The next paper in A Farewell to the Yahwist? is “The Transition between the Books of Genesis and Exodus” by Jan Christian Gertz. If I remember correctly, this paper was delivered at the annual SBL meeting in San Antonio in 2004.

Gertz focuses on Genesis 50 and Exodus 1, trying to determine the connection between the Joseph story and the exodus account. He is unable to find such a connection in the non-P layer, which he sees as ending with the Israelites family in Canaan after returning to bury Jacob. He can find no trace of the returning to Egypt in this layer. It is only in P and post-P additions that such a connection comes in. The same is also the case on the Exodus 1 side.

Gertz’s reconstruction is a bit difficult to follow, and in some ways it harkens back to the heyday of source criticism when half verses were attributed to different authors. It also seems a bit risky to base the conclusion on what is not found in the text. The fact that there is no non-P story of the return to Egypt could be back it was left out in favor of the P version of the return. After all, it would have been impossible to have both of them, since they only returned once.

Gertz attributes the first connection of the eisodus with the exodus to P. But even here he says it is put together in a rather simple fashion. He states,

With respect to Exod 1:8, one observes first that together with verse 6 the memory of the Joseph story and its drammatis personae has been consistently eradicated. The respect enjoyed by Joseph in Egypt and the servitude of the Israelites are mutually exclusive, and thus Joseph was removed with one stroke of the pen. Regardless of the redaction to which one ascribes this editorial activity, it constitutes solid evidence that the connection between the narratives in the books of Genesis and Exodus postdates the primary literary stratum of the texts.1

While I agree with him that they are secondarily connected, I don’t think the connection is as sloppy as Gertz portrays it. After all, as Baruch Schwartz demonstrated at this year’s SBL, the P story of the eisodus does not have Joseph becoming an official in phraoh’s court. Instead, Joseph appears before pharaoh but is not mentioned as being granted an office.2 If Joseph was not a high official in P, then it is not surprising that the new pharaoh would not know him. This is only a problem when the non-P material is combined with P.


  1. Gertz, “Transition,” 82. [back]
  2. Baruch J. Schwartz, “The Priestly Narrative of Israel’s Descent into Egypt,” paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Washington, DC, November, 2006. [back]
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