THREAD: What’s a Source for the Goose...

SUB-TITLE: The Flood Narrative.

In source critical circles, the text of Genesis 6–9 is typically seen as an amalgamation of two independent flood narratives,...

...one composed by a Priestly author and the other by a non-Priestly author (so Wellhausen 1899, Skinner 1910, Gunkel 1917, Von Rad 1961, Westermann 1974, Friedman 2003).

A snippet of the way in which the final product is thought to have been put together is shown above.

Different scholars have proposed more or less intricate variations on the above theme,

but all of them are predicated on the same basic premise:

the author of Gen. 6–9’s narrative wove together two independent narratives,...

...which left ‘wrinkles’ in his composition (e.g., multiple accounts of the same incident, narrative discontinuity, etc.),

and if we can identify these wrinkles, then we can reconstruct our redactor’s sources.

Or at least so the theory goes.

Such theories, however, disappoint in at least two key respects.

First, they don’t remove the (perceived) oddities they claim to be able to remove.

Or, to put the point another way, if the (allegedly) combined narrative of Gen. 6–9 contains oddities, then so too do its (alleged) sources.

By way of illustration, consider again the left hand (Priestly) side of our ‘snippet’ above,...

...and consider it in light of 6.9–22 (also thought to be Priestly).

In 6.9–22, Noah does everything God requires of him—i.e., he builds the ark, gathers up the animals, and (presumably) enters the ark—,

at which point the flood comes (7.6), as one would expect.

After that, however, things start to get messy.

The animals again come to Noah (7.8ff.).

And, after a further seven days, another flood takes place (7.11),

at which point Noah and the animals enter the ark for a third time (7.13).

Our Priestly source doesn’t, therefore, read very smoothly (as some define smoothness).

Or, to put the point another way, the repetition present in the (allegedly) amalgamated flood narrative is still present in at least one of its (alleged) sources.

In response, a source critic might simply say we need to read our Priestly source more sympathetically,

i.e., as a narrative which consists of occasional ‘summary statements’, later filled out with additional detail.

And he’d be right.

Narratives *should* be read sympathetically.

But then why not simply read Genesis 6–9’s narrative sympathetically in the first place and do away with the (felt) need to decompose it?

Second, not only does the classic source critical treatment of Gen. 6–9 fail to remove the oddities it claims to identify; it creates new oddities where none previously existed.

Recall the flow of 7.1–9:

As a single narrative, the text of 7.1–9 reads naturally enough:

Noah is commanded to enter the ark along with pairs of all the clean and unclean animals (7.1–5),

and, in 7.7–9, he does.

As individual sources, however, both our Priestly or Non-Priestly seem conspicuously incomplete.

In non-P, the animals are never said to enter the ark,

and, in P, before Noah is said to enter the ark in response to 7.1’s command (cp. 7.8), the animals are said to enter ‘along with him’ (in response to 7.2’s command).

In other words, our sources contain holes which are filled by their counterparts,

which is not what we’d expect to observe if our alleged sources were in fact independent sources,

yet it is exactly what we’d expect to observe if our alleged sources were not sources but were culled from a single narrative.

Our sources also embody other oddities.

Consider, for instance, some unusual features of our non-Priestly source.

YHWH’s mention of ‘the ark’ arrives out of the blue. In 7.1, YHWH tells Noah to ‘enter the ark’ (בֹּא אל התבה) (where ‘ark’ is accompanied by the article), yet no ‘ark’ has previously been mentioned in our non-Priestly source.

In 7.7, Noah is said to enter the ark ‘because of (alt. before the presence of) the floodwaters’ (מפני מי המבול), yet, like the ark, the floodwaters haven’t previously been mentioned in our non-Priestly source.

And 8.6 qualifies its reference to ‘the ark’ with the clause ‘which Noah had made’, yet Noah is only said to build the ark in our Priestly source (6.22).

None of these oddities are intrinsic to our text; they are a product of the source critical method.

Or, to put the point another way, none of the verses cited above read awkwardly in the context of Gen. 6–9;

they only read awkwardly in the context of our reconstructed non-Priestly source,

which means our non-Priestly source can’t reasonably be said to read like a source—or at least not an independent one.

