these matters. Cf. in this regard Perdue, Sword and Stylus, passim, who sketches the literary activity of elite Zadokites, dtr Levites, and the wise.
308 The derivation of this theory traces to Eckart Otto, “Das Heiligkeitsgesetz Leviticus 17–26 in der Pentateuchredaktion,” in Altes Testament—Forschung und Wirkung: Festschrift für Henning Graf Reventlow (ed. P. Mommer and W. Thiel; Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1994), 65-80, 125-96.
309 Achenbach (“Heiligkeitsgesetz,” 151f.) believes the composition and addition of H by PentRed was carried out after CC and Deuteronomy had been included in the Pentateuch (cf. ibid., 154f).
310 Achenbach, Vollendung, 233.
311 I accept that two dtr texts saw further development in Lev 18, namely Deut 12:9-31 (polemic against Canaanite cults, cf. Lev 18:3f) and Deut 18:9-14 (polemic against manticism, cf. Lev 18:21). Here Achenbach (“Heiligkeitsgesetz,” 153) acknowledges Cholewínski, Heiligkeitsgesetz, 253–255.
312 As of yet I remain unconvinced that the positioning of H opposite Deuteronomy functions as its
“hermeneutical key” (pace Achenbach, “Heiligkeitsgesetz,” 154, with reference to Otto in n. 27). More satisfying is the notion that H establishes not only elite priestly traditions as hermeneutical key of the entire Mosaic law (ibid., 155) but also traditions of a priestly-lay sodality insinuating itself in the discussion; cf.
§6.4.3.