11. And Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the children of Israel from Egypt?”
12. And He said, “Because I’ll be with you. And this is the sign for you that I have sent you. When you bring out the people from Egypt you shall serve God on this mountain.”
APPENDIX B
THE STORY ACCORDING TO EACH OF THE MAIN SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH
THE STORY ACCORDING TO THE E SOURCE
1. Before the Exodus
Abraham in Gerar, says his wife Sarah is his sister: Genesis 20:1–18
Abraham’s son Isaac is born: 21:6
Abraham’s concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael are sent away: 21:8–21
Abraham makes a treaty with King Abimelek: 21:22–34
The binding of Isaac: 22:1–10, 16b–19
Abraham and Keturah have six sons, including Midian: 25:1–4
Jacob has a dream of angels and a celestial ladder at Beth-El: 28:11b–12, 17–18, 20–22
Jacob’s wives give birth to sons: 30:1b–3, 4b–24a
Jacob and Laban: 31:1–2, 4–16, 19–48, 50–54; 32:1–3
Jacob returns from Aram: 32:14b–24
Jacob struggles with God, is named Israel: 32:25–33
Jacob meets with Esau: 33:1–17
Jacob buys land at Shechem, sets up an altar to “El, God of Israel”: 33:18a, 18:c–20
Jacob returns to Beth-El: 35:1–8
Rachel dies at Bethlehem giving birth to Benjamin: 35:16b–20
Joseph and his brothers: 37:3a, 4, 12–18, 21–22, 24–25a, 28a, 29–30, 36
Joseph in Egypt: 40:1–23; 41:1–45, 47–57; 42:5, 7, 21–25, 35–37; 43:14, 23b; 45:3
Jacob comes to Egypt: 46:1–5a; 47:13–26; 48:1–2, 8–22; 50:15–21, 23–26
2. The Exodus
Egypt oppresses Israelites: Exodus 1:8–12, 15–21
Moses, in Midian, summoned by God; Yahweh reveals His name: 3:1, 4b, 6, 9–18; 4:1–18, 20b, 21a, 22–23
Aaron speaks for Moses to Israel’s elders in Egypt: 27–31
Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues: 5:3–6:1; 7:14–18, 20b, 21, 23–29; 8:3b–11a, 16–28; 9:1–7, 13–34; 10:1–19, 21–26, 28–29; 11:1–8
The exodus: 12:21–27, 29–36, 37b–39; 13:1–16
The Red Sea: 13:17–19; 14:5b, 7, 11–12, 19a, 20a, 25a
Miriam sings the (incipit of the) song of the sea: 15:20–21
3. The Journey After the Exodus
Yahweh sets laws: 15:25b–26
Water in the wilderness, Moses strikes a crag, water flows from Horeb to Meribah: 17:2–7
Attack by Amalek: 17:8–16
Jethro, priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law: 18:1–27
Mass revelation at mountain: 19:2b–9, 16b–17, 19; 20:18–26
The Covenant Code: 21:1–27; 22:1–30; 23:1–33
Vision of Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders at mountain: 24:1–15a
The golden calf: 32:1–33
Theophany to Moses: 33:1–23
Rebellion at Taberah: Numbers 11:1–3
Rebellion over food: 11:4–35
Moses’ Cushite wife: 12:1–16
Rebellion over food, Moses’ bronze snake: 21:4b–9
Moab and Balaam: 22:3–41; 23:1–30; 24:1–25
Joshua succeeds Moses: Deuteronomy 31:14–15, 23
THE STORY ACCORDING TO THE J SOURCE
1. Before the Exodus
Creation: Genesis 2:4b–25
Garden of Eden: 3:1–24
Cain and Abel: 4:1–16
Cain genealogy: 4:17–24
Sons of God and human women: 6:1–4
The flood: 6:5–8; 7:1–5, 7, 12, 16b–20, 22–23; 8:2b–3a, 6, 8–12, 13b, 20–22
Noah’s drunkenness: 9:18–27
Generations of Noah’s sons: 10:8–19, 21, 24–30
The tower of Babel: 11:1–9
Promise to Abraham: 12:1–4a
Abraham’s migration: 12:6–9
Abraham in Egypt, says his wife Sarah is his sister: 12:10–20
Abraham and Lot: 13:1–5, 7–11a, 12b–18
Abraham and Hagar give birth to Ishmael: 16:1–2, 4–14
