SOURCE: "Sacred History and Theology: The Redaction of Torah" in The Creation of Sacred Literature: Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text, edited by Richard Elliott Friedman, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 25-34.

[In this essay, Friedman claims that the Priestly redaction of the Torah—the combination of the Priestly source with the Elohist-Jahvist document—significantly shaped the Pentateuch's conception of God and the portrayal of the magnalia Die.]

One of the significant consequences of the enterprise of source criticism is the demonstration that the Torah (and ultimately the Hebrew Bible), more than perhaps any other book, is the product of a community—it is quintessentially a national work of literature, not the creation of a particular man or woman in a particular historical moment, but the offspring of a continuing, developing culture.

A more troubling consequence of the source-critical enterprise is the difficulty it engenders when one returns from it to the reading and studying of the whole. Thus is born redaction criticism, the study of the final literary product which we call Torah with the sophistication of one who knows something of the complex literary history of the text. The focus now is upon the literary figure who assembled the received texts into a single work. The combinatory design which this redactor conceived did more than house the received texts. It gave birth to new narrative syntheses.

Martin Noth wrote that, precisely because the Priestly source (P) depended upon the JE sources (or because both depended upon a common Grundlage), the combination of P and JE did not result in any major new element, historical or theological, in the unified work.¹ I believe, however, that we may perceive several significant metamorphoses in the conception of God and in the portrayal of the magnalia Dei which result from the design of the Priestly tradent who was responsible for the redaction of the work.²

The juxtaposition of the J and Priestly Creation accounts, first, precipitated a narrative synthesis with exegetical possibilities which neither of the original documents possessed independently. The humans who reach to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil are different from all other creatures in that they bear the stamp of the imago Dei. Without pursuing the precise meaning of selem and demût, one can say at minimum that humans are portrayed as embodying some divine element—and this element is critical to the events of Eden. Insofar as beings who share some quality with Yhwh are nonetheless treated by him as his subordinates, his communication with them being initially and nearly exclusively commands, the stage is set for their disobedience even before the introduction of the serpent as catalyst. When Mark Twain queried, "If the Lord didn't want humans to be rebellious then why did he create them in his image?" he was at his theologically ironic best. Depicted as creating humans in his own image and then setting under prohibition the fruit whose very attraction is to endow one with a divine power, Yhwh is thus portrayed as himself creating the terms of that tension which results in human disobedience. Themselves possessing some godly quality, the humans are attracted precisely by the serpent's claim that if they eat from the tree they will be like God(s). This tension, however, is neither the work of the author of J nor the work of the Priestly author. It is purely a by-product of the combination of the two at the hand of the tradent. P does not portray a primal human rebellion; J does not portray the creation of humans in the image of God. The combination of these two re-cast the interpretive range of the motive of the humans' actions in Eden. In the final product we call Torah, one cannot separate the creation in imago Dei from the natures of the humans who disobey the divine instruction. Interestingly, Noth referred to this identification of the humans who are created in the divine image with the humans who rebel, but he concluded only that the combined text thus accurately reflects a condition of humankind, while he held nonetheless that this effect of combination of texts still constitutes no new narrative or theological component of the whole.³ In response, I would insist that the effect of the combination of these originally alternative texts was profound—in this case refocusing the perspective of the first chapters of the biblical narrative. Indeed, insofar as the struggle between Yhwh and the human community persists as an obvious and dominant theme in biblical narrative, the Genesis 1 -3 account of the archetype of that struggle sets a fundamental Leitmotif of those narratives. From this perspective, it is difficult to overestimate the impact of the tradent who produced in Genesis 1-3 a narrative which is quite literally more than the sum of its components.

