Using Umberto Cassuto to Argue for Non-Mosaic Authorship

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.

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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.^

Song of the sea

Parshat Beshalach

The central moment of this week's parsha is the climactic conclusion to the Exodus account which occupies the first half of the book of Shmot (Exodus).  In the story, the escaping Israelites are trapped between a pursuing Egyptian army and an impossible body of water, Yam Suf (Red Sea or Reed Sea depending on who you talk to.)  However, miraculously, God parts the water, the Israelites pass through on dry land, and then when the Egyptians pass through afterwards, the waters return drowning the army.  After the Israelites triumphantly return on the other side, they sing the song known in Hebrew as Az Yashir and in academic circles as "The Song of the Sea."


The Song of the Sea is going to be the topic of this post.  Specifically we will ask two questions, the first is whether the song is, as academics claim, one of the oldest parts of the Torah, composed far earlier than the stories that surround it.  And second, we will look at the precise relation between the song of the sea and the story of the splitting of the sea that was synopsized above.  Specifically, we will find that the song of the sea makes no mention of a splitting of the sea and seems to be referring to a different event, now long forgotten.  The Song of the Sea takes up the majority of the 15th chapter, and all verse references will be to that chapter.

Dating Texts

Dating biblical texts is a daunting task.  Typically, one can use any of the following, (1) the type of language used, whether it uses archaic words or modern words.  (2) The type of syntax or morphology present.  (3) What spelling of words are used. (4) Where it fits in theologically in the development of Israel.  (5) Where it fits in traditionally regarding the historical views of Israel's ancestors.  And/or (6) Historical references that can constrain when it was written [1]. 

For now we will avoid using 4 and 5, since they are very contentious and assume at first that you know something about the historical and theological development of the Israelites.  The 6th option is not terribly useful either, it tells us for example, that it was at a time period after the Egyptians had domesticated horses, but that doesn't really help much.  Of more use are the references to the Philistines, Moab and Edom, nations that did not exist until the late bronze age at earliest in tribal form, and not as kingdoms until much later.  The third is tricky as well, since spelling corrections are the most likely corrections by later editors, and there's no doubt that the biblical texts underwent editing corrections of this type.  This leaves the first two.

On the syntax side (2), there are two aspects of the song that appear archaic.  The first is the prevalence of mo or umo endings.  These are somewhat equivalent to "eth" endings on verbs in modern day English.  They only exist in a very specific subset of texts, ones that are old, or ones that are trying to sound old.  They are used correctly here, as far as we can tell, so if someone was faking it, they did a very good job [2].  The second syntactic feature is the absence of ha in front of nouns where you would expect.  In Hebrew this means "the" and the contention is that this was a new syntactic feature of the language that appeared in the early Iron Age, similar to developments in Akkadian and Arabic [3].

For the language (1), it certainly appears that some of the words used are archaic.  Some are so old that they are hapaxes (words with no other appearances).  This makes translation difficult for one, but hapaxes aren't a sole indication of age.  They could be nonce words for example. A full discussion of the various archaic language features are given by Cross and Freedman [4].  We won't go into details, because I imagine there aren't many people that are as interested as Hebrew linguistic development as me, so I'll just quote their conclusion on the matter.

"In its metrical style and strophic structure, the poem fits precisely into the pattern of old Canaanite and early Hebrew poetry.  The repetitive parallelism, mixed meter, and the complex makeup of the strophes suggest an early date of composition."

Why Yashir and not Vayashar?

So I said I wasn't going to delve too deep into grammar, but there's one point I'd like to make.  There's a lot of fuss about the fact that the literal translation appears to be "And then Moshe will sing" i.e. Az Yashir, where you would expect something like "And then Moshe sang", i.e. Vayashar Moshe.  The answer could be just a matter of old sounding text where the yaktul form, used in modern day, and most biblical text, as a future tense, was also used in ancient Canaanite and Ugaritic as a past tense.  It is clearly an old form that had completely fallen out of practice by the time the rest of the biblical texts were composed.  This shows up in other places in the song as well, and modern translators often render those forms incorrectly as future forms [5].

The Song Itself and the Extra Verse

The song can be broken down into several parts.

• 1-3: Introduction, praise of God.
• 4-12: God drowns the Egyptians, who pursue the Israelites, in the sea.
• 13-18: God brings the Israelites to Canaan and all the surrounding nations are afraid.
• 19: A but wait there's more verse.  It mentions that the Israelites walked on dry land in the water

Verse 19 is tricky.  First of all, it does not look archaic at all, in morphology or language.  The meter is nothing like the rest of the verses.  Furthermore, verse 18 certainly sounds like a conclusion to the song.  By the time it reaches verse 19, it's already long after the song finished talking about the drowning of the Egyptians.  So it's out of place in content as well as style.  Everything seems to point to verse 19 being added, but why [6]?  What problem was an editor trying to solve that they appended this verse to the song?

How did they Sink if they were Already at the Bottom?

If you read verses 4-12 carefully you'll notice some odd features in the song that don't seem to match up with the preceding story.  In the preceding story, Moses splits the water, the Israelites travel through it, and then the waters return on top of the Egyptian army as they try to follow through afterwards.  In other words, what verse 19 is trying to describe.  In the song, the language is different.  The armies are "cast into the sea" and the captains are "sunk" in the sea (v 4), where they are then "covered by waters" and "sink like rocks" (v 5). A little bit later, (v 10) they "sink like lead" (v 10) and "the earth swallows them" (v 12).  The question is, if they were already at the bottom, then how could they sink?  These verses seem to suggest a story where God caused a violent storm or large waves that either carried Egyptian armies out to sea, or sank Egyptian vessels.

The observant reader will notice I skipped verses 5-10 above.  Some of them aren't relevant, but one is.  Verse 8, is possibly one of the most difficult verses to translate in the entire Torah.  It has archaic words, including one hapax.  It's also the verse that's used to extract the entirety of the preceding story.  Verse 8 in the JPS translation is:" 

And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up--the floods stood upright as a heap; the deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea.

Frank Cross translates it in the following way:

At the blast of your nostrils the waters heaped up. The swells mounted up as a hill; The deeps foamed in the heart of the sea [7].

For the first time in this blog, I'm going to need to include the actual Hebrew to go further: 

וּבְרוּחַ אַפֶּיךָ נֶעֶרְמוּ מַיִם, נִצְּבוּ כְמוֹ-נֵד נֹזְלִים; קָפְאוּ תְהֹמֹת, בְּלֶב-יָם

We can see the problematic words are נֵד and קָפְאוּ.  The first, ned, is the hapax mentioned above.  The only other mentions of this word are derivative from this verse, so can't be used for translation.  The JPS translation translates it as "heap."  Other translations are more brazen and use words like "column" or "wall." Cross says this is wrong, and says, that the only etymological evidence we have for this word is an Arabic cognate, nadd which means "hill" [8].

