The Naked Bible

Posted By MSH on March 8, 2012

I don’t often post about my employer, Logos Bible Software, but this one deserves mention: “Logos in Hall of Fame: Makes 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list fifth time.” I post it since I know how much work has gone into the growth (and is still going into it). We are blessed with very competent executive leadership and talented people at all levels. The company has literally tripled in size since my first day back in 2004 (from 85 to now over 250 employees). And Logos is still looking for people.

Category: Announcement | 3 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By MSH on March 6, 2012

In my previous post on JEDP I said this post would be my last on that topic. In the intervening days I told someone in the comments page that I would add a post to the topic – the best example I can think of for changes made in OT law between Exodus and Deuteronomy. This post covers that example, and so the next post will be my last.

The commenter was curious about evidence for Deuteronomy re-purposing and adapting existing Torah laws for a later context. There are a number of examples of this, but in many cases someone could argue that Deuteronomy merely envisions being in the land and so the content of Deuteronomy at that point doesn’t actually reflect a later period, but looks forward to the conditions of a later period. I like the example that follows because there is no way to coherently make that explanation in this instance. The only way to explain the difference between the law of Exodus and that of Deuteronomy is that the latter law changed the former in response to later historical circumstances – circumstances that post-dated the Mosaic period.

In the left column we find the law concerning what needs to be done when a slave desires to stay in his master’s household. It is a famous passage. Part of the procedure is that the master would impale the slave’s ear with an awl (Hebrew: martsea’) to the doorpost of his house, signifying his permanent membership. This Hebrew term is used only one other place in the OT, Deut 15:12-18, so there is no confusion that these two passages are certainly speaking of the same situation and law. There are some minor differences between the two passages, but one major one. In the Exodus passage, this symbolic act is to be done “before ha-elohim.” The translation below translates ha-elohim as “God.” As part of the rather poor argumentation against a divine council of divine elohim in Psa 82:1b, some apologists who want to argue that the elohim of Psa 82:1b are humans go to this Exodus passage. They argue that ha-elohim refers to Israelite judges or elders. This would mean that the master of the house pierces the slave’s ear “before the human elders” (i.e., local authorities in Israel). So who is right?  Is ha-elohim plural or singular, and does it refer to God or “gods” that are actually people?

Determining who is correct takes us into the parallel passage and its key change:  there is no ha-elohim in the Deut 15 passage! It has been deleted. Why that change was made is directly tied to which view of ha-elohim is correct. Let’s unpack things (what follows is taken from my ETS 2010 paper on Psalm 82, with minor editorial changes to make it readable).

First, ha-elohim could be semantically singular, referring to the God of Israel. The promise about the status of the slave is being made in truth before God.  This is the simplest reading. However, there is evidence that the redactor-scribes responsible for the final form of the text did not interpret ha-elohim here as singular but plural—but ALSO did NOT interpret a plurality as referring to human beings! The key is the parallel passage in Deuteronomy 15. Later redactors apparently saw ha-elohim as semantically plural since the parallel to it found in Deut 15:17 removes the word ha-elohim from the instruction. This omission is inexplicable if the term was taken as singular, referring to YHWH for a simple reason: Why would the God of Israel need to be removed from this text? Moreover, if ha-elohim had been construed as plural humans, Israel’s judges, the deletion is just as puzzling. What harm would there be if the point of the passage was that Israel’s judges needed to approve the status of the slave?

The deletion on the part of the writer of Deuteronomy is quite understandable, though, if ha-elohim was intended as a semantically plural word that referred to gods, not people. Seventy years ago Cyrus Gordon pointed out that the omission in Deuteronomy appears to have been theologically motivated.¹ Gordon argued that ha-elohim in Exod 21:6 referred to “household gods” like the teraphim of other passages, which represented one’s deceased ancestors. Bringing a slave into one’s home in patriarchal culture required the consent and approval of one’s ancestors—departed human dead who were elohim (cp. 1 Sam 28:13, where the deceased Samuel is called elohim).  Under a later redaction after the time of Moses this phrase was omitted from the Exodus law. The context would logically have been the time of some reformer like Josiah or Hezekiah, who did much to eliminate idolatry in the wake of Israel’s struggle with idolatry during the Divided Monarchy under wicked kings. The fear prompting the editorial deletion was apparently that any reference to household elohim (teraphim figurines – sort of like our pictures of departed loved ones) might lead to a new spasm of idolatry.² Only a plural referring to multiple divine beings can coherently explain the deletion. As a result, this passage is also no support for the plural human elohim view with respect to the argument over Psalm 82:1b. And it also shows a clear alteration of a law in Exodus at a later period in Deuteronomy, one that Moses could not have written. But, as I have noted in several posts in this series, calling the Torah “the law of Moses” is entirely appropriate and coherent in my view since its contents are overwhelmingly associated with the life and work of Moses irrespective of how much of its contents can be traced to his own hand.

