Blue Cord

The class I am teaching this semester is a one semester introduction to the Bible. I have always found it hard to teach the Bible in one year, but cramming it into one semester is just nuts. In order to get everything in, I have to teach the patriarchs in just one session. That session happened to be today. Ordinarily I would have 65 minutes per class. But today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, so all of our classes have been shortened to 50 minutes. Poor Isaac only got mentioned in one PowerPoint slide!

Just when I thought my treatment of the patriarchs couldn’t get any more compressed than it already was . . .

On the other hand, I did coin the adjective “birthrightalicious” to refer to the soup Jacob gave to Esau for his birthright, so the day is not a total loss.

By the lack of power vested in him, Chris Brady at Targuman declared January to be International Biblical Studies Writing Month. Bibliobloggers have been announcing what they will be writing about during this month–long burst of writing energy, so I thought I would do the same.

I am a contributor to the new lectionary series put out by Westminster John Knox Press entitled Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.  For those unfamiliar with this series, it provides commentary on each of the four assigned readings from the Revised Common Lectionary for every Sunday in the three year cycle. The commentary for each reading consists of an exegetical essay, a theological essay, a homiletic essay, and a pastoral essay. I have been asked to contribute the exegetical essays for three readings from Year C:

• Exodus 14:10-31, 15:20-21
• Isaiah 65:17-25
• Acts 5:27-32

Why I have been asked to write the commentary for a passage from Acts is unclear, but I will happily accept the $0.08 per word for writing it.

So, in the spirit of International Biblical Studies Writing Month, I hereby vow to have this assignment finished by the end of the month.

I was printing out my syllabi for the classes I am teaching here at Wartburg College this semester, when I noticed a sign taped to the wall above the copier. Under the heading “What Would Yahweh Do?”, it asked whether God would print single– or double–sided documents. It offered the following passage in favor of double–sided printing:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back. ¹⁶The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. (Exodus 32:15-16)

Of course, it is easy to see why God used double–sided printing. Rocks are much harder to recycle than paper.

Steve Cook and John Hobbins both replied to my post on H in Genesis. I wanted to address their comments.

Steve is right, of course, in pointing out that Knohl does not completely reject the idea of H in Genesis. In addition to p.103, n.150, which Steve notes, Knohl also says on p.60 that parts of Genesis 17 may belong to HS. This is a far cry, however, from attributing large amounts of narrative to H as John and Jim Getz have done.

John asks how I explain Ezekiel when I date H to the post–exilic period. The answer is that I see a development of tradition from PT, through Ezekiel, to HS. Ezekiel is, in effect, writing Torah, especially in Ezekiel 40-48. But according to the authors of the Pentateuch, all Torah is given at Sinai. This leads to HS taking many of the ideas of Ezekiel and writing them into the Pentateuch. For one example of this, see my post on P in the book of Numbers.

John also criticizes van Seters for seeing J as entirely post–D, but I don’t think this is an entirely accurate reading of van Seters. J the author certainly worked post–D according to van Seters, but I am sure he doesn’t deny that J drew upon older traditions (and even if van Seters denies this, I don’t). Although I am not directly familiar with Blum’s work on the Jacob stories, I would have no problem seeing a pre–exilic version of this story. It probably had several versions, some that are oral and some that are written. This does not change the fact that J as an author is post–D.

Finally, John thanked me for keeping this topic going, but I wanted to thank those who have responded (and hopefully will continue to respond) to this thread. As you know, I am currently not working in academics, so my only colleagues are those in the biblioblogosphere. Thanks to all of you for providing the intellectual stimuli I need to challenge my thinking on this topic.

For those who read this blog but are not biblical scholars, I am sure all of the different signs used to designate different layers in the Pentateuch can be a bit confusing. So, I thought I would present this handy guide.

• P – the entirety of the Priestly Source; as classically formulated, P was an independent document from the post–exilic period that was later edited together with J, E, and D; P spans Genesis–Numbers, although some scholars see P continuing into Joshua and sometimes even further.
• Pg – the narrative sections of P, sometimes seen as the earliest version of the Priestly Document.
• Ps – later supplements to Pg, usually legal sections; Pg + Ps = P; Martin Noth in particular did a lot of work with Pg and Ps; the g and s are sometimes written in superscript.
• PT – the Priestly Torah; this siglum was devised by Israel Knohl to indicate an early layer in P; although much of Pg is seen as belonging to PT, the two are by no means coterminous.
• HS – the Holiness School, Knohl’s designation for the later layer in P; it contains much of what was classically designated by Ps plus some of Pg.
• H or HC – the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26); classically seen as being an independent document that was incorporated into the Pentateuch by P; contemporary scholarship now views H as being the last layer of P; Knohl developed his idea of HS by connecting H with other layers within P.

Unfortunately, scholars do not always use these sigla in a consistent way. I am guilty of this myself. I often refer to P and H when what I mean is PT and HS. Part of the problem is that the field of source criticism is in flux. The old consensus of JEDP has broken down and a new consensus has yet to emerge. This leads not only to a lack of clarity in the use of the sigla, but also to different scholars using the same signs to designate different layers in the Pentateuch.