Blue Cord

I am finishing my first semester using an on-line component to my classes, so I wanted to reflect a bit on how it has gone. Our school does not have WebCT or Blackboard (although we can get access through other schools), so I installed Moodle on my own server. Moodle is an Open Source — and therefore free — course management system that is comparable to Blackboard.

I have been very pleased with my experience. If you understand web software, it is a fairly simple system to learn. It has enough modules that you can configure it for your needs. I added an attendance module that allowed students to see how many absences they had.

I dislike the idea of teaching on-line, especially at the undergraduate level. So much of teaching is face-to-face interaction, and I don’t want to lose that. What I used Moodle for was a way to deliver information to the students that otherwise would be done in handouts, provide them with access to their grades, and allow them to take quizzes on-line.

Here are my thoughts:

• The on-line quizzes have been a big help. I use quizzes simply to ensure that the students are reading the biblical material. By doing it on-line, I could expand the quizzes to cover an entire week’s readings. I could also make the questions more difficult, since I could assume that they were using the Bible. It involved a bit more work on my part this time around, because I had to make a large database of questions from which the quizzes could be drawn. This was to ensure that each student would get a different test, since I knew students would try to cheat by taking the test together. With this system, the only benefit they get from helping each other is that they read more of the Bible. And, since I can keep the database from year to year, it won’t be as much work in the future.
• An added bonus to the quizzes was that it freed up time in class for more teaching. Quizzes took 10-15 minutes in class, which was a quarter of the period (we use hour long periods here). That meant that with four quizzes, I got an additional hour of teaching spread over the course of the semester.
• I was also able to give more quizzes. Instead of the usual four, I gave six. But only four were counted in the grading. This meant that if a student missed a quiz, he or she did not have to worry about it. Because all of my quizzes were pop quizzes before, I would always have students complaining if they missed that day of class. This way, it is not a problem. And, if a student does manage to miss three quizzes, this points to a problem on their part of not paying attention or planning their time well, so I don’t feel I have to cut them slack.
• Quizzes are graded automatically, which makes up for some of the extra time I spent writing them.
• Students have been giving me very positive feedback about being able to see their grades when they want to. Some have even been pestering other professors to use the same system. The system even averages the grades for them, so they can see how their final grades are coming along. As an added bonus, it also gives me the final grades already averaged in Excel format.
• One unexpected benefit is that I have run an almost paper free class. Except for the syllabi at the beginning of the semester, all handouts have been available on-line. Hard copies were only made if the student chose to print them out, and many students would have just copied them onto their laptops. All assignments have also been turned in on-line. One student was complaining that I made the papers too long and was trying to convince me that we were wasting paper and killing trees. But all the papers were submitted electronically, so this was not an issue.

Overall, this has been a very positive experience, well worth the extra time it took. And since it will take even less time in future semesters, I can spend the time improving questions on the quizzes and making even more resources available from the site. The only downside I have noticed is the extra time it took, but that will not be an issue in the future.

I have added a new item to the menu at the top of the page.  It is a link that will take you to Featured Content.  It is a way for people to access what I consider to be the best posts or best series of posts from my blog.  Right now it only contains the series I did on A Farewell to the Yahwist? and the series of posts on teaching the Bible in a liberal arts context.  As I have more time (and better material), I will add to the page.

When I originally started my current research in source criticism, it was motivated by another field of study: the history of the priests in ancient Israel. I wanted to be able to date the relative layers of the Pentateuch so I could use their information on the priesthood in a chronological manner. But I became excited by the possibilities of research in source criticism, so I am enjoying it as much as the original project on the priesthood.

At this year’s SBL, Konrad Schmid gave a paper entitled “The History of Pentateuch Redaction and the Development of Sacerdotal Institutions.” His thesis was that we have to pay attention to the priesthood at the same time as we focus on the development of the Torah. Although he focused on the exilic and postexilic periods, I am currently considering the same issue for the preexilic period.

For example, when we divide the P material into P and H (as Knohl has done), it seems significant that P pays very little attention to the Levites. All of the Levitical passages are assigned to H. But does not this imply that P would have arisen in an era in which the Levites were not around or at least were not an issue? P focuses all of its energy on the descendants of Aaron with little recognition that there are non-Aaronid Levites.

A possible solution for this occurred to me while reading Menaham Haran’s Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel. He points out that the Levitical cities are divided between those that belong to Aaron and those that belong to the rest of the Levites. All of the cities of Aaron are located in Judah, while the Levites are found in Israel. This could indicate that there were no Levites in Judah during the divided monarch or at least very few. It would only have been with the fall of Samarian in 722 BCE that an influx would have begun, and this could never have been particularly large.

When the Deuteronomistic reforms were undertaken by Josiah, this would have caused a problem for P. Deuteronomy allows Levites to come to Jerusalem and partake in the sacrifice. P has no legislation to regulate this. This would have led to a rethinking of priestly classes during the exile. We see this in Ezekiel 44, where the Levites are accepted but demoted to temple servants. This would have then been codified into Torah by H, who has Levites running around all over the place.

The implications of this for the dating of P are clear. It would need to be written sometime before Josiah’s reforms and possibly before the similar reforms of Hezekiah. This suggests at the latest an early 7th century BCE date, with the 8th century BCE also being a strong possibility. This would mean that P could be the earliest source in the Pentateuch, not the latest as Wellhausen envisioned.

One other indication that P is situated within the Divided Monarchy is the way it deals with Zadok and Ahimelech. P places great emphasis on Eleazar’s line, through whom Zadok is descended. The story of Phinehas (Num 25:6-13) grants him the perpetual priesthood. Ithamat, Aaron’s other son, is given no genealogy anywhere in the OT. The only descendants of his we find are Eli’s line, although this is in 1 Chronicles 24 and it is not a complete genealogy. Solomon had banished Ahimelech to Anathoth, which means that Ithamar’s line was excluded from the priesthood from the time of Solomon on. This would explain why P has no interest in that line and focuses exclusively on Eleazar’s descendants through Zadok. In other words, not only were the Zadokites the main priestly line; they were the only priestly line (at least as far as P is concerned).

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]

Scott Callaham has added an entry to the Blue Cord Bible Dictionary on Walther Eichrodt.  It is very well done and includes not only a summary of his work but also a critical evaluation.  If you are unfamiliar with Eichrodt, who wrote one of the two main OT theologies of the 20th century, I encourage you to check it out.  You might also want to read it if, like me, you know Eichrodt’s work but would like a refresher.