One may observe a broader metamorphosis in the portrayal of Yhwh in the unified Priestly work when one compares certain features of the JE and Priestly theologies. It is regularly noted in theological studies of the Hebrew Bible that one finds in P a more cosmic perspective of Yhwh than in the other sources.⁴ Specifically, one observes, first, that the Sabbath is fixed in the orders of Creation in P, while it is not in J, and functions as commemorative of historical national events in D. Second, the Priestly Creation account depicts the construction of the entire universe, describing a "cosmic bubble" of sky over earth with water above and below, while the J Creation focuses exclusively on the earth and the birth of plant and animal life thereon, with Yhwh personally moving about among his creatures. Interestingly, the Priestly narrative begins: "When God began to create the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1), while J begins, "In the day that Yhwh God made earth and heaven" (2:4b). The reversed order, as it happens, is appropriate to the respective points of view, as E. A. Speiser has observed.⁵ Again in the Flood account, P portrays a cosmic crisis in which the habitable bubble is threatened; the fountains of the deep are divided, thus causing the waters to flow up from below; and the windows of heaven are divided, thus causing the waters to flow down from above. The J version meanwhile merely reports rain. P, further, adds the Noahic covenant to those of JE tradition (the Abrahamic and Israelite covenants), thus setting the latter covenants, which bind Yhwh to a particular community of humans, into a larger framework of a covenant with all flesh. In all of these instances the Priestly writer portrays Yhwh in conceptually broader terms than those of the JE portrayal. The Priestly compositions consistently desist from the angelic and blatantly anthropomorphic portrayals which are widespread in JE tradition. In the Priestly portrayal of history there is never an appearance of an angel. There is never a portrayal of Yhwh so anthropomorphic as the JE portrayals of Yhwh's walking in the Garden, standing on a rock in the wilderness, wrestling with Jacob, making Adam's and Eve's loincloths, and closing Noah's ark. There is never a talking animal. There is never a dream narrative. It is no oversimplification to characterize P as a more clearly cosmic portrayal of the deity, and JE as a more personal conception. But, again, the merging of the two portrayals in the unified work of the Priestly tradent yielded a new formula, i.e., a synthesis in which the cosmic and the personal aspects of God stood in a balance unlike that of either of the component compositions. It is this theological synthesis, in which Yhwh appears as both universal and personal, as both the Creator and "the God of your father," that has seeded Jewish and Christian conceptions of God for millennia. Yet it was neither the conception of JE nor of P—but, rather, something new, a product of the union of the two at the hand of the Priestly tradent.

A second synthetic theological formulation was born in the unified Priestly work with regard to the portrayal of the mercy of Yhwh. The centrality of the mercy of Yhwh to JE tradition is manifest in the divine formula revealed to Moses on Sinai in Exod 34:6f. Yhwh is "merciful and gracious, long-forbearing and abundant in hesed. …" It is upon this formula that Moses bases his appeal that Yhwh rescind his condemnation of the nation following the spy incident in Num 14:13-20. The appeal is successful, as is Moses' prior appeal following a similar condemnation in the golden calf incident (Exod 32:11-14). Israel's God, in JE portrayal, is a deity who can be "grieved to his heart" by the actions of his humans (Gen 6:6). The well-known compassion of Yhwh, which is responsible for innumerable reprieves for Israel's continual violations of covenant in JE and Deuteronomistic literature—and which pervades the Psalms and Prophetic literature—is, however, almost entirely unknown in P. The fundamental vocabulary of the category of mercy, formalized in the divine formula of Exodus 34, is completely missing in the Priestly compositions. All forms of the root rhm are missing, as are all forms of hnn.⁶ There is not a single reference to the hesed of Yhwh.⁷ The regular biblical term for repentance, šwb, never appears in P, as Jacob Milgrom has observed.⁸ Not only is the terminology of divine mercy absent in P, but the portrayal of it as a phenomenon in narrative is exceedingly rare as well. Notably, Moses' appeal for mercy in the matter of the spies in JE is simply eliminated in the Priestly version of that episode. In P, instead of Yhwh's sentence being made more lenient as a result of the arguments of Moses, the sentence is simply pronounced and carried out. The similar appeal of Moses in the matter of the golden calf in JE of course has no counterpart in P—the latter, being the product of the Aaronid priesthood, eliminated the story of the golden calf, in which the eponymous ancestor of the Aaronids figured centrally as culpable in the incident.

