Whence the Priestly Narratives?
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?
On December 13th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
The arguments for H as P narrative have been kicked around for a while. Knoll has talked about it (literally, I don’t know if he’s written on it yet), as well as Bill Arnold. An acquaintance of mine is working on this topic as her dissertation as well, so I’ve been hearing it from many places.
As for Schmid and van Seters, I don’t find their arguments convincing. I’ve worked through legal material in CC, D, P, and H. In every case that a genetic relationship can be posited, CC always winds up being the earliest version. (However, sometimes D knows P and sometimes P knows D, but that’s another issue entirely.) Jeff Stackert, Bernie Levinson and David Wright have all worked on these issues and taken van Seters to task.
On December 13th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I can’t top Jim Getz on this subject.
I find Milgrom helpful on these issues, though I don’t remember him addressing the possibility that so-called P narrative might in fact be H narrative.
On December 14th, 2007 at 12:42 am
[…] Getz and John Hobbins both replied to my previous post on whether the narratives in Genesis are from P or H (or better, PT or HS). I wanted to respond to […]