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Geography in Num 33 and 34 and the Challenge of Pentateuchal Theory

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Geography in Num 33 and 34 and the Challenge of Pentateuchal Theory Geography in Num 33 and 34 and the Challenge of Pentateuchal Theory Koert van Bekkum 1 Introduction More than ever, it seems that studying the literary, social-historical and theo- logical aspects of the Pentateuch is a discussion without end. The issue of Fall 2014 of the Journal of Biblical Literature took Deut 34 as an example for a vivid exchange of arguments on one of the foundations of ‘higher criticism’ of the Hebrew Bible, that is, source criticism. Earlier that year scholars gathered in Jerusalem for a conference on ‘The Pentateuch within Biblical Literature’.1 A short look at (the abstracts of) these contributions, and to some extent also in this volume with papers of the Joint Meeting of SOTS and OTW in Edinburgh 2015, suffices to see that several elements stand out in present research. Despite all efforts to avoid tribalism, and the clear tendency to include empirical knowl- edge about the literary transmission of texts in the oral cultures of the Ancient Near East,2 the number of approaches is still multiplying; and whatever issue is discussed, lack of consensus seems to be the main result. Many of those who are involved in today’s study of the literary history of the Pentateuch will sooner or later recognize what Julius Wellhausen wrote to his friend William Robertson Smith in January 1885, shortly after he had received the second imprint of Abraham Kuenen’s Historisch critisch onderzoek. He had browsed the book and tended to agree with everything. But he also found the 1 S. Frolov, ‘The Death of Moses and the Fate of Source Criticism’, JBL 133 (2014), 648–60; P.Y. Yoo, ‘The Place of Deuteronomy 34 and Source Criticism: A Response to Serge Frolov’, JBL 133 (2014), 661–8; S. Dolansky, ‘The Death of Moses, Not of Source Criticism’, JBL 133 (2014), 669–76; D.M. Carr, ‘Unified until Proven Disunified? Assumptions and Standards in Assessing the Literary Complexity of Ancient Biblical Texts’, JBL 133 (2014), 677–81. For the papers of the conference ‘The Pentateuch within Biblical Literature: Formation and Interaction’, Jerusalem, May 25–29, see J.C. Gertz et al. (eds), The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (FAT), Tübingen 2016 (forthcoming). 2 See in particular D.M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible. A New Reconstruction, Oxford 2011. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004337695_007 94 van Bekkum material so boring that he doubted whether he would ever decide to study the volumes in detail.3 Nevertheless, the discussion regarding the formation of the Pentateuch in the recent compositional and so-called Neo-Documentarian approaches is also fascinating and addressing big issues. On the one hand, Genesis to 2 Kings—or the ‘Primary History’, as it has been labelled by Richard Elliot Freedman4—clearly presents itself as a one literary textual continuum from creation to exile,5 one ongoing story from Paradise to the loss of Jerusalem,6 a story that can also be read as a double aetiology explaining how Israel inherited the Promised Land as well as why it was lost.7 At the same time, this continuous unit is divided into nine different books. This most likely happened primarily for technical reasons, but also constituted clear begin- nings and endings highlighting specific features and creating separate literary entities.8 Yet, from a canonical perspective, the most important transition in the Old Testament does not occur between the books of 2 Kings and Isaiah, but between Deuteronomy and Joshua, that is, between the Torah and the Former Prophets, thus establishing the first five books as the book of Moses. Accordingly, the quest for the literary history of the Pentateuch regards not only the relation between the stories of the patriarchs, the Exodus and the wil- derness, and the question of the historical growth of the books of Genesis to Deuteronomy, but also the composition of the Primary History and the forma- tion of the canon. The diverse approaches of this complicated conundrum of questions all have their own starting point. Those who take their point of depar- ture in the classical Documentary Hypothesis mostly discuss issues regarding 3 J. Wellhausen, Briefe, Tübingen 2013, 167, on A. Kuenen, Historisch critisch onderzoek naar het ontstaan en de verzameling van de Boeken des Ouden Verbonds. Tweede, geheel omgewerkte uitgave. Eerste deel. De Thora en de historische boeken des Ouden Verbonds, Leiden 18872: ‘Kuenen habe ich durchgeblättert. (. .) Mir ist übrigens der ganze Stoff allmählich so lang- weilig, dass ich mich zu einem eigentlichen Durchstudiren gewiss nie entschliessen werde.’ 4 D.N. Freedman, ‘The Law and the Prophets’, in: W. Baumgartner et al., Congress Volume Bonn 1962 (SVT, 9), Leiden 1963, 250–65. 5 For this observation, see already Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. by J. Israel (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), Cambridge 2007, 127, 129. 6 E.g. J. Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch. An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible, New York 1992, 35. 7 M. Weippert, ‘Fragen des israelitischen Geschichtsbewusstseins’, VT 23 (1973), 441. 8 C. Levin, ‘On the Cohesion and Separation of Books within the Enneateuch’, in: T.B. Dozeman et al. (eds), Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings (Ancient Israel and Its Literature, 8), Atlanta 2011, 124–57..
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