Scholars Face Off Over Age of Biblical Stories

Introduction

In the December 1993 BR we published a lengthy review of John Van Seters’s Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Bible Books, BR 09:06). Our reviewer, Richard Elliot Friedman, of the University of California at San Diego, leveled numerous criticisms at the book, writing at one point, “There is therefore reason to doubt the soundness of method and reasoning in Van Seters’s work. In this scholarship the [Bible’s] text rarely speaks for itself …. Rather it is the scholar’s spin on the text that houses the point.” Van Seters’s rebuttal to Friedman’s critique follows this introduction; Friedman’s reply follows that.

Friedman began his review with Van Seters’s position on the documentary hypothesis—the widely held view that the Hebrew Bible consists of four major authorial strands, labelled J (the Yahwist; written with a J in German), E (the Elohist), P (the Priestly writer) and D (the Deuteronomist). In particular, Van Seters believes that J was composed much later than most other scholars do. Friedman noted that critics of the documentary hypothesis credit Van Seters with helping to undermine the theory. But, wrote Friedman, “Van Seters’s project is not an attack on the documentary hypothesis. It is the documentary hypothesis. He is just dating the source J (and E, to the extent that he recognizes its existence) to a much later time than most biblical scholars have dated it. When scholars attempt to place authors in the period that best suits the evidence, they are not challenging the hypothesis. They are doing the hypothesis.”

Friedman next criticized Van Seters’s view that the ancient Israelites did not write any history until the Babylonian Exile (following the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.). “In Van Seters’s picture,” Friedman wrote, “ancient Israel produced practically no history, no prose at all (at least none that survived), during all the centuries that it existed as a nation in its land. Late Jewish writers fashioned the history of their people after they had been evicted from their land. Also, according to Van Seters, even though these writers were living in the pocket of the Babylonians, they wrote under the influence of the historiographic traditions of the Greeks. How these late historians knew (or claimed to know) what had happened in all those earlier centuries is not made clear.”

As an example of the weaknesses in Van Seters’s arguments, Friedman recalled a talk Van Seters gave at the 1992 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. “In the last question in the session, the biblical historian J. Maxwell Miller asked Van Seters: If the Deuteronomistic historian was writing history by invention, and not from real historical sources, how did he manage to describe the actions of Pharaoh Shishak (in 1 Kings 11:40, 14:25) so accurately? As Miller put it, how did he get Shishak in just the right ‘time and pew’? Van Seters responded that he assumed that there were monuments all over the country with information on them. Miller explained that this still would not enable a historian centuries later to locate Shishak so well in an invented history, so he asked him again: If the biblical historian was just inventing, how could he possibly have gotten such details right? Van Seters’s response was: ‘I wish I knew.’”

The bulk of Friedman’s review was reserved for a criticism of Van Seters’s approach to the use of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible as indicators of the author of a given section. “He simply mistakes the facts in the matter of the names of the deity, for example,” according to Friedman.

“Specifically, J consistently excludes the word ‘God’ (Elohim) in narration. Individual persons in J use the word ‘God,’ but the narrator of the story in J does not. Instead the narrator consistently calls the deity by the personal name Yahweh, with perhaps one exception out of all the occurrences in the Pentateuch.

“E also maintains a distinction: The name Yahweh is not revealed until the time of Moses (Exodus 3). In E, prior to Moses the deity is referred to simply as God (Elohim) or by the name El, but not by the name Yahweh. There are two or three possible exceptions out of all the occurrences in E.

“P maintains the same distinction as E (until Exodus 6:3), with one possible exception out of hundreds of occurrences.” As a consequence of Van Seters’s approach to the use of the names of the deity, Friedman wrote, Van Seters seems oblivious to the fact that “when these source-works in Genesis are separated from one another, each frequently flows as a continuous story … it is possible to read the J flood story and then the P flood story, and each makes sense as a complete story with no factual or grammatical breaks.”

Friedman continued, “Van Seters also separates the whole Joseph story and identifies it as an ‘independent composition,’ which is simply impossible. It is intricately bound to the rest of the Jacob story. Not only does the evidence of language demand this, but the literary evidence does as well, in that numerous events in the Jacob stories have their explicit denouements in the Joseph stories …. When Van Seters deals with the story of the relations between the “sons of the gods” and human women, which produce giants/Nephilim^a (Genesis 6:1–4), he compares this to Hesiod’s Greek Catalogue of Women, because the Catalogue of Women has parallels to the biblical story, although it does not include the element of giants: “Van Seters concludes that ‘it would be best to view the reference to the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4 as secondary’ (p. 155f). This is weak reasoning. The presence of an element in the Bible’s story that is not present in the Hesiodic work does not make that element ‘secondary,’ yet Van Seters arrives at this conclusion without further defense or comment.”