Yahweh appears to Abraham, the three visitors: 18:1–33
Sodom and Gomorrah: 19:1–28, 30–38
Birth of Isaac: 21:1a, 2a, 7
Rebekah: 22:20–24; 24:1–67
The death of Abraham: 25:8a
Jacob and Esau: 25:11b, 21–34; 27:1–45
Isaac says his wife Rebekah is his sister: 26:1–11
Isaac and Abimelek: 26:12–33
Jacob at Beth-El: 28:10–11a, 13–16, 19
Jacob, Leah, and Rachel: 29:1–30
Jacob’s children: 29:31–35; 30:1a, 4a, 24b
Jacob and Laban: 30:25–43; 31:49
Jacob’s return: 31:3, 17; 32:4–13
Dinah and Shechem: 34:1–31
Reuben takes Jacob’s concubine: 35:21–22a
Kings and chiefs of Edom: 36:31–43
Joseph and his brothers: 37:2b, 3b, 5–11, 19–20, 23, 25b–27, 28b, 31–35
Judah and Tamar: 38:1–30
Joseph in Egypt: 39:1–23; 42:1–4, 6, 8–20, 26–34, 38; 43:1–13, 15–23a, 24–34; 44:1–34; 45:1–2, 4–28
Jacob in Egypt: 46:5b, 28–34; 47:1–4, 27a, 29–31; 50:1–11, 14, 22
2. The Exodus
Egypt oppresses Israelites: Exodus 1:6, 22
Baby Moses in the basket: 2:1–10
Moses from Egypt to Midian: 2:11–23a
Moses summoned by Yahweh at burning bush: 3:2–4a, 5, 7–8, 19–22; 4:19–20a, 24–26
Moses and Pharaoh: 5:1–2
The Red Sea: 13:21–22; 14:5a, 6a, 9a, 10b, 13–14, 19b, 20b, 21b, 24, 25b, 27b, 30–31
3. The Journey After the Exodus
Water in the wilderness: 15:22b–25
Food in the wilderness, manna: 16:4–5, 35b
Mass revelation at Mount Sinai: 19:10–16a, 18, 20–25
Theophany to Moses: 34:1a, 2–13
The Ten Commandments: 34:14–28
Departure from Mount Sinai: Numbers 10:29–36
Moses sends scouts into the land: 13:17b–24, 27–31, 33; 14:4, 11–25, 39–45
Rebellion led by Dathan and Abiram: 16:1b–2a, 12–14, 25, 27b–32a, 33–34
Edom refuses to let Israel pass through its border: 20:14–21
King of Arad attacks but is defeated by Israel: 21:1–3
Israel fights the Amorites: 21:12–35
Apostasy to Baal Peor with Moabite women: 25:1–5
Trans-Jordan tribal inheritances: 32:1, 3, 5a, 5c, 7–12, 25–27, 33–42
The death of Moses: Deuteronomy 34:5–7
THE STORY ACCORDING TO THE P SOURCE
1. Before the Exodus
Creation: Genesis 1:1–2:3
The Flood: 6:9b–22; 7:8–11, 13–16a, 21, 24; 8:1–2a, 3b–5, 7, 13a, 14–19; 9:1–17
Noah’s descendants: 10:1b–7, 20, 22–23, 31, 32
Abraham migrates to Canaan: 11:27b–31a; 12:4b–5
Abraham and his nephew Lot: 13:6, 11b–12a
Abraham and Hagar give birth to Ishmael: 16:3, 15–16
Covenant with Abraham: 17:1–27
Destruction of cities of the plain: 19:29
Abraham and Sarah give birth to Isaac: 21:1b, 2b–5
Abraham buys the cave of Machpelah as a family tomb: 23:1–20
Death of and burial of Abraham: 25:7, 8b–11a
Ishmael’s descendants: 25:13–18
Isaac marries Rebekah: 25:20
Esau’s wives and Jacob’s departure to Aram: 26:34–35; 27:46; 28:1–9
Jacob’s return to Canaan: 31:18
Jacob’s name changed to Israel at Beth-El: 35:9a, 9c–15
Jacob’s wives and his sons: 35:22b–26
Death and burial of Isaac: 35:27–29
Esau’s wives and descendants: 36:2–30
Jacob lives in Canaan: 37:1
&nbs
p; Joseph in Egypt: 41:46a
Jacob in Egypt: 46:6–27; 47:5–12, 27b–28; 48:3–7; 49:29–33; 50:12–13
2. The Exodus
Egypt oppresses Israelites: Exodus 1:7, 13–14; 2:23b–25
Moses, in Egypt, summoned by God; Yahweh reveals His name: 6:2–11, 30; 7:1–9
Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues: 7:10–13, 19–20a, 22; 8:1–3a, 12–15; 9:8–12
The exodus: 12:1–20, 28, 40–50
The Red Sea: 14:1–4, 8, 9b, 10a, 10c, 15–18, 21a, 21c, 22–23, 26–27a, 28–29
3. The Journey After the Exodus
