Konrad Schmid, «Genesis and Exodus as Two Formerly Independent Traditions of Origins for Ancient Israel», Vol. 93 (2012) 187-208
This paper is a response to Joel Baden’s article, which claims that the material in Genesis and Exodus was already literarily connected within the independent J and E documents. I suggest an alternative approach that has gained increased acceptance, especially in European scholarship. The ancestral stories of Genesis on the one hand and the Moses story in Exodus and the following books on the other hand were originally autonomous literary units, and it was only through P that they were connected conceptually and literarily.
Genesis and Exodus as Two Formerly Independent Traditions
of Origins for Ancient Israel
It comes as a very welcome opportunity to be able to respond to
some of the points raised by Joel Baden in his paper regarding the
question of a continuous non-priestly narrative from Genesis to Exo-
dus (see the preceding article in this fascicle). Before beginning my ar-
gument, I want to stress the fact that I come from a different academic
culture than Joel Baden, and it is my conviction that the plausibility
of individual exegetical theories not only depends on the strength of
textual observations and their evaluations, but also on the respective
intellectual framework of a specific scholar’s situation. Of course,
these frameworks are (or at least should be) always fluid and are in-
fluenced by the evidence and theories of a discipline. Nevertheless, as
Schleiermacher noted, they also have an impact on the perception of
the evidence and conclusions, and it is a difficult and nuanced process
of adaptation between them that characterizes the task of biblical ex-
egesis. I understand this dialogue with Baden as a contribution to this
adaptation, and it is my hope that it helps to enhance the dialogue be-
tween our different academic cultures 1 and, above all, to illuminate the
historical genesis of the Pentateuch.
I. Continuity in the non-priestly text from Genesis
and Exodus as a default assumption?
Baden begins with the argument that the assumed gap between
Genesis and Exodus “emerges from the development of tradition
criticism from Noth to the present. On the textual level, however, in
the canonical Pentateuch, there is no such division†(163) 2. What is
the weight of this argument? First of all, it is quite apparent that the de-
nial of any division between Genesis and Exodus is an overstatement
See on this T.B. DOZEMAN et al. (eds.), The Pentateuch. International
1
Perspectives on Current Research (FAT 78; Tübingen 2011).
Page numbers between parentheses without further specification refer to
2
J. Baden’s article in this same issue of Bib 93 (2012).
BIBLICA 93.2 (2012) 187-208
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