This reduced concern with mercy, grace, hesed, and repentance in P is itself a valuable datum for exegesis, and for dating as well.⁹ My present concern, however, is specifically to note the effect of the combination of the differing compositions. Quite simply, the uniting of the JE and Priestly texts within the single Priestly work resulted in a new theological formula of justice and mercy which corresponded neither to that of JE nor to that of P. The proportional ratio of these qualities to one another within the character of Yhwh in the Priestly work bore no resemblance to that of either of its components. The portrayal of Yhwh in the united Torah therefore depicts the deity as embodying a quality of compassion which the Priestly writer(s) never intended to emphasize so, while it develops the reverse constituent of the divine character far beyond the original portrayal thereof in JE texts. A new view of the tension between the divine traits of mercy and justice was thus born in the design of the Priestly tradent.

The enterprise of the Priestly tradent thus resulted in a Torah whose theology was neither independent of its sources nor a simple composite of them. We have seen three examples of the impact of this literary process upon the component texts which have significant theological implications. The question is whether this phenomenon of narrative metamorphosis through combination is the chance result of the mechanical combination of the sources, of interest now primarily to a sociologist or cultural anthropologist as reflecting layers of a culture—or can we pursue the intention of the redactor and uncover and identify a theological consciousness.

Initial study of the text would lead one to believe that the tradent's redactional decisions in combining and arranging his sources were motivated primarily by mechanical considerations. In the narrative of the Flood, for example, each of the two accounts which we have, J and P, when separated from one another, constitutes a complete, flowing account of the Flood event. The Priestly tradent's method clearly was to segment the two versions and to place the thematically corresponding blocks adjacent to one another: e.g., entrance into the ark, initiation of the deluge, expiration of living creatures, recession of water, dispatching of birds, etc. The redactional design here does not seem to be theologically motivated, but, rather, the product of a literary mechanical decision. The same goes for the Red Sea narrative, in which at least the P and J accounts (though not the E) are each independently complete, flowing stories and are combined in a brilliant synthesis in which the differing versions are united in an incomparably unified continuous narrative. Here, especially, the redactional genius seems to be mechanical rather than theological or ideological. The episode of the spies in the Book of Numbers reflects the same modus operandi: two accounts, each a complete, fluent story, segmented and combined with adjacent juxtaposition of thematically corresponding blocks. In each of these three cases—the Flood, the Sea, the spies—the natural mechanics of the process of redaction are sufficient to explain the combinatory constructions before us.

A variation of this technique is segmentation and distribution. The Priestly version of the Abraham/Lot sequence of events, for example, is an abbreviated account (merely four verses long; Gen 12:5; 13:6, llb, 12a; 19:29). When separated from the JE materials (12:4, 6-20; 13:1-11a, 12b-18; 18:1-33; 19:1-38) these four verses flow comfortably as a unit, a summary version of the longer JE narrative. The redactor, patently, has segmented this unit and distributed the pieces over eight chapters of Genesis in thematically appropriate junctures. The result of this segmentation and distribution design was that the redactor was able to retain this Priestly material without contradicting the narrative sequence of events in the JE texts. The same redactional process seems to have been in operation in the handling of the Jacob/Esau materials and of the accounts of the migration and settlement of the Israelites in Egypt. In each of these cases we have a short Priestly narrative, complete or nearly so in itself, segmented and distributed through a larger body of narrative material at thematically satisfactory junctures.¹⁰ In all three cases, again, the design before us is an editorial mechanism, demonstrably a response to the mechanical requirements of this redactor's unique enterprise.

