Blue Cord

On his blog yesterday, Joseph Cathey posted a blurb from a book he is currently reading on the composition of the Pentateuch. The blurb included the following statement:

Starting as we do from the position of a Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch we may lay it down as a general rule that a given passage is of Mosaic origin unless there are decisive proofs for labeling it as post-Mosaic.

I don’t know whether Dr. Cathey agrees with this position or not. He simply posted it. But because the Pentateuch in general and source criticism in particular is one of my areas of research, I thought I wanted to comment on this statement.

It seems to me to be problematic to begin with the assumption of Mosaic authorship. If one wants to argue in favor of Moses as the author, then that is fine, but to merely start from that position is not scholarship. On the other hand, rejecting Mosaic authorship out of hand is also not a valid position. One must begin by examining the arguments in favor and against Mosaic authorship of the Torah before one can draw a conclusion. This seems rather axiomatic, but the author quoted by Cathey seems to ignore this.

The reason for attributing the writing of the Pentateuch to Moses is mostly taken from sources other than the Pentateuch, primarily statements in the New Testament. Although Deuteronomy 31:24 states that Moses wrote down the law, within its context it only refers to the law in Deuteronomy, not the entire Torah. The only other thing we are told Moses wrote is the laws given in Exodus 34. But we cannot assume that just because the text says that Moses wrote the law that he actually did. The Pentateuch is making a theological statement when it assigns the law to Moses, i.e., all of the law of Israel, regardless of its historical origin, is to be treated as the original law of God given at Mt. Sinai.

We therefor have to look at the nature of the text to determine its origins, and the text of the Pentateuch as we have it is highly composite. It comes from multiple time periods and apparently multiple hands. In addition to the evidence for multiple authors, there is also evidence against Mosaic authorship. These reasons are rehearsed in every introduction to the Old Testament, so I do not need to discuss them at length here. A few of them were noted even by Medieval rabbis, such as the question of how Moses could record his own death.

I would have issue with the conclusions of someone who examined all the evidence and decided that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but at least he or she has looked at the evidence. But to begin with the assumption of Mosaic authorship in the light of previous scholarship is an irresponsible handling of the Bible.

One of my students from Pentateuch class asked me the following question, which I thought I would answer here:

The story of Korah in Numbers 16 makes a point that “levites have gone too far” as these are only priests that are holy, to put it simplisticly. How does the test of the rods in 17 prove that the levites were wrong since it was their clan’s rod that blossomed? Is 17 a P source material?

The material in Num.16-18 is a composite of three different layers.

• First, we have the J story of the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram, which has nothing to do with the priests. It is concerned merely with a challenge to Moses’ authority.
• The second layer is the rebellion of the 250 chiefs of the congregations, who challenge the exclusive right of Moses and Aaron to be priests. The test of the censers and the budding of the rod show that it is in fact the Levites who are to be priests. This layer comes from the P source — or more specifically from the H source.
• The final layer is the layer that introduces Korah, and turns it into a question of whether all the Levites are priests or only the descendants of Aaron. This layer comes from the H redactor, who has combined the J and H stories plus added his own material. This redactor expands the story of the censers so that it is the Levites who make the offering and are punished.

It is this final redaction that is creating the tension, since it now contrasts the test of the censers and the test of the rod. Aaron’s rod budding confirms the Levites power in the original story. As it stands in combination with the Korah story, however, it appears to only confirm the power of the Aaronids over against the rest of the tribes. It is the H stratum in the Pentateuch that first makes a distinction between the Aaronids and the Levites. Prior to this, all Levites seem to have been eligible to serve as priests (see Deuteronomy and Judges for examples).

Christopher Heard at Higgaion has a good post that critiques the exegesis in an article from the Expository Time.  Although I agree with most of what he says, I did want to make one comment.

Chris points out that, contrary to what the article says, most offerings in the Bible are not todah (thanksgiving) offerings.  He says that the todah is found only in Leviticus 7:11-18 (he has a typo that calls it chapter 17 instead) and is to be understood as a subset of the shelam (offering of well-being).

I would have to disagree with this.  It seems to me that the todah is not actually a type of sacrifice.  It is not listed as a sacrifice in Leviticus 1-7, and the same word simply has the meaning of “thanksgiving” in numerous passages.  Instead, todah is a reason for offering any number of sacrifices.

