A Farewell to the Yahwist?
The SBL Symposium Series has a new book out on recent European research concerning the Yahwist. It is entitled A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation. The contributors to this volume are the top scholars in source criticism, with European scholars providing the main papers and American providing the responses. If you have followed the source criticism debate in the SBL Forum recently, you will recognize many of the contributors.
The main trend in European scholarship is to move more towards a tradition critical approach (following Rendtorff). Many scholars in Europe think that the five main blocks of tradition (patriarchs, exodus, wilderness, law, and conquest according to Noth) were first joined by the Priestly author.
If you have been to the Pentateuch sections at the SBL lately, you will have heard most of these papers, but it is nice to have them all in one place. Some were delivered as recently as last year, so it is definitely up to date.
If you would like to read my summary and comments on a particular paper, please click on the title of the paper below.
Contents
- Introduction, Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid
Part 1: Main Papers
- “The Elusive Yahwist: A Short History of Research,” Thomas Christian Romer
- “The So-Called Yahwist and the Literary Gap between Genesis and Exodus,” Konrad Schmid
- “The Jacob Story and the Beginning of the Formation of the Pentateuch,” Albert de Pury
- “The Transition between the Books of Genesis and Exodus,” Jan Christian Gertz
- “The Literary Connection between the Books of Genesis and Exodus and the End of the Book of Joshua,” Erhard Blum
- “The Commission of Moses and the Book of Genesis,” Thomas B. Dozeman
Part 2: Responses
- “The Yahwist and the Redactional Link between Genesis and Exodus,” Christoph Levin
- “The Report of the Yahwist’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated!” John Van Seters
- “What Is Required to Identify Pre-Priestly Narrative Connections between
Genesis and Exodus? Some General Reflections and Specific Cases,” David M. Carr
On December 5th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
This post was chosen for the inaugural (and experimental) This Week in Early Writings.
On January 5th, 2007 at 2:06 am
[…] Moving from the sons of God to the sons of Aaron, Kevin Wilson over at Blue Cord has a post musing about the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel. His post, “Priests and the Pentateuch” explores the question of the relationship between the pentateuchal sources and the history of the priesthood; Wilson suggests — rather provocatively — that the P source may in fact be one of the earliest sources to the Pentateuch, rather than the latest (Wellhausen says, Nein!). Also of note is Kevin’s in-depth multipart review of the latest SBL Symposium series volume, A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation, edited by Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com). […]
On January 10th, 2007 at 1:42 am
[…] “In the beginning” of the month there were a number of interesting posts on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil by Stephen Cook at Biblische Ausbildung (see also his follow-up posts here and here) with a response by Chris Heard of Higgaion fame. Other great posts include Simon Holloway’s post on the mysterious Writing on the Wall in the story of Daniel 5 over at דבר ×חר (dawar acher, literally “another interpretationâ€), Mark Goodacre’s post Does Galatians post-date 1 Corinthians? which started a flurry of blogging activity on Pauline chronology, Kevin Wilson’s post “A Farewell to the Yahwist?,” and even Troels Myrup Kristensen’s fascinating post on the cult of the severed head. […]
On September 10th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[…] this time last year, I did a series of posts reviewing A Farewell to the Yahwist?, a book the presented a number of papers from the Pentateuch […]
On November 20th, 2007 at 2:39 am
[…] from graduate school. For a discussion of this question, see the articles in the first part of A Farewell to the Yahwist? [back] SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Monday at the SBL”, url: […]