Abstract
The questions continue to abound. There is an ongoing fascination with the history of the architecture of – or of the interconnections within – the books of Moses and the immediately following narrative books, called the Primary History by some. And widely accepted models and answers continue to prove elusive. This collection of essays offers good insight into several key current discussions. Four are methodological: Konrad Schmid re-examines ‘the Noth-von Rad compromise approach to the composition of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets’. Thomas Römer invites us to think of a library of scrolls, within which different groupings or collections would suggest themselves for different purposes: summaries in Psalms 78; 80; 95; 105; 106; 136 review differing portions of the nation’s story. Erhard Blum starts from the difficulty of identifying beginnings and endings securely, and also distinguishing between inter-textual and internal/intra-textual links in these books. Can renewed attention to Samuel-Kings and Chronicles and the rewriting of shared material provide empirically-based control – so David Carr? Or may we look to our increased awareness of ancient book/scroll production? And seven case studies echo these themes: Suzanne Boorer argues against ascribing to the original Priestly Writer any portions of Joshua or the end of Numbers: the promise of the land was only partially glimpsed but not fulfilled. Christoph Levin agrees with Schmid ‘that the division of Genesis to 2 Kings into books must be earlier than the conclusion of the productive shaping of the text’. Cynthia Edenburg doubts whether Gen. 2-4 and 2 Kgs 24-25, though related, are book-ends of an Enneateuch. Michael Konkel studies links between (the late) Exod. 32-34 and portions in the narrative books: these establish not an Enneateuch that embraces them all, but a Pentateuch in which the period of Moses is marked off from what follows. Thomas Dozeman notes how relatively small differences between the Hebrew and Greek texts of Joshua at beginning and end result in different readerly expectations of the connections of this book. For Christoph Berner, the theme of forced labour is secondary in both Exod. 1-15 and 1 Kgs 1-12, with the influence moving from Exodus to Kings. Felipe Blanco Wissmann finds Deuteronomy and Kings too different to be beginning and end of a Deuteronomistic History as conceived by Martin Noth. Many of these essays usefully remind us how a work can be re-‘authored’ very economically to produce a new ‘edition’ with significant fresh perspectives.