The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

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• Richard said...

  Hi Jason,

  Thanks for this post; I do wonder why Mosaic authorship needs to be developed for your applications to be valid. Much of the key texts that you cite Gen. 11:31-32; 12; 15; Exod. 1 are clearly late.

  Gen. 11:31-32 are usually assigned to the Priestly source and are to be dated to the exilic period owing, partly, to the reference to ‘Ur of the Chaldeans,’ personally I don’t buy that vv. 28 (commonly assigned to J) was edited in its light and would assign this to the exile too.

  Gen. 12:2-3 depends upon royal ideology and so post-dates Moses by quite some time.

  Gen. 15 is commonly recognised to be very late, it too references the ‘Ur of the Chaldeans’ and is dependent upon Deuteronomy and forms a post-D layer (post-621 BCE.) comprising Gen. 22:15-18 and Gen. 26::3-5.

  There does not seem to be any evidence of a literary link between Genesis and Exodus until the exilic period which indicates that Moses could not have composed Exodus even if he did have some input into Genesis (which is doubtful), all forward references to the exodus are secondary, as are references in Exodus-Deuteronomy to promises made to the patriarchs.

  Personally I would suggest that the narrative you refer to was composed during the late exilic early postexilic period. One can still achieve the same practical application for preaching, i.e. ‘we’d better not turn back, because Joshua has already secured our victory’ but grounded on solid scholarship.

  Just some thoughts!

  09/10/12 10:39 AM | Comment Link

• Jason Hood said...

  Thanks Richard. I agree that there are significant ongoing implications as it sits in Gen-2 Kings, and as the story is recapped by the Chronicler. As I mentioned, I’m okay with the notion that “Chaldeans” (or Dan in Gen 14:14) are not particularly ancient. But why must the whole must therefore be late.

  I could be wrong on Moses. But in any event I have major questions re: the general contours of JEDP (although some scholars I respect work with part of the theory): 1. Its strikes me as highly speculative (like the famous first and second edition of Q in my native NT scholarship); 2. it fed itself from principles of religious development that derive from Lutheran and idealistic anti-Judaism (per Brevard Childs and others); 3. It has been problematized by a failure to agree on particular details for respective strata (I know some minimalists who would savage some of what you wrote), which gives the impression of a significant lack of consensus; 4. The discovery of lengthy material in sequence (esp Atrahasis) that antedates the period in question by some time gives me pause re: theories that depend heavily on phases of development.

  “Gen. 12:2-3 depends upon royal ideology and so post-dates Moses by quite some time.” (Assume I’m well acquainted w/ scholarship here going back to Brueggemann on David in Gen 1:26ff; I’m just looking for the logic of the case.)

  Here’s my question: how do we know that Moses didn’t have a royal ideology?

  09/10/12 11:14 AM | Comment Link

• Ray Hollenbach said...

  Thanks, Jason, for suggesting a plausible parallel between the Patriarchal narrative and the Exodus event, but for pulling the thread all the way through to the General Epistles. This is one dinosaur I can embrace.

  09/10/12 12:47 PM | Comment Link

• Matthew Mason said...

  Richard, thanks so much for your brilliant parody. It gave me the laugh I needed today.

  09/10/12 1:15 PM | Comment Link

• Tim Russell said...

  Jason,
  I appreciate the work that you have been doing and your commmitment to sharp-edged responsible scholarship, as well as your unapologetic evangelical bias. Kudos, guy.
  Looking forward to seeing you more in CT, too!

  By the way–there are still respected evangelical and Reformed scholars worth their Twitter account who would raise the banner for plenary Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.

  09/10/12 4:06 PM | Comment Link

• Jason Hood said...

  Thanks Tim, that’s good to know. “I’m not aware” and “everyone” are not synonymous with “the full picture” when NT scholars start making observations about OT scholarship!

  09/10/12 5:42 PM | Comment Link

• Richard said...

  Hi Jason,

  Thank you for your gracious response; when I use the language of the Documentary Hypothesis I am cognisant that there has been much ground shifting since the 1970s. I am happy to speak of P and non-P as well as D to differentiate between texts that can be distinguished on linguistic grounds though I don’t affirm sources in the classical Wellhausen sense, breathing, as I do, the air of Blum, Carr, Kratz, Rendtorff, Schmid et al as well as the work done by Emerton, Davies, Nicholson, and Williamson. That is, from the exilic period I affirm ‘sources’ but in the pre-exilic period I prefer to speak of independent narrative-cycles.

