Blue Cord

Jim Getz and John Hobbins left comments on my prior post about parallel structures in creation stories. Both of them suggested that the priestly narrative materials in the Pentateuch are H, whereas I had assigned them P.

I would be interested in hearing their arguments for this. While I think H is the redactor of P and J (or better, P and non–P), I have not heard anyone argue that Pg comes from the same school as Leviticus 17-26.

So what do you say, guys? What is your evidence? If H is the author of the priestly narratives in the Torah, was he also the redactor? And for Jim, who sees JE as earlier than P and D, what do you do with the scholarship of H.H. Schmid, John van Seters, and others who have critiqued the arguments for the priority of J?

John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry has an excellent post on the state of biblical interpretation training in seminary. His post has elicited several responses and posts on other blogs. Links to these can be found at the bottom of his original post.

John laments the fact that most seminary graduates have such a poor grounding in the Bible. In a phrase that cuts to the heart of the problem, John states:

Overwhelmed by many other claims on time and mind, students end up with a merely cursory and superficial preparation in the literature that is supposed to be compass, mirror, and anchor of the ministry they will carry out.

I wanted to make two points about biblical studies in seminaries.

The first flows out of John’s statement about the other claims on the time and minds of seminarians. Part of the blame for this comes from the fact that mainline churches — including my own — do not place as much stress on the Bible as they once did. Many other things clamor to be the central mission of the church, including social justice and pastoral counseling. And many parish search committees look more for someone who can be an administrator than someone who can interpret a biblical text. Is it any wonder, then, that the people who go to seminary look to focus more on things other than the Bible?

This is not to say that social justice and pastoral counseling are unimportant. They are, but they are not the reason that the church exists. They flow out of our commitment to the gospel of Christ Jesus, a gospel that is best understood through the Scriptures of the church.

I would be surprised if there were any medical schools out there in which students studied administration more than they studied the human body. Or a law school in which actually reading the law was required in only a quarter of the classes. But that is exactly what we are doing in a number of seminaries.

Sad to say, I knew more than one person in my seminary who could quote from memory more lines of T.S. Elliot’s poems than verses of Scripture.¹

My second point is that I am not sure requiring Hebrew and Greek of seminarians would improve this situation, especially if we mandated just the one year that some denominations require. If we are trying to create students who can responsibly use Hebrew and Greek, then no less than three years should be mandatory in each.

Obviously, few seminarians are going to go for this, and I am not convinced we should make them. Not all seminarians are cut out to be linguists (as my friend the Peripatetic Polar Bear can attest) nor should they be. But one year of language study creates a dangerous situation. We have all heard sermons where the preacher made basic mistakes in handling the original languages, and it often comes from thinking that they know enough of the language. Giving students one year of language equips them to make mistakes but does not really give them enough to understand the text better. I think Alexander Pope’s caveat needs to be recalled here:

A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

Are we really convinced that Hebrew and Greek are such simple languages that two semesters of each gives the would–be pastor the tools to delve deeper into the text? I think the student’s time would be much better spent taking additional classes on interpreting the text in English.

1. Granted, T.S. Elliot is de rigueur for us Episcopalians, but the Bible should be too. [back]

While I was continuing to work my way through From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch last night, something occurred to me.

As I pointed out in a previous post, Nihan argues that Pg ends somewhere in Leviticus (I haven’t gotten far enough in his book to know where he thinks it ends). Others argue that it ends with the instructions to build the tabernacle in Exodus 25-31 or the completion of the tabernacle in Exodus 40. All of these make sense from a narrative perspective.

But this raises a new question for my own research. I am currently working on a paper that deals with the relationship of PT, Ezekiel, and HS. I started this paper in the summer of 2006, but put it aside to work on some other projects. In short, the paper sees a PT layers in Numbers 16-18 that Ezekiel re-interprets in Ezekiel 44.  HS takes Ezekiel’s reading and edits Numbers 16-18 to bring it into line with Ezekiel.