If we focus upon smaller pericopes in a more specific way, the case becomes even clearer. In the account of the Patriarchal migration from Mesopotamia, for example, we have both a Priestly and a J account of the event. The Priestly account portrays the migration in two stages: namely, Terah brings the family from Ur to Haran; Abram brings the family from Haran to Canaan. The J material contains only the command of God to Abram to leave his birthplace, followed by the report that Abram did as God had commanded him. (P: Gen 11:31, 12:4b, 5; J: 12:1-a) The tradent who received these two texts did not choose to set the P text before the J, nor the J before the P, nor to eliminate one or the other. He rather chose to combine them by having the J narrative intersect the two stages of the Priestly record. Thus in our Torah we read that Terah brings the family to Haran, then Yhwh commands Abram lēk lekā, then Abram brings the family to Canaan. This arrangement is mechanically mandated. The Priestly account of the Terah-led migration (with Terah "taking" the family) had to precede the J divine command to Abram to migrate. The J divine command to Abram to migrate had to precede the Priestly account of the Abram-led migration (with Abram "taking" the family). One may object that the present arrangement still has a structural problem in that as it now stands Abram is being told (12:1) to leave his birthplace (mwldtk), but his birthplace is back in Ur, and he is already in Haran! Indeed, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban raise this very question and propose the most complex models of migration to reconcile the facts. Such a problem, however, is a constant, for if the tradent had chosen to set the J narrative wholly before that of P, the problem of "Leave your birthplace" would have been solved, but a problem of "Leave your father's house (mbyt 'byk)" would then be born, because Abram's being taken by Terah would then look even clumsier than we observed earlier.¹¹ To have set the J version wholly after that of P would be less credible still, for then Abram would already have left home prior to the divine command to lēk lekā. In short, the redactional design of our united text is based on factors of the mechanics of the literary construction.

The redaction of the Abrahamic covenant traditions likewise reflects decisions grounded in the mechanics of literary combination. In this case the redactor placed the J version (Genesis 15) before that of P (Genesis 17) and separated the two by placing the J and P accounts of Hagar and the birth of Ishmael between them. The arrangement reflects the requirements of the received texts. In the J tradition, the Abrahamic covenant precedes the birth of Ishmael; and the wording of the J text holds the redactor to maintaining the integrity of this tradition, for in the text Abraham remarks that he is childless (hōlēk 'arîrî; 15:2). Priestly tradition, however, specifically develops the notion that Ishmael is already born prior to the inception of the hereditary covenant, but God rejects Abraham's appeal for Ishmael as covenantal heir and announces the forth-coming birth of Isaac (17:18f). Thus this text, too, holds the redactor to its integrity. The result: the Torah as we have it.

The account of the divine acquaintance and commission to Moses is a third example of this redactional activity. The J charge to Moses, set at the burning bush, includes the divine assurance that when Moses goes to the people in Egypt they will listen to him (Exod 3:18). Exodus 4 then concludes with the notation that the people do listen (4:31). In the Priestly version of the commission (which does not identify the place in which it occurs) Yhwh sends Moses to the people with the announcement of imminent rescue, and the text specifically notes: "But they did not listen …" (6:9). The Priestly tradent, thus confronted with a contradictive doublet, introduced the Priestly text of the charge to Moses following the J account of Moses' second meeting with the leaders of the people. In the tradent's design, as it now stands, God charges Moses in Midian, Moses goes to the people in Egypt and announces the coming liberation, the people listen, Moses' first exchange with Pharaoh results in increased burdens upon the people, the leaders of the people express their anger to Moses—then, following this second, unsatisfactory encounter with the people, comes the Priestly text: God charges Moses to go to the people with an announcement of liberation, and the people do not listen.

Through these several cases, the method of the redactor begins to be apparent, as follows: he apparently tried to retain as much of the received material as possible, this balanced against the editorial considerations of producing a narrative which, for him, had sufficient unity and sense. He was not bound to any one fixed design, but rather he might place two complete narratives side by side, or intersect one with the other, or relocate one or the other, or use segmentation and thematic combination or distribution. Finally, he united the whole within two editorial frameworks, themselves derived from received texts, as Frank Cross has described.¹² Cross identified the first of these as the 'ēlleh tôledōt series of headings, a genealogical framework derived from a "tôledōt Book," which provided a continuity for the collected narrative materials in the book of Genesis. The second such framework was the "Wilderness Stations" series of headings, an itinerary framework derived from the Numbers 33 list of Israel's movements during the forty years' wilderness journey, which provided a continuity for the narrative and legal materials from Exodus 12 through the arrival of Israel at the Plains of Moab in the Book of Numbers.

In all of the material which I have noted here, mechanical considerations are a sufficient explanation of the redactional design. In several of the cases, mechanical considerations are a necessary explanation. Still we must be hesitant to pronounce the redactor's task to be wholly grounded in editorial mechanics.

