The "new documentary hypothesis" has been the leading scholarly paradigm governing literary analysis of the Pentateuch for almost a century. However, in recent research its historical and literary presuppositions have become questionable. A growing number of scholars have embraced a redaction-critical model for interpreting the literary growth of the Pentateuch instead, identifying the priestly-code as the first literary thread combining the patriarchal narratives with an earlier version of the Moses-Exodus-story (cf. K. Schmid, J. C. Gertz). This view is based on the observation that the oldest literary evidence for a narrative that bridges the stories about Abraham and Jacob with the Moses tradition is to be found in the priestly material. In this article this new "consensus" shall be revisited, taking the story of the commission of Moses as a test case (cf. Ex 3-4). The literary analysis of this passage (and related texts) leads to somewhat different conclusions: The oldest layer of the narrative in Ex 3 f. seems to be pre-priestly in origin and already contains a literary bridge back into the patriarchal narratives (cf. Ex 3:6). The later priestly material in Ex 2:23-25 and 6:2-13 develops this connection further by reinterpreting it in accordance to Yahweh's covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen 17). The latest criticism of the "new documentary hypothesis" and its replacement by a consequent redaction-critical model may hold true, but to identify the priestly-code as the first literary thread of the later pentateuchal narrative is misleading.

Enthalten in:
Theologische Literaturzeitung; 2014/2 Monatsschrift für das gesamte Gebiet der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (2014)

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Serie / Reihe: Theologische Literaturzeitung

Personen: Pietsch, Michael

Schlagwörter: Mose Pentateuch Bibelwissenschaft Berufung