The problem, obviously, is that if Pg ends in Exodus or Leviticus, it doesn’t continue into Numbers. The question then becomes, what was Ezekiel reading when he came across the story in Numbers 16-18? Was it a priestly document that was not a part of Pg? Given the similarity in vocabulary and terminology between Numbers 16-18 and Ezekiel 44, I find it hard to believe that it was not a written document. So what was it?

John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry points to parallel structure of Genesis 1 and Genesis 3. In both cases we have a temporal clause, a subordinate circumstantial clause, an action, and a resulting state. (See his post for more detail.) He then asks me the following question:

Hey, Kevin Wilson, online specialist in ‘P.’ What’s going on here? Is this evidence that the author of Gen 1:1-3 had Gen 2:4b-7 before him? Vice-versa? Or is it just a remarkable coincidence?

I would probably answer “none of the above.” If one is relying on the other, I would argue that J is relying on P, because I think P is earlier than J (see some of my arguments). But I don’t think we are forced to see such a relationship here. But I also don’t see the similarities as just coincidental.

It seems to me the structure can probably be explained simply as the way one starts a creation story (or perhaps any number of story types).  You state the time when the story took place, the conditions that obtained at that time, and what the protagonist did. The origin of this structure in Genesis 1 and Genesis 3 is probably more form critical than source critical.
Now, I have absolutely no parallels to back this up from other biblical stories or comparative data from Mesopotamia or Egypt.  Nor do I plan on hunting it down. This is nothing more than a hunch, but I doubt this structural parallelism is indicative of literary dependence.

I am almost finished with chapter two of From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch. In this chapter, Nihan moves from source criticism to a discussion of the structure of Leviticus. He critiques prior ideas about its outline. Among these are several theories that see Leviticus structured in a ring centering on Leviticus 16, such as that proposed by Mary Douglas in Leviticus as Literature. Personally, I have never found such ring theories to be particularly convincing for Leviticus, as I have trouble imagining the authors and redactors working this way, especially given the amount of complexity some scholars have seen in the ring structure.

Nihan does not like the ring structure either. Instead, he proposes a threefold division into chapters 1-10, 11-16, and 17-27. This is nothing particularly new. What is new, however, is his discussion of the narrative logic that lies behind this division.

Nihan points out that Exodus ends with an unresolved issue: the gap between God and the people of Israel. As Nihan puts it,

After the completion of Israel’s sanctuary . . . Moses is not allowed inside the tent specifically because the latter is filled with the divine presence . . . . In other words, although he is present among his people as promised in 25:8 and 29:45, Yahweh cannot be approached, even by Moses, and the gap between God and man remains insuperable. [emphasis original]¹

Leviticus begins with this gap in place, but God begins to speak to Moses from within the tabernacle for the first time. Leviticus 1-7 give the rules for approaching God with sacrifices, and this culminates in Moses and Aaron being admitted to the tabernacle in Leviticus 8-9.

A similar problem is raised by Leviticus 10, namely the unauthorized sacrifice of Nadab and Abihu. Their offerings pollute the tabernacle, both because they offer unholy fire and because their corpses are found within the confines of the sacred space. Leviticus 11-16 provides the solution for this. It contains laws that are intended to prevent the contamination of the tabernacle (and later the temple), and it ends with the ritual that cleanses the temple from any defilement that may occur.

Finally, Nihan points to an interesting theological move that Leviticus makes. In Exodus, God appears on Mt. Sinai at times of God’s choosing, and then only Moses may approach (at least in P). With Leviticus 16, however, this changes:

[F]inally, Aaron is permitted inside the inner–sanctum (16:13ff.), where Yahweh appears to him inside the cloud (cf.16:2b?, ?), thus recalling the previous encounter between God and Moses on the mountain in Ex 24:15-18. — except that Aaron has now replaced Moses in the role of the communities mediator, and that this encounter is no longer unique but part of a yearly ritual (cf.16:29, 34a). [emphasis original]²

This is a remarkable reading of Leviticus, and it casts a wonderful light on P’s theology concerning the role of priests within the community of Israel.

1. Nihan, Priestly Torah, 90. [back]
2. Nihan, Priestly Torah, 105. [back]