This paper proposes envisaging the ancestral narratives (with a special focus on the Abraham cycle) as Persian period ‘prequel’ as a fruitful approach to exploring relationship between Genesis and the Moses and monarchic traditions. The literary capacity of a prequel to influence and alter its audience’s perceptions of an earlier, principal, work means that understanding the ancestral narratives as ‘prequel’ may highlight matters not immediately apparent when the ancestral narratives are envisaged as ‘introduction’, ‘prelude’ or ‘prologue.’ Recent insights associated with the so-called ‘Death of the Yahwist,’ including Konrad Schmid’s argument about the lack of a pre-P literary source spanning Genesis and Exodus, have been important, but remain largely unexplored from the point-of-view of the ancestral narratives. This paper proposes the application of the literary category of ‘prequel’ to the ancestral narratives as one means of exploring the issues, both synchronic and diachronic, raised by these insights.
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David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University, 2011), p. 259.
R. Walter L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament: Overtures to Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress/Augsburg, 1992).
Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Siphrut, 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010). See also the collected essays in Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid (eds.), A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006).
Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky; Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 1977), p. 177.
Chalotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1847).
David M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), p. 232.
So, for example, Rolf Rendtorff, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (trans. John J. Scullion; JSOTSup, 89; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), p. 76.
John Van Seters, ‘Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period’, VT 22 (1972), pp. 448-59; Thomas Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuschungen zur Vaterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der Deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO, 99; Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990).
Römer, Väter pp. 269-70. The exception is Deut. 34:4 where the names of the patriarchs are not appositional to the term ‘fathers’.
Schmid, Moses Story pp. 68-69; D.M. Carr, ‘Genesis in Relation to the Moses Story: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives’, in A. Wénin (ed.), Studies in the Book of Genesis: Literature, Redaction and History (BETL, 155; Leuven: University Press, 2001), pp. 273-295 (290-291). For a more recent contribution to the debate see Bill T. Arnold, ‘Re-Examining the ‘Fathers’ in Deuteronomy’s Framework’ in Klaas Spronk and Hans Barstad, (ed.), Torah and Tradition (OTS 70; Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 10-41.
For Genesis 15, see Schmid, Genesis and Moses Story, pp. 158-72; for Genesis 17, see Christophe Nihan, ‘The Priestly Covenant, Its Reinterpretations, and the Composition of “P”’, in Shectman and Baden, (eds.), Strata of the Priestly Writings, pp. 87-134.
For example, Nicol, ‘Studies in the Interpretation of Gen. 26:1-33’, pp. 74-75.
Mark G. Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 77-78.
See A.A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (WBC, 11; Dallas: Word, 1989), but note that this element is more pronounced in the 1 Chronicles 21 parallel; see Gary N. Knoppers, I Chronicles 10-29 (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p. 763.
See Diana Lipton, Longing for Egypt and Other Unexpected Biblical Tales (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2008), pp. 108-140 (135).
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This paper proposes envisaging the ancestral narratives (with a special focus on the Abraham cycle) as Persian period ‘prequel’ as a fruitful approach to exploring relationship between Genesis and the Moses and monarchic traditions. The literary capacity of a prequel to influence and alter its audience’s perceptions of an earlier, principal, work means that understanding the ancestral narratives as ‘prequel’ may highlight matters not immediately apparent when the ancestral narratives are envisaged as ‘introduction’, ‘prelude’ or ‘prologue.’ Recent insights associated with the so-called ‘Death of the Yahwist,’ including Konrad Schmid’s argument about the lack of a pre-P literary source spanning Genesis and Exodus, have been important, but remain largely unexplored from the point-of-view of the ancestral narratives. This paper proposes the application of the literary category of ‘prequel’ to the ancestral narratives as one means of exploring the issues, both synchronic and diachronic, raised by these insights.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 270 | 57 | 7 |
Full Text Views | 143 | 1 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 137 | 5 | 2 |