The second word, translated in JPS and most places as "congeal" is also extremely difficult.  The word occurs in 3 other places biblically.  Zech 14:6 is nearly impossible to translate based on context.  Zeph 1:12 is also difficult, but seems to be the act of precipitating dregs in wine.  And Job 10:10 has it relating to cheese.  Iyov (Job) is a difficult text to use, because it is one of those works that by all rights is late, but is purposely filled with archaisms and obscure words, often incorrectly, to make it sound old.  In Talmudic Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew, the word seems to be used as in Zephaniah to precipitate solids in liquids.  Cross seems to indicate that we should probably translate it as something like "to rise to surface," "form scum, froth or foam," or "curdle" [9].

If you buy Cross's translation of verse 8.  And you accept that verse 19 was a later addition. Then the song contains no references at all to the splitting of the sea story. Rather here we have a story in which the pursuing Egyptian army is caught in a violent squall, or possibly something like a tidal bore, and dragged out to sea and drowned.

Poem First, Prose Later

The sketch I'll present to you is one that appears many times in the Tanach when a poem seems to parallel a prose section.  Generally the idea is that the poem was written earlier, and the prose sections came after.  The same idea is suggested for the Song of Devorah (Judg. 5) and the stories that relate to the blessing of Yaakov (Gen. 49).  Here too, the poem came first, and the story came later.

So why is the story different than the poem?  There are several possibilities.  One is that the prose authors made the same translation errors we did.  After all, these words may have been just as obscure to them as they are to us, since they appear nowhere else in the Torah.  Another possibility, is that they took another story which was already known about Joshua splitting the Jordan river (Josh 3:9-17) and adapted it to this situation. They conflated the two stories, God drowning the Egyptians, with God splitting the river Jordan, and the result was the story that we all know and are left with.   There's yet another possibility.  The splitting of the sea could be used as a demonstration of God's power over the mythical sea.  This would be similar to what Marduk does to Tiamat, where he splits the carcass.

There is one possibility that supports the last reading. We mentioned above the possibility that the absence of the ha prefix in words was a possible sign of age.  Several of these missing words are with regard to Yam (verses 7 and 10).  It might be that these are referring not to the generic idea of Yam as a body of water, but as the mythical Yam, the god of chaos.  Unlike the battle with Ba'al, here it is one-sided.  Yam is not a worthy adversary for God, just another tool at his disposal.  Later biblical authors may have conflated a song with a sea element with the mythical account of splitting the dead chaos-sea-monster.  A stretch perhaps, but one worth considering.

Regardless, how you approach it.  The clear fact that the song does not seem to align with the prose sections must be explained somehow.  Especially if you think they were all written contemporaneously.  However, this isn't the end of the problems.  There are also contradictory elements in the prose sections themselves.  Unfortunately, these will have to wait for another year.

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1. F.M Cross "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" Harvard Univ. Press 1973 p. 121^

2. Cross and Freedman, "Song of Miriam," J Near Eastern Studies, Vol 14, No. 4, 1995 p. 237-250^

3. Kugel, "How to Read the Bible," Free Press, 2006, p. 227 and see footnote 24.^

4. Cross and Freedman, "Song of Miriam."^

5. F.M Cross "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic," p. 125. This interpretation might be problematic since first verse isn't actually part of the song. It could be an example of improper use.^

6. See the previous discussion on Sukkot and the additions accredited to Ezra.^

7. F.M Cross "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic," p. 128.^

8. Ibid, see footnote 58.^

9. Ibid, see footnote 59.^

"...And my name YHWH I did not make known to them"

Parshat Vaera

This week we'll focus on a verse that had in the past troubled me a lot.  It was a question that I searched a while for an answer for, but never found a good one.  It turns out there is a pretty damn good answer to this question, but it was not one that any Rabbi was willing to offer me.

I will remark on the outset that this post will require discussion of the tetragrammaton, which I will represent by YHWH.  I realize that this must be off-putting to some religious people who might stumble across the blog, but it is far too cumbersome to euphemize the name.

The Burning Question

This parsha picks up right in the midle of the conversation between God and Moshe (Moses).  We won't go any farther than the first two verses, which read (Exod 6:2-3):

2 And God spoke unto Moses, and said unto him: 'I am the LORD (YHWH); 3 and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by My name YHWH I made Me not known to them.

Verse 3 gave the title to the blog post, as I would translate it, and is the source of the problem.  Bonus points to you if you picked up on it already. If you haven't, the problem is that this verse is a blatant contradiction with various previous stories.  God says here that he never told Avraham, Yitzchak, or Yaakov, about his name YHWH, instead appearing as El Shaddai only.

The first question to ask is does God use El Shaddai in conversations with the patriarchs?  The answer is yes.

1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him: 'I am El Shaddai; walk before Me, and be thou wholehearted. (Gen 17:1)

10 And God said unto him: 'Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name'; and He called his name Israel. 11 And God said unto him: 'I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; (Gen 35:10-11)

Both Avraham and Yaakov also use El Shaddai in their own conversations.  But what about the other half?  Does God use the name YHWH.  Unfortunately, for me, I remembered from being a ba'al korei (Torah reader) that he did not too many weeks ago.  There is one clear example of God introducing himself to a patriarch as YHWH.

12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 13 And, behold, the LORD stood beside him, and said: 'I am the LORD (YHWH), the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. (Gen 28:12-13)

However, there are also numerous times where the Patriarchs appear to know this name.  A couple of examples will suffice:

unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first; and Abram called there on the name of the LORD (YHWH) (Gen: 13:4)

And Abraham planted a tamarisk-tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the LORD (YHWH), the Everlasting God. (Gen 21:33)

And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD (YHWH), and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants digged a well. (Gen 26:25)

And he (Yaakov) came near, and kissed him (Yitzchak). And he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said: See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD (YHWH) hath blessed. (Gen 27:27)

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the LORD (YHWH) is in this place; and I knew it not.' (Gen 28:16)

And many more.  Not only do the Patriarchs seem to be very familiar with this name, Even the wicked Lavan (Laban) seems to know it:

And Laban said unto him (Yaakov): 'If now I have found favour in thine eyes--I have observed the signs, and the LORD (YHWH) hath blessed me for thy sake.'  (Gen 30:27)

And to top it all off, we have this cryptic verse all the way back in Gen 4:26 which seems to indicate that the name was known publicly to everyone in the 3rd generation!

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh; then began men to call upon the name of the LORD (YHWH). (Gen 4:26)

A Blatant Contradiction?

We have here what appears to be a blatant contradiction.  Furthermore, it's one that ancient Rabbis could not have failed to notice.  However, despite this, I was not able to find any good explanations. I'm not going to devote too much to traditional answers, if you want, you can read more about them here (Part 3).