Where this is a sufficient explanation, we must be open to the possibility of theological or ideological redactional motives which are no less sufficient explanations. And even in those cases in which mechanical considerations are so patent as to compel us to acknowledge their determinism of the redactor's decisions in these pericopes, this is not to say that the redactor was an unthinking creature who was not sensitive to the literary implications—theological or others—of his designs. I therefore seek evidence of the presence of a theological consciousness on the part of the Priestly tradent who redacted the Torah.

One narrative in particular points to the existence of such a theological consciousness, namely, the plagues narrative of the Book of Exodus. Brevard Childs, Moshe Greenberg, and Ziony Zevit have observed that in the plagues traditions J and P do not stand in tension but are bound together to form a richer narrative.¹³ The plagues traditions of Exodus form one of the most complex constructions of Priestly and JE composition in the Torah. Separated from one another, neither JE nor the Priestly material flows comfortably. As Cross has pointed out, it is hardly possible to picture the present shape of the section as the basically mechanical juxtaposition of corresponding blocks of two narratives by a redactor."¹⁴ Upon examination one finds that this construction is a special design of the tradent who produced the unified Priestly work. In the plagues narrative one may uncover an editorial framework which, like the tôledōt and Stations frameworks which respectively precede and follow it, gives shape to the materials which it encloses, thus accounting for what is otherwise a thirteen-chapter gap between the two structures which Cross identified. Just as the tôledōt and Stations frameworks are based on received texts which the tradent had at his disposal, so the framework of the plagues section is derivative from a received text, namely, the Priestly account of Moses and Pharaoh. In this account, Yhwh informs Moses prior to the latter's first meeting with Pharaoh that "I shall harden Pharaoh's heart … and he will not listen to you" (Exod 7:3f). The realization of this prediction is then noted several times in the account of Moses and Pharaoh which follows. Using the verbs qšh and hzq for "to harden," this is the Priestly alternative to the JE account, which regularly uses the verb kābēd for the hardening of Pharoah's heart. The latter is consistent with a regular play upon the term k b d in the JE account. Moses is … (literally, "hard of tongue and hard of mouth"), while Pharaoh is … ("hard of heart"). After his first meeting with Moses, Pharaoh declares, … ("let the work be hard"; 5:9). Moses predicts … ("hard pestilence"; 9:3). There falls … ("hard hail"; 9:24).

The difference between the JE and Priestly portrayals of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, though, is more than one of terminology. The JE account is a confrontation in which the personality of Pharaoh, his strengths and his weaknesses, figures integrally in the dynamic. Pharaoh is a thinking, arguing, deciding character. It is Pharaoh himself who makes his heart hard. Pharaoh several times agrees to liberate the people if only the current plague will cease, but upon seeing respite hardens his heart. He bargains with Moses several times over the terms of the liberation. The focus is upon his (Pharaoh's) decision. At the burning bush, God informs Moses: "I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go …" (Exod 3:19), claiming only precognition of Pharaoh's will, not divine determination. Moses continually speaks to Pharaoh in a manner which suggests volition on the king's part: "How long will you refuse … ?" (7:27; 8:17; 9:2, 17f.; 10:3f.); and God himself says to Moses: "The heart of Pharaoh is hard, he refuses to send forth the people" (7:14), suggesting only knowledge of the condition of Pharaoh's will, not control. Only once does the text associate the power of God with the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. In Exod 10:1, after five plagues have already occurred in the JE narrative, Yhwh tells Moses: "I have hardened his heart.…" So anomalous is this statement compared to all that which precedes it and follows it in the JE plagues account that it is widely held among scholars that this verse and the one following must be a secondary insertion. Even if we do not call for a gloss here, though, we must at minimum see this passage as a surprising turn from the rest of the text, never developed further by the author, albeit perhaps intentionally.

The Priestly story of the plagues, however, carries this notion to divine control of Pharaoh's will full-blown. As we have already observed, in the Priestly version God informs Moses at the outset that he will harden Pharaoh's heart. In P, further, Pharaoh has no dialogue; he makes no promises of liberation and no reversals. Whereas in JE it is apparently the respite from plagues itself that makes Pharaoh harden his heart, no such action appears in P, where the development is rather a fast crescendo: in the plagues of blood and frogs the Egyptian magicians duplicate the wonders; in the plague of lice the magicians fail to duplicate it, and they say, "it is the finger of God"; in the plague of boils, the magicians are themselves afflicted. But the developing divine victory, from which no respite is mentioned, does not turn Pharaoh's thinking around, because Yhwh has predetermined to harden Pharaoh's heart.

