The Pentateuchal Narratives Silva Redigonda
The study of the Old Testament is not restricted to theology. The Old Testament is also an historical account stemming from the roots of humanity in literary form. This paper will explain the documentary hypothesis that accounts for the divergent materials in the Pentateuchal narratives. This paper will define what the Pentateuchal Narratives is, what the documentary hypothesis is, and provide examples of what these divergent materials are.
Pentateuch is a common name for what the Jews call the Torah, which is the Law or the Law of Moses. The Pentateuch is a five-fold book because it encompasses the first five books of the Old Testament that includes Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.[1] The Pentateuch tells the story from creation to the death of Moses.[2]
A series of scholars contributed to the development of what became known as the Documentary Hypothesis for the formation of the Pentateuch. Richard Simon (d.1712) a French Catholic priest was one of the first to question the sole authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses and to propose that it was rather a compilation of diverse documents. Simon noted inconsistencies such as Moses’ description of his own death and burial in Deuteronomy 34:1-8 (Ceresko, p 59). Moses could not have written the account of his own death. Attention was gradually drawn to repetitions and contradictions that the Torah was not the work of one author but of a compilation long after the time of Moses (Collins, p 48).
Internal discrepancies are also found in the creation and flood accounts. Genesis 2:4b-25 has human beings created first, while Genesis 1:1-2:4 has placed them last. We now understand the two creation accounts to reflect two sources from different time periods in Israel’s history, representing a different theology of creation that have been interwoven (Ceresko, p 59). In 1735, Jean Astruc, a convert to Catholicism who became the private physician to King Louis XV, noted that in some passages of Geneses, God is referred to as Elohim, the general Hebrew word for God and in other passages of Genesis, God is called Yahweh. Some of these passages as in Gen1:1- 2:4 a, and various passages dealing with genealogies were recognized as a Priestly source that is extensive in Leviticus. The remaining narrative was observed as a combination of the Yahwistic source and an Elohistic one. For much of the 19th century it was assumed that the Priestly document was the oldest of the Pentateuch. In the 1860’s this theory was revised and the Priestly source was viewed as the latest or next to latest.
Astruc’s early observation was gradually developed by later scholars into a full fledged documentary hypothesis, which addressed the composition of the entire Pentateuch. The book of Pentateuch was recognized as a distinct source (Collins, p 49).
There are also doublets, or various forms of the same story. Examples are the two versions of the flood intertwined in Genesis 6-9. Abraham identifying his wife Sarah as his sister to a foreign King in two separate stories and in a third story, Abraham identifies his wife Rebekah as his sister. There are two different accounts of Abraham’s dealings with Hagar and Ishmael and two accounts of the naming of Beersheba. These doublets are not confined to Genesis or to the narrative material. There are also variant accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus and different accounts of the revelation of the commandments in Exodus 10-20 and in Deuteronomy. The mountain of the revelation is variously named Sinai or Horeb. The Ten Commandments is given three times with some variations (Exod 20: 1-17; 34:10 – 28; Deut 5:6-18). This is to name but a few (Collins, p 50).
When it became clear that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, the dates when passages were written was studied. German scholar De Wette (1780 -1849) demonstrated that the Book of Deuteronomy differs from the preceding books of the Pentateuch and is the product of a different and somewhat later author because Deuteronomy 12 restricts sacrificial worship to the place that YHWH chooses and calls for the destruction of all the places of worship at high places. This law is in contrast to the historical practice of Israelite religion. Prophets such as Amos, who condemned cult practice at bethel and other sanctuaries, never appealed to a law forbidding worship at more than one place (Collins, p 59). Recent debates about the Pentateuch show that the reconstruction of earlier forms of the biblical text is very speculative. The texts are composite and incorporate layers from different eras; a collection of traditional materials. Some elements of the Priestly stand were added long after the Babylonian exile. There were some Deuteronomic additions in the earlier books, but the extent of the editing remains in dispute (Collins, p 64).
This paper has defined the term Pentateuchal Narratives to be the first five books of the Old Testament. The documentary hypothesis addressed the composition of the entire Pentateuch and this paper has explained the documentary hypothesis that accounts for the divergent materials in the Pentateuchal narratives which were derived and combined from independent, parallel narratives into current form. As more scrolls are found and examined from different eras of history, the more we can grow closer to appreciating literature through time, history and our respective theology.
No comments:
Post a Comment