Food in the wilderness, manna: 16:2–3, 6–35a, 36
Mass revelation at Mount Sinai: 19:1; 24:15b–18a
Tabernacle instruction: 25:1–31:11
Sabbath instruction: 31:12–17
The tablets of the testimony: 31:18*
The skin of Moses’ face: 34:29–35
Tabernacle construction: 35–40
Priestly law code: Leviticus 1–27*
Census, last days at Mount Sinai: Numbers 1:1–2:34; 3:2–9:14; 10:1–12, 14–27
Moses sends scouts into the land: 13:1–16, 25–26, 32; 14:1–3, 5–10, 26–38
A Sabbath violation: 15:32–36
Law of fringes on clothes: 15:37–41
Rebellion led by Korah: 16:1a, 2b–11, 15–24, 27a, 32b, 35; 17:1–28
The tithe and the division of the Aaronid priests from the other Levites: 18:1–32
Law of the red cow: 19:1–22
Water in the wilderness, Moses strikes a rock at Meribah: 20:1b–13
The death of Aaron: 20:23–29
Apostasy at Peor with Midianite women: 25:6–19
Census: 26:1–7, 12–65
Law of women’s inheritance: 27:1–11
Appointment of Joshua to succeed Moses: 27:12–23
Laws of women’s vows: 30:2–17
War against Midian over Peor, Midianite women: 31:1–54
Tribal inheritances: 32:2, 4, 6, 13–24, 28–32; 33:50–56; 34:1–29; 35:1–34; 36:1–13
The death of Moses: Deuteronomy 34:8–9
THE STORY ACCORDING TO THE D SOURCE
Moses reviews his experience with the people: Deuteronomy 1–11
The Deuteronomic law code (called Dtn): 12:1–26:15
Moses encourages the people: 26:16–19; 27:1–10
Covenant ceremony: 27:11–26
Blessings and curses: 28:1–69
Moses concludes: 29:1–28; 30:1–20; 31:1–6
Moses charges Joshua to succeed him: 31:7–8
Moses writes a torah and entrusts it to the “Levitical priests”: 31:9–13, 16–22, 24–29
Moses gives a song to the people: 31:30; 32:44–47
Moses gives a poetic blessing to the people: 33:1
Moses sees the promised land from a mountain in Moab before he dies: 34:1–4, 10–12
OTHER SOURCE TEXTS
Genesis 14: This story is from an independent source.
Genesis 15: Identification of this text by sources is uncertain. Verses 13 to 16 can be identified as coming from the Redactor, not from any of the sources.
Genesis 49:1–27: The Blessing of Jacob is an old poem, now embedded in the J text.
Exodus 15:1–18: The Song of the Sea is an old poem, now embedded in the J text.
Exodus 20:1–17: The Ten Commandments, an independent source. Verses 1 and 11 can be identified as coming from the Redactor.
Deuteronomy 32:1–43: The Song of Moses, an old poem
Deuteronomy 33:2–29: The Blessing of Moses, an old poem
NOTES
Chapter and verse numbers were inserted into the biblical text long after it was written. They sometimes merge lines from separate sources into a single verse. When that happens, we identify the parts of the verse with a lowercase a or b to show that the verse as now numbered contains more than one source text. People sometimes misunderstand and mistakenly accuse scholars of splitting verses, when in fact it is the opposite: it was the persons who put the verse numbers into the text who created the confusion.
The process of identifying the sources is a continuing task. Some of the source identifications of verses in my The Bible with Sources Revealed (2003) are different from those I made in Who Wrote the Bible?, which first appeared in 1987, and which were modified in a second edition in 1997. Where these differences occur, readers should regard the identifications in The Bible with Sources Revealed as representing my more recent thinking.
