Though Bible scholars live in an age of unprecedented discovery, they stand in the shadow of nineteenth-century higher criticism. There was a time when the label “conservative” meant the rejection of that higher criticism, but now the conservative mind often latches onto higher criticism even though archaeology has rendered it untenable. My conservative critics, some of whom are on the faculties of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish seminaries, find fault not because my writings run counter to any particular religious tenet, but because I am not devoted to JEDP: the badge of interconfessional academic respectability.
INTELLECTUAL COMMITMENT
All of my Bible professors were conservative higher critics with a positive appreciation—and in some instances, with a profound knowledge—of the archaeological discoveries bearing on the Bible. I was trained simultaneously in higher criticism and biblical archaeology without at first realizing that the two points of view were mutually exclusive. By this I mean that a commitment to any hypothetical source-structure like JEDP is out of keeping with what I consider the only tenable position for a critical scholar: to go wherever the evidence leads him.
When I speak of a “commitment” to JEDP, I mean it in the deepest sense of the word. I have heard professors of Old Testament refer to the integrity of JEDP as their “conviction.” They are willing to countenance modifications in detail. They permit you to subdivide (D1, D2, D3, and so forth) or combine (JE) or add a new document designated by another capital letter; but they will not tolerate any questioning of the basic JEDP structure. I am at a loss to explain this kind of “conviction” on any grounds other than intellectual laziness or inability to reappraise.
The turning point in my own thinking came after (and in large measure because of) a four-year hiatus in my academic career during World War II. Coming out of the army and back into teaching, I offered a course on the Gilgamesh Epic. In the eleventh tablet I could not help noting that the Babylonian account of the construction of the Ark contains the specifications in detail much like the Hebrew account of Noah’s Ark. At the same time, I recalled that the Genesis description is ascribed to P of Second Temple date, because facts and figures such as those pertaining to the Ark are characteristic of the hypothetical Priestly author. What occurred to me was that if the Genesis account of the Ark belonged to P on such grounds, the Gilgamesh Epic account of the Ark belonged to P on the same grounds—which is absurd. The pre-Abrahamic Genesis traditions (such as the Deluge) are not late P products; they are essentially pre-Mosaic and it is not easy to single out even details that are late. This has been indicated by Sumero-Akkadian tablets for a long time; it is now crystal-clear from the Ugaritic texts, where whole literary themes as well as specific phrases are now in our possession on pre-Mosaic tablets, as well as in our canonical Bible. Ezekiel (14:13–19) thus refers to an ancient Daniel: a model of virtue who emerged together with his progeny from a major disaster. We now have the Ugaritic Epic of this Daniel on tablets copied in the fourteenth century B.C., when the story was already old. Like many another psalm ascribed to David, psalm 68, far from being late, is full of pre-Davidic expressions some of which were not even understood before the discovery of the Ugaritic poems. In verse 7, for example, kosharot means “songstresses” as in Ugaritic so that we are to translate “He brings out prisoners with the songstresses,” meaning that when God rescues us from trouble, he brings us joy as well as relief. He frees the prisoner not into a cold world but into one of joyous song. The Kosharot were just as much a part of the classical Canaanite heritage of the Hebrews as the Muses are a part of our classical Greek heritage.
The question the biblical scholar now asks is not “How much post-Mosaic (or post-Exilic) is this or that?” but rather “How much pre-Mosaic (or pre-Abrahamic)?”
The urge to chop the Bible (and other ancient writings) up into sources is often due to the false assumption that a different style must mean a different author.
AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE
When the subject matter is the same, different styles do ordinarily indicate different authorship. But any one author will employ different styles for different types of subject matter. A lawyer uses different styles depending on whether he is preparing a brief, or writing a letter to his mother. A clergyman does not use the same style in making a benediction and in talking to his children at the breakfast table. No physician writes in prescription style except on prescription blanks. Accordingly the technical style of Genesis in describing the Ark is no more an indication of different authorship from the surrounding narrative than a naval architect’s style in describing the specifications of a ship makes him a different author from the same architect writing a love letter to his fiancée.
Minds that are incapable of grasping whole entities are tempted to fractionalize the whole into smaller units. The Book of Job, for all its difficulties, is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts after the critics have hacked it to bits. Ancient Near East literature makes it abundantly clear that Job as it stands is a consciously constructed single composition. The kind of criticism that detaches the prose prologue and epilogue from the poetic dialogues on stylistic grounds (that is, that “prose and poetry don’t mix”) runs counter to ancient Near Eastern rules of composition. From many available illustrations, let us single out Hammurapi’s Code in which the prose laws are framed within a poetic prologue and epilogue, giving the composition what may be called the ABA form. This means that the main body of the composition is enclosed within language of a contrasting style. The structure of Job (“prose-poetry-prose”) exemplifies this ABA scheme. Moreover, the structure of Daniel (“Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew”) also reflects the ABA pattern, and the book should be understood as a whole, consciously composed unit.