Van Seters’s dating of the tower of Babel story also comes under fire from Friedman. Van Seters believes the story is based on the Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki, which he dates to about 765 B.C., based on a reference in the Erra epic. Friedman counters, “Van Seters does not acknowledge that the date of the Erra epic is a contentious issue. He does not make clear that although the first reference to the ziggurat Etemenanki by name is in the Erra epic, the ziggurat of Babylon is mentioned in the Enuma Elish, dating perhaps to the 12th century B.C.”

Friedman noted that Van Seters too readily dismisses the arguments of other scholars. “Van Seters’s response to Baruch Halpern’s work is a particularly serious case since it so challenges his own,” wrote Friedman. Of Van Seters’s claim that Halpern “simply ignores the whole subject of ancient historiography outside of the Old Testament,” Friedman counters that “Halpern has referred to the ancient Greek historians more than almost anyone in the field.”

The review concluded, “These matters require a substantial, meticulous defense. If the case can be made, Van Seters has not yet made it.”

Van Seters: “Friedman misrepresents what I said”

By John Van Seters

Richard Friedman’s review of my Prologue to History (Bible Books, BR 09:06) is not a fair presentation of the book or the arguments in it. A basic principle of any review is that it present a general description of what the book is about and its basic arguments. Friedman does neither. He seems more concerned to defend his own published views and those of his friend Baruch Halpern than to present my position fairly.

First, my work does not support the documentary hypothesis, as Friedman claims. It departs from the four-source theory in three important respects. I do not recognize the separate existence of an E document extending from Genesis to Numbers. I regard J as later than Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings). Most important, I do not support the notion of separate documents combined by editors. I advocate a “supplementary” hypothesis in which one author added his work directly to an already existing corpus. There is no need to envisage any redactors in this process. Supplementary and documentary hypotheses have never been viewed as compatible, as any basic “Introduction to the Old Testament” makes clear.

The basis for the Exilic dating of J is highly complex and difficult to summarize. Let me make only a few observations that point in the direction of a late date. First, there are certain striking anachronisms in J. The reference to Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 11:28, 31; 15:7) reflects the renaissance of this city under the Chaldean rulers of the Neo-Babylonian period, especially Nabonidus (555–539 B.C.E.). At this time Harran was also greatly honored by this ruler, both cities being special to the moon god Sin. Their prominence and close association in the Abraham story points to this period and no other.

The mention of Pithom in Exodus 1:11 is another anachronism. We now know from archaeology that Pithom (Tell el Maskhuta) was first built by Necho II about 600 B.C.E. and was a major commerce center and defensive bastion of the Saite rulers. Both anachronisms point to the Exilic period.

Next, the first reference to Abraham in the prophets does not occur until Ezekiel 33:24, and Abraham becomes very important as a theological example in the prophet of the Exile, Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55, contemporary with Nabonidus). While J makes considerable use of the prophetic tradition, including Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he stands closest in perspective to the monotheism and universalism of Second Isaiah, with the same concern for creation, for the divine promises to the patriarchs, for certain details of the Exodus and wilderness traditions and the Red Sea event.

Finally, we can make detailed comparisons between J (in Exodus-Numbers) and Deuteronomy where they deal with the same subject matter and the same stories. I have published studies on these comparisons for over 20 years, and several major studies have now joined mine to argue that the versions in Deuteronomy are earlier than those in J. This is an important area of discussion in continental scholarship at present, but Friedman dismisses it as marginal.

Friedman challenges my view that “ancient Israel produced practically no history … during all the centuries that it existed as a nation in the land,” but only wrote such histories during the Exile. This is stated as unbelievable, but is it? The Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations through almost three millennia of literacy and high culture never produced any histories comparable to those of Israel and Greece. Even the Greeks, who had literacy from at least the eighth century B.C.E. (some would say much earlier), did not develop narrative history until the fifth century B.C.E. Historiography is a late literary development, however much we now assume that it must be part of anyone’s corporate identity.

