Source-Critical Versus Narrative Approaches to the Pentateuch

‘What does it matter who is speaking,’ someone said, ‘what does it matter who is speaking.’ Samuel Beckett.


Introduction


What does it matter whether the Pentateuch was written by a single author such as Moses, or composed from a set of sources, Yahwistic, Elohist, Deuteronomist or Priestly, abbreviated with Germanic efficiency to J, E, D and P? Does it matter whether we know anything at all of the authors? All we have is the text. What does that text tell us? Beckett’s statement-question is at the root of the difference between scholars who take a narrative approach to understanding the Pentateuch and those who take a source-critical approach.


Foucault suggests that different approaches to this question lead to different secondary questions. For those interested in authorship, relevant questions to ask are: “Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in the discourse?” On the other hand, those with an interest in the text as a text might ask: “What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? Where are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject-functions?” These are not the precise questions addressed by the different schools of study into the Pentateuch but they do resonate in terms of the kinds of issues being addressed.


The Pentateuch is a problematic text. It is full of repetition, contradiction and discontinuities. It is these features that the source-critical scholars attempt to address. However, it also contains coherence, consistency, and continuity. These are the features focused on by narrative scholars. The Pentateuch is a pre-modern text that lends itself to both post-modern and modernist approaches to engagement. This is the claim that I will be attempting to support in this piece.


Source-Criticism as a Modernist Approach to the Pentateuch


The traditional assumption in both Judaism and Christianity is that the Pentateuch was authored by Moses. There are no internal claims within the text of Moses authorship other than some of the laws and a poem. Ezra 6:18, 7:6 and Nehemiah 8:1 in the Old Testament and John 7:19 in the New Testament are sometimes cited to support this position but these are very general references to the book or law of Moses without claiming his authorship of the Pentateuch.


 One early criticism of Moses authorship is that Deuteronomy ends with an account of the death of Moses. It would indeed be strange for the author of a text to end with an account of his death. However, it would not be unknown to have a note of the author’s death appended to an autobiography. Thus, while this challenge has some strength, it is not decisive. It also assumes a very modern approach to authorship; of the author sitting down and penning his or her way through page after page of text. This is not the current, scholarly view of ancient authorship. The first narratives were not written down at all but transmitted orally, by the creator or by story-tellers. There are no examples of written Hebrew before the 11th century BCE, centuries after Moses lived.


Stronger criticisms of Moses authorship, or indeed of any single author, arise out of the structure and content of the text itself. One structural feature of the Pentateuch is repetition. For example, in Genesis, there are two accounts of the creation. Bokovoy, in his introduction to the documentary hypothesis, writes ‘In some ways these two accounts are duplicative; each tells a story concerning the creation of animals, plants, and man. On several key issues, however, they contradict each other.’ Bokovoy then points out that in Genesis 1 plants are created before animals and then man and woman are created together while in Genesis 2 man is created first, followed by plants, animals, and woman in that order.


A further feature noticed, in this case by those reading Hebrew, was the different terms used for God. Genesis 1 uses the divine name ‘Elohim’, usually translated as ‘God’ although strictly speaking it is a plural. Genesis 2 uses ‘Yahweh Elohim’, translated into English as ‘LORD God’ (capitals intentional). The significance of the different use of divine names will be discussed below when we review explanations of these differences.


The flood story contains contradictions. For, example, Genesis 7 contains discrepancies in the number of animals to be taken onto the ark. In 7:2 we read ‘Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of animals that are not clean.’ Later in 7:8-9 the text reads ‘of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female went into the ark with Noah, as God commanded Noah.’


Later in the Pentateuch, laws are set out that appear, in some cases to be direct opposites. What is forbidden in one version of the law is prescribed in another. An example of this can be found by comparing Exodus 20:24 with Deuteronomy 12:13-14. The former reads ‘You need to make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt-offerings and your offerings of well-being, you sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered…’ In the latter, we read, ‘Take care that you do not offer your burnt-offerings in any place you happen to see. But only at the place that the LORD will choose in one of your tribes…’ (in both cases emphasis added by me). In the Exodus verses the people are commanded to offer sacrifice everywhere yet in the Deuteronomy passage only in one place. There are many other examples of repetitions, contradictions, and directly opposite commands.


