Parshat Yitro
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if most or all of the readers of this blog are unfamiliar with the name
Umberto Cassuto. He was a Jewish Rabbi and Scholar who lived in the first half of the 20th century and wrote several criticisms on the Documentary Hypothesis. Modern Orthodox Jews today who know a little about biblical criticism will often bring him up as a critic who has shown the incorrectness of the Documentary Hypothesis. While I personally think his arguments are not very compelling, and inferior to those of other critics such as Whybray, I won't be focusing on the correctness or incorrectness of his arguments. Instead I will use one of his arguments to show that if you accept Cassuto's premises, there is no way to argue that the Torah could have been written by
Moshe (Moses).
An Unassuming Contradiction in Genesis
A contradiction that Cassuto mentions several times has to do with the names of the wives of
Esav (Esau). There are two references, the first says (Gen 26:34):
And when Esau was forty years old, he took to wife Judith the daughter
of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite.
And the second section says (Gen 36:2-3):
2 Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the
daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the
daughter of Zibeon the Hivite, 3 and Basemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebaioth
This isn't a huge contradiction by any means. It can be argued away by simply asserting that these people just had different names. This is what Rashi does, for example in his commentary on the chapter 36 verses (my translation):
Adah daughter of Elon: She is Basemath daughter of Elon, and she was called (Basemath) because she lit incenses (Besamim) for idol worship. Oholibamah: She is Judith, he (Esav) nicknamed her Judith to deceive his father into thinking she denied idol worship.
This idea of someone being named something else is a standard occurrence in the
Tanach. Yaakov (Jacob) is the same as
Yisrael (Israel).
Hoshea (Hosea) is renamed as
Yehoshua (Joshua) and so on. Perhaps it's plausible to assume that the same renamings occurred in other places not specifically mentioned.
How Cassuto Deals with Contradictions
Cassuto has two main works that deal with Documentary Hypothesis. The first is a series of eight short lectures which is a broadside assault on the Documentary Hypothesis as he understood it. The second is a more detailed description of the various issues in Genesis. Unfortunately, the second book is only published in Hebrew and Italian, and is thus extremely rare. However, since I'm not interested in disproving Cassuto, and instead am more interested in seeing where Cassuto's actual arguments lead us, this is not too much of an issue here. Everything we need exists in the shorter work
[1]
.
Some of the apparent contradictions of the text, Cassuto supplies explanations for, not dissimilar from traditional rabbinic approaches. However, not so for the contradiction regarding the wives of
Esav. As Cassuto says:
It appears that there were current among the Israelites in regard to the names of Esau's wives, and likewise with reference to the other topics that similarly recur in contradictory versions, two divergent traditions; but the Torah did not wish to reject one in favor of the other, and therefore found room for both in its text, leaving it to the reader to chose one of the versions or to find a way of reconciling them as he deemed fit (Cassuto, p. 68).
and a bit later:
When the Torah was written, there already existed among the Israelites a number of traditions concerning the creation of the world and the beginning of human life upon earth... There were undoubtedly all kinds of traditions: on the one hand, the narratives handed down in the circles of the sages and philosophers; and on the other, the folk-tales that circulated among the broad masses of the people, stories that were understood by all and that were suited to explain abstruse matters to the simple mind of a humble shepherd (Cassuto, p. 71).
Not to beat a dead horse, but yet again:
At the time when the Torah was written, there were current among the Israelites a number of traditions concerning the Patriarchs...and the Torah chose from among them those that were able to advance its purpose (Cassuto, p. 82).
It seems to me that once you are willing to accept multiple traditions regarding one story, it seems reasonable to apply it to similar contradictions. Cassuto provides explanations of why the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 differ, resolving the contradiction regarding the order of creation
[2]. However, multiple traditions, if you are willing to accept it, explains these things more elegantly.
Furthermore, Cassuto's position is not all that different from that of the Documentary Hypothesis. If you replace the word Torah in the first quote with "redactor", you get a position very similar to that of modern academia. Cassuto likes to be vague with regard to who he thinks wrote the Torah, as is noticeable from the paragraphs above. To me, this is a glaring weakness in his argumentation.
Nevertheless, we are mainly interested in the implications of Cassuto's "multiple tradition" theory. The main implication is that if there are multiple traditions, then it is required that the date or place of composition is sufficiently distant from the time of the events so that multiple traditions can arise through errors of oral transmission. It is possible that one of several accounts was near to the actual date and place, but then an explanation is required for why another later account exists, providing a contradictory story. For example, the later account could be unaware of the first one.