Most of the answers in the linked article, and the ones I heard from Rabbis capable of answering the question relied on either tortured readings of the verse, or some kind of esoteric meaning of the word shem (name).  For the second explanation, it meant that it wasn't the literal name, YHWH, that God was talking about, but rather some sort of alternative concept, that could very well mean whatever you want it to, as long as it didn't make more contradictions.  This is a standard tactic in traditional explanations to resolve contradictions.  You just force an alternative interpretation on one of the verses and, voila, the contradiction is resolved.

However, there is a much better answer, but before we get there, we'll divert a bit to give some background.

How the Documentary Hypothesis was Formed

One of the first steps on the road to formulation of the Documentary Hypothesis was noticing that there were multiple stories where the same thing appeared to occur twice.  We've already seen some instances of this, such as the multiple stories of a Patriarch pretending his wife was his sister in a foreign land.  Or the multiple times Yaakov was renamed as Yisrael, or Beth-el was named [1].

However, there was another piece of evidence that was a bit curious.  It seemed that in many of the repeating stories in the book of Bereishit (Genesis), each version used a different name for God.  Some used elohim, which is a generic word for "god," and can be viewed as a sort of title.  The other used YHWH, the tetragrammaton, which was more akin to a personal name.  This discovery was made simultaneously by Astruc, Eichhorn and Witter in the 19th century [2].   The next step was to separate the stories into multiple authors or sources.  One source used one name, the other used a different name.

Chances are, if your yeshivah, synagogue, or any other religious based institution you frequented addressed the Documentary Hypothesis at all, the view they gave was one of multiple authors who just happened to prefer using one name of God or the other.  This was certainly the description I was given, and I've seen it described as such today among Orthodox Jews.  However, it's incredibly incorrect, or rather, it represents a formative view at the very beginning when they were just figuring out what was going on. The verse we were discussing provides the key as to why one author would prefer to use YHWH an another would eschew it.

What the Documentary Hypothesis Actually Says about the Names of God

What the Documentary Hypothesis actually says is not that each source just happened to pick a name of God they liked and ran with it, but rather there was an important theological reason for their choices.  One of the authors believed that the name YHWH was hidden from mankind until it was revealed to Moshe at the burning bush.  In fact, this is told to us explicitly in Exod. 6:3, quoted above.  The other author thought that YHWH was known to mankind from the beginning, or at least from Gen 4:26. 

This also explains why the name YHWH gets used frequently in all stories after Exod 6:3, including in both parts of later doublets (For example, the quails stories in Exod 16 and Num, 11).  Furthermore there are multiple other idiosyncrasies that can be used to differentiate the sources.  (Friedman or Kugel in the references link are good sources to learn about these.)   Regardless, the narrative makes sense without resorting to tortured readings provided you are ok with there being multiple storylines or traditions.

The simple story I've painted in the last two paragraphs isn't the actual opinion held today, even with the version of the Documentary Hypothesis held by proponents like Friedman.  For them there are four authors, with two authors holding the view that YHWH was not known before Moshe.  Although, one of them, does not appear much in the Patriarchal stories.  The fourth author is confined entirely to the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) and comprises the first 31 chapters of that book.

Even then, there are some cracks in this four author story (again Whybray in the references section can point out some problems.)  But the general idea of there being multiple storylines holds across nearly all modern secular scholars.  The contradictions are far too many, and the coincidences are far too strong to argue for anything else.  In a couple weeks we'll see that even defenders of traditional readings commonly quoted by religious Jews are forced to admit the presence of contradictions arising from multiple sources, even if they weren't actual written documents.

---

1. For example, check the posts in previous weeks here or here. ^

1. See Friedman, "Who Wrote the Bible" Summit 1987, p. 23. ^

The Story or Stories of Joseph and the Pit

Parshat Vayeshev

Up until this point I've only vaguely mentioned the Documentary Hypothesis (DH), which is among the leading hypotheses to explain the creation of the Torah, and is taught in every secular biblical course at the university level. I have mentioned that different paragraphs were probably written by different people at different times. I've also mentioned the most agreed upon statement that Deuteronomy (minus the last three chapters) was written by a different author or authors than the other four books. However, these kind of claims are more general than the DH. They can be attributed to many other hypotheses about the writing of the Torah.

What is unique to DH is that it states that the Torah existed as separate complete or near-complete documents, and that these documents were merged together by a redactor. One piece of evidence for this process appears in stories which are repeated in separate places, like the stories of Avraham (Abraham) and Yitzchak (Isaac) passing off their wives as sisters in foreign lands. Another piece of evidence, and the focus for today, are stories that look like they were spliced together from two distinct sources. When the sources are separated, various inconsistencies and contradictions vanish, and you are left with two complete stories. This is a very difficult procedure to do for any standard writing you would pick up, and its repeated success in many stories in the Torah should at the very least provoke some serious thought as to why the Torah was written in this way.

As an example of this process, we'll look at the story a the beginning of this week's parsha which deals with Joseph's brothers throwing him into the pit.

Problems in the story

The story of the selling of Joseph appears in 37:18-36 and is pretty convoluted. It's probably a good idea to pause and read it now. If you've read it you'll notice a very strange sequence of events. in 37:28 Midianites pass by, and "they" drew Joseph out of the pit and "they" sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for silver, and "they" brought Joseph to Egypt. Then later in 37:36, the Midianites sold Joseph to Egypt. In order for the surface reading to make sense, Rashi interprets the first they, the people who bring Joseph out of the pit as the brothers, even though the previous sentence had the subject as the Midianites. He also interprets the second they as the brothers, and says that the brothers sold them to the Ishmaelites, who then sold them to the Midianites. Rashi does not specify which group was responsible for bringing Joseph to Egypt, but presumably it's the Ishmaelites, which means the second "they" in verse 28 refers to them, even though they haven't appeared yet in the story!

There's another bizarre wording issue in the text.

21 And Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their hand; and said: 'Let us not take his life.' 22 And Reuben said unto them: 'Shed no blood; cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him'--that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.

When I used to read it, I would read the second sentence as elaborating on the first. However, there are problems with this reading. First, the second sentence repeats Reuven said, where the Torah usually would  use something like "And he said" when the speaker does not change. This is a small problem. The bigger problem is later in the text it is Yehudah (Judah) who is responsible for taking him out of the pit and not killing him. Where was Reuven? Later he comes back to the pit and no one is there, and he's distraught.

Breaking into Two Stories

Now let's see what happens when we split this story into two. The first story looks like this:

19 And they said one to another: 'Behold, this dreamer cometh. 20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say: An evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.' 21 And Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their hand; and said: 'Let us not take his life.' 25 And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt. 26 And Judah said unto his brethren: 'What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother, our flesh.' And his brethren hearkened unto him.  28b and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt.