Examination of each of the appearances of this notation clarifies for us the redactional design which the Priestly tradent constructed to house these materials.

The episode of Aaron's rod becoming a snake (P) concludes with the prediction-fulfilling Priestly notation, "And the heart of Pharaoh was hard (wyhzq), and he did not listen to them, as Yhwh had said" (7:13). The description of the blood plague (P and JE combined) concludes identically (7:22). The description of the plague of frogs (P and JE combined) ends with the JE notation that Pharoah hardened (hkbd) his heart (8:11), but attached to this JE statement is the Priestly remainder:" … and he did not listen to them, as Yhwh had said." The plagues of lice and boils (both wholly P) conclude with the full Priestly statement (8:15; 9:12). The plagues of flies and pestilence (both wholly JE) each conclude with the full JE statement: "And Pharaoh hardened (wkybd) his heart, and he did not send forth the people" (8:28; 9:7). Thus the plague accounts which are wholly P conclude with the P notation, those which are wholly JE conclude with the JE notation, and those which are combined conclude with the P notation or with a combined notation. This unsurprising picture changes, however, in the remaining plagues. The plague of hail is entirely a JE composition, yet it concludes with a mixed notation in which the Priestly elements predominate, thus: "And the heart of Pharaoh was hard (wyhzq), and he did not send forth the children of Israel, as Yhwh had said" (9:35). A Priestly statement has somehow come to summarize a JE pericope.¹⁵ The lengthy narrative which follows, climaxing in the plague of locusts, likewise is wholly JE, but concludes: "And Yhwh hardened (wyhzq) the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not send forth the people" (10:20). The account of the plague of darkness follows; it, too, is entirely a JE composition, yet it concludes similarly to the two preceding accounts (10:27). There follows a JE portrayal of the last dialogue of Moses and Pharaoh, at the end of which stands a Priestly conclusion to the entire sequence of Moses/Pharaoh encounters, thus:

And Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, and Yhwh hardened (wyhzq) the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not send forth the children of Israel from his land. (11:10)

The presence of Priestly conclusions upon JE narratives, fulfilling the prediction which is made in a Priestly introduction, and arriving finally at a Priestly summation, indicates that we have in the Exodus account of Moses and Pharaoh portions of two received texts, one P and one JE, which have been combined by the Priestly tradent in a framework which he modeled upon the P version. A final indicator that this is the case is the presence of the Priestly formulation of the hardening-of-the-heart phrase in the midst of the account of God's initial instructions to Moses (4:21b). The context is somewhat awkward as it stands (4:21-23) and apparently reflects the tradent's unifying work. Indeed, the specific combination of phrases in this verse (4:21b) viz., that God will harden (hzq) Pharaoh's heart and that Pharaoh will not send forth the people, otherwise occurs only in the four passages which we last observed.

The effect of this redactional design was to cause the Priestly notion of divine control of the chain of events to dominate the entire combined narrative. With the Priestly predictions that God would harden Pharaoh's heart now located at the beginning of the narrative, not only did the subsequent Priestly notations of this hardening portray fulfillment of this divine intention; now the JE expressions of hardening fell into this rubric as well. Every JE notation that Pharaoh hardened his heart now appeared to be the fulfillment of the original prediction, with the invisible power of Yhwh controlling Pharaoh's action. The JE picture of a confrontation between Pharaoh and the power of God in which the divine might proves victorious was now a part of a larger scheme in which the deity controls both sides of the dynamic, both Moses' challenge and Pharaoh's response.

