Compare and Contrast Strikes Back
On biblicalia, Kevin Edgecomb has responded to my criticisms of his criticism of my criticism of his post. So of course I wanted to respond.
He begins his post by clarifying that he does not deny that the Pentateuch has undergone development. What he doubts, however, is our ability to trace that development and to say anything significant about the documents that lie behind the Pentateuch. He says he agrees with Stephen Kaufman that source criticsm is a “consummately fruitless endeavor.” It is interesting to note, however, that he does not quote all of Kaufman’s quote. What Kaufman said is that “the attempt to identify and reconstruct those sources in other than their broadest outlines is a consummately fruitless endeavor.” With this, I would agree. But it is possible to say something about them in outline. We can come up with dates (relative, if not absolute) for the sources. And this allows us to say something about the time in which they were written. No one in modern source criticism thinks that we are reconstructing the original documents exactly as they existed. That would be a fruitless endeavor. But we have not been doing that since the early 20th century. Many do not even think that P was a source, but instead was a supplement to JE. In this, Kevin seems once again to be arguing with source criticism as it was practiced 80 years ago.
Kevin also takes issue with my saying that positing different hands at work in the text is the simplest way to explain the data found in the documents we have. Instead, he says,
[T]he simplest answer is this: in this literary work, for some reason the author has chosen to use simply one or the other or both terms. Applying a modern narrative logic to an ancient work is anachronistic.
This may be the case or it may not. If he thinks he can find a literary reason for why the author changes usage of the divine name, then I would be happy to see it. I have seen some arguments along these lines, and none of them are persuasive. Most of them involve far more special pleading than the idea of multiple hands in the text.
Edgecomb again and again accuses source criticsm of applying “modern narrative logic to ancient texts. I think source critcism easily avoids this criticism. There are numerous cases where there are things in the text that we consider problems, but which can easily be accounted for by understanding the difference between our ideas of texts and theirs. But we cannot ascribe every problem in the text to differences in narrative understanding. Exodus 6 has the narrator saying that God was not known to the patriarchs as Yahweh, while Genesis shows the patriarchs knowing the name of God. Unless we posit that ancient narrators were so different that they did not mind having passages in their text that completely contradicted what they say in other places, these present a problem. Unless Kevin wants to suggest that ancient authors did not care about such contraditions, he needs to explain this difference. It cannot be explained on a literary level, so source criticism is the simplest answer. Contradiction is not an invention of modern logic.
Kevin then dismisses my discussion of the difference in theology between P and D by stating that they were meant for different time periods (the wilderness and land respectively). But this is hardly the case. P is intended to be used in the land just as much as D is. The sacrifices in Leviticus were not just used in the wilderness but were the sacrifices for the land as well. This literary explanation does not cut it, so Kevin still needs to explain the difference in theology.
Repeatedly, Edgecomb asserts that if you look for something in the text, you will find it. He accuses source critics of merely imagining these things in the text. But he ignoring my argument. You cannot divide the texts and have the characteristics neatly divide into groups. One group of texts having characteristics A-C while another having D-F must be explained. Accusing us of imagining these characteristics is an attack on the scholar, not on his theory.
Kevin also accuses us of having a theory and then seeking data to back it up. This makes me wonder how many source criticial books he has read. It was the data that led scholars to seek a theory to explain these difference, not the other way around. I do more than dabble in source criticism, as Kevin says. I work at it all the time. And if the data were imaginary, I would not be able to find it. Until Kevin actually explains this data in the particular (instead of dismissing it in the abstract), his criticisms do no damage to source criticism.
Edgecomb’s theory is reading is this:
What I suggest (indeed, what I practice!) is a reading of these ancient texts that assumes them to be largely the product of one hand each, usually, even if that hand is just a final editor.