  The independence between the stories of the ancestors and the exodus-Moses story is, to my mind, the problem facing the idea that Moses composed a story from creation to settlement. The problem is that it is demonstrable that it is highly probable such a literary gap existed until the late pre-exilic or exilic period, i.e. certainly no earlier than 722 BCE and most probably no earlier than 586 BCE owing to Ezekiel being unaware of a continuous narrative. An article length outline can be found in ‘Confessional Reformulation during the Exilic Period’ by John Van Seters whose work was continued by Thomas Römer. Contrary to some of those mentioned above, I would affirm a pre-P source running from creation to settlement however it cannot date to the pre-exilic period, to my mind the independent narrative-cycles being joined together at a pre-P level, yet this coordination was strengthened at the P and post-P level.

  Once we allow for pre-exilic narrative-cycles the question becomes one of analysing their growth from small units to larger literary complexes. Emerton has written a fascinating article on the growth of the promises to the patriarchs and has demonstrated that the only promises that we can be reasonably certain are ‘original’ are those in Gen. 12:7; 16:11; 18:10, 14; and 28:15. There was an early ancestor story uniting Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that contained some promises, but there is also the further question of at what stage were these united? Jacob is associated with the north (Bethel) and Abraham with the south (Jerusalem). I could go on but I hope it is clear that the closer we get back to the period of Moses the less material we have that we could potentially attribute to him, leaving aside the questions of literary production at such an early stage in the development of Israel as a nation.

  You asked specifically of royal ideology in Gen. 12:2-3. The promise of a ‘great name’ in v. 2 is an extension to Abraham of older royal blessings wished for in Ps. 72:17 and promised in 2 Sam. 7. Now of course one could say ‘Well could Moses not have adopted a royal theology from Egypt?’ To which I would want to urge caution on what we can say that is evidence-based and what we want to say grounded on conjecture and the mists of time. One of Kraus’ more insightful comments on the hypothesised annual enthronement festival relating to kingship is his point (from memory I think he makes it in his comments on Ps. 132) is that the Israelite concept of kingship is wholly unlike that of other ANE theologies of kingship, it being grounded in ‘history’ rather than primeval myth as is the case in Egypt, Ugarit, and Mesopotamia. Indeed, we can pose the question of probability, is it probable that Moses could have written this promise in Gen. 12:2-3, which is at best ‘secondary’ to it literary location, drawing upon the royal ideology contained in a Royal Psalm dated no earlier than the tenth-century and a section of the Deuteronomistic History which is also going to be no earlier than the tenth century? That, I would suggest, is a far less likely scenario than someone familiar with such material, from the tenth century onwards, composing a promise and inserting it into the Abraham story. If you accept, as you do, later redactional material being present in Genesis then such a solution will not be too shocking I hope. If we take a step back for a second and recall that outside of the Pentateuch the figure of Abraham does not appear in works dated to the pre-exilic period and yet is prominent in the work of Second Isaiah who grounds hope of return upon the promises to the patriarchs, and who also democratises the Davidic covenant (Isaiah 55:3-5) we can pose a further question of whether an exilic writer is possibly doing something similar with Abraham to argue that the Davidic covenant is fulfilled in the seed of Abraham. To my mind such a view is far more in accordance with the biblical evidence and we can place this discovery of critical scholarship into our biblical-theological hat and run with it, O what delights!

  My methodology is to seek to determine the compositional seams that serve to coordinate the smaller narrative-cycles and to date that; hence I would suggest that Gen. 15 is part of such a compositional seam that coordinates both the ancestor stories and the exodus narrative and because it can be dated to the exilic period we can join the dots together to create a beautiful picture.

  For those interested the following are worth reading:
  Albertz, R. Israel in Exile. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
  * A great guide to the literature of the exilic period and provides a thought provoking argument concerning the growth of the Patriarchal History.

  Carr, D. M. Reading the Fractures of Genesis. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.
  * An outstanding reconstruction of the growth of the book of Genesis.

  Emerton, J. A. ‘The Origin of the Promises to the Patriarchs in the Older Sources of the Book of Genesis.’ Vetus Testamentum 32 (1982): 14-32.
  * A coherent analysis of the promises and their literary growth raising questions of dating.

  Ska, J. L. Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
  * A really helpful introduction to the key data and history of scholarship.

  09/11/12 2:48 AM | Comment Link

• Jason Hood said...

  Thanks Richard. Citing scholars doesn’t constitute an argument, not least because two can play that game; other (critical!) scholars have a position that doesn’t agree with Kraus in the slightest. I’m asking why someone in Moses’ position couldn’t have been interested in royal agenda, as you proposed. It’s possible I’m just dense, but I’ve yet to see you cite a reason why this is inherently more conjectural or implausible than the myriad of alternative positions (there’s not just one, even among the slice of scholarship you cited).

