Class notes on session 3

Class notes for Session 3 – Study unit 11-15.

The Text to the Old Testament
Literary approaches to Old Testament Study
Pondering the Pentateuch: The search for a new Paradigm
The historiography of the Old Testament
Early Israel in recent Biblical Scholarship

Study Unit 11: The text to the Old Testament: Wolters.
Major manuscripts:
Septuagint
Targums
Peshitta
Vulgate

The dead sea Scrolls:
Oldest manuscripts
LXX
Samaritan Pentateuch
Proto-Masoretic Text NNB!
Different theories:
1. Albright – Local text
a. LXX – Egypt
b. Samaritan Pentateuch – Palestine
c. Masoretic text – Babylon.

2. Talmon – Textual diversity
a. LXX – Christian
b. Samaritan Pentateuch – Samaritans
c. Masoretic Text – Rabinnical Judaism
3. Tov – Ads Qumran orthography, and unaligned with those above.
4. Ulrich – not textual groups – Different stages in canon development of texts.

Ancient versions and Samaritan Pentateuch:
1. LXX – Greater conformity with MT
2. Minor Greek versions – Theodotion Symmachus, Aquila
3. Targums
4. Peshitta
5. Vulgate
6. Samaritan Pentateuch.
Priviledged status of Proto-Masoretic text.

AIMS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITISISM:
1. Restore the original composition
2. Restore the final text
3. Restore the earliest attested text
4. Restore accepted texts
5. Reconstruct final texts (plural).

3 LARGE SCALE PROJECTS:
Hebrew University Bible Project
Preliminary and Interim report on the Hebrew and Old Testament Text project
UBS – New edition of BH

Theological issues:
- Barthelemy and inspiration.

Study unit 12: Literary approaches to Old Testament Study. LONGMAN III

Rebirth of Literary approach:
- Alter study: Art of Biblical Narrative.
- Focus on text created a joint platform for discussion
Ancient Precusors
- Stephen Prickett, James Kugel.
- Goes back to accusing Jerome, Enlightenment for derailing scholarship.

Conceptual map of Literary approaches:
1. Structuralism and Semiotics – Barr, De Saussure
2. Reader Response approach
3. Deconstruction – David and Goliath - Derrida
4. Contemporary post-structuralist approaches
New Historisism
New Literary Critisism and intertextuality
Bach’s Sotah Female portrayal/betrayal in Gen 12:1-3

Into the future:
1. Scholars continuing to “bracket” historical data.
2. 3 approaches to narrative:
a. Narrative as convergence of textual tradition
b. Narrative as being “undecidable”,- deconstruction
c. Narrative criticism – recover ancient literary conventions.

Session 3 Pondering the Pentateuch – WENHAM
1. Introduction
a. Wellhausen JDEP
b. Alt – Going back to Patriarchal times
c. Von Rad, Noth - Grundlage
d. Albright – parallels with second Millenium laws – dates Pentateuch very early
e. Wybray p 130– Genesis 37-50 as a unit – METHODS STAYED THE SAME, understand repetition differently.
f. Von Seters – Older dating of Patriarchal narratives.
g. Rentorff – Back to form – critical approach – away from JDEP
h. Berge
i. Boorer
j. Knohl
k. Mconville
l. Rendsburg.


Unit 14 Historiography of the Old Testament.

MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS IN HISTORIOGRAPHY:

1. An increase in religious liberalism that was “less dogmatic in its theological orientation, more progressive in its relationship to contemporary culture and thought, and more humanistic in its perspectives than previous generations”;
2. advances in “general historiography,” including the development of “a positivistic approach to history, which not only attempted but also believed it was possible to reconstruct past history ‘as it had actually happened”;
3. the decipherment of the languages of Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors in Egypt and Mesopotamia;
4. a new level of activity and competence in the historical geography of the Near East; and
5. the gradual rise to dominance of the Pentateuchal documentary hypothesis, along with the belief that the “character, content, and date of the individual documents were . . . of great significance in understanding the religious development of Israelite and Judaean life and in evaluating the historical reliability of the documentary materials.”

Each of these nineteenth-century developments has made itself felt in twentieth-century biblical scholarship, but none has escaped challenge or failed to precipitate new debate:
1. nineteenth-century-style liberalism has been challenged by neoorthodoxy and neoevangelicalism: these movements, while not wishing to ignore the concerns of contemporary culture, have stressed the primacy of a theocentric over a merely humanistic perspective on life’s ultimate issues;
2. positivistic history has come under considerable strain through advances in general hermeneutics and a greater awareness of the distinction between “brute facts” of the past, which are of course no longer subject to observation, and “historical facts” as they are perceived in the present by means of probability judgments based on the available evidence;
3. the decipherment of, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Akkadian cuneiform has opened up a whole new world of comparative literary studies and with this advance has raised significant questions as to the proper uses and potential abuses of comparative material in the study of the Bible;
4. the greatly increased archaeological and geographical exploration of the “lands of the Bible” has raised as many questions as it has answered, not least as regards the inten-elatioriship of textual and artifactual evidence in the reconstruction of Israel’s history; and finally,
5. the documentary hypothesis, promoted most effectively in the nineteenth century by J. Wellhausen, has been rigorously challenged in the twentieth, as have other literary theories and, indeed, the whole general approach of Wellhausen and his followers).

Unit 15 Early Israel in Recent Biblical Scholarship.

Summary of the models:
A. Conquest from outside
1. Conquest model – Joshua straightforward campaign, blitzkrieg.
2. Peaceful infiltration model – Israel as nomads, tension with farmers.
B. Conquest from inside
1. Revolt models – Peasant revolt from inside – Mendendall, Gottwald.
2. Other theories of Israel as indigenous.
a. Dever – Proto-Israelites, highlands and lowlands.
b. Finkelstein – Pastoral nomadic model – houses, silos, compounds, ascribes everything to socio-economic change.
c. Lemche – Complete a-historical approach – no such place as “Canaan”.
d. Thompson – Period of drought responsible for nomadic activity.
e. Davies – historic Israel, biblical Israel and ancient Israel.

Factors that influenced the models.
A. Philosophy of history.
B. Archaeology
a. Rural studies
b. Ethnicity
C. Extra-Biblical texts.
a. Merenptah Stela
b. Amarna tablets
D. Tribal organisation
a. Definition of household, tribe.
E. Role of the book Joshua. (p. 201)
a. Joshua and Judges does not correspond in terms of historical accuracy.
1. Based on surface reading of Joshua
2. Based on “strong or hard” objectivism in archaeology.
Suggestions for a more comprehensive model.
1. Recognise the complexity of the picture that Joshua paints.
2. Recognise the complexity of the picture that Archaeology paints.
3. Use comparative literary analysis of Synchronic types to uncover the ways in which the ancient Near Eastern Peoples wrote their accounts.

Cannot ignore Biblical, extra Biblical or Archaeology in interpretation.