And the second one:

18 And they saw him afar off, and before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him 22 And Reuben said unto them: 'Shed no blood; cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him'--that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father. 23 And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph of his coat, the coat of many colours that was on him; 24 and they took him, and cast him into the pit--and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. 28a And there passed by Midianites, merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, 29 And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. 30 And he returned unto his brethren, and said: 'The child is not; and as for me, whither shall I go?' 31 And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a he-goat, and dipped the coat in the blood; 32 and they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said: 'This have we found. Know now whether it is thy son's coat or not.' 33 And he knew it, and said: 'It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces.' 34 And Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. 35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said: 'Nay, but I will go down to the grave to my son mourning.' And his father wept for him. 36 And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard.

The Documentary Hypothesis puts authors to these stories

According to DH, the top story is by J, which I would describe is something like "tales and legends of the southern kingdom". Notice how in this version, Yehudah (Judah) is the one who takes control of the situation. He is the one who steps up, the leader. This will be true throughout the Yosef saga, Yehudah is the head of the tribes. In the second version, the version attributed to E, which could be read as "tales and legends of the northern kingdom," Yehudah is not relevant at all. Here it's Reuven who is the one who saves Yosef, and Yehudah isn't even mentioned! Also, splitting into these two stories makes the surface reading clearer as far as Reuven returning to the pit. In this version, the brothers threw him into the pit, left to eat, the Midianites took him out, and then when Reuven returned to rescue him, Yosef was gone. In the patched together version, Reuven must have wandered off somewhere when the rest of the brothers, led by Yehudah, sold him. None of the other brothers even felt the need to inform him that Yosef isn't actually dead, just sold to Egypt?

Splitting the stories resolves all the textual problems. The two consecutive sentences that begin with "Reuven said," the convoluted selling chain, the narrative inconsistencies of Reuven knowing or not knowing that Yosef is alive. To me it's pretty clear. This is one of many instances were separate stories were cobbled together to create a single harmonized reading.

In general, I think DH oversells its claims, but it's foolish not to recognize where it does admirably well.  This is just one example of a situation where it works extremely well to clarify a biblical story.

Propaganda

Parsha Vayishlach

I imagine that some people will be turned off at the title of this week's post. After all, it's no secret that Jews have been victims of some of the most vicious propaganda in the last 2000 years.  Jews have been accused of being murderers of Christian children, shadowy riggers of world markets, and polluters of wholesome societies. However, propaganda is very old and very effective, and there are lots of stories in the Torah that really seem like propaganda.  We'll look at few of the ones that occur in Bereishit (Genesis) this week.

Rival nations

The nations of Yehuda (Judah) and Yisrael (Israel) were surrounded by other nations, sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly. In each case the Torah gives a description of the origin, sometimes positive, sometimes cautious, and sometimes negative. Always though, the other nations are inferior in some way to the two Jewish nations. 

Esav (Esau) who is the progenitor of the kingdom of Edom, is treated cautiously. Similarly, Lavan (Laban) who is a stand-in for the northern neighbor Aram. The etiological tales about them make Esav come off as a bit dim-witted, and Lavan as conniving, but both are treated with grudging respect.  Not so the two nations between them, Ammon and Moab. The stories about their origins is dripping with contempt. Bereishit (Genesis) 19:31-37 recounts the story. 

31 And the first-born said unto the younger: 'Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.' 33 And they made their father drink wine that night. And the first-born went in, and lay with her father; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the first-born said unto the younger: 'Behold, I lay yesternight with my father. Let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.' 35 And they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose, and lay with him; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. 37 And the first-born bore a son, and called his name Moab--the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. 38 And the younger, she also bore a son, and called his name Ben-ammi--the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.

Both nations were bastards born out of incestuous unions, things that would put you on the bottom of society in the Iron Age Ancient Near East. Indeed Devarim (Deuteronomy) 23:4 makes it clear that the Ammonites and Moabites are not welcome as converts.

It is also known, both from the Tanach and through the Mesha Stele that Moab was a vassal to the kingdom of Israel for some period of time. The Mesha Stele describes how the Moab kingdom broke free from their vassalage to the kingdom of Israel. It is easy to imagine how stories about these kingdoms, claiming that they are a bunch of half-breeds could lead to justifying political and military conquest and subjugation.

By far though, the tribe with the biggest propagandistic hit attack is the Amalekites. Here, the Torah commands nothing short of genocide of everyone.  Deut. 29:19:

Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget. 

And lest you think that this doesn't mean the actual wholesale slaughter of the Amalekites, as is popular in modern commentaries who wish to distance Judaism from genocidal commandments, 1 Sam. 15:1-3 can put that idea to rest.

1 And Samuel said unto Saul: 'The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over His people, over Israel; now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. {S} 2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts: I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'

Why this hatred? The story is that the Amalekites attacked the Jewish people as they were fleeing Egypt. Did this actually happen, or is this used as a justification for killing all of them and taking their land?  Also, remember, that by the time Shaul (Saul) and Shmuel (Samuel) get around to slaughtering the Amalekites, something like 300 years have passed since the supposed actions of their forebears. Even if the story wasn't invented, should the people dwelling there now be judged for the actions of their ancestors? As members of a people that have been the victims of propaganda induced genocide, stuff like this should elicit concern.  It is easy to notice propaganda when you are the one being targeted. It is much more difficult to recognize it when someone else is the victim. 

Propaganda is powerful, and it can be used to justify all sorts of heinous acts. Propaganda is often necessary to rally citizens to go to war with other people that they might otherwise not want to fight. It deepens divisions between peoples and nations. It's something we should all be vigilant for. How sure are you that the Torah is the inspired word of God commanding genocide, and not the desire of a very human king to destroy a rival kingdom?  Would a divine author even use such tactics?

Propaganda for Land Claims

There are a slew of examples in Bereishit of propaganda providing land claims.  The land given to Avraham by God, going from the Nile to the Euphrates (Gen 15:18) was far larger than any Jewish nation every actually possessed, and could give justification for any Israelite aggression against a nearby nation.  There's the famous story of Avraham buying the cave of Machpelah in a way that makes it clear that this land is property of the Jews (Gen 23:1-18).  The monument that Yaakov set up with Lavan that we looked at last week, is a way for the Israelites to mark off territory (Gen 31:44-54).  There are many more examples.

Propaganda to Elevate

Propaganda also can be used to elevate one group or individual.  The stories of David, for example, are filled with propaganda, or at least stuff that really really seems like propaganda.  For example, there are several stories that make it clear that David absolutely did not kill Shaul.  He could have but didn't (1 Sam 24:1-7, 26:1-14),  and Saul definitely was killed another way, he killed himself (1 Sam 31:4) or was killed by an Amalekite (2 Sam 1:10).  Why so many stories of this sort?  Could it be the transfer of power was messy and David was implicated in a coup?  Who knows.  These stories seem to be designed to clear his name and head off any suggestions of dirty business.  The propaganda worked, David is seen as the head of the Judean dynasty to this day, and is beloved by Jews everywhere.