Nothing of the redactional design which we have observed in the plagues narrative is critical to the mechanics of the combination of the texts. If we remove the references to God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart which I have identified as redactional additions, the narrative still flows continuously and sensibly. In this case the Priestly tradent has conceived a literary structure based on considerations other than purely mechanical demands. He has not been governed by the character of the received texts to the extent that he was in the case of the Flood texts or the Abrahamic covenant texts. He has, rather, increased his share of the literary partnership between himself and the authors of his received texts. He has favored and developed a particular theological notion, he has imposed it upon the whole, and thus he has produced a united narrative which, like the united creation accounts, is more than the sum of its components. Even as God controls both sides of the confrontation, owing to the Priestly text and the derivative framework, it is still the thinking, struggling Pharaoh of the JE texts who is thus controlled. The combined portrayal thus magnifies the power of the God of Israel, who now exercises supreme determinism over a more worthy opponent. And this picture is not the chance by-product of mechanical editing. The nature of the design rather points to a theological consciousness on the part of the designer.

Thus, in addition to the retention of received materials and the fashioning of unified, sensible constructions, another factor enters the formula of the tradent's modus operandi, namely, the tradent's own theological sensitivities.

In any given pericope, these factors may stand in different balance. The theological considerations may play a significant part in the tradent's conception of the redactional design, or mechanical considerations may be determinative. Our task now is to analyze each narrative, independently and in context of the whole, to weigh with more particularity the balance of factors which motivated the tradent's design in each case: what did he perceive to be contradiction? Which contradictions were to him tolerable, and which did he perceive to require resolution? Ultimately, what was the nature and the extent of the Priestly tradent's contribution to the creation of the Torah? Even these early researches point to the likelihood that his contribution was no less significant and no less creative than that of the authors who, knowingly or not, bequeathed their work into his care.

Notes

¹ "Partly in consequence of a common harking back to a fully developed oral narrative tradition, and partly in consequence of mutual literary dependence, the course of history was narrated so much the same in all the sources that even their combination with one another could change nothing essential in this regard." Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972), 250; German edition, Überliefe-rungsgeschichte des Pentateuch (1948).

² I use the term tradent to denote one who is both editor and writer, one whose handling of received texts involves both arrangement and elaboration. I have elsewhere described his task and identified the texts which are to be ascribed to him: R. E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (Harvard Semitic Monographs 22, Chico, Calif., 1981). Following F. M. Cross, I identify him as Priestly and refer to his final product (which includes at least the Tetrateuch, and possibly Deuteronomy as well) as the Priestly work.

³ Noth, History, 251.

⁴ E.g., Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, I (New York, 1962), 148f. (German edition, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 1957); E. A. Speiser, Genesis: The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York, 1964), xxvff.

⁵ Speiser, Genesis, 18f.

⁶ The second element of the threefold Priestly blessing, Num 6:25, is the lone possible exception to the absence of the root hnn, but this passage may be Exilic, i.e., the addition of the tradent himself, and in any event is almost certainly the insertion of an actual formal cultic ceremony, not narrative composition.

⁷ The mention of hesed in the Decalogue is common to the Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 versions and is clearly related to the Exodus 34 formula. It is therefore not original to P.

⁸Cult and Conscience (Leiden, 1976), 121ff.

⁹ If P were Exilic, the absence of any reference to repentance or to divine mercy would be strange indeed.

¹⁰ The Priestly Jacob/Esau account: Gen 26:34f.; 27:46; 281-9. The Priestly migration account: Gen 37:1; 41:45b, 46a; 46:6, 7; 47:27b.

¹¹ The objection is questionable in any event since the term mwldtk has a broader range of meaning than merely "birthplace." See, e.g., Esth 2:10, and S. Talmon's treatment in "The Textual Study of the Bible—A New Outlook," in F. M. Cross and S. Talmon, eds., Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975), 360.

¹²Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973). 301-317.

¹³ Childs, The Book of Exodus (Philadelphia, 1974), 155; Zevit, "The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus," JQR 66 (1976); 199; Greenberg, "The Redaction of the Plague Narrative in Exodus," Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright, ed., H. Goedicke (Baltimore, 1971), 243-252.

¹⁴ Cross, Canaanite Myth, 318.

¹⁵ The distinction between hzq and kbd is consistently confirmed in the LXX. Note also the doublet of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart in 9:34 (kbd) and again in 9:35 (hzq). Hzq lb, further, continues as a key term in P through the Sea episode, Exod 14:4, 8 (cf. v 5, JE), 17.