Technorati Tags: awl, Deuteronomic, Deuteronomist, editing, elohim, law, Moses, Pentateuch, slave, Torah

Category: Bibliology, Book of Exodus, Deuteronomy, divine council, Hebrew Bible, Pentateuch | 16 Comments »
Tags: awl, Deuteronomic, Deuteronomist, editing, elohim, law, Moses, Pentateuch, slave, Torah

Posted By MSH on March 3, 2012

I’m thinking this will be my next-to-last post on JEDP. The topic has not generated much discussion, so I’m going to move on.  Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m not all that interested in composition of the Pentateuch myself. Toward the end I’ll sketch what I think. In this post I want to just give you a taste of what Friedman *doesn’t* tell readers in his book: that several scholars in recent years (not Christian apologetics types) have expressed sincere doubt about JEDP, and have proposed other models.  But all that would be the subject of a doctoral seminar, not a blog. So just a glimpse here.

In the last post, I noted that, while the idea that the Pentateuch has been edited and was not entirely composed by Moses is a coherent (and biblically driven) notion, the standard JEDP theory is dissatisfying. Here are the problems I’ve drawn attention to so far, with standard JEDP responses.

1. Nearly 100 instances where two Hebrew source texts disagree as to the name for God (Yahweh or Elohim). JEDP response: sloppy translator; the problem can’t be the divine name criterion.

2. P vocabulary and concepts showing up in J’s version of the flood story. JEDP: that’s the editorial hand; he made it messy; the problem can’t be the vocabulary criterion.

3. A criterion for P (no anthropomorphisms) not being valid. JEDP response: I haven’t seen any specifically, though I’m betting it would be something like, “well, J and E do *more* anthropomorphizing, so they must be different authors with different religious views.” (A “counting noses” answer; the problem can’t be the “view of God” criterion — of course this also ignores later anthropomorphosms outside the Pentateuch, and anthropomorphic portrayals in Jewish literature after the biblical period — never mind that stuff).

Beside these specific items, I have alluded to the propensity of JEDP to defend itself by assuming what it seeks to prove, and then offering said assumptions as proof of an argument. In this post I want to illustrate this again from Friedman’s second chapter.

Toward the end of Chapter 2, Friedman writes: “J and E were written by two persons . . . the author of J came from Judah and the author of E came from Israel.” Friedman believes this difference in location explains differences in the sources, such as the divergence in names for God. Friedman then goes on for a few pages telling readers how items in the text “belong” to a Judah writer and an Israel writer.  But stop and think about this: Is he “seeing” these things *because* he already has J and E as sources in his head, or would you just read the Torah through and those things be self evident?  I think the former is at play in many respects, and that amounts to assuming what one seeks to prove. Any clever interpreter can come up with some reason why someone living in X location probably wrote this.” But is there any compelling reason why someone NOT living in X location could not also have written this? Friedman never considers such things (and, to be fair, he is trying to explain a theory).

At any rate, a number of scholars don’t buy the neat picture Friedman creates for the lay reader. For example, there is Rolf Rendtorff, a respected German scholar who says, “The positing of ‘sources’ in the sense of the documentary hypothesis can no longer make any contribution to understanding the development of the Pentateuch.”¹ And consider this quotation from The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2007; p. 6).

These are just sample, of course.

My take is that we don’t have four sources writers with competing agendas. Rather, there was a Mosaic core, patriarchal traditions that began as oral history, a national history, rules for priests and Levites, and a primeval history section. This sounds a bit like sources, but it’s not quite the same.  By way of a simplistic summary (this is just a loose description; I haven’t systematized this, since I find so many other things more interesting):

1. Israelites before Moses preserve the patriarchal traditions via oral history.

2. The above traditions pre-date arrival in the land, but got written down after Israel arrived at the land (at some point). That is, I don’t think Moses was writing them down during the trip, as most conservatives think. He had better, more pressing things to do. I don’t think this patriarchal document was written by two writers with competing agendas. I think the patriarchal oral history had “El language” for God since that was the name of God prior to the exodus event. The name of God associated with the exodus (Yahweh) was introduced by God as a way of commemorating the re-creation of the nation (this reflects my agreement with F.M. Cross at Harvard who saw “Yahweh” as meaning “he who causes to be”). Someone who took the Mosaic core (#3 below) and married it to the patriarchal material combined the names in various ways to ensure (and telegraph) theological unity.

