Blue Cord

Not much to report on the research front today, unless you feel like reading really boring details about prospective suffixes in Late Biblical Hebrew. I was able to start writing the paper today and got about six pages done. This is something I have been thinking about for several months, so when I finally got to a research library everything started falling into place.

I did want to make a plug for a type of software. I got a free copy of Microsoft OneNote, a note taking program. I have been using it to take all of my research notes for the last eight months, and it is so wonderful to have everything right at hand when I need it. It arranges things well, and I can create subpages, do searches within the notes, and mark things that I need to come back to later. So, when I started writing the paper, it was simply a matter of organizing the materials into paper format. I wish it had better bibliographic tools, but other than that it works well.

Now, I am not necessarily endorsing OneNote on this. I just happen to use that one because I got it for free. What I am endorsing is this type of software, as it is a big step over taking notes in word processing files. There are several other note taking programs out there, including some that are open source and are therefore free. If you are a scholar or a student and have not tried one, you might want to take a look at it.

I continued my work today on the dating of P and H. Not much exciting to report, but I do think my research provides secondary confirmation of the results of Knohl and Milgrom. They divided P into earlier (P) and later (H) source on the basis of their theology. P uses much more precise terminology, whereas H is looser in the way it uses technical terms. There are also typical phrases that occur in each. The fact that linguistic evidence provides two different profiles for the layers confirms that they are correct.

The two places I disagree with them is on dating and the nature of the early layer. Both want to see P and H as pre-exilic, with the possibility of H being exilic. I agree that P is pre-exilic, but I think the evidence points to H being early post-exilic (or at least very late exilic). This would make sense, as H’s work in combining P and J would have been a part of the efforts to rebuild the temple and reestablish the Jewish community.

My other disagreement is on the nature of P. Both of them see P as one source. I think it should be divded into one main source (Pg) and a number of smaller documents. I agree with Noth that Pg is a narrative source without much law (except for the command to build the tabernacle in Exodus). I think passages such as Leviticus 1-7 were originally separate. They were produced by the priests in Jerusalem, but did not get attached to Pg and the rest of the Pentateuch until H did his work. The idea that the priests in Jerusalem must have produced just one document is ridiculous and goes again what we know about temple records in other parts of the ancient Near East.

One nice thing about this theory is that is solves the recent debate over P as a source or a redaction. As it turns out, P is both. The earlier layer is a source (Pg) and the later layer is a redaction / supplement. It reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live skit where the woman is convinced that Shimmer is a floor wax because it cleans her floors so well, while her husband is convinced Shimmer is a dessert topping because it tastes so good on pie. Dan Akroyd then comes out and says, “Yes, new Shimmer is both!”

I think in the long run I have enough here for a book. I am thinking it might be sort of a companion volume to The Life of Moses that van Seters did. He focused on the Yahwist in Exodus-Numbers in that book. Mine would take his research as a starting point and then outline P and H, as well as deal with the final form of the Pentateuch. Besides, Charles Halton at Awilum has asked me to write a book on this subject, so I guess I better do it.

I am currently at Virginia Theological Seminary, where I will be until Sunday. I will be doing research morning to night every day, so I thought I would engage in a little Open Source Scholarship ™ while I am here. I will be posting blogs about my research for each individual day as a way for me to sort out some things in my head. If others have comments or critiques they would like to make, I would be glad to hear them too.

I have some research I want to do and some I have to do, and I thought I would treat myself on the first day by doing the stuff I want to do. So, I started on some research dealing with the dating of the Priestly layer in the Pentateuch.

The idea I am researching is this: linguistic studies aimed at dating P have given mixed results. Avi Hurvitz found P to be linguistically earlier than Ezekiel.¹ Robert Polzin, on the other hand, has found Pg to have some late elements and Ps to have a lot of late elements.²

It occurred to me that neither of these studies takes into account the division of P into P and H that Knohl and Milgrom have made. This is not surprising, since both these studies were done before Knohl’s work. But since Knohl has shown that H is later than P, I was wondering if the data would show that P is early and H is late. So, I have been working through Hurvitz’s and Polzin’s data to see if there is a correlation.