What we have in Leviticus 7:11-18 is not the regulations for the todah but the regulations for a shelam that is offered for a thanksgiving.  But other types of sacrifices could be offered as a todah as well.  Amos 4:5 calls for todah of leavened bread, and this certainly is not a shelam, since the shelam must be an animal.  Of course, Leviticus 2:11 forbids the use of leaven in the grain offering, so it is unclear to what type of sacrifice Amos 4:5 refers.  And although the burnt-offering is never connected with the word todah, it is likely that thanksgiving was one of the reasons for offering the burnt-offering as well.

Two types of offering could not be considered for todah, however.  These are the purification offering and the guilt offering, which were brought to purify the temple and the believer, not for thanksgiving.

In other words, Chris is correct that Numbers 15 does not mention the todah, but it does mention several types of offerings that could be offered for thanksgiving.  But the passage in Numbers 15 does not specifically focus on its function as thanksgiving.  Instead, it lists a number of reasons for sacrifice, such as fulfillment of a vow or as a freewill offering.  Obviously, these reasons for offerings do not support the author’s position, which is the point of Chris’s post.

Since the time I first thought of buying my own domain and moving to a personal web server, I have been giddy with the heady excitement of what I can do with all the extra space I have on the server. After all, the blog only takes up a small percentage of my allotted space. So, I have been considering what kind of web pages I could inflict upon the world.

I definitely want to do something related to the Bible. For example, Rob Bradshaw uses his web space to host all kinds of articles and papers related to the study of the Bible. The reason I want to do this is because although there is a great deal of material concerning the Bible on the Internet, a large percentage of it is crap not of acceptible quality. I have been searching for some reliable places to send my students when they want to do research on the Bible. Because my students are just beginning, I need a site that will have only quality material, because they don’t yet have the critical skills in this area to tell the good from the bad.

So, I thought about creating a Bible wiki. There are a few of these out there already, but most allow anyone and everyone to edit (as is the case with most wikis). But while this may work well with some wikis, I would prefer to have one written exclusively by scholars. Call me an elitist, but I would prefer that people know what they are talking about before they write on a subject. Granted, this is not always the case, even with scholars. But I still don’t want my house built by a doctor or my surgery done by a construction worker. I’m just picky that way.

Obviously, this is not a project I can do by myself. Even if I had infinite amount of time, I don’t have the expertise to write with authority on all areas of the Bible. Nor does anyone else. So I thought to myself, do I know a community of biblical scholars who might be interested in this? And can I find such a community that is also computer and Internet savvy. Of course, the biblioblogging community came to mind.

I wanted to see if there was any one else who thought this was a good idea. Some of my students have already said they would like such a site, so I know we would have users. And I already have loaded some wiki software onto my site and am in the process of configuring it. Now all we need is some authors.

What I am proposing is a wiki, but not the traditional open wiki. Writing of pages would only be done by biblical scholars. I have already set up the wiki to require log in for authors. In addition to its limited authors, I would also like the pages to have a more standardized format than a regular wiki, so I we would be writing templates for some of the articles. This would turn out ultimately to be an on-line Bible dictionary of sorts, but one that would forever stay up to date. Whenever a new discovery came along, such as the Gospel of Judas, we could immediately have an entry to which we could send our students.

So, what do people think? Is this needed? Would this be used? And if so, are you willing to write for it? I would love to get a lot of feedback on this before I get started, just to make sure that I am not out on a fool’s errand. And for those readers who are not scholars, is this something that you would use?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Teaching in an international setting is always interesting, and you often learn new things. I expected that when I took this job. But there are simply some things I had not anticipated.

When I first introduced the qal stem of the verb in Hebrew, all of my students started laughing. It turns out that qal is the Russian word for ‘poop’. This prompted one of my students to mention the experience that all of them had in grade school. At the beginning of each year, students were required to bring in a sample of their poop in a matchbox. They would bring it up to the teacher’s desk, who would give it to the school nurse to be checked for indications of health problems. Ah, life in the Soviet period!

Today is the final day of classes at LCC. When I walked into the Intro to Bible II class this morning, there on my desk were thirty matchboxes. Each was filled with a piece of poop chocolate. I now have one of them displayed in my office in the collection of memorabilia I keep on my desk. (Other items in the collection include a picture of my dog, my son’s little league baseball card, a chunk of salt from the salt mines in Krakow, a model of the Rosetta Stone, and a hand-made Christmas card made to look like a pocket New Testament given to me by an Old Testament student.) The chocolate was delicious, by the way.

This is easily the weirdest - and most appreciated - end of the year gift I have ever received from students.