3. Moses or someone soon after Moses’ death recorded events in Moses’ life and leadership period, from the exodus, to Sinai, and through the wilderness. I think the law and Sinai episodes were recorded, along with narration of events as the Israelites traveled. Who knows how much?

4. Parts of the above were included and re-purposed in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is therefore a hybrid: parts Mosaic; parts much later adapting Mosaic material and composing new material reflecting occupancy of the land, thereby necessitating adaptations in laws, for example. Same thing for Numbers and Leviticus; the material encompasses times, needs, and customs from the Mosaic period well into the monarchy. Moses, the law, the deliverance from Egypt, and the events at Sinai are constant touchpoints. And so the collective whole is, appropriately, the “law of Moses.” I don’t care what the percentages are of each hand. And I consider many hands played a role, not just four “source hands.”

5. Genesis 1-11 was written during the exile, as it has a Babylonian flavoring in terms of what it seeks to accomplish and respond to theologically (creation epics, flood recounting, Sumerian king list [antediluvian history], Babel. This section gives Israel’s rival understanding of the hand of Yahweh in pre-patriarchal history with specific counter-points to Babylon’s claims and the claims of other ANE religions (that is, in the process of composing Gen 1-11, the opportunity was taken to take aim at other belief systems / theologies besides that of Babylon).

All the above operated under the hand of Providence, regardless of how many hands and what order things were written. As many of you know, I view inspiration as a providential process, not a (small) series of paranormal events.

In my next and last post, I want to apply the above a bit to statements about the law of Moses in the NT.

Technorati Tags: authorship, Documentary Hypothesis, JEDP, Mosaic, Mosaic law

Category: Bibliology, Deuteronomy, Genesis, Hebrew Bible, Numbers, Pentateuch | 54 Comments »
Tags: authorship, Documentary Hypothesis, JEDP, Mosaic, Mosaic law

Posted By MSH on February 24, 2012

I am presuming that most of you have given Friedman’s Chapter 2 (from Who Wrote the Bible?)  a read-through by now. I wanted to post a couple quick thoughts on why his description, though accurately describing the theory, actually makes me suspicious of the approach. For our purposes here, I’m not going to get into technical rough-and-tumble. Just simple items that, for me, raise red flags as to the coherence of JEDP.

Friedman’s Overview

First, Friedman notes that Genesis creation accounts in Gen 1-2 are actually two creation accounts. The bases for this conclusion are:

• A different order for creation elements.
• Different vocabulary for God (Elohim vs. Yahweh)

He then notes that the same distinction between the names for God is seen in the flood story, and so that story must be two separate stories as well, woven together by someone.

Second, E turns out to be two sources itself as well (E and P). While P also uses “elohim” for the name of God, P has several distinctive markers, namely unique vocabulary that reflects priestly concerns (sacrifice, incense, purity) and shows an interest in dates, numbers, and measurements.

To illustrate how the separate source hypothesis is valid, Friedman proceeds to illustrate J and P comprise the flood story. They can be read separately as coherent stories.  The J flood story of course uses Yahweh for the name of God, while P uses Elohim.

Some Inconsistencies

Even at this stage of exposure to the theory a careful reader should notice some inconsistencies. Notice how P features oddly show up in J:

• numbers and date calculation (Gen 7:3-4, 10, 12, 17; 8:6, 12) — it’s unclear how J has “no concern for dates and numbers” when these verses are assigned to J.
• clean and unclean animals (i.e., purity concerns; Gen 7:2; 8:20) — “clean” is an important distinction for sacrifice, which J is not supposed to care about.

Of course, the response to these sorts of outliers is “Well, those inconsistencies are present because they are the work of the redactor (editor) who put the sources together.” And so we have it. Actually, that response is a classic instance of assuming what one needs to prove. And that sort of logic is found throughout the JEDP discussion. It’s coherent and neat except where it isn’t, and when it isn’t, we defer to (or blame — see below) the redactor.