So far, there does appear to be. The few late features that Polzin found in P are not truly late features, and it therefore appears that there is no reason to date P to either the exilic or post-exilic periods. This, along with Hurvitz’s demonstration that P is prior to Ezekiel, implies a pre-exilic date. The late features Polzin points out in Ps, however, mostly appear to be actual late features (with one or two exceptions). Since most of the Ps passages he names fall into passages Knohl would ascribe to H, this appears to argue for a late exilic or early post-exilic date, since the language in H is not as late as Chronicles.

What this suggests to me is that P preserves documents from the pre-exilic period. I say documents, because it does not seem to be a unified whole. H, on the other hand, seems to be a reworking of these priestly documents for the early post-exilic community, and may have been written as a part of the effort to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and reestablish the priesthood.

If P is pre-exilic, this has other implications, especially if you accept John van Seters’s idea that J is dependent on D. Since D is definitely pre-exilic and quite possibly late pre-exilic, this would mean that P must therefore be earlier than both D and P. The only way around this is to posit that D was written prior to its discovery in 621 BCE by Josiah. The likely time for such a document would be the late 8th century in the rule of Hezekiah. But if P does preceed D and J, this would resolve the debate over whether P is a source or a redaction. If it is prior to D and J, it obviously cannot be a redaction. It would have to be a source or sources.

Again, this reinforces my conviction that the correct order is PDJH.

1. Avi, Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel: A New Approach to an Old Problem, Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 20 (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1982). See my review. [back]
2. Robert, Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose, Harvard Semitic Monographs 12 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976). [back]

The number three is an important one in Christianity. After all, we have the three persons of the Trinity, the three wise men, the three apostles of Jesus’ inner circle, and so forth. And so it is with great pride that I announce that I stand squarely within this tradition of three, for that is exactly how many people showed up for my book signing. O.K. Maybe pride is not the appropriate word. Disappointed is probably a more apt description.

I had my book signing at the Episcopal church’s general convention in Columbus today. They had me set up at a table in the Morehouse / Church Publishing booth for an hour. Unfortunately, that hour was during major sessions for both the house of deputies and the house of bishops, which meant most people had to be in meetings. But I won’t attribute the lack of people completely to that. I was also due to the fact that I am a scholar who is just starting out. This is only the second book I have published, so I couldn’t imaging that people would be flocking to get my autograph. I pointed this out to the publisher when they first asked me to do the signing, but they said we should do it anyway.

I did increase sales, because two of the people who bought books for me to sign were friends of mine. One is the former director of missionaries for the Episcopal church (i.e., my former boss) and the other is the canon missioner for the Convocation of American Churches in Europe. I had met her in Wiesbaden, Germany, and Istanbul, Turkey, so this was the first time for us to meet on US soil. She is the one pictured with me below.

Chris Heard at Higgaion has blogged about the academic projects he will be working on this summer.  I thought it would be interesting to hear the same thing from other bibliobloggers out there, so I will keep the ball rolling by blogging about my academic plans.

• I have about twenty articles left to write for the New Interpreters Dictonary of the Bible.  I wrote about 85 entries last summer and just have these few left to finish out my assigned articles.  This summer will include such exciting topics as Teman, Thutmose, Turban, Tel Sippor, Zeredah, and Khirbet Raddana.
• I need to put the finishing touches on the paper I am reading at the European Association of Biblical Studies conference in Budapest in August on the development of Deuteronomy and Joshua.
• I am starting a paper on dating of the Priestly source and whether splitting it into P and H will resolve some of mixed data that have been encountered by linguistic attempts at dating.
• I am also considering whether to apply for a Louisville Institute grant to write a book on the way Christian radio talk show hosts use the Bible to address political issues.

I am looking forward to being able to get all this research done.  One of the problems with working in Lithuania is not having access to an academic library.  I have the ATLA database on the Internet, which allows me to access most articles, but if I don’t have a book in Lithuania I either have to order it or go without.  I will be spending next week and the week after that in Alexandria, VA, and Baltimore, MD, where I can use the research libraries at Virginia Theological Seminary and the Johns Hopkins University.