A common approach by those who accept the Pentateuch as a divinely inspired, coherent, and consistent text, was to devise theological explanations in the attempt to maintain this position. One example of this is cited by Bokovoy when he reports that the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, explained away the difference in the two Genesis accounts of the creation by suggesting that one referred to a spiritual creation while the other referred to temporal creation. Others have suggested that scribal errors or superimposing particular doctrinal perspectives have led to the resulting inconsistencies.


  The most prominent set of explanations for the repetitions, inconsistencies and contradictions within the Pentateuch comes from scholars who propose that multiple sources were combined to produce it. Davies identifies four stages that led to the development of a well-developed model of how the Pentateuch is constructed the way it is.


Step 1 was an acceptance of the idea that the Pentateuch could be subjected to critical (questioning) analysis and that such analysis was not ruled out by religious tradition. Such a movement began to have some momentum in the mid-eighteenth century.


Step 2 was to analyse the text to demonstrate the nature of its lack of unity. Some of the features outlined above were identified such as multiple accounts of the same event or incident; statements or laws that are incompatible or contradictory; differences in vocabulary or style and; differing religious perspectives.


Step 3 was the development of hypotheses about the major parts of the Pentateuch and how these fitted together.


Step 4 was to arrange these constituent parts into date order.


The most developed and well-known thesis was that proposed by Wellhausen in his 1878 text Prolegomena to the History of Israel. There are several variations and developments of what is known as the documentary hypothesis but Bokovoy provides an account of the broad shape of the hypothesis. He proposes (his proposals are not original but a summary of certain strands of scholarship) that the Pentateuch commences with a priestly (P) account of the creation. The priestly source is so named because of its focus on rituals and theology connected with priestly functions. Passages identified with this source provide accounts of priestly clothing, ordinances and rituals, temple architecture and sacred objects. The consensus is that the P source originated in the 6th century BCE. The P source appears mainly in the first four books of the Pentateuch but many scholars believe (according to Bokovoy) that the final chapter of Deuteronomy was also composed by P. This leads to the view that since the Pentateuch begins and ends with priestly writing, that it was priestly authors who did the final redaction into the Pentateuch as we have it.


The Genesis account moves from the P source to the second account of the creation which uses Yahweh as the divine name. This provides this source with its designation as Yahwistic or J. Judah and his tribe feature prominently in the narrative identified with this source leading to the hypothesis that this source had its origins in the southern kingdom of Judah. This was thought by Wellhausen, to have been the earliest source but recent scholarship has suggested that parts could not have been written prior to the seventh century BCE. Yahweh is quite anthropomorphic in J for example he walks and talks with Adam and Eve before the fall.


After switching between P and J in the early chapters of Genesis, from chapter 15 a third source appears. This is designated the Elohist (E) source. It is the least easy to identify in the Pentateuch. It focuses on Israel as a people and contains some pericopae not featured elsewhere such as the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. E is identified with the Northern kingdom since it features sites in this area.


The final source is identified as the author of Deuteronomy and is designated D. it contains little narrative merely contextualising laws within the stories of the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt and the wanderings of the people in the desert.


Davies provides a statement of the current broad consensus on source-critical scholarship. The two main strands of this consensus are that ‘the first major comprehensive Pentateuchal narrative was composed either late in pre-exilic times or in the Babylonian exile (7th or 6th cent, BCE)’ and that ‘the priestly work never existed as a separate source, but involved insertion into the older narrative of specifically Priestly narratives and laws, so as to produce a work very like our present Pentateuch.’


What are the advantages and shortcomings of taking a source-critical view of the Pentateuch? The first advantage is that this approach provides a sound explanation of the repetitions, inconsistencies and contradictions apparent in the text. In terms of Foucault’s questions about authorship what can we say about “Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in the discourse?” We can possibly say more of who really did not speak since source-criticism provides a sounder hypothesis of authorship than the traditional perspective that Moses authored the Pentateuch. In terms of the positive we only have hypotheses that the Pentateuch had four(ish) sources. We also have hypotheses concerning their theology (their deepest selves?) However, if we use theology to identify the sources, as the source-critical theorists do, then we cannot identify the theology of the sources from the texts without circularity.


