11

RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR RENDTORFF

R.N.Whybray Department of Theology University of Hull HU6 7RX

Students of the Pentateuch have good reason to be grateful to Professor Rendtorff for this study. One of the main reasons for our gratitude is that he has expressed with great clarity something which has long been in the minds of many of us, even if only in the form of a nagging suspicion, after reading von Rads &dquo;The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch&dquo; and Noths A History of Pentateuchal Traditions: that there is a hidden flaw somewhere in the masterly and impressive marshalling of hypotheses in these two works which somehow eludes definition. Sometimes -for example, with regard to Noths knack of leaving the reader in uncertainty either about his views or about the reasons for his views, on certain matters where clarity would seem to be essential, or von Radlq curious failure to define clearly what he meant by the term the Yahwist- the suspicion has grown to doubt whether these two scholars themselves fully realised all the implications of their theories. Rendtorff has confirmed these suspicions and put the situation plainly: much recent study of the Pentateuch, including that of von Rad and Noth, has been continuing -at least to some extent- to use the tools of the Documentary Hypothesis to perform tasks for which they are quite

unsuitable.
Rendtorffs point, as I understand it, is that the recent tendency to look in the Pentateuch for theological intentions is a move in the right direction, but that this pursuit runs entirely counter to the old kind of source criticism. It should be noted, however, that he does not deny the separate existence in the Pentateuch of priestly material or the final reshaping of the material at the latest stage of its composition. His concern is with the pre riestly stages of the process of composition (the so-called JE). But, though presumably he would support those who doubt whether it is possible to distinguish between J and E, his own purpose is much more radical: he is opposed to the

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whole theory of documentary sources

(longitudinal

sections

as

he calls running through the whole work. He seeks to show that the theological interpretation which is clearly present in the pre-priestly portions of Genesis is not carried through into the books which follow, lqhatever were the theological presuppositions of the authors (or editors) of Exodus and Numbers, they of the were not the same as those of the Genesis material. Consequently there is no Yahwist, either in sense or in the sense in which the term is von Rads There is no single theology used by Wellhausen and his school. rather each Pentateuchal all the but through books, running theme (in Noths sense) has been built up with its own theology ; and it is these theologies that we should be looking for. Only with the final priestly stage of the Pentateuch were those themes combined to form the monumental whole which we now have. But why did the final redactor not smooth out the theological roughnesses and inconsistencies of the earlier theologies? Rendtorff does not tell us this. Perhaps he would reply that he was unwilling to suppress or modify what was for him already traditional material, and was content to rely on his own additions to it to carry the weight of his own theological message, so leaving traces of the earlier, more limited theologies for us to find.

them)

author(s)/editor(s)

(equivocal)

Like many before him who have put forward new theories about the Pentateuchal problem, Rendtorff confines himself to Genesis -and indeed to one part of Genesis, chapters 12-36. Obviously it would have been impossible for him to cover more ground in the time allotted to him for his paper at the Edinburgh Congress, and he rightly renards his study of these chapters as simply one example of his approach, pointing to the need to apply his method to the material in the other books. One cannot help wondering, however, whether his suggestion that each theme has received its own distinct theological treatment would, if followed out, produce equally clear results when applied to the other individual themes. The three parts of which Genesis is composed -the Primaeval History, the Patriarchal Narratives, and the Joseph Story- are each even at first sight far more distinct from one another and from the rest of the Pentateuch than is the case with the others. The themes of the Exodus, Wanderings, Settlemert and even Sinai -if ever they were all quite separate bodies of tradition- were so easily amenable to being run together to form an apparently continuous and straightforward narrative that it took the ingenuity of scholars like Noth and von Rad to show that they were in fact originally distinct. It is, however, quite obvious

13

to the merest tyro that there is a break between Genesis and Exoand that the connection between the patriarchs and the events of Exodus is an artificial one. Moreover even within Genesis itself it is quite obvious that the link between the Primaeval History and Abraham is a quite artificial one made out of genealogical lists, and almost as obvious that the Joseph Story is of a different kind from the stories which precede it. That Gen. 12-36 (35) is a collection of material which might well have its own point of view or theology is therefore not difficult to believe, even before Rendtorffs method is applied to it.

dus,

However this may be, with regard to the particular example which Rendtorff has taken to test and illustrate his hypothesis, It is generally held he has undoubtedly made a very strong case. the who written about those have theology of the Yahwist by that the theme of the promises made to the patriarchs which is so prominent in Gen. 12-36 and which binds the various narrative elements of these chapters into a single whole, is a fundamental theme to which the remainder of the Pentateuch corresponds as fulfilment, and which in this way governs the whole of the Yahwists work throughout the Pentateuch. This is generally agreed despite differences of opinion regarding the extent to which the promise theme already existed in the earlier traditions used by the Yahwist, and the extent of the Yahwists own contribution as Rendtorffs demonstration of the author as distinct from editor. total failure to sustain and work out this theological theme in the pre-priestly material in Exodus and Numbers seems therefore +p P-ove that this theological point of view expressed by the Yahwist in Gen. 12-36 does not extend beyond those chapters: that it is confined, in other words, to the theme of the patriarchs. The events of Exodus mark what is in fact the beginning of the fulfilment of the promises, yet the promises themselves are not mentioned after Gen. 36, and the divine giving of the land to Israel is there expressed in a quite different manner. Even the four passages (Exod. 3:6,15,16; 4:5) in which the names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob occur (Rendtorff does not in fact make clear that this is the case) in the earlier material strengthen Rendtorffs argument: here is an attempt to link the patriarche with Moses which fails to make use of, and therefore presumably betrays ignorance of, the promise theme. Rendtorffs other -and, with regard to his main argument, secondary- points about the promises in Gen. 12-36, namely the addition of the element of guidance to the list of elements

14

progeny and blessing), and the arguforms in which the promises are expresvarious the in ment that sed there are signs of a progressive extension of the promise, first made simply to the individual patriarch himself, to include his seed, are theories of considerable interest which Rendtorff, whose earlier studies of these questions must be taken into account, was obviously unable to discuss fully in this If one may refer to them briefly, the first is a challpaper. serious enge to earlier w(,rk on this subject which deserves very consideration and which, if valid, has important theological consequences. With regard to the latter, however, it may perhaps be suggested that in view of the fact that in ancient Israel a man was never conceived of as an individual in isolation from his family, particularly when his good or evil fortune was the question at issue, it is doubtful whether in the formulation of the promises to the patriarchs the addition of the phrase and through your seed to through you or even its substitution for it may be allowed that this is what the latter really constitutes a significant theological change. This is not to deny that Rendtorff may be right in his view that the theological rcwjrking of the patriarchal material was carried out in a series of stages rather than in a single operation; but more evidence for this view would seem to be needed. This does not, however, affect Rendtorffs main argument, which is that the material in Gen. 12-36 cannot have been combined with that in Exodus and Numbers before the final redaction of the Pentateuch; a conclusion which seems both justified and of great significance for the future study of the Pentateuch.

generally recognised (land,

(if

haipened)

Are we at last witnessing the demise of the Documentary Hypothesis? Probably not -it will no doubt once again show its customary resilience; but the evidence against it continues to grow (see for example the strictures most recently in J. van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition). What we really need
is a full and reasoned defence of it which takes into account and answers the criticisms which have been levelled against it in recent years.
now