This implication isn't all that exciting for the case of
Esav's wives, or the creation. No one thinks that these stories were written by
Yaakov (Jacob)
, or Adam. So Cassuto's explanation seems reasonable both for an author such as
Moshe, or one significantly later. However, what about very similar contradictions that date to the time of
Moshe and his immediate family? This is what we will look at.
Before we do that, there's one other question. Why would multiple traditions arise with regard to
Esav's wives? Why would the Torah need to keep both? Were people really so attached to the spouses of the progenitor of a nearby nation? The answer is to understand that these marriages were meant to show the alliances of Edom, the nation synonymous with
Esav at the time of writing. Marriages have been a form of political alliance in many cultures, and the biblical culture is no exception. In the first account, Edom is only close to the Hittites
[3], while in the second account, they seem to be allied with the Hittites, Hivites and Ishmaelites (desert dwellers). Thus, we can understand the traditions about wives either through
etiology or
propaganda. It makes sense that multiple traditions would arise, if the political situation was different at the time that each of these traditions arose, or if the author wished to tie Edom to different other nations for propagandistic reasons.
Moshe's Father in Law
Now we will look at two other textual contradictions similar to the one regarding
Esav's wives. The
parsha opens with the following verse (Exod 18:1):
Now Yitro (Jethro), the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all
that God had done for Moses, and for Israel His people, how that the
LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt.
Yitro then comes to join
Moshe and the rest of
B'nei Yisrael (Israelites) at mount Sinai, bringing with him
Tzipporah, Moshe's wife, and his two sons
Gershom and
Eliezer. He then advises
Moshe to set up a court system, and then departs.
This isn't the first time that we've been introduced to
Yitro. Earlier in
Shmot (Exodus) we saw that after
Moshe fled Egypt, he took care of
Yitro's flocks. However, let's look at some of that story a little closer (Exod 2:15-21):
15 Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.
But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of
Midian; and he sat down by a well. 16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters; and they came
and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 And the shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.18 And when they came to Reuel their father, he said: 'How is it that ye are come so soon to-day?' 19 And they said: 'An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of
the shepherds, and moreover he drew water for us, and watered the
flock.' 20 And he said unto his daughters: 'And where is he? Why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.' 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man; and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
And it's only a couple verses later that we encounter the name
Yitro (Exod. 3:1)
:
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law,
the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the farthest end of the
wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb.
There's one other place in the Torah where
Moshe's father in law is mentioned (Num 10:29):
And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Reuel the Midianite,
Moses' father-in-law: 'We are journeying unto the place of which the
LORD said: I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee
good; for the LORD hath spoken good concerning Israel.'
And if this wasn't confusing enough, in
Shoftim (Judges), we have this (Judg. 4:11):
Now Heber the Kenite had severed himself from the Kenites, even from
the children of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, and had pitched his
tent as far as Elon-bezaanannim, which is by Kedesh.
Here,
Hobab is the father-in-law, and not only that he's a Kenite, not a Midianite! Just like the wives of
Esav, it is possible to interpret these away, Rashi in his commentary to Num 10:29 says (my translation):
Hobab: He is Yitro, since it says, Hobab father-in-law of Moshe (Judg. 4:11), but why does it say (Exod 2:18) and they came to Reuel their father? It teaches that young women call their grandfather, "father". And he had many names. Yitro because he added (yeter) a parsha in the Torah. Hobab, because he loved (Hovev) the Torah, etc.
However, if Cassuto wasn't swayed by Rashi's comments regarding the wives of
Esav, it stands to reason that this explanation wouldn't be all that convincing to him either. It's much easier to explain this in the terms of multiple traditions, one traditions thought that
Moshe's father in law was
Reuel, one thought it was
Yitro and one thought it was
Hobab.
If we remember the requirements for multiple traditions to form, we conclude that at least some of these verses must have been written by someone distant from
Moshe in space or time, and time seems most likely.
Moshe could not have written these verses, he would have consistently named his own father in law, or at least been explicit to the reason behind multiple names, as the Torah is wont to do in several cases
[4].
It's also worthwhile to ask, why the different names. As with
Esav's wives, it might be possible to answer this politically. Perhaps the verse in
Shoftim was written when relations between the Israelites and the Kenites were good, and the verses in the Torah, were written when the Israelites had an alliance with the Midianites. It's hard to determine more without really going into speculative theories.