We also see propaganda with respect to Jews themselves.  Jews are "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (Exod. 19:6)"  Jews are a holy people chosen by God as his treasure (Deut. 7:6).  I certainly remember being taught in Yeshiva, that we Jews were better than everyone else, simply because we were Jews, and the Torah tells us that we're better.  These things aren't said in polite conversation, but this idea of superiority is another form that propaganda takes.

There are many instances of propaganda, or things that really look like propaganda in the Torah and Tanach.  It's definitely something one should keep in mind whenever a story speaks negatively about another individual or nation.

Etiology

Parshat Vayetze

Why the book of Bereishit (Genesis) was written, is a question that scholars and rabbis both ask. Prolific medieval commentator Rashi poses it in Bereishit 1:1, offering the option that the Torah should begin partway through Exodus when the first mitzvot are written.  Traditionally, Jewish commentators have attempted to extract moral, and sometimes disastrously, scientific and historical lessons from the various stories.  We will provide one alternative reason for various stories in Bereishit.  We'll note that one reason cannot suffice for all the stories, many of which may have been written at different times for different purposes.  This week we will look at etiological reasons, and next week we will look at another reason, which I'll leave for a surprise.

Etiology, in the context I'm using it, basically means explanations for why things are the way they are, usually with mythical or historical reasons. These are sometimes used to explain why things are named the way they are. For example, Homer describes the naming of the Greek city of Delphi as arising because of the transport of people to the city on dolphins (the actual origin likely has to do with a similar sounding word meaning womb.) Sometimes, these stories are used to explain why certain religious activities are performed. An example here could be the Aztec belief that the sun was a deity that required continual human sacrifice to be sustained or he would fail like the four previous suns did.  The story of the four previous suns gives an etiological reason justifying the current human sacrifice ritual.  Sometimes these explain physical phenomena, an example from the Torah would be the explanation of why rainbows exist at the end of the flood story.

The Torah furnishes lots of examples of etiological stories. These stories are present in pretty much every culture that has provided us with a record of beliefs.  It's not surprising that the ancient Israelites would provide us with their stories also.

The naming of places

In this week parsha, we have etiological examples of place naming. After Yaakov (Jacob) has his famous dream with the ladder to the heavens, he wakes up and says: (Gen 28:17-19),

17 And he was afraid, and said: 'How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God (beth elokim), and this is the gate of heaven.' 18 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. 19 And he called the name of that place Beth-el, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

The Torah tells us how the city of Luz got the name of Beth-el. It's because Yaakov associated it with the house of God, beth elokim.  Beth-el actually gets named a second time, also by Yaakov (Gen 35:7), for a different reason.  And furthermore, it seems to have already had this name by the time Avraham came through (Gen 12:8).

This parsha also informs us of how all the tribes got their names, providing etiological explanations for all of them. Just one example will suffice (Gen 29:32)

And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben; for she said: 'Because the LORD hath looked (ra'ah) upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.'

The name Reuben is explained to derive from the root ra'ah, to look. The other tribes are named similarly.  These etiological origins for names are all over the Torah, sometimes in cases that make no sense.  For example, Moshe (Moses) is a well known Egyptian name, but in the Torah etymology, she is named by an Egyptian princess with a pun that only makes sense in Hebrew.

At the end of the parsha we are given one more example of an etiological naming, the area of Gilead, is explained as to have arisen from the words Gal Ed, literally, monument-witness. This is because Lavan (Laban) set up a monument as a witness for a non-aggression treaty with Yaakov.

Ritual explanations

Unfortunately, this parsha doesn't furnish us with an example of an etiological reason for a ritual, however, next week's does, so we'll look ahead a little.

The story of Yaakov's wrestling with a mysterious man provides us with lots of etiological reasons for things. It gives an explanation of why Yaakov is also known as Yisrael, because he "strove" (saritah) with God (or gods) (elohim). It tells us why the river is called Yavok, because a man "wrestled" (vayeavek) with him. It explains why the place gets the name Penuel, because Yaakov saw God face (panim) to face. And lastly, and relevant to this topic, it explains the religious restriction on not eating a particular part of an animal (32:33).

Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the thigh-vein which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, even in the sinew of the thigh-vein.

The beginning phrase of this sentence, here translated "therefore" is in Hebrew al cain, and is often written in the Torah prior to an etiological reason for a specific practice. Similarly the phrase "until this day" is used in a lot of etiological contexts. The simple way to interpret these phrases is something like, "this is the way these things are at the time of writing, and here is why."

Natural Phenomena

Most of the Torah's examples of etiological explanation for natural phenomena occur in the first two parshiot. We learn why it rains from the sky (there's water above that's kept there by a rakiah, a firm boundary). We learn why women have pain during childbirth, and why agriculture is so darn hard. We learn why there are rainbows, and why it's impossible to understand the weird speaking neighbors to the east.  At least we learn the mythological stories that the ancient Israelites invented over the course of many years to explain these things. We actually know the real reasons for these phenomena nowadays, and many religious Jews interpret these stories allegorically, because the etiological explanation have since been proven false. 

There is one example from a recent parsha of a natural phenomenon with an allegorical explanation.  Normally regions surrounding bodies of water are lush areas, full of plant an animal life.  However, the region near the dead sea is the exact opposite, it is completely devoid of life, a barren wasteland.  The sea itself has a salt concentration far higher than what life can thrive in.  How did this region become so?

The Torah's answer was that it once was fertile, just like every other body of water.  But it was wicked and was turned into what it is today as punishment from God, and all the population were killed.  Just like the stories earlier in Genesis, we know today that there was no catastrophic geological behavior in this region in the last 10,000 years.  This is another example of the ancient Israelites inventing explanations for the world around them etiologically.

Understanding the World

Etiology is a manner in which many ancient people used to understand the world.  This is a great human desire from the dawn of time, and it's no surprise that every culture has these kinds of stories.  One question to ask, for people who hold the Torah to have some special divine value, is whether the Israelite stories differ in style or verifiability from the many other stories that have been passed to us from other cultures.  Having read a lot of these stories, it is my opinion that there is no noticeable difference.  However, perhaps you have a different view.  I'd love to hear. 

Next week we'll talk about another, sometimes overlapping reason, for why the book of Bereishit was written.

The Patriarchs in the Nevi'im

Parshat Toldot

One of the main differences between how I studied the Torah as a religious Jew and how I approached it as an atheist is the relative weight given to the prophetic writings versus the Torah. In the religious world, the Torah is paramount, and the rest of the Tanach is of far less importance. The Torah came first, was written directly by God, and the rest was written later, and was more subject to human error. However, these assumptions are not clear from the biblical text itself, and indeed, modern academics argue that many of the prophetic writings predate the Torah and represent an earlier view on these topics. If you remove the assumption that the Torah is earlier, it may be possible to recreate how various stories developed by looking at how the prophets viewed them, and only afterward, do you decide which timeframe best fits the composition of the Torah itself.