  What’s the evidence that the royal material in Gen 12 is based on those late texts and not other texts? It’s inference, not evidence, and inference based on a particular set of assumptions that don’t arise apart from a commitment to anti-supernaturalism (which I can understand, even if I don’t agree). Sandmel’s famous dictum applies here if it applies anywhere: *Similar agendas cannot constitute an argument for dependence.*
  Don’t you in fact have to begin with the premise that one text is later than the other, and then use that premise to argue that Gen 12 is later and even (a really massive stretch) dependent? Isn’t that circular? You want me to follow Kraus and say “this is late because it derives from a psalm belonging to a hypothetical festival”? Hypothetical festivals are fantastic for writing dissertations, they are even possible, but I cannot see how they can be called “evidence-based” vs. “what we want to say grounded on conjecture and the mists of time”?!

  “Demonstrable that it is highly probable” and “hypothesised annual enthronement festival” and “I would suggest” and “far less likely” are not the language of “evidence-based” argument. That’s why the minimalists are much more assertive than your appropriately cautious language. It’s all easier that way.

  Open in another window on my computer since last week is a PDF of the Harvard University PhD dissertation of Catherine Beckerleg (now McDowell) on Genesis 1-3. It calls into question some depictions of alleged seams in Gen 1-3. (She’s just making a partial argument, mind; there are other such studies, of course, even if you don’t care for them.) Among other things she notes the royal agenda in what you would call a mythic setting, and the way in which it ties to ANE (IMHO pace Kraus). She is far too cautious to assign early or late date to such material.

  “The independence between the stories of the ancestors and the exodus-Moses story is, to my mind, the problem facing the idea that Moses composed a story from creation to settlement.”
  Again, maybe my literary education has failed me or misled me, but the narrative connections are so sophisticated as to be almost breath-taking. Independence has to be read into the text.

  “There was an early ancestor story uniting Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that contained some promises”
  That’s fine to hypothesize. Can you show it to me, or can we dig this up? Of course not. It’s conjecture, along the lines of an anti-eschatological recension of Q .

  There are Abrahamic texts in pre-exilic material (Isa 29, Micah 7:20; and only appears 3x in Deut-Isa, unless you take isa 63 as Trito-Isa, so then you’re down to two… “prominent” is remarkably incorrect), unless those texts are dated later because of Abraham’s presence, in which case the circularity is so tight as to no longer be rendered “evidence-based.”
  You might consult my published dissertation, which doesn’t address the present discussion, but still wrestles with the many “summaries of Israel’s story” over many centuries before and just after the NT era. What’s striking is the diversity on display: there’s no one way to tell the story, even in times and places where Abraham or David or Moses are absolutely vital to Jewish identity. I find it hard to expect earlier writers to be more rigid in their use of Israel’s story than later writers, and I find it strange to assume that they did not know of Abraham or Moses on that basis. Obviously the many reference to God’s dealings with his people are based on something…but what? A fair bulk of Torah would be a good guess! Among many other points, JVS and others assume Ezekiel doesn’t know of something because he doesn’t mention it (if they don’t excise parts of 16, 20, and 23 as “obviously late”). Doesn’t that strike you as…conjectural and presumptive?!

  I’m getting ready to go off social media for writing purposes, so I don’t have time to continue the discussion. But I appreciate you commenting and wish you the best in your studies. Perhaps we’ll meet at SBL at some point.

  09/11/12 9:24 AM | Comment Link

• Richard said...

  Hi Jason,

  To respond to all of your points would take too long; suffice it to say that the question of royal ideology in Gen. 12:2-3 is a minor part of my argument, and the literary gap is the major whereas your response has been to focus in on the plausibility of Moses possessing a royal theology; lets assume, for the sake of argument, that I cannot ‘prove’ Moses did not possess such a royal theology, that does not mean any claim that he did is thereby proven right. Moreover, I certainly don’t want you to buy into any hypothesised festival rather the point is that Israel’s understanding of kingship has no place for primeval myth which is problematic because if Moses did possess a royal ideology he would, most likely, have obtained it from either the Egyptians or the ANE milieu which, if he had, we imply that we should expect it to have overtones of primeval myth, but it doesn’t. Israelite royal ideology was historical not mythical, that is it was grounded upon Yahweh’s election of David and his dynasty and this theology developed a ‘specialised’ language located in royal psalms and this language we find in Gen. 12:2-3, so you could posit an alternative origin but the actual evidence is a literary relationship between Gen. 12:2-3; 2 Sam. 7; and Ps. 72. But all of this is secondary to the question of a literary gap between the ancestors and the exodus. To claim that ‘the narrative connections are so sophisticated as to be almost breath-taking’ is to ignore the layers or strata at which the connections are made. All of those verses that link the exodus with the patriarchs are clearly secondary. A basic example, as demonstrated by Rendtorff is Exod. 3:8 ‘I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.’ It is intriguing that the land is described in the way it is, as though it were a wholly foreign land with which they had no previous connection, which would be odd if the story presumed a patriarchal narrative. There are also more subtle hints, why, if Moses wrote Gen. 50:26a, did he feel the need to tell us again that Joseph died? And so on.