Furthermore, I do not claim that the biblical writers “wrote under the influence of the historiographic traditions of the Greeks.” Yet the evidence I have compiled, and which Friedman does not mention, argues for some shared “antiquarian” historiographic traditions between the Greek world and the Levantine coast, traditions that are not those of Babylonia. I believe the Phoenicians (“Canaanites”) were responsible for the diffusion of these literary traditions, since they were in close contact with both the Greek world and Judah.

Friedman drags into the review my debate with Halpern over the nature of the Deuteronomistic history, although it is not a subject dealt with in my book. This allows him to use as a put-down an anecdote from the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in 1992 involving Maxwell Miller, who has otherwise expressed in print much support for my work on the Pentateuch. The anecdote is quite misleading. First, the organizers of the session had repeatedly invited Baruch Halpern to debate publicly with me the issues on which we differed, but he declined, so the session became a one-sided response to his work. Second, contrary to the impression of the review, I was the one who brought up the problem of Pharoah Shishak’s invasion in the context of the Deuteronomist’s sources. My point, simply stated, is that there are several references to historical figures in Kings in which the biblical historian does not quite get the event or the chronology right. What I said was, I wish I knew in what form the information containing the names came to the Deuteronomist, because it is not likely that it was as annals or as chronicles.

Turning to matters of substance, Friedman defends the division of J and E and accuses me of simply mistaking “the facts in the matter of the names of the deity.” He continues: “Specifically, J consistently excludes the word ‘God’ (Elohim) in narrative. Individual persons in J use the word ‘God’ but the narrator of the story in J does not.” He allows for perhaps one exception. Of course, this is the case because the texts have been divided solely on the basis of the fluctuation in the use of Yahweh and Elohim. This means that E has only 2 or 3 exceptions before Exodus 3. This seems remarkable, but what are the facts? At the beginning of J in Genesis 2:4a–3:24, the narrator uses the combined title “Yahweh God” 19 times and never in direct speech. At one time scholars argued for a combination of two sources here, but that has been abandoned. Admittedly the usage of “Yahweh God” is special to this particular story, but it strongly suggests that the terms “Yahweh” and “God” could be used interchangeably. Even Friedman would allow that either could be used in direct speech in J. Furthermore, the fact is that once the use of the divine name as a source distinction is no longer applicable after Exodus 3, one would expect Yahweh to be used consistently by all the sources, but this is not the case. Now it is E who can fluctuate between Yahweh and Elohim. (See Numbers 22–24, the Balaam story, attributed to E by Friedman.) After E is permitted to use Yahweh from Exodus 3 onward, there is little agreement as to what to attribute to E. One need only compare Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? with other recent treatments of E to note the wide disparity. By contrast with this apparent E usage, P, after the revelation of the divine name to Moses in Exodus 6:2–3, consistently uses Yahweh and not Elohim in the rest of his “document.” Why would the E source not do the same?

Friedman also says that I “seem unaware of the fact that, when these source-works in Genesis are separated from one another, each frequently flows as a continuous story.” He takes as his primary example the flood story and says I have fragmented the two versions by my divisions between J and P. So let us look at his version of J. He believes that Genesis 6:5–8 and 7:1–5 forms a continuous narrative, but that is clearly not the case. The command of Yahweh to Noah to enter the ark (Genesis 7:1) presupposes the account of ark building in Genesis 6:13–17, 22 (my J and his P). The only reason to exclude it from J is that it uses “God” (Elohim) instead of “Yahweh.” Furthermore, Genesis 7:16b (J) should follow Genesis 7:7, not verse 12, as Friedman suggests; Genesis 8:2b is not the continuation of Genesis 7:23; and Genesis 8:20 must be preceded by a statement about the departure from the ark, as in Genesis 8:18 (attributed to P by Friedman and others). All this and more is pointed out in my discussion of the new divisions that restore the continuity in J (at P’s expense) for the first time. P must be regarded as a supplement, not as an independent source. Friedman just does not seem to understand the “supplementary” principle.

Similarly in the case of the pre-J materials in Genesis 34, Genesis 38 and elsewhere, I do not deny that they are closely bound to J. They are the sources that J has taken into his own work, even when they create some tensions within it. Friedman criticizes my view that the Joseph story was an originally independent composition, but he fails to note that this is the prevailing position in studies of the Joseph story over the last 25 years, as I make clear in my book. It was just one of the sources that J used for his larger history, not an independent document alongside of J.