One last contradiction. The book of
Devarim (Deuteronomy) never mentions
Moshe's father in law by any name. However, it does mention the appointment of judges (Deut 1:9-18). The language is very similar, except that the father in law is nowhere to be found. The idea is
Moshe's alone. Ok enough on this, let's move on.
What was that Mountain Called Again?
Ask any young child, Jewish or Christian what was the name of the mountain where God gave the Torah to Israel, and they'll all tell you that it was Mount Sinai. And indeed in this week's Torah portion, every time the mountain is mentioned, it is called Sinai. However, there are many places where the mountain is given another name,
Horev (Horeb). Sinai and
Horev appear in several places in the book of
Shmot (Exodus). In the next two books there are only references to Sinai, no
Horev. In
Devarim (Deuteronomy) the reverse is true, only
Horev, no Sinai
[5].
Again, like the other contradictions, the traditional explanation is that
Horev and Sinai are the names of the same place. However, this is a bit tricky. At the end of last week's
parsha we had one of the stories of
Moshe bringing water from a rock (Exod 17:6-7):
6 Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb;
and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it,
that the people may drink.' And Moses did so in the sight of the elders
of Israel. 7 And the name of the place was called Massah, and Meribah,
because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they
tried the LORD, saying: 'Is the LORD among us, or not?
After this, the Israelites encountered
Amalek in
Rephidim, without any notice of travel in between the incident at
Massah and
Merivah (Exod 17:8)
Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim.
Then, we get a travel statement at the beginning of this week's
parsha (Exod 19:1-2)
1 In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth
out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of
Sinai. 2 And when they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to
the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there
Israel encamped before the mount [6].
So it seems clear to me that at least in this section,
Horev and Sinai are different places. Unless, you think that the Israelites went from
Horev/Sinai
to
Rephidim and then back to
Horev/Sinai, and the Torah author just happened to choose one of the names for the first place and another name for the second. A bit of a stretch.
What is clear, is that if you are willing to accept Cassuto's multiple tradition hypothesis, then it's very reasonable to apply that here as well. One tradition had a revelation at Sinai, one at
Horev. Once you accept Cassuto's hypothesis, it becomes clear that these verses also could not have been written by
Moshe. He would not have forgotten which mountain the revelation took place on. Nor would he have propagandistic or etiological reasons to change it around.
And Many More
The three contradictions mentioned in this article, the different versions of
Esav's wives, the different names for
Moshe's father in law, and the different sites for the revelation are not pathological examples. These types of differences are all over the place throughout
Tanach. These help build the case for the multiple traditions of Cassuto, or the multiple authors of the Documentary Hypothesis. While Cassuto disagrees strongly with the Documentary Hypothesis, his alternative cannot be very appealing to modern day Jews. As we have seen, it leads directly to a date of composition far enough distant from
Moshe that multiple traditions could have arisen regarding details of his life.
1.
Umberto Cassuto,
The documentary hypothesis and the composition of the Pentateuch; eight lectures Jerusalem, Magnes Press, Hebrew University [c1961], all references to Cassuto come from here.
^
2. In the first creation account, the plants are created on day 3, and man and woman together on day 6. In the second creation account, first man is created then the plants, then woman. Cassuto offers the explanation that the plants on day 3 represent wild plants, while the plants in the 2nd creation story represent cultivated plants.
^
3. It's questionable whether the biblical authors actually knew who the Hittites were. The Torah, here and elsewhere, has them dwelling in Canaan. However historically, the Hittite empire never stretched that far south. It is also possible that the biblical reference are not the Hittites, but a smaller coastal nation with a similar name.
^
4. For example, the multiple names of
Yaakov and
Yisrael, Esav and
Edom, or the explanation that
Beth-el used to be called
Luz (link to etiology).
^
5. There is exactly one mention of Sinai in the poem
Ha'azinu. This poem, and the blessing of
Moshe are special cases, as is true for all of the poems. They tend to represent very early compositions, as we'll see in future weeks. I should note that their are surprisingly few references to either Sinai or
Horev in the rest of
Tanach. Judges has one mention of Sinai in
Devorah's song (Judg. 5:5, another early composition). Kings mentions only
Horev (1 Kings 8:9, 19:8), the first of which appears verbatim in Chronicles (5:10). Note that the Deuteronomy choice agrees with that of Kings.
Malachi and
Nehemiah only mention Sinai, and there are no references in the rest of the prophets, somewhat amazingly. Sinai appears in Psalm 68 (twice) and
Horev in Psalm 106 (once).
^
6. If you noticed that the language in these verses is awkward and a bit clunky, you should be proud of yourself. There are multiple authors hypothesized here.
^
