A Review of A Farewell to the Yahwist?
About 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 sections at SBL meetings over the past several years. Last month the Review of Biblical Literature published J. Harold Ellens review of the same book.
Ellen’s review provides a good summary of the main question that is being addressed in the book. The six main essays deal with many of the problems raised by Rendtorff, especially the question of whether the main Pentateuchal traditions (ancestors, exodus, Sinai, wilderness, and conquest) were joined together prior to the work of P. If the answer is no, we can discard the theology of a Yahwist (hence the title of the book).
I encourage those interested in source criticism to check out the review, but more importantly to check out the book itself. If you haven’t kept up with recent scholarship concerning the Pentateuch, you may be surprised to learn how much you learned about source criticism in college or seminary is obsolete.