Many scholars have eliminated portions of the Priestly (P) source, of all different sizes, and ascribed them to a separate source called the Holiness (H) text. Some claim that there was an entire Holiness school of persons who produced the H text(s). As I have said in Who Wrote the Bible? on p. 172, The Bible with Sources Revealed on pp. 218 and 296–297, and here in Chapter 6, note 2, I do not think that this claim of a Holiness text or school has ever been adequately defended, and I do not think that it is correct.
NOTES
Introduction
1. William Propp, Exodus 19–40, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2006), p. 795.
2. On the “King of the House of David” (mlk byt dwd) inscription, see Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal (1993): 81–98; and “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” Israel Exploration Journal (1995): 1–18. On the Moabite inscription, see André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” Biblical Archaeology Review 20 (1994): 30–37. See also Emile Puech, “La stele araméenne de Dan,” Revue Biblique 101 (1994): 215–41.
3. Yigal Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I 1978–1982: Interim Report of the First Five Seasons; and Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985, vol. 5, ed. D. T. Ariel, Qedem Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology (Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000); Eilat Mazar, “Did I Find King David’s Palace?” Biblical Archaeology Review (January/February 2006); A. Faust, “Did Eilat Mazar Find David’s Palace?” Biblical Archaeology Review (September/October 2012); see also Mazar, “Excavate King David’s Palace!” Biblical Archaeology Review 23 (January/February 1997). See also Mazar, “The Undiscovered Palace of King David in Jerusalem—A Study in Biblical Archaeology,” in Avi Faust, ed., New Studies on Jerusalem (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University, 1996), pp. 9–20 (Hebrew).
4. Most highly recommended is Baruch Halpern’s David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), which is recognized and praised in the books published subsequently about David. Others include Jonathan Kirsch, King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel; Steven McKenzie, King David: A Biography; Robert Alter, The David Story; Joel Baden, The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero; Jacob Wright, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory; David Wolpe, David: The Divided Heart; and R. E. Friedman, The Hidden Book in the Bible.
CHAPTER ONE
History Recaptured
1. Numbers 2:32.
2. See Thomas E. Levy and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright, 1891–1971: A Biographical Memoir (Washington, DC: The National Academies of Sciences, 2008), pp. 1–29.
3. John van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham (New York: De Gruyter,1974); Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001); and even the Albrightians, including my teachers and colleagues and myself, took a more critical approach.
4. Donald Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 422.
5. David Sperling, The Original Torah (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
6. Lee Levine, “Biblical Archaeology,” in David Lieber and Jules Harlow, eds., Etz Chayim: Torah and
Commentary (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, Jewish Publication Society, 2001), pp. 1341–42.
7. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (New York: Free Press, 2001).
8. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, p. 58.
9. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, p. 61.
10. William Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 99.
11. Some think that the name Palestine for that land goes back to earlier times because Herodotus used it. But if one looks at all the references in Herodotus, one sees that they refer only to the region where the Philistines lived, not to all of Israel or Judah. That is presumably why Herodotus called it Philistia/Palestine.
12. This was published later in Abraham Malamat, The History of Biblical Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
13. Johannes de Moor, “Egypt, Ugarit, and Exodus,” in N. Wyatt et al., eds., Ugarit, Religion and Culture (Münster: Ugarti-Verlag, 1996), pp. 213–47.
14. James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).
15. Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, and William H. C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience (hereafter: IETP), Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Science (New York: Springer, 2015), http://exodus.calit2.net/.
16. William H. Propp, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1998); and Propp, Exodus 19–40, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
17. Reported in Who Wrote the Bible? (hereafter: WWTB), The Bible with Sources Revealed, The Hidden Book in the Bible, and The Exile and Biblical Narrative. See the bibliographies in these for works by other scholars. I shall also cite some more recent works as we go on here. For better or worse, the bibliography on this subject is now so extensive that no one work can list it all.
18. Bernard Batto, “The Reed Sea: Requiescat in Pace,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 27–35; “Red Sea or Reed Sea? How the Mistake Was Made and What Yam Sûp Really Means,” Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August, 1984); R. E. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, pp. 214–15; Propp, Exodus 1–18, pp. 486–87; John Huddlestun summarizes the varieties of views in “Red Sea,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (hereafter: ABD) (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 5, pp. 633–42.
The Exodus Page 19