Friedman also misrepresents my discussion of Genesis 6:1–4 on whether the Nephilim (“giants”) are to be identified with the heroes, the offspring of the “sons of the gods” and human women. My first point is that the text of Genesis 6:4 does not make this identification; grammatically the sentence is very awkward, suggesting an addition. When the issue of giants is also absent in the very close parallel in the Catalogue of Women (although there are primordial giants in Hesiod), then the secondary character of the giants is strengthened.

Notwithstanding Friedman’s efforts to find an earlier tower of Babel, the obsession to build the greatest tower in Babylon between the years of Esarhaddon and Nebuchadnezzar provides the most obvious background for the biblical Tower of Babel tale.

Friedman’s isolated comments on my discussion of individual texts is not intended to deal with the arguments in my book, but to make me look foolish. One of the hallmarks of biblical study is to recover the ancient patterns of language and rhetorical usage and not impose our own patterns and usage onto the biblical text. If a verse like Leviticus 26:42—which lists the Patriarchs in reverse order—violates a very regular pattern of a biblical formula, then it needs an explanation, but not one based on a rhetorical device familiar only to us in modern times. That is anachronistic, as in the case of his reference to Martin Luther King’s speeches.

Similarly, we encounter in Genesis 28:10–22 patterns of linguistic usage that are attested elsewhere in the Bible. For instance, there is the common pairing of time or action phrases: “When the sun had set” (verse 11a) and “in the morning” (verse 18); “he spent the night” (11a) and “he rose early” (18), “he placed the stone as a headrest” (11a) and “he set it up as a sacred pillar” (18); “he lay down to sleep” (11b) and “Jacob awoke from sleep” (16). Friedman and others wish to break apart every one of these pairings by placing verses 11a and 16 in J, and verses 11b and 18 in E. Since in this way they produce parallel texts that do not reflect regular biblical usage, their source division is not acceptable, whether or not Friedman thinks that the texts still make sense to him.

Friedman accuses me of not paying attention to his own rather popular treatment of Pentateuchal issues in Who Wrote the Bible?, a work that hardly bears on the current debate in the field. He mentions some other scholars whose primary concern is with the P source, and who are therefore marginal to the concern of my book. Friedman’s suggestion that I have been ignored by him and by some other American scholars because I have been “on the fringe” hardly reflects the facts, unless the whole of European and British scholarship, in which I have been so frequently cited, is marginal. Since the beginning of the Pentateuch Seminar in the Society of Biblical Literature, of which I served as chairman for several years, there has been virtually no participation by the Harvard school, of which Friedman is product, although a wide spectrum of Pentateuchal scholars has actively participated in the group.

Friedman complains that I “too readily dismiss other scholars’ arguments” with demeaning remarks. He may be right. It is a serious temptation and is to be avoided. The quotes he gives, however, have all been taken out of context. He might reread his own review with this criticism in mind. There are clearly limits, even in the heat of debate. An example of what goes beyond the acceptable can be found in the work of Baruch Halpern. In The First Historians (p. 31)^b he imputes to me a most derogatory view of the Deuteronomistic Historian, with the statement: “Van Seters imagines him (Dtr) a rogue and a fraud, a distributor of taffy.” I never suggest that in a single statement and it is inflammatory to say that that is my intention. Furthermore, Friedman objects to my criticism that Halpern ignores Greek historiography, saying: “Halpern has referred to the ancient Greek historians more than almost anyone in the field.” In the work in question Halpern mentions Greek and Roman historians frequently, but these are included in a potpourri of historians of all periods and not as a treatment of ancient classical historiography. Halpern does not have a single comment on my extended treatment of that subject.

Friedman seems unaware of the fact that not only my own works but a number of others are providing the “meticulous defense” that he calls for and that my view is more widely accepted than he imagines. I have just published a more detailed sequel to Prologue to History, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus-Numbers.^c Perhaps for some, if not for Friedman, it will make the case for an Exilic Yahwist.

Friedman: “I didn’t mean it as a put-down”

By Richard Elliot Friedman

I am sorry to learn that Professor Van Seters interpreted my review article as a put-down of him or as an attempt to make him look foolish. I do not know Van Seters personally, and I do not bear him ill will. I raised certain objections to his positions and methods. I recognize that the criticisms were strong, but they do not contain the kind of demeaning remarks he claims.