The strongest critique of the source-critical approach comes from those who promote a more holistic approach to the study of the Pentateuch; who suggest that a synthetic rather than an analytical approach permits a deeper understanding of the purpose of the text which at its roots is literary and theological. It is an attempt or a collections of attempts designed to explore the relationships between people and their God. It is to this approach that I now turn.


Combining the Pre- modern and Post-Modern – A Narrative Approach to the Pentateuch


Historically the Pentateuch has been read, when it has been read, as a complete text. Even when read partially, for example, through reading individual books or parts of books, the text has been read holistically. This is particularly true of narrative portions of the Pentateuch such as Genesis and the first part of Exodus. Readers have gained much from such a reading in terms of their understandings of the meanings of the text.


How can we respond to the second set of Foucault’s questions, “What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? Where are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject-functions?” Readers have some understanding of the modes of existence of the text. They understand it as a religious text originating in Judaism and accepted later in Christianity and Islam as scripture. As such they see it as different from a novel or a scientific treatise. They understand that it was originally written in Hebrew and later translated into a wide range of other languages. They also may see it as having been used in tandem with the New Testament as a tool of imperial expansion or domestic political control. Individual readers have read the account of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and asked themselves ‘would I have fled or would I have succumbed to the pleasures offered?’ They have read the harrowing account of Abraham journeying with Isaac at God’s command to sacrifice his son and questioned either their own faith commitment or God’s righteousness in imposing such a test.


There is clear space in the text for subjective insertion. Approaching the text in this way is accepting it as a whole, as a finished piece of literature designed to be accessed as a unity. This is the claim of those who promote a narrative approach to the Pentateuch. Clines criticises the documentary approach as being ‘atomistic’. He suggests that it is based on a scientific approach. One might add that it adopts a philosophical positivism. It tends towards physics rather than poetry in its search for truths. It is a classical rather than a romantic approach looking for broader structures rather than meanings for the individual. Clines rather proposes identifying the big theme or themes contained in the Pentateuch. He sees this as the core of what the original writers were attempting to communicate. His formulation of the theme of the Pentateuch is ‘the partial fulfilment…of the promise to or blessing of the patriarchs. The promise or blessing is both the divine initiative in a world where human initiatives always lead to disaster, and are an affirmation of the primal divine intentions for humanity.’ Clines represents an extremely holistic narrative approach.


 Other literary scholars have adopted a more analytical approach as an attempt to counter the claims of the documentary theorists that the Pentateuch is drawn from a number of sources. Baden illustrates how these attempts have been less than successful. Is it necessary though for narrative scholars to demolish the claims of the source-critical scholars? Are they not doing different things?


Conclusions


I would like to conclude with two metaphors. The first is a car. If one takes an analytical approach to a car one finds repetitions. The whole combustion and exhaust cycle of the international combustion engines is repetitive. One also discovers a propulsion system in contradiction to a braking system. The former is designed to make the car go and the latter to stop it. One can though, either in full knowledge or in complete ignorance of these systems effectively use a car to get from A to B.


The second metaphor involves buying a house. One can approach the purchase analytically asking questions such as ‘Is the price right? What is the manner of construction? What kind of heating system does the house have?’ One might also ask oneself ‘Does this house feel right? Can I live here?’ Most house purchasers adopt elements of both approaches.


The point of these two metaphors is to argue that both the source-critical approach and the narrative approach offer the general and the academic reader of the Pentateuch complementary ways of approaching the text. An understanding of the source-critical approach both clarifies the contradictions, repetitions and discontinuities and highlights differing theological perspectives contained in the text. Taking a narrative approach allows the readers to move beyond the particular to universal and overarching truths contained in the text be they theological or literary.


To return to Beckett and Foucault, it can very much matter who is speaking. The other questions are not the only relevant ones.