This week we'll look at the prophets for clues on how they related to the early patriarchs.  We'll note, that as we discovered last week, Yaakov (Jacob) is associated with locations in the northern kingdom, while Avraham and Yitzchak (Isaac) are associated with locations the southern kingdom.  We also noted that the stories with Yitzchak were much fewer than with Avraham and Yaakov. We come in with the expectation that the northern kingdom prophets will focus more on Yaakov while the southern prophets will focus more on Avraham. 

The early prophets

There are four prophets that self-proclaim the dates of their composition to be in the late 8th century BCE, making them the earliest of the prophets which left writing.    The four prophets are Hoshea (Hosea), Amos, Michah (Micah), and Yishayahu (Isaiah). Yishayahu is a bit of a problem, since modern academia is pretty confident that everything from at least chapter 40 onwards was written by later authors and appended to the text, and therefore falls under the term "pseudopigraphia". We won't discuss the reasons for that this week, but we'll only consider chapters 1-39 as the relevant chapters of Isaiah for this exercise.  We'll look at these prophets in turn.

Hoshea, was a northern prophet, who focuses mainly on the north. He prefers the term Ephraim for the northern kingdom, but also uses Yaakov (Jacob) as a synonym for Yisrael (Israel). Hoshea seems familiar with the basic outline of the story of Yaakov. He writes (Hos. 12:3-5):

3 The LORD hath also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways, according to his doings will He recompense him. 4 In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and by his strength he strove with a godlike being; 5 So he strove with an angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him; at Beth-el he would find him, and there he would speak with us;

12:13 also mentions Yaakov fleeing to Aram. Hoshea does not mention Avraham or Yitzchak at all.  He is either unaware of them, or does not think they are relevant.  Out of all the prophets Hoshea is actually the only one with what looks like clear references to biblical stories, the event at his birth, the wrestling with an angel, and the sojourn in Aram.

The next prophet to look at is Amos. He is a bit of an oddity in that he was born in the southern kingdom but appears to have spent most of his time in the northern kingdom. Amos is the only prophet to mention Yitzchak, however he spells the name differently with a sin instead of a tzadi. To Amos, Yitzchak is a synonym for the kingdom of Judah (Amos 7:9, 7:16). Like Hoshea, and indeed nearly every other prophet, Yaakov is used a synonym for the northern kingdom (Amos 3:13). Amos makes no mention of Avraham, although he does mention Yosef (Joseph), and associates him with Bethel (Amos 5:6).

Michah is the third prophet. He was a southern prophet and spoke in the south. The very last sentence, 7:20, is the only mention of Avraham. Yitzchak is not mentioned at all, and Yaakov is associated with the north (1:5) specifically Samaria.  Incidentally, Michah also is the only prophet in this set to mention Moshe (Moses), Aharon (Aaron), and Miriam (Mic. 6:4).

Yishayahu is by far the most prolific author in this group.  He is a southern one prophesying in Judah. Although in all 39 chapters that are clearly attributable to him, Avraham is only mentioned once (29:22) and Yitzchak not at all. Like the others Yaakov is a synonym for the north.

Looking at these four as a group, we see that only the purely northern Hoshea makes no mention of Avraham. Only Amos, a southern transplant to the north, knows about Yitzchak. Everyone seems to know about Yaakov, but mostly this is a name for the north, synonymous with the kingdom of Israel (not necessarily the person.)  Only Hoshea, a northern prophet, mentions things that reference the Patriarchal stories that we are familiar with in Bereishit (Genesis).  

This fits very well with the conclusions from last week based on the locations where each patriarch was most associated with. Avraham and Yitzchak were associated with southern locations, with Avraham having a much more extensive story. Yaakov is associated with the north, and indeed in nearly all the prophetic texts it is synonymous with the northern kingdom, often to the exclusion of the southern kingdom, which is usually Yehudah (Judah).

Prophets after the Destruction of the Northern Kingdom

In the period after the destruction of the northern kingdom, but before the southern kingdom (722 BCE - 586 BCE), there were several prophets.  The most prolific was Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah), but also we have Zephaniah, who unfortunately mentions none of the Patriarchs in his short work.

Yirmiyahu mentions Avraham and Yitzchak exactly once, and this mention is in a string that includes all three Patriarchs in the correct order.  He is the first prophet to mention all three.  Verses (Jer.) 33:25-26 read:

"25 Thus saith the LORD: If My covenant be not with day and night, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; 26 then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David My servant, so that I will not take of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will cause their captivity to return, and will have compassion on them."

This is the earliest we can claim for certain that all three Patriarchs were known and ordered together.  Although even in these verses, Yaakov is also mentioned as a synonym of the north, here contrasted with David, who represents the south.

Patriarchs in Exilic and Post-Exilic Prophets

The towering figure in this era is Yehezkel (Ezekiel), who wrote in the time of the Exile.  He makes no mention of Yitzchak, and only mentions Avraham once, but in the role of a Patriarch (Ezek. 32:34).

 Son of man, they that inhabit those waste places in the land of Israel speak, saying: Abraham was one, and he inherited the land; but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.

Even in the relatively late date of Yehezkel, Yaakov is associated with the north specifically, usually in exclusion of the south.  For example, 39:25

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD: Now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob, and have compassion upon the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name.

and 20:5

and say unto them: Thus saith the Lord GOD: In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up My hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made Myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up My hand unto them, saying: I am the LORD your God;"

For other post-exilic prophets, the only one worth mention is Malachi who mentions that Yaakov and Esav (Esau) are brothers in his opening sentence.

There are further mentions in the books from Yehushua (Joshua) to the end of Melachim Beth (2 Kings), however the dates of composition of these works are by no means certain.  Unlike the prophets, the author is not identified.  There are also a few mentions in the remaining prophets that do not give a time stamp, but most of these works are short, and the absence of a Patriarch has minor meaning.

What Does it all Mean?

If all you knew about the Patriarchs came from Nevi'im (excluding Yehushua - Melachim which are traditionally grouped in Nevi'im, but are clearly different styles of work), you would produce a picture that placed Yaakov as the name of the northern kingdom, along with Yisrael, and sometimes Ephraim.  You might conclude, at least from Hoshea, that there was a actual person by this name, but this wouldn't be too surprising considering that most Israelite works assume that nations are named after human founders (a poor assumption in reality.)

You would then probably relate Avraham to the southern kingdom, and conclude that Yitzchak was a minor character, only playing a significant role in one of the prophets (Amos).  This is exactly the same as the hypothesis we had last week from looking at the Torah alone.

You'd also then be hard-pressed to come up with a time period when Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov were considered the Patriarchs of both the southern and northern kingdoms.  While, you might get as much from Yirmiyahu, the later Yehezkel, clearly associates Yaakov only with the north.