I did not “state as unbelievable” his view on the lateness of Israelite historiography, as he took it, though I certainly do disagree with the view. I stated the view at the beginning of the article without any evaluation at all.

I did not aim to misinterpret his views relative to the documentary hypothesis. I noted that people incorrectly cite Van Seters as evidence of the demise of the hypothesis. If he feels that his work is more in the category of a supplementary hypothesis, I’ll be happy to refer to it that way; but my point remains that people who dislike source-critical biblical scholarship will not be any happier with his work than they are with any other work that sees J, P, and D texts in the Pentateuch.

Van Seters even took an apology I made to him as something negative. In noting that we have not referred to each other’s work, I said that I had made only a few references to his work in the past because I regarded it as on the fringe of the field. I apologized and wished with my review in BR to begin to address his work, albeit critically. He felt the need to prove that he is not on the fringe by noting his citations by European scholars and invitations to lecture in Europe. I assure him that this is unnecessary. On the other hand, he justified the fact that he has not addressed the evidence in my own work by making some unkind remarks about my book Who Wrote the Bible, calling it “a work that hardly bears on the current debate in the field,” which is hurtful and untrue. This is all the more unkind since I did not refer to Who Wrote the Bible? in my comment; I referred to my work. If he thinks that “popular” treatments do not deserve response (an insulting remark to make to his audience in BR of all places), then he could have responded to my more “academic” works.

Likewise he meets the criticism that he has ignored many other scholars whose evidence challenges him by saying that the scholars I mentioned are marginal to the concern of his book. With due respect, the linguistic works I cited indicate that texts are written in a Hebrew that is centuries earlier than the period in which he says they were composed. That is not marginal.

He replies to my noting that he has not responded to Professor Halpern’s critique by saying “it is not a subject dealt with in the Prologue.” But my point was that it is not a subject dealt with in the Prologue. I stated that at the beginning of the book Van Seters promised an implicit response to Halpern, but that no response, implicit or explicit, appears.

Van Seters also replies to my criticism that he makes strong pronouncements about other scholars rather than direct response by making the strange comment that Halpern once made a strong comment about him. If he has a complaint about Halpern, he should rightly take it up with Halpern (whom I have always found to be a gentleman and who would be responsive, I am sure). But the point remains that Van Seters is very harsh and dismissive and does not address a good deal of contrary evidence. “The heat of debate” does not justify such behavior, and it is in his interest to rectify it.

Thus he does not actually answer my criticisms in his response either. I said that he does not acknowledge that his evidence on the dating of the tower of Babel story is a contentious issue, and that the Babylonian ziggurat is mentioned earlier than he stated; he responds thinking that I made “efforts to find an earlier tower.” I commented on his mistaken claims concerning whether the E source uses “Elohim alone;” he responds with reference to the well-known 19 occurrences of “Yahweh Elohim” in Genesis 2, which is a separate issue. I said that the continuous narrative flow of the stories is strong evidence against him; he responds by challenging points of my own divisions of the flood story, still ignoring the quantity of flow that remains. (He is mistaken on those points in any case: for example, misunderstanding a frequent use of the Hebrew definite article in the phrase “the ark.”)

My evaluation was based on whether he has made his case and addressed those who disagree with him. I do not know why he attributes such malice to someone who has never met him, or why he thinks that criticizing Halpern is somehow an answer to me, or what his strange reference to “the Harvard school” has to do with this. It was harsh and incorrect to claim that I “distorted” and “misrepresented” his work. Van Seters must learn that scholars who criticize him are not his enemies; they are colleagues who disagree with him. As further assurance that I meant to criticize his work strongly but collegially, I would like to invite him to our center at the University of California at San Diego as my guest to argue these matters with my colleagues and me. I promise him that he is not entering the lion’s den; we shall show him our well-known hospitality.

In the December 1993 BR we published a lengthy review of John Van Seters’s Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Bible Books, BR 09:06). Our reviewer, Richard Elliot Friedman, of the University of California at San Diego, leveled numerous criticisms at the book, writing at one point, “There is therefore reason to doubt the soundness of method and reasoning in Van Seters’s work. In this scholarship the [Bible’s] text rarely speaks for itself …. Rather it is the scholar’s spin on the text that houses the point.” Van Seters’s rebuttal to Friedman’s critique follows this introduction; Friedman’s reply follows that.