  You are correct that Abraham appears in Isa. 29:22 and Mic. 7:20, the problem is that neither of these are pre-exilic texts, not because of Abraham’s presence but other more technical reasons as laid out in the relevant commentaries. But, lets assume these are pre-exilic, both prophets are linked to Judah and I have already indicated that Abrahamic traditions were southern, the question is whether there is any evidence of a union of northern and southern traditions pre-722 BCE and whether there is any evidence of an ancestor-exodus narrative.

  I am sure we could keep on with this; all the best in you writing.

  09/11/12 11:08 AM | Comment Link

• Jason Hood said...

  “that does not mean any claim that he did is thereby proven right.” I agree completely, Richard.

  “we imply that we should expect it to have overtones of primeval myth, but it doesn’t.” I could cite counter-evidence, but why infer or imply that someone in Moses’ position MUST have articulated kingship in identical terms to ANE, particularly when he has already articulated humanity as a whole in royal ANE language (Gen 1-2)? I note that the assumption that Jesus couldn’t have said anything original (granted he and Torah are very heavily informed by their respective contexts) has made a mockery of a fair portion of historical Jesus scholarship.

  The assumption of strata and *definitive* seams as well as the examples you provide require assumptions about literature that don’t work.

  RE: Joseph’s death; note the overlap/repetition in the beg/end of a 2 vol work like Lk-Acts, or 1 Chron 29:23-25 with 2 Chron 1:1. I could go on. Bruce Longenecker’s recent book Rhetoric at the Boundaries is not irrelevant here (it’s NT but he’s got older examples). Recapping what’s come before is a pretty standard literary trait, it’s not reasonable to assume dift authorship on that basis. IOW, janus passages existed long before we called them by that name.

  RE: “a wholly foreign land with which they had no previous connection,” in Exod 3:8. Well, in many ways it essentially was a foreign land to them, I reckon. Why is it reasonable to require that verse to articulate a full version of the story complete with patriarchal association, then make that verse pull anti-patriarchal duty if they aren’t present? It’s an argument from silence. (And in any event, if they were there, it’d simply be ruled out the way some rule out Exod 6:3)

  09/11/12 12:59 PM | Comment Link

• Richard said...

  Hi Jason,

  Just a quick reply then I will leave it be; it seems clear to me, and many others for that matter, that the primeval history is a fairly self-contained block (cf. ANE parallels). So where are its connections with the patriarchal history to be found? Well in those verses that mention Abram in Gen. 11:27ff. which mention ‘Ur of Chaldeans’ which you recognise as being ‘not particularly ancient’.

  If I may suggest one more book; David M. Carr’s “The Formation of the Hebrew Bible” is superb not only in its scope but also in his attempt to ground his synthesis with comparative analysis.

  RE Joseph: So you think that recapping is the solution? I am not persuaded as it would certainly read odd in a continuous narrative (Gen. 50:24-26 + Exod. 6, 8):

  “Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die; but God will surely come to you, and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’ So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying, ‘When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here.’ And Joseph died, being one hundred and ten years old; he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said…”

  Recalling that Exod. 1:1-5, 7 are P. A further problem is, that Gen. 50:24-26 is part of the layer forming the hexateuch (cf. Josh. 24:32) which Moses certainly can’t have composed.

  Anyway, I am signing off. All the best!

  09/13/12 3:12 AM | Comment Link

• Richard said...

  Btw, do please feel free to cite some works dealing with Israelite royal theology being related to primeval myth as I will check them out. I am familiar with Mowinckel, Eaton etc and that generation of scholarship but if you have more recent people that would be grand!

  09/13/12 5:21 AM | Comment Link

• Jason Hood said...

  Richard, I’m sorry to be tardy as I’ve been off social media. There are many places, I hardly know where to begin–esp given that I’m not sure what would be of interest to you. Random comments that come to mind include Childs, Intro to the OT as Scripture, 517; Sandra Richter’s dissertation in BZAW and her summary of some of that in Epic of Eden, 252 n. 14, plus Jacobsen, etc., which she cites. Plenty more but none that will be of interest to you I reckon.

  Thanks again for commenting.

  10/1/12 3:55 PM | Comment Link

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