The final paper in A Farewell to the Yahwist? is David Carr’s “What is Required to Identify Pre-Priestly Narrative Connections between Genesis and Exodus? Some General Reflections and Specific Cases.” Carr is the author of Reading the Fractures of Genesis, so he is very much a part of the current debate concerning source criticism in the Pentateuch.1

Carr begins by summarizing the similarities and differences between the papers in this volume. Since I have done the same here, I will skip over this part. He then moves to the model of development employed by Schmid and Gertz, which he compares with his own.

Schmid and Gertz see the process as follows:

  1. Separate traditions
  2. P’s combination of the traditions
  3. Post-P additions

Carr prefers the following model:

  1. Separate non-P compositions
  2. A document that combined non-P sections with limited cross reference
  3. P’s coordination and expansion of this material.

My own model agrees more with that of Carr, although I would see the process slightly differently:

  1. A complete P narrative
  2. Separate non-P compositions
  3. A document that combined non-P sections with limited cross reference
  4. A later redactor / author in the holiness tradition who combines the independent P and non-P compositions as well as adding his own material

One of the methodological problems Carr has with Schmid and Gertz is that they take P as the standard against which to measure the non-P material. But, he says, P seems to have been much more concerned with establishing connections between the different traditions, so there is little reason to fault the non-P material for not living up to the standard set by P. He also point out the fact that Schmid and Gertz assume that we have all of P and all of non-P, even though it is likely that a redactor would have left out some parts of each. Just because we do not have a certain element in our current text in both P or non-P does not mean that P or non-P did not originally have that element. We cannot assume either way.

Carr goes through the text of Genesis 50 and Exodus 1, examining texts that could potentially be pre-P connections between the Jacob story and the exodus traditions. In each of the examples, he finds Schmid’s reasons for assigning a particular connection to a post-P redactor to be unconvincing. Although he admits that the pre-P connections are not numerous, they are there. It is only when one assumes that the connection is not made in pre-P that one automatically assigns passages with connections to a post-P stratum.

Finally, Carr points out that he and others have been called “proponents of the Yahwist thesis.” This, he says, is somewhat misleading, because none of the theories about J / non-P that he and others have put forward would be recognizable as the Yahwist of Wellhausen or von Rad. Even among those who accept the existence of a non-P document, almost no one would hold to a 10th century Yahwist. Most would now date him to very late in the preexilic period or sometime in the exile, with some even proposing a postexilic date. Except for the material in question, this Yahwist has little in common with the traditional view of the Yahwist.


  1. As an aside, I wanted to mention that I ran into Carr at the SBL book exhibit this year. I introduced myself and told him how much I had enjoyed Reading the Fractures of Genesis. It is always nice to be able to put a face with a name. [back]
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