The Pentateuch. An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible

283 Pages·1992·4.872 MB·English

by  Joseph Blenkinsopp

THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY is designed to be a third major
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THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY
THE
PENTATEUCH
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST FIVE
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE
JOSEPH BLENKJ[NSOPP
Y A L E
~
THE ANCHOR YALE BIBLE
Yale University Press
,\lew Haven & London
THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY,
DouBLEDAY, and the portrayal of an anchor
with the letters ABRL are trademarks of Doubleday,
a division of Random House, Inc.
Book design by Patrice Fodero
The Pentateuch was originally published
as an Anchor Bible Reference Library hardcover
by Doubleday in 1992.
Book design by Patrice Fodero
The Library of Congress has cataloged the 1992
Anchor Bible Reference Library hardcover edition as follows:
Blenldnsopp, Joseph
The Pentateuch : an introduction to the first five books of the
Bible I by Joseph Blenkinsopp.
p. em. - (The Anchor Bible reference library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Bible. O.T. Pentateuch-Introductions. I. Title.
II. Series.
BS1225.2.B544 1992
222'.1 061-dc20 91-22988
CIP
ISBN 978-0-300-14021-7
Copyright © 1992 by Joseph Blenkinsopp
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Chapter 1. Two Centunes of Pentateuchal Scholarship 1
Chapter 2. The Basic Features of the Pentateuch:
Structure and Chronology 31
Chapter 3. Human Origins (Gen 1:1-11:26) 54
Chapter 4. The Story of the Ancestors (Gen 11:27-50:26) 98
Chapter 5. From Egypt to Canaan 134
Chapter 6. Sinai, Covenant and Law 183
Chapter 7. Concluding Reflections 229
Abbreviations 244
Bibliography 247
Subject Index 265
Author Index 268
FOREWORD
The final decade of the century would seem to be a good time to assess
what has been achieved in the study of the Pentateuch and to speculate on
the direction research is likely to take in the future. For whatever reasons,
perhaps only illusory ones, the final years of a century seem to mark the
end of one phase and the beginning of something new. With respect to our
topic, for example, the first critical introduction to the Old Testament, that
of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, appeared in 1783, and was followed shortly
afterward by the epoch-making work of de Wette. Exactly a century later,
in 1883, Wellhausen published his Prolegomena, which expounded the
documentary hypothesis in its classical form, thus laying the foundations
for another century of critical inquiry. Now, in the final decade of the
twentieth century, the question facing us is whether that hypothesis can
survive and, if so, in what form. While there is no dominating presence in
the field of Hebrew Bible studies comparable to Wellhausen, the com
bined efforts of scholars in the seventies and eighties, especially in the
German and English language areas, has given fresh impetus to the study
of the Pentateuch which promises to set it on a new course. It is this
uncertain, but in several respects promising, situation which I attempt to
document in the following chapters.
We need to recall at the outset that the critical study of the Bible is one
vii
viii
FOREWORD
aspect of the intellectual history of the modern world since the Enlighten
ment, and is therefore affected, as are other aspects, by currents of
thought, intellectual fashions, and assumptions, sometimes tacit, that make
up the contemporary Zeitgeist. With benefit of hindsight, we can now mea
sure the extent to which eighteenth-century rationalism, nineteenth-cen
tury Romanticism, the Hegelian philosophy of history, and other major
trends predisposed our predecessors in the field to reach certain conclu
sions about the religious history of Israel and early Judaism and even
influenced the exegesis of specific texts. The cultural and intellectual
forces bearing on the work of our contemporaries are rather less apparent,
but certainly no less real. What we do notice, however, is that a strong
reaction has set in against certain assumptions shared by almost all schol
ars who have worked on these texts previously, down to the last significant
phase in the middle decades of the century associated with the German
scholars Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth. We are speaking of the ten
dency to accord a privileged status to origins and the earliest stages of
development, to concentrate exclusively on diachronic analysis and the
development of ideas, and therefore to put a premium on the identifica
tion and chronological ordering of sources. Many of our colleagues today
have become disillusioned with all of this, and are advocating alternative
approaches. In addition, and with specific reference to the Pentateuch, the
documentary construct itself has begun to show enough cracks and strains
to place its survival in doubt. We cannot yet speak of a paradigm shift,
since no convincing and comprehensive alternative is in sight, but at a
century's distance from Wellhausen we are clearly at an important turning