No one in his right mind would want to outlaw the study of the component parts of biblical (or any other) books, but a sane approach to scriptural (or and other) literature requires that we take it on its own terms, and not force it into an alien system.
One of the commonest grounds for positing differences of authorship are the repetitions, with variants, in the Bible. But such repetitions are typical of ancient Near East literature: Babylonian, Ugaritic, and even Greek. Moreover, the tastes of the Bible World called for duplication. Joseph and later Pharaoh, each had prophetic dreams in duplicate. In Jonah 4, the Prophet’s chagrin is described at two stages, each accompanied by God’s asking “Are you good and angry?” (vv. 4, 9). Would anyone insist that such duplicates stem from different pens?
One particular type of duplicate is especially interesting because of the extrabiblical collateral material at our disposal. Judges 4 gives the prose and Judges 5 the poetic account of Deborah’s victory. The two accounts confront us with variants. The usual critical position is that the poetic version is old; the prose version later. The assumption of disparity in age or provenance between the two accounts on stylistic grounds is specious. Historic events were sometimes recorded in Egypt simultaneously in prose and poetic versions, with the major differences appropriate to the two literary media. (Sometimes the Egyptians added a third version—in pictures.) In approaching matters such as the date and authorship of Judges 4 and 5, it is more germane to bear in mind the usages of the Bible World than it is to follow in the footsteps of modern analytic scholars who build logical but unrealistic systems.
A FRAGILE CORNERSTONE
One of the fragile cornerstones of the JEDP hypothesis is the notion that the mention of “Jehovah” (actually “Yahweh”) typifies a J document, while “Elohim” typifies an E document. A conflation of J and E sources into JE is supposed to account for the compound name Yahweh-Elohim. All this is admirably logical and for years I never questioned it. But my Ugaritic studies destroyed this kind of logic with relevant facts. At Ugarit, deities often have compound names. One deity is called Qadish-Amrar; another, Ibb-Nikkal. Usually “and” is put between the two parts (Qadish-and-Amrar, Nikkal-and-Ibb, Koshar-and-Hasis, and so forth), but the conjunction can be omitted. Not only biblical but also classical scholars will have to recognize this phenomenon. In Prometheus Bound, Kratos Bia-te “Force-and-Violence” is such a combination. If any further proof were necessary, Herodotus provides it in his history (8:111), where he relates that Themistocles tried to extort money from the Andrians by telling them that he came with two great gods “Persuasion-and-Necessity.” The Andrians refused to pay, and their way of telling him “you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip” was that their gods were unfortunately “Poverty-and-Impotence.” Thus it was a widespread usage to fuse two names into one for designating a god. The most famous is perhaps Amon-Re who became the great universal deity as a result of Egyptian conquest under the eighteenth dynasty. Amon was the ram-headed god of the capital city, Thebes. Re was the old universal Sun god. The fusion of Re’s religious universalism with the political leadership in Amon’s Thebes underlies the double name “Amon-Re.” But Amon-Re is one entity. Scholars can do much to explain the combination of elements in Yahweh-Elohim. Yahweh was a specific divine name, whereas Elohim designated “Deity” in a more general, universal way. The combination Yahweh-Elohim is probably to be explained as “Yahweh = Elohim,” which we may paraphrase as “Yahweh is God.” But when we are told that ‘Yahweh-Elohim is the result of documentary conflation, we cannot accept it any more than we can understand Amon-Re to be the result of combining an “A” document with an “R” document.
THE GENUINE SOURCES
Older documents do underlie much of the Old Testament. Our Book of Proverbs is compiled from collections indicated as “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David” (1:1), “The proverbs of Solomon” (10:1), “These also are sayings of the wise” (24:23), “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied” (25:1), “The words of Agur” (30:1), and “The words of Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him” (31:1). The individual psalms must have existed before our canonical book of 150 Psalms was compiled. Many of the psalms bear titles ascribing them to specific authors. But other biblical books do not have titles heading the text. The scroll of Ruth begins “Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled”; Leviticus opens “And Jehovah called unto Moses”; and so on. Since some biblical books are compilations (like Proverbs and Psalms) and since titles were often omitted (as in Ruth or Leviticus), it follows that certain biblical books can be compilations of earlier sources unidentified by titles.