If he wishes, he is welcome to read the text that way. I have no problem with that. But when doing such a reading he has the choice of either ignoring the seams in the text (which is not a reading at all) or explaining them. Even positing an editor, as he does here, is a tacit admission of sources behind the text. An editor has to edit something to turn it into the final text. And that something is a source. If he does not think that we can say something about those sources, he will need to explain why different scholars are able to reproduce the same results by looking at the data in the text. We know fairly well what texts are P and which are non-P. Unless he wants to claim that scholars are sheep who merely follow what people before them said, he needs to explain this consensus.
Kevin ends by saying,
Thirdly, however, (and critics have nothing to say on this) one will, if listening with the proper hearing and reading with the proper sight, read or hear the voice of the timeless, cultureless, eternal God. In the end, that’s what most people are reading this book for, and wrangling over sources, whether they have been or can be defined, is irrelevant to them in their purpose for reading. It has been and always will be.
That is why I read the Bible as well, and source criticism has enhanced my understanding of that text. Whether or not most people find this irrelevant is irrelevant. When I have taught adult learners from churches, most of them have been excited the learn source criticism and found that it helped them understand some of the aspects of the text that had confused them. In addition, most people find textual criticism irrelevant as well, but I suspect Kevin will continue to practice it, even if he continues to pretend that textual critical data are somehow more objective than source critical data.
On May 9th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for the response, Kevin. You wrote: Unless Kevin wants to suggest that ancient authors did not care about such contraditions, he needs to explain this difference.
That is exactly what I suggest. The contradictions are something that bother us, but by their very presence in the text, it is quite readily apparent that even the most recent of the editors through which the text has passed did not take issue with them. This indicates a serious difference in our perception of narrative logic and that of the ancient Hebrews. Similarly, the oddities encountered in the numerical/genealogical framework have remained, in their odd discordance, in the Masoretic tradition, while they have certainly been tampered with in the Samaritan and Septuagintal traditions, which both tried to straighten them out a bit, showing a concern for the narrative logic which is still yet closer to our own than the earlier Hebrew writers, but still not quite identical. This difference is crucial.
You missed my distinction of the context of P and D. I didn’t write that they were “meant for different time periods,” but the narrative context of the elements differed greatly, in a way which explains the differences quite sufficiently. There’s quite a difference in those two perspectives. The skill of the author (or editor, if you will) of the materials at hand was such that they are contextually appropriate. Thus the “citified” stuff of D is not presented in Leviticus, which was set in a wilderness setting and as coming directly from God in the Tent of Meeting, but in Deuteronomy, where the additional instructions were narratively arranged as a series of regulations on what to do once having settled in the Land. The specific differences between the two which you mentioned are more easily explained by context than by alternative theologies of suppositional source materials.
You also say this: If he does not think that we can say something about those sources, he will need to explain why different scholars are able to reproduce the same results by looking at the data in the text. Ah, but do they produce precisely “the same results”? You cannot pretend that they do. I therefore can have nothing to explain. Throughout the history of the project, the lines have always moved, and no two scholars (unless, as the sheep you posit, in their copying of one or another) have ever achieved an identity of equivalence in their separation of those sources. If it were such an objective process, there would be no such differences.
And yes, text critical data, as I described them, are still more objective. Variants are verifiable, while your “sources” are not. That is one of the requirements of objectivity. Has anyone found a manuscript of J/E? Of Q? Then you could verify your sources. Until then, it is all supposition.
In the end though, I’m happy to have had this interesting discussion, and to agree to disagree. As I said, I’ll be going more in depth on the matter later in the year, and we can revisit it in more detail then. For now, we seem to be going in circles.
On May 10th, 2006 at 12:13 am
I am happy to agree to disagree, and look forward to further conversations in the future. We are packing to head to America on Sunday, so I would be out of touch for several days anyway. Thanks for the debate.
On May 10th, 2006 at 8:34 am
I’ve enjoyed it. I’m also about to go offline, due to replastering at home. I don’t like to write from the office. Happy trip!