For these reasons, and for the reasons we discussed last week, many academic scholars see the final codification of these stories, the ones that appear in the Torah, to post-date the Exile.  The actual time period varies greatly depending on scholar from around the Exile to all the way into the Hellenistic period.  It's possible that individual narratives existed much earlier, at least we can glean as much from the stories of Hoshea which seem to be aware of some of the stories in Bereishit.  But none of the other stories, especially the ones of Avraham seem to be known, or at least were not important, to the prophets.

As a final note, there's an important point in that last sentence.  Assuming the prophets were writing for an audience, and were prophesying to the people of their time, then one might expect them to reference popular stories from the Torah.  The Rabbis in our shuls certainly do this in their weekly sermons.  This is especially poignant in that these references are powerful.  God promises things to Avraham and Yitzchak in various visions.  If these stories were known, one might expect prophets to refer to them when trying to convince the Israelites to keep up their end of the bargain.  But they don't.  They are not found at all, except for some brief mention in Hoshea.  This is very peculiar, and it seems to indicate that the stories of the patriarchs, one that are known to almost all Jewish and Christian children, were not well known at all when the kingdom of Israel and Judah stood.  The fact that the prophets do not refer to the Patriarchal stories, makes the traditional timeline extremely unlikely.

The Wanderings of the Patriarchs

Parshat Chayei Sarah

This will be a two part post, split into two weeks. In the first week, we'll look at the various wanderings of the patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak, (Isaac) and Yaakov (Jacob), throughout the book of Genesis. We'll focus on the places that they went to, and we'll notice that even though the patriarchs are supposed to represent all Jews, both in the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, the patriarchs tend to be leave their mark exclusively in sites near the north (Yaakov) or the south (Avraham, Yitzchak), and only travel to the other region for story continuity reasons.  This is a topic we'll pick up next week where we will get more support from this hypothesis from the prophets.

Additionally, we'll discuss some of the reasons that academic scholars think that multiple traditions, or indeed multiple authors, are represented in these stories.  There are multiple stories in which the same patriarch, or a different one, travels to the same place and does the exact same thing, with some slight alterations, and no indication that there ever was someone that did this previously.  We'll also briefly touch on some of the historical anachronisms in the stories, which are indications that they were written much later than traditional thoughts, and represented a world closer to the 1st millenium BCE rather than the 2nd millenium BCE.

When I started researching this topic, I wasn't exactly sure what I would find.  This type of approach, where you are unsure of the answers, and you accept whatever answer the data give, is more in line with a scientific type of thinking.  This is completely different from the theological type of thinking in which the answer is already determined, and the verses are interpreted to support it.  Personally, I find the scientific approach much more satisfying.

All verses, unless otherwise noted, are from Bereishit (Genesis)

Abraham, wanderer of the South

On the fairly poorly made graphic below, I've attempted to plot out the paths of the patriarchs, starting with Avraham in red and continuing with Yitzchak in green, and finally Yaakov in blue. Avraham begins his journey well off the map in Ur Cashdim far in eastern Mesopotamia. He winds up in Haran in the northeast of Israel where God tells him to go into Canaan (12:4). This is the red dashed line on the plot. Avraham passes briefly through Shechem (12:6), and his first encampment is between Beth-el and Ai (12:8).

 Poorly made graphic of the wanderings of the Patriarchs.  Red represents Avraham, Green is Yitzchak, Blue is Yaakov. 

After this Avraham, makes a trip to Egypt because of famine, and we encounter the first story of a patriarch journeying to a different land and telling the ruler that his wife is his sister.  This causes trouble for the ruler who then takes the matriarch as a consort and is punished for it (12:10-19). After Egypt, Avraham returns to the camp between Beth-el and Ai briefly (13:3) where he splits up with Lot. Then Avraham travels to Elonei Mamre which later verses indicate is in Hebron (13:18). This is the home base of Avraham from here on out, and he remains here all the way until Chapter 20.

In 20:1 Avraham travels to the Philistine city of Gerar (an anachronism) and repeats the wife-swapping misadventure with a new king. Avraham dwells somewhere in that land when Yitzchak is born, the place is not indicated. However, 21:33 places him in the vicinity of Be'er-Shebah and a story is given for how that place got its name.

The last adventures of Avraham begin with Akedat Yitzchak, the sacrifice of Isaac, which is not placed explicitly in the Torah, but traditionally occurred in Yerushalayim (Jerusalem). As such I've put his path there. Afterwards, Avraham returns to Hevron where he is buried (25:9).

The most important points to note in the travelings of Avraham is that the vast majority of the places he visits are southern locations. He very briefly passes near Shechem, and camps near Beth-el for a short time, but there are no real events that occur there.  Beth-el was a very important city on the border of the two kingdoms, but in the territory of the northern kingdom of Israel. Most of the events of his life occur in the south, in Hevron, Be'er-Shebah, Egypt, and even possibly Yerushalayim. Peripheral events, like the adventures of Lot in S'dom and Amorah (Sodom and Gemorrah) are also southern locations.

The wanderings of Yitzchak

Yitzchak gets the least attention out of the three Patriarchs, and he never leaves the southern areas. He starts at Be'er Lahai Roi (25:11) a place that is somewhere in the Negev, but otherwise not well known. He repeats his father's adventure in Gerar, where he tells the same Philistine king, with the same captain of the guard, that his wife is his sister, and similar bad things occur (26:1-17). Afterwards, Yitzchak digs a bunch of wells in the desert, culminating at Be'er-Shebah (26:33) where Yitzchak seemingly has forgotten that his father named the place in the past, renames it with the same name, but for a different reason! Presumably, Yitzchak settles here, because at this point the focus of the story switches to his son Yaakov.

The wanderings of Yaakov

Yaakov begins his adventures proper when he leaves his childhood home of Be'er Shebah (28:10), traveling to the north, to Aram. He makes a pit stop in Beth-el where he has the famous dream with the ladder (28:11-22) and at this point he names the place Beth-el (28:19). That verse also mentions that the previous name of the place was Luz, which is somewhat confusing, because when his grandfather Avraham passed through, the place was called Beth-el and not Luz.

Nevertheless, Yaakov, reaches Aram, and lives there for 20 years, siring 12 of his 13 children. Yaakov leaves in chapter 31, and has an encounter with Laban somewhere in Gilead, and the Torah gives an explanation for why that area got its name. On his return home, Yaakov has adventures in multiple places mostly on the east side of the Jordan river (transJordan). The first adventure is in Mahanaim where he encounters a bunch of angels and names the place accordingly (32:3). He then has the famous encounter with the angel at Penuel, near Nahal Yabbok. (32:22-32), providing names for both of those places, as well as giving the reason why Yaakov is also known as Yisrael (Israel). Yaakov then travels to Sukkot (33:17) and explains the naming of that place, finally winding up back across the Jordan in Shechem (33:18) where he remains for a while.  He never makes it back to Be'er Sheba.