If JEDP are artificial sources of the Pentateuch, are there any real ones? Yes, and one of them happens to be the book of the Wars of Jehovah cited in Numbers 21:14. Another ancient source used by the authors of both Joshua and Samuel is the book of Jashar, excerpted in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18 ff. The second of these excerpts is the beautiful dirge of David for Saul and Jonathan, which was used for teaching the troops of Judah heroism and skill in the art of war (note, for teaching the sons of Judah bowmanship—in v. 18). There can be little doubt that the book of Jashar was a national epic, commemorating the heroic course of Hebrew history from at least the conquest under Joshua to the foundation of the Davidic dynasty. Like other national epics, including the Iliad and Shah-nameh, the book of Jashar was used for inspiring warriors to live, and if necessary to die, like their illustrious forerunners. If the entire book of Jashar was characterized by the high quality reflected in David’s dirge, we can only hope that future discoveries will restore it to us. It might successfully compete with the Homeric epic as a masterpiece of world literature.
The books of Kings draw on earlier documents, such as, “the book of the acts of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:41); and “the chronicles of the kings of Judah” and “the chronicles of the kings of Israel.” The canonical books of Chronicles cite a host of sources by name. The time is ripe for a fresh investigation of such genuine sources of Scripture, particularly against the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
THE MODERN IDOLS
No two higher critics seem to agree on where J, E, D or P begins or ends. The attempt to state such matters precisely in the Polychrome Bible discredited the use of colors but not the continuance of less precise verbal formulations. The “history” of Israel is still being written on the premise that we can only do so scientifically according to hypothetical documents to which exact dates are blandly assigned. While most critics place P last chronologically, some of the most erudite now insist that P is early, antedating D in any case. Any system (whether P is earlier or later than D in such a system makes no difference) that prevents us from going where the facts may lead is not for me. I prefer to deal with the large array of authentic materials from the Bible World and be unimpeded by any hypothetical system.
There may well be quite a few sources designated but not generally recognized as such in the Bible. Just as an older Deluge story is incorporated in the Gilgamesh Epic, another older variant Flood account has been, I think, excerpted in Genesis. The Hebrew word toledot (literally “generations”) can designate a “narrative” or “story.” In Genesis 6:9 “This is the Narrative of Noah” (literally, “generations of Noah”) may well have conveyed to an ancient Hebrew what a title does to us. The account of nature in Genesis 2:4 ff. is introduced by “This is the Account of the Cosmos” (literally, “the generations of the heavens and the earth”) and might possibly have been intended as a title indicating a biblical source.
Let us keep our eyes open and our minds sharp. Let us make observations and check them against the available facts. But let us not erect vast edifices on shifting sands.
The excavations at Ugarit have revealed a high material and literary culture in Canaan prior to the emergence of the Hebrews. Prose and poetry were already fully developed. The educational system was so advanced that dictionaries in four languages were compiled for the use of scribes, and the individual words were listed in their Ugaritic, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Hurrian equivalents. The beginnings of Israel are rooted in a highly cultural Canaan where the contributions of several talented peoples (including the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and branches of the Indo-Europeans) had converged and blended. The notion that early Israelite religion and society were primitive is completely false. Canaan in the days of the Patriarchs was the hub of a great international culture. The Bible, hailing from such a time and place, cannot be devoid of sources. But let us study them by taking the Bible on its own terms and against its own authentic background.
If there is any expression in the Hebrew language that is charged with meaning for the intellectual person devoted to his biblical heritage, it is simhat torah “the delight in studying Scripture.” I am familiar with this delight and I like to see others have the opportunity of experiencing it. I am distressed to meet ever so many intelligent and serious university students who tell me that their teachers of Bible have killed the subject by harping on the notion that biblical study consists of analyzing the text into JEDP. The unedifying conclusion of all such study is that nothing is authentic. That this type of teaching should go on in our age of discovery when biblical scholarship is so exciting is, so to speak, a perverse miracle.
A professor of Bible in a leading university once asked me to give him the facts on JEDP. I told him essentially what I have written above. He replied: “I am convinced by what you say but I shall go on teaching the old system.” When I asked him why, he answered: “Because what you have told me means I should have to unlearn as well as study afresh and rethink. It is easier to go on with the accepted system of higher criticism for which we have standard textbooks.”
What a happy professor! He refuses to forfeit his place in Eden by tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Cyrus H. Gordon is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Chairman of the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University. He is recognized as a leading Orthodox Jewish scholar. Worldfamous as an archaeologist, lecturer on the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” and authority on the Ugaritic tablets, he formerly was Professor of Assyriology and Egyptology at Dropsie College, Philadelphia. He holds the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Pennsylvania.