point in the study of the Pentateuch.
A major challenge, not just to the documentary hypothesis but to the
historical-critical method which generated it, derives from those biblical
scholars who have been influenced by new (or in some cases not so new)
theories of literary criticism. In literary theory the turning away from the
historical-critical approach dates back to the early decades of this century
with the emergence of what came to be known as the New Criticism.
Concentration on the text itself, without reference to the circumstances of
its production, its authorial intention, assuming this could be known, or
the information which might be extracted from it, also characterized the
formalist, structuralist, and deconstructionist schools of literary theory,
and their influence on the interpretation of both Old and New Testament
has been increasingly in evidence over the last several years. While results
to date have been rather less than overwhelming, we have had some inter
esting new readings of individual texts and have come to appreciate more
the purely literary and aesthetic qualities of the Hebrew Bible, and espe
cially its narrative component.
We would have to add, however, that the new literary approach to
FOREWORD IX
biblical texts has some built-in limitations which make it impossible for us
to speak of the emergence of a new paradigm. At the most obvious level,
the fact that these are ancient texts from a very different time and culture,
written according to quite different literary conventions, in a different
language, and often heavily edited, cannot simply be set aside. The inter
preter should not have to pretend that the text is a literary unity when
there are fairly obvious indications to the contrary. Then again, there is
much in the Hebrew Bible that resists this kind of synchronic, nonreferen
tial reading; suffice it to think of the laws which are of such central and
irreducible importance in the Pentateuch. A more general problem, how
ever, is the following. While there will always be a sense in which biblical
texts, like all texts, are "infinitely interpretable"-a phrase of Martin
Buber's-emphasis on plurality of meanings can also mean that the essen
tial point of reference is no longer in the text but in the individual inter
preter-that, in other words, the text is subordinated to the self-under
standing of the reader and the hermeneutical distance between text and
reader has been abolished. The consequent privatization of meaning ts
particularly unfortunate when we are dealing with canonical texts which
have come to play a sustaining role in communities of memory and faith.
For reasons both practical and theoretical, therefore, I assume in the
present study that the diachronic and synchronic readings of biblical texts
are both legitimate and both necessary. I have therefore paid attention to
the formation of the Pentateuch, following the tradition of historical-criti
cal inquiry since the late eighteenth century, while trying to emphasize its
structure and internal organization and those of its major components and
individual texts. The present study is not in any sense a commentary on
the Pentateuch. Issues are raised and, where possible, solutions are pre
sented with respect to some of the more important texts, but for further
elucidation the reader is referred to the commentaries and other works
listed in the notes and bibliography.
To avoid any possible misunderstanding at the outset, I should add that
this is in no sense a theology of the Pentateuch, always assuming that the
Pentateuch is an entity capable of generating a theology. It is unfortunate
that during the heyday of historical-critical study, throughout the nine
teenth and the early twentieth centuries, theological interpretation lagged
behind the critical analysis of texts, and the gap appears to have widened
with the collapse of the Biblical Theology Movement following World
War II and the rise to greater prominence of conservative theological
opinion hostile to the historical-critical reading of biblical texts. I can only
state my conviction that historical-critical and literary study is not only
consistent with theological meanings but a necessary preliminary for elab
orating a truly contemporary theology, Christian or Jewish, which accords
to these texts a privileged status of some kind. The present volume limits
X FOREWORD
itself to this preliminary stage and is therefore intended for both Christian
and Jewish readers who find in the Pentateuch, in their own very different
ways, clues to their own identity.
Unless otherwise indicated, biblical translations are my own. Hebrew
words are given in transliteration and with the English equivalent, and I
have reduced the footnotes to a minimum, indicating in parentheses refer
ences to authors listed in the bibliography, which is therefore functional
and, needless to say, far from exhaustive. It is a pleasure to thank David
Noel Freedman for asking me to contribute this volume to the Anchor
Bible Reference Library. His fame as an editor needs no advertisement,
and his quite remarkable attention to detail has saved me from many
errors. Any that remain are, of course, my own.
Joseph Blenkinsopp