Glynn on Hauser on Source Criticism
Fred Glynn has written a letter responding to Hauser’s article entitled “Sources of the Pentateuch” in the SBL Forum. Glynn is listed on the SBL Forum only as living in San Francisco. A search of the web reveals that he is the author of Authors of the Bible: Who, When, Where, What, and Why. The author’s page on the book’s site describes Glynn as a “historical researcher and journalist.” Five years ago, he began to explore the question of who wrote the Bible.
Hauser’s article is a good one, and it certainly deserves engagement. I posted my own critique of Hauser’s essay last week. Unfortunately, Glynn’s response to the article can serve only as an example of how not to do source criticism.
Hauser begins by offering the following rhetorical questions:
Isn’t it reasonable to suspect that before a single line of Genesis was written, someone — possibly a court historian hired by Solomon (as the late Stefan Heym has so engagingly proposed in his novel, The King David Report) to legitimize his ascension to David’s throne — had written the original version of the book of Samuel?
And, isn’t it reasonable to suspect that before a single line of Samuel was written, someone — possibly David with Abiathar acting as scribe — had written the now long-lost Book of Jashar?
And, isn’t it reasonable to suspect that before a single line of the Book of Jashar had been written, someone — possibly Israel’s first king, Saul — had dictated the Decalogue to a scribe of his own?
The problem with these questions is that they make a whole host of assumptions based on what he sees as being “reasonable to suspect.” Among these:
- He assumes Solomon had a court historian. This begs a number of questions regarding the nature of scribal activity in the 10th century BCE. Did scribes produce large works like this or were their activities limited to recording daily court activities? Our knowledge of scribal activity in this period is very limited, so it would be a mistake to base source critical theories on ideas about what scribes might have done.
- He assumes the Throne Succession Narrative (which is what I assume he means by “the original version of the book of Samuel”) dates from the time of Solomon. This is certainly a possibility, but is by no means universally accepted.
- He assumes Abiathar was a scribe. Why he chooses Abiathar is unclear, since 2 Samuel 8:17 lists Abiathar as a priest and Seraiah as the scribe.
- He assumes the Book of Jashar was written in the time of David. We have no evidence for this.
- He assumes that the Decalogue predates the Book of Jashar.
Each of these assumptions may be correct. But we do not determine whether they are correct based on what seems “reasonable to suspect.” It may be reasonable to suspect that David and Solomon had scribes in their employment who could produce large literary works. But we cannot decide that a priori. We must find if there is actual evidence for such scribal activity and good reason to think that the books in question date from this period. As I wrote a year ago in my post “Dating of Pentateuchal Sources”, just because a document seems to fit in a period does not mean it was written then.
What is amazing in Glynn’s article is the number of conditional and subjunctive phrases he uses. These include:
- “isn’t it possible . . .”
- “isn’t it reasonable . . .”
- “mightn’t X be the case”
- “isn’t it likely that . . .”
- “X may have been the case . . .”
There is a great deal of difference between what is possible and what is probable. Proving that something was possible does not mean that it actually happened. As biblical scholars, our reasons for dating a particular source to a particular period must be much more closely argued than that. Linguistic characteristics and external references within the text are grounds for dating a text. Musing about what might have been possible is not.The one positive thing about Glynn’s letter is that he says that source critical questions about the Pentateuch should be addressed in the content of source critical questions about the Hebrew Bible as a whole. Books such as Reinhard Kratz’s The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament are moving in that direction. But although Glynn’s suggestion of this goal is a good one, the steps he proposes for achieving that goal are severely lacking.
On February 27th, 2008 at 1:36 am
Dear Mr. Wilson,
Since I am not a subscriber to Blue Cord, I am only now discovering your response to my response to Hauser’s article.
If you had contacted me prior to your writing your comments, or if you had, as a matter of simple courtesy, sent me a copy after you had written them, I would have been happy to explain how I had come to hold each of the opinions that I expressed.
I think that if you were to read S. David Sperling’s “The Original Torah, The Political Intent of the Bible’s Writers,” you would understand why I suspect (and suspect is about all any of can do about almost anything that appears in either the Hebrew Bible or in the New Testament) that some form of the Decalogue dates only to the time of King Saul.
I think that if you were to consider who the most likely client would have been for writing of the Book of Jashar (considering its purpose and examining what else may have been in it by looking at Emil Kautzsch’s “An Outline of the Literature of the Old Testament”, you would might agree that it dates to the time of David. Or, might not.
If you consider Abiathar’s age at the time with which II Samuel 8:17 deals, you would see that it would have been long after David had composed his elegy. Seraiah is a contemporary of Abiathar’s son. At the time David composed his elegy, Abiathar was a young man, the only survivor of the massacre at Nob. Of the four to six hundred malcontents whom David had attracted, Abiathar would have been the most likely (as a priest) to have the ability to write. But, as always, we can only suspect. Unfortunately, nothing can be known.
In “David’s Secret Demons”, Baruch Halpern credits the late Stefan Heym for his intuition concerning the timing of the origin of the Throne Succession Narrative (aka Original Book of Samuel). It’s a question of motive. And I’d be happy to discuss it in detail.
If you know of anything that has to do with the origin of the Hebrew Bible that is, as you say, “universally accepted,” I do hope that you’ll let me know what it is.
You may be interested to know that it is not universally accepted that Genesis 1-11 was the work of two writers, P and J. Two professors from UC Berkeley, Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn, argued very persuasively in ” Before Abraham Was,” (Abingdon Press, 1985) that Genesis 1-11 was the work of a single writer . . . I think most serious scholars would find it a book well worth reading.
I notice that you’re now located in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I’d like to meet you to chat the next time I’m back in Massachusetts. I get back to the Boston area once in awhile to visit the Athenaeum since I’m one of its 1,049 Proprietors.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit San Francisco, I do hope you’ll look me up.