And its Priestly counterpart suffers from similar problems (note 4 below).

In response, a source critic might say our redactor has removed certain elements of his sources in order to avoid repetition,

which would explain why our reconstructed sources don’t read like independent sources.

But such a critic would then need to explain why our redactor hasn’t removed repetition in a consistent manner—that is to say, he’d need to explain why our redactor has only avoided *certain* instances of repetition—,

not to mention redefine the objective of his endeavour,

since if Genesis 6–9’s sources haven’t simply been woven together but have also been substantially adapted, then in what sense are they *identifiable* sources?

Other questions also need to be asked of the classic source critical analysis of Genesis 6–9. For instance,

Why is the ark’s construction absent from our non-Priestly source, and why is no-one ever said to leave the ark? (Ostensibly, Noah builds an altar to YHWH while he is still on board: 8.20.)

Why is the distinction between clean and unclean animals (7.2) first raised in our non-Priestly source (rather than our Priestly source)?

And why, in our Priestly source, is a raven—i.e., an unclean bird—the first creature to be released from the ark to enjoy a newly-purged post-flood world (8.7)?

Perhaps, in response, a source critic could simply say our sources lacks coherence.

But on what basis can a narrative be decomposed into individual sources if those sources are allowed to be incoherent?

And if incoherence (as some define incoherence) isn’t allowed in Genesis 6–9, then why should it be allowed in Genesis 6–9’s sources?

A HISTORICAL ISSUE

Gordon Wenham has raised a different (though equally important) issue with the classical source critical analysis of Genesis 6–9, which is historical in nature.

If we went back in time to the 19th century and asked a source critic what he’d expect a pre-Pentateuchal account of the flood to look like, he’d no doubt tell us he’d expect it to look like one of the sources behind Genesis 6–9.

Yet our account of ‘the deluge’ in the Gilgamesh epic is just such an account of the flood,

and it has far more in common with Genesis 6–9 as we have it in the MT today than it does with either of Genesis 6–9’s (reconstructed) sources,

as is illustrated in Joshua Berman’s summary of Wenham’s work below:

Perhaps in response to the issues raised above a source critic might claim the flood narrative is an easy target.

But the source critical analysis of the flood narrative has been celebrated as a major accomplishment and hence as justification of its method of analysis.

And, in response to a critique of various source critical analyses of Deuteronomy 34, David Carr writes,

‘The validity of the source-critical approach would be better explored by the interrogation of a text like the flood narrative,…which has been and remains foundational for past and present source criticism of the Pentateuch’,

which is what I’ve sought to do here.

Of course, my aim in the present thread isn’t to suggest everything in Scripture is straightforward to account for on a more traditional approach to Scripture (since it isn’t),

nor is it to imply the text of Scripture doesn’t require careful consideration (since it does).

It’s simply to say I’ve yet to see the source critical paradigm illuminate and explain otherwise obscure and inexplicable texts of Scripture,

while I’ve found more traditional approaches to be highly fruitful.

For instance:

The story of Balaam was once celebrated as a poster child for the source critical method (e.g., in Eißfeldt 1939), yet it has now fallen out of favour,

and its use of divine names can (I claim) be explained/analysed more cogently as part of the narrator’s artfulness: https://twitter.com/JamesBejon/status/1326641193787199488

The chronology of Genesis 11.27–12.5 is often explained as a ‘seam’ between two sources, yet it is part of a deliberate and consistently-employed feature of the text: https://twitter.com/JamesBejon/status/1273038793193512961

And, as @DrPJWilliams has argued, the independent sources which are thought to lie behind Genesis 1–3 aren’t as independent as they’re often assumed to be: https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1055596001648615425

New paradigms generally rise to prominence because of the awkward data they purport to explain.

They often *fall* from prominence, Kuhn says, when people start to realise such data could have been explained equally well on the old (abandoned) paradigm.

If Kuhn is right, then it is important for those who believe in the value of older and more traditional methods of exegesis to demonstrate their elegance, explanatory power, and fruitfulness.

THE END.