In 35:1 God tells Yaakov to go to Beth-el. The Torah informs us again that the place was once called Luz (35:6) and Yaakov names it Beth-el a second time, again for a different reason (35:7). Afterwards, (35:9-10) God changes his name to Yisrael, even though it was already changed in the past. The final travels of Yaakov has him going to Beth-lehem, where Rachel is buried (35:19) and then he buries his father in Hevron (35:27-29). Chapter 37 opens with the Torah giving no more specific location of Yaakov than that he was in Canaan. At this point the story shifts to focus on his children, mainly Yosef (Joseph).

If Avraham is the hero of the south, then Yaakov is the hero of the north. He is strongly associated with the city of Beth-el, an extremely important city of the northern kingdom of Israel. Not to mention that he shares his adopted name Yisrael, with that of the northern Israelite kingdom. Other cities like Shechem, and the various locations east of the Jordan river, are in the territories of Israel.

Geographical Associations

Looking at where the patriarchs spent their time, we have Avraham, who starts far in the north, but spends all of his adult years in the south, with his northernmost location near Beth-el. Yitzchak who never leaves the south at all. And Yaakov, who begins far in the south, but spends all of his adult life in the north, before returning to the south in order for the story to connect with that of Yosef which occurs in Egypt. Each one is associated with specific places, Avraham with Hevron, and Be'er Shebah, Yitzchak with Be'er Shebah, and Yaakov with trans-Jordan locations, Shechem, and most importantly, Beth-el. 

From here we have the basic framework of our first hypothesis.  Avraham and Yitzchak, were the patriarchs of the south.  Yaakov was the patriarch of the north.  They were essentially separate stories, but at some point, the two stories merged into one.  A good guess for when this happened was after the northern kingdom was destroyed in 722 BCE, and residents of it fled to the south.  With the merging of the stories, the patriarchs became a single hereditary line: Avraham - Yitzchak - Yaakov. For continuity's sake, they then had to live in the other's territory at the beginning and ends of their lives.  

Based on the data, this is the hypothesis I've come up with.  But in order for it to be believable, it needs support from writings outside the Torah. We'll test the hypothesis next week when we'll look at some supporting information from this from the prophets.  We'll see that the prophets strongly associate Avraham and Yitzchak with the south, and Yaakov with the north. 

Repeated Events (Doublets)

Also, we see that the Torah repeats events. There are three stories of a patriarch trying to pass a wife off as a sister, and bad things happening to the king who is taken by the ruse. It also gives multiple explanations for place names, each one seemingly unfamiliar with previous explanations.  There are two separate explanations for the naming of Be'er Shebah, and similarly, two separate instances for the naming of Beth-el. It is these features that have led academic scholars to hypothesize that these various stories represent different traditions that were later compiled together. A hypothesis called the Documentary Hypothesis which we've already hinted at, but will deal with in more detail throughout the year, goes a step further.  It states that there were actual separate documents that were redacted together and relates these documents to specific historical time periods in different locations. Scholars who aren't comfortable with multiple documents, hypothesize that these stories arose from multiple conflicting oral traditions that existed at the time that the author was writing the Torah, and that author wished to incorporate as many of the conflicting oral traditions as possible. Either way, the presence of these duplicated events create huge problems for traditional readings, and traditional explanations require tortured readings of the text.

Anachronisms

One of the most glaring anachronisms in the Patriarchal stories is the presence of the Pelishtim (Philistines).  Both Avraham and Yitzchak visit the lands of the Pelishtim, and live there for several years.  They also feud over territory in the south, in the vicinity of Beer-Shebah.  In later years, Pelishtim were rivals of both kingdoms throughout the monarchial period.  They controlled the coasts, including lucrative trade routes, and fertile lands by the Mediterranean, while the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were relegated more to the inner highlands.  However, the Pelishtim were not always there.

In the beginning of the 12th century BCE, the "sea peoples" arrived and destroyed many lands.  They were responsible for the destruction of Ugarit in the north.  And they also took control of the coastal regions from the Egyptians, who then retreated back to Egypt.  Before the arrival of the Sea Peoples, Egypt controlled all of Canaan.  After this, the "sea peoples" settled in the cities and built new ones.  Their arrival is attested archaeologically by the destruction of various cities, and the presence of new Aegean pottery which was found starting at this time at key cities of the Pelishtim.  Furthermore, Rameses III mentioned the Pelishtim as one of the Sea Peoples [1].  So we are pretty certain that the Sea Peoples included the Pelishtim, and thus, the Pelishtim could not have been in Israel before 1200 BCE.  Therefore, these stories must have been written much later, after all memories of the arrival of the Pelishtim were forgotten.  [2]

The city of Gerar as the capital of the Pelishtim, is even more problematic. 

Quoting Finkelstein/Silberman,"Gerar is today identified with Tel Haror northwest of Beersheba, and excavtions there have shown that in the Iron Age I [~1200 - 900 BCE] - the early phase of Philistine history - it was no more than a small insignificant village.  But by the late eighth and seventh century BCE, it had become a strong, heavily fortified Assyrian administrative stronghold in the south, an obvious landmark. [3]" 

And on the choice of cities that the Patriarchs visited, they say the following:

"The Middle Bronze [~2000-1500 BCE, a traditional dating for the Patriarchs] was a period of advanced urban life.  Canaan was dominated by a group of powerful city-states, ruled from such capitals as Hazor and Megiddo.  These cities were strongly fortified by huge earthen ramparts with massive gates.  They had great palaces and towering temples.  But in the biblical text we do not see this at all.  True, a few cities are mentioned, but not necessarily the most important ones.  Shechem (as a city) is not there, nor are Bethel and Jerusalem - all three were massive Middle Bronze strongholds.  And in the plains we should have heard about Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, not Gerar.  The biblical story of the patriarchs is clearly not the story of Middle Bronze Canaan. [4]"

Now, some caution is in order when dealing with specific dates, as Finkelstein's proposed dating system is not universally agreed on.  However, the disagreement usually run in the order of about 100 years, and we're talking about discrepancies of over 500.  The conclusion is inescapable.  The authors of these stories were living in a time much later than the supposed events, and did not know what the land looked like at the distant past time period in which they chose for the setting.  Rather they placed them a mythical nomadic past, which may have been accurate at some points in the history of Canaan, but not at the time they chose! 

Ok, that's enough for this week.  Next week we'll look at what the Nevi'im have to say about the patriarchs

---

1. Redford, "Egypt Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times" Princeton Univ. Press, 1992, p. 246. ^

2. For more on this see Finkelstein and Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed," Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.86-90. ^

3. Ibid. p. 38.^

4. Ibid. p. 323.^