Idolatry in the Pentateuch

An Innertextual Strategy

McKenzie

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781498271646
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Idolatry in the Pentateuch addresses both the manner in which the Pentateuch was produced and how theological intentions can be discerned from the texts that constitute it. McKenzie attempts to read the final shape of the Pentateuch while not ignoring the diachronic complexities within its pages. Using a compositional approach to the Pentateuch, he establishes his methodology, analyzes several idolatry-related texts, and traces the theological intentions through an inner-textual strategy. Moreover, McKenzie briefly considers the history of interpretation through the last few centuries and discusses the state of Old Testament studies as he understands it.

1

Innertextuality and Biblical Authorship

A central concern for Old Testament theology is an understanding of the final shape of the canon.1 Thus, a central concern for the basis of this project is an understanding of the final shape of the Pentateuch. In his The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, Rolf Rendtorff describes his task as “allowing the intentions of those who gave the texts their present shape to come into their own . . . The guiding interest is not the uncovering of tensions or contradictions in the texts, however, but rather the question how the authors of the extant texts understood them in their present form and how they wanted their readers to understand them.”2 The task as Rendtorff saw it was to explain the text in its present shape by discerning the intentions of those who shaped it.

Rendtorff is balancing two opposing poles in order to focus on this task. The first pole concerns the issues dealt with in the introduction to this work. The task of literary criticism was an attempt to isolate the different sources within a text in order to explain those sources. This process resulted in a loss of concern for the final shape of the text.

The other pole attempts to gloss over the “tensions or contradictions in the texts.”3 This pole treats the text in a harmonizing manner. It attempts to smooth out the complexities of the final shape in order to arrive at a uniform reading. In doing so, this pole also fails to take seriously the final shape of the text. Rendtorff avoided these poles in an attempt to understand the final shape. Rendtorff maintains “that each biblical text in the form in which we now have it has its own statement to make.”4 For Rendtorff, this statement of the text can be comprehended neither by dividing the text nor by glossing over any apparent complexities.

The complexities are observable data that have often been used to delineate sources. A complexity might be a repeated storyline, phrase, or term, the absence of smooth or typical syntax, or the use of alternate names. These complexities exist in the final shape of the text, however, and can be used to discern the intentions imprinted in that shape. These complexities often reveal the process of selection, arrangement, adaptation, and writing of smaller units of texts in order to create a larger whole in a structured and meaningful manner. The task of biblical studies should be to explain the text, along with any complexities in order to arrive at the message of the final shape.

This analysis also seeks to balance these opposing poles. Its aim is not an isolation of the sources that make up the Pentateuch. Neither is its aim primarily an attempt to understand the historical development of how the current Pentateuch came into being. Moreover, it is not at attempt at harmonization. The narratives of Exod 32:7–20 and Deut 9:12–21 do contain certain complexities. An attempt will not be made to level the surface of these two narratives and harmonize the differences between them. Rather, this work asks, why does the final shape of the Pentateuch contain these two narratives? As Rendtorff said concerning his attempt to understand the final shape, “it is a matter of changing the set of questions to be asked and the exegetical interest.”5 The interest of this analysis lies in the final shape of the Pentateuch and the intentions embodied in it.

This chapter will provide an interpretive basis for discerning these intentions. The first section will define the term innertextuality and interact with others who have demonstrated similar notions from biblical passages. The second section will relate innertextuality to the authorship of biblical books.

Innertextuality

This section will introduce the notion of innertextuality and give its definition. Each integral part of the definition will be discussed in the following subsections. The term, innertextuality, is understood as an intentional connection between texts in order to combine them into a larger whole. These connections are used to produce a structure through which an author communicates a message. John Sailhamer, in his Introduction to Old Testament Theology: A Canonical Approach, discusses this phenomenon. Sailhamer views innertextuality as a strategy of authorial composition. Such strategies of composition “make up the whole fabric of biblical narrative books. Such inner-linkage binding narratives into a larger whole is called inner-textuality. By means of such links the biblical authors thematize their basic message.”6 What Sailhamer calls “inner-linkage” and “links” are the linguistic connections between different textual units. These connections between narratives serve to join the narratives together. If the connections are distributed throughout an entire unit, a composition is constructed by means of the connections.

These connections reveal the strategies and intentions imprinted in the text. A reader pursues understanding by detecting the strategies “embodied in the text.”7 This work assumes that a biblical book is a reflection of an author’s, that is, a composer’s intention.8 The name or personality of the author is not the objective for the current purposes. Rather, the current shape, the content of the text and the strategies contained therein contribute to the message communicated through the text. The following section will discuss the first integral component of innertextuality, the connection between textual units.

Connections between Texts

This section will discuss the first aspect of innertextuality, the connection between textual units. These connections between textual units are a primary feature of innertextuality. They are more than random links that a reader associates between texts. They are formal characteristics constituting texts. A connection consists of formal linguistic elements that exist in two or more passages. Terminological, syntactical, and stylistic characteristics are able to signal the connections between textual units, which indicate signs of compositional activity. The final section of this chapter will lay the methodological groundwork for determining the intentionality of these connections. Once demonstrated, an intentional connection exhibits the design of an author and leaves an imprint reflected through linguistic signs.

Sailhamer illustrates an example of this intentional connection at key positions within the Pentateuch. He explains,

At three macro-structural junctures in the Pentateuch, the author has spliced a major poetic discourse onto the end of a large unit of narrative (Ge 49; Nu 24; Dt 31). A close look at the material lying between and connecting the narrative and poetic sections reveals the presence of a homogeneous compositional stratum. It is most noticeably marked by the recurrence of the same terminology and narrative motifs. In each of the three segments (especially Ge 49:1; Nu 24:14; Dt 31:28–29), the central narrative figure (Jacob, Balaam, Moses) calls an audience together (imperative) and proclaims (cohortative) what will happen in the “end of days.”9

In detecting the repetition of expressions and subject matter Sailhamer has uncovered traces of compositional activity. Sailhamer explains the expressions and subject matter of each passage and concludes: “Such convergence of macro-structure, narrative motifs, and terminology among these three strategically important poems of the Pentateuch can hardly be accidental. The fact that the terms occur only one other time in the Pentateuch, and that also within a macro-structural seam (Deut 4), argues strongly for our taking these connecting segments to be the work of the final composer or author of the Pentateuch.”10 Sailhamer detects formal qualities such as t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Innertextuality and Biblical Authorship
• Chapter 2: Analyzing the Relationship between Exodus 32:7–20 and Deuteronomy 9:12–21
• Chapter 3: The Innertextuality of Exodus 32:7–20 and Deuteronomy 9:12–21 and the Structure of the Pentateuch
• Excursus: Idolatry in the Pentateuch
• Chapter 4: Conclusion
• Bibliography