My personal favorite among the inconsistencies is harder to detect, since Friedman gives such a small sampling. He insists that J uses anthropomorphic language for God but in P this quality is “virtually entirely lacking” (p. 60). Friedman is actually stronger on this denial of anthropomorphic language in P in his more academic treatment of JEDP in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. In his article on the Torah you’ll read this assertion:

“Blatant anthropomorphisms such as God’s walking in the garden of Eden (J), making Adam’s and Eve’s clothes (J), closing Noah’s ark (J), smelling Noah’s sacrifice (J), wrestling with Jacob (E), standing on the rock at Meribah (E), and being seen by Moses at Sinai/Horeb (J and E) are absent in P.” (ABD VI:611, R.E. Friedman; my emphasis).

The problem is, Friedman is simply wrong here. It took me about five minutes to come up with the query in the Andersen-Forbes syntax database of the Hebrew Bible to test his assertion (I wrote a paper on this topic a couple years ago for a regional academic meeting). For those who know some Hebrew, I should explain how my query was formed. The part of his quotation that struck me as suspicious was his notion that in P the anthropomorphism of being seen (Friedman uses the example of Moses at Sinai, J and E) are absent in P.  In the query I asked for all the places in P where a deity is the subject of Hebrew galah and ra’ah in the niphal (both mean “to appear” or “be seen/revealed”). Here’s what the search looks like in Logos 4 (note how the Andersen-Forbes syntax database contains searchable source-critical tags (J,E,D,P and others) and searchable tags for noun semantics (Subject: “deity”).

The results of the search uncovered clear instances in P of exactly what Friedman says isn’t in P. Here is the paper I read at that conference in case readers are interested.

The Point

What we have at this juncture (two posts on JEDP) are some issues that I think significant with respect to the some of the basic ideas that led to the source-critical view of the Pentateuch centuries ago:

1. (First post): Nearly 100 instances where two Hebrew source texts disagree as to the name for God (Yahweh or Elohim). If these textual variations were swapped in and out, there is no doubt the neatness of the name criterion for sources would be marred.

2. P verbiage and concepts showing up in J’s version of the flood story.

3. A criterion for P (no anthropomorphisms) not being valid.

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I am not claiming that the above destroys JEDP. That would be greatly overstated. Just because these criteria either fail or are not as neat / coherent as one presumes when reading about the theory doesn’t mean the theory is junk. It has other elements. (And we will look at those). What I’m saying is, here are some reasons I don’t trust the theory and wonder if there isn’t a better way to think about the authorship of the Pentateuch — one that doesn’t default to “Moses wrote every word” (something readers know I don’t believe either¹). Maybe Gen 1-2 are the way they are for some other reason — literary, perhaps. Maybe one of the creation accounts is from a different author — but is that justification for seeing it as part of a very large source that runs throughout the Torah? As we’ll see, there is a good bit of circular reasoning and extrapolation within the JEDP theory. More reasons to distrust it.  I just don’t like theories that over-promise and under-deliver.

And in case someone is wondering I did actually bring up some of this stuff in a course while in grad school. Specifically, I asked about the textual differences between MT and LXX with the divine names, and how that might undermine *that* single element of the theory. Believe it or not, the answer I got was “the editor was just sloppy.” Seriously? So, we’re supposed to breathlessly marvel at the skill of the editor (remember, he was so good it took painstaking work during the 18th and 19th centuries to tease out the sources), but then when there is a problem for justifying the source division we call the same guy a bungling doofus. That’s just self-serving illogic, not an answer to the question.

It just doesn’t build confidence in the approach. And there’s more.

Technorati Tags: anthropomorphism, documentary, E source, elohim, hypothesis, J source, JEDP, Mosaic authorship, P source, Pentateuch, Torah, Yahweh

Category: Bibliology, Book of Exodus, Genesis, Hebrew Bible, Pentateuch | 2 Comments »
Tags: anthropomorphism, documentary, E source, elohim, hypothesis, J source, JEDP, Mosaic authorship, P source, Pentateuch, Torah, Yahweh

Posted By MSH on February 22, 2012

Just a heads up.

Logos has organized a conference for June 5-6, 2012 at Park Community Church in Chicago, IL. The event is known as PASTORUM. The conference focus is encouraging pastors and other serious Bible students to engage the text in its original languages and context. There are over twenty well-known scholars speaking, among them: John Walton, Peter Enns, Dan Block, Scot McKnight, Craig Evans, Mark Futato, and Roy Ciampa.  I’m also a speaker.  You can get $50 off registration if you register before March 10.

Hope you can come!

Category: Announcement | No Comments »
Tags: