Idolatry in the Pentateuch: An Innertextual Strategy

Idolatry in the Pentateuch

An Innertextual Strategy

Tracy J. McKenzie

Idolatry in the Pentateuch

An Innertextual Strategy

Copyright © 2010 Tracy J. McKenzie. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978-1-60608-607-0

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7164-6

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

McKenzie, Tracy J.

Idolatry in the Pentateuch : an innertextual strategy / Tracy J. McKenzie.

x + 138 p. ; 23 cm. — Includes bibliographical references.

isbn 13: 978-1-60608-607-0

1. Bible. O.T. Exodus Xxxii, 7–20—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. O.T. Deuteronomy Ix, 12–21—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Idolatry—Biblical teaching. 4. Bible—O.T. Pentateuch—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 5. Bible. O.T.—Theology. I. Title.

bs1199 l7 m36 2010

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my major professor, Dr. John Sailhamer, for his guidance in the completion of this work. His inspiring pursuit to understand the Hebrew Bible, his comprehension of the field of Old Testament studies, his thoughtful analysis, and his constant encouragement made the original dissertation possible.

I would also like to thank Dr. Bill Brown for reading the original dissertation and providing many helpful comments on it. His input over the final few months of that project was an encouragement to me. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Vernon Steiner for his lasting influence upon me in teaching biblical Hebrew and for his input in an independent research seminar.

Although fellow students enriched my experience at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary through listening and interacting with ideas, I would like to thank one in particular. Dr. Joshua Williams and I spent hours together wrestling over ideas within Old Testament studies and translating sources. Moreover, his input in the final days of completion of the original dissertation made it a better project.

Finally and most important, I want to thank my wife, Beth, to whom this work is dedicated. Her selfless service to our family allowed me to complete the doctorate degree in a timely manner. She has only and always been a source of encouragement, patience, and wisdom during its course, and without her affection and friendship none of this would be possible.

Abbreviations

AnBib Analecta Biblica

BDB Brown, Francis, et al. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996

BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum Lovaniensium

Bib Biblica

BKAT Biblischer Kommentar. Altes Testament

BZAW Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

CahRB Cahiers de la Revue biblique.

ConBOT Coniectanea biblica: Old Testament Series

CCSL Corpus Christianum: Series latina.

EvT Evangelische Theologie

FC Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC) 1947–

FRLANT Forschungen Zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

Int Interpretation

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature

JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series

NAC New American Commentary

NCB New Century Bible

NEchtB Neue Echter Bibel

OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology

OtSt Oudtestamentische studiën

OTL Old Testament Library

TRE Theologische Realenzyklopedie. Edited by G. Krause and G. Müller. Berlin, 1977–

UTB Uni-Taschenbücher

SBET Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology

SBLSP Society for Biblical Literature Seminar Papers

VT Vetus Testamentum

VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum

WBC Word Biblical Commentary

WTJ Westminster Theological Journal

ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Introduction

The Relevance and Goals of the Study

The narrative of the golden calf relates the story of Israel’s worship of a molten image. The story occurs in its most extensive accounts in two locations in the Old Testament. The first location is Exod 32:1–35. The second location is Deut 9:12–21. Scholars acknowledge that the report of the golden calf is important. The question that remains, however, is its significance for the Pentateuch. More precisely, what is the textual relationship between Exod 32:7–20 and Deut 9:12–21? What purpose does the relationship of these two texts of the golden calf play in understanding the compositional strategies within the Pentateuch?

Scholars have examined the narrative of the golden calf in connection with other parts of the Hebrew Bible.¹ Hans Christoph Schmitt, in an essay titled, Die Erzählung vom Goldenen Kalb Ex. 32 und das Deuteronomistische Geschichtwerk, has said, The literary-critical result of the narrative of the golden calf in Exod 32 is of central significance for the identification of the relationship between the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History.² Schmitt’s statement reveals that the relationship between Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9 has significance in determining the larger structure of the Hebrew Bible.³

The relationship of the golden calf narratives in Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9 may also have significance in determining the structure of the Pentateuch. An analysis of these texts in relationship to each other could provide evidence of compositional strategies within the Pentateuch. These strategies are often more conspicuous as one observes uneven syntax. Exodus 32 exhibits complexities within its syntax and structure. As a result, critical scholars have debated the presence of independent sources since the rise of historical criticism.⁴ More traditional approaches attempt to explain the complexities within a presumed unity.⁵

The narrative of the golden calf within the book of Deuteronomy also presents a certain complexity. Scholarly works concerning this passage tend to concentrate in two divergent directions. They are inclined to focus either on its coherence within a Deuteronomic context or on its literary-critical relationship with Exodus.⁶ In this manner, the relationship of Exodus 32 to Deuteronomy 9 has not gone unnoticed. Attempts to lay bare the relationship between the two often end in hypotheses concerning sources or a comparison of their respective dates. Each direction overlooks the relationship of these two passages in light of the final shape of the Pentateuch.

J. Clinton McCann affirms the direction of this project when he opens his article with the following statement: Exod 32:1–14, along with the larger narrative which it introduces (Exod 32–34), is fundamental for understanding the Book of Exodus, the Pentateuch, the entire Old Testament, and indeed, the New Testament and the whole history of God’s dealing with humanity.⁷ This statement along with the view cited above by Schmitt not only indicate the importance of the incident of the golden calf narrated in Exod 32:7–20 but also the need for an examination of the other major textual unit dealing with the golden calf within the Pentateuch, Deut 9:12–21. An examination that explains the nature of the relationship between these two passages will aid a proper understanding of the Pentateuch and propose an understanding of the golden-calf narratives that coheres with the rest of the Bible.

The purpose of this analysis is to examine the relationship between the golden-calf texts of Exod 32:7–20 and Deut 9:12–21. It will argue that the two passages are part of an innertextual strategy making up the composition of the Pentateuch. The term innertextuality is understood as an intentional connection between narratives in order to combine them into a larger whole.⁸ These connections are used to produce a structure through which an author⁹ communicates a message.¹⁰ While these connections between passages may be detected on various narrative levels, this analysis will focus on what Bar-Efrat labels the verbal level.¹¹

The narratives in Exod 32:7–20 and Deut 9:12–21 are clearly related. The question is the nature of that relationship. Are the two units textually related? Is the relationship one of a late redaction of the Pentateuch, as many scholars have suggested? What role does the golden-calf narratives play in the composition of the Pentateuch? This work will demonstrate that the connection between Exod 32:7–20 and Deut 9:12–21 is directly related to the compositional strategy of the whole.

A Survey of Approaches to Old Testament Studies from the Eighteenth Century until the Present

Literary Criticism and the Objective of Old Testament Studies

The field of the Old Testament is in a state of transition. Since before the nineteenth century, scholars have attempted to uncover the makeup of the Old Testament through the discovery of literary layers and sources.¹² Emboldened by the literary criticism of Astruc, Eichhorn, and Wellhausen, they saw their task as to discover the historical progression associated with the Old Testament.¹³ Each layer of tradition which was ascertained in the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch or Hexateuch, led to an examination of that layer. In his book Die Biblische Urgeschichte: Redaktions- und Theologiegeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu Genesis 1,1—11,26, Marcus Witte describes the development: Hypotheses concerning the birth of the Pentateuch proliferated after the results of J. Astruc were confirmed by the examinations of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, were proven to be on a solid scientific foundation, and were communicated to a larger research environment.¹⁴ The scholarly interest in the production and growth of the Old Testament proliferated from there.

The complex makeup of the Pentateuch had been proposed since the seventeenth century.¹⁵ Wellhausen focused scholarship on that makeup with his work Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel.¹⁶ Wellhausen gained scholarly consensus due in part to the high opinion in which Old Testament scholarship held historical development.¹⁷ He combined an attempt to understand the Pentateuch with an attempt to trace the historical milieu in which it was produced. In the introduction to his Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, he states, It is necessary to trace the succession of the three elements [sources] in detail, and at once to test and to fix each by reference to an independent standard, namely, the inner development of the history of Israel so far as that is known to us by trustworthy testimonies, from independent sources.¹⁸ Wellhausen attempted to situate the preexistent sources in a historical period of the history of Israel.

Wellhausen accomplished this by examining the three constituent elements for a relationship to a period in Israel’s history. The constituent elements were the Priestly Code, Deuteronomy, and the Jehovist.¹⁹ His methodology and goal quickly became clear. He began his discussion with an attempt to isolate the notion of a singular place of worship. He states,

But this oneness of the sanctuary in Israel was not originally recognized either in fact or in law; it was a slow growth of time. With the help of the Old Testament we are still quite able to trace the process. In doing so, it is possible to distinguish several stages of development. We shall accordingly proceed to inquire whether the three constituent parts of the Pentateuch give tokens of any relationship to one or other of these; whether and how they fall in with the course of the historical development which we are able to follow by the aid of the historical and prophetic books from the period of the Judges onwards.²⁰

This statement shows Wellhausen’s purpose. He wanted to understand the connection between a constituent element and a period in history.

Wellhausen’s success in Prolegomena won over the majority of scholars in his day. Scholarship focused its attention on the sources that made up the Old Testament. Witte evaluates this period by saying, Consequently, the interests of research slipped to a survey of the pre-history of the Pentateuch, to the sources.²¹ The primary focus of scholarship was no longer on the shape of the biblical text itself. The general objective of scholarship became an examination of those documents thought to constitute the Pentateuch and other biblical books. Rolf Rendtorff recognizes this movement in The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament. He writes, It was, after all, an essential point of departure for modern historical-critical exegesis that the texts often appear to lack cohesion or are recognizably disparate, so that they seem to issue a veritable challenge to diachronic analysis and the discerning of earlier stages in their history of development. By devoting itself to this task, however, modern biblical criticism largely lost the present form of the text from view.²² The importance of the shape of the biblical text disappeared in the wake of sources and strata within the text.

It was a respect for these sources and their original authors that led to a devaluation of any material not assigned to them. Because of the interest focused on the sources, an attempt to exegete the final shape lost relevance. Moreover, the one responsible for this final shape was seen in a negative light. Witte states, Bound with the working out of the original sources, the moving of final redaction into the post-mosaic time and the with the interest on the ‘pure,’ ‘original’ texts, a devaluation took place since the end of the eighteenth century for the figure responsible for the end shape. The work of the final redactor appeared now as a distortion of the original clear narrative course of the sources.²³ Konrad Schmid assesses the loss of respect for the composer. He states, Following the influence of Romanticism, the original author of the Old Testament writings—the Yahwist or Isaiah—was a religious genius while almost inevitably only the label of ‘Epigone’ remained for the one who completed it.²⁴ Since those responsible for the final shape were devalued, so was their work.

The work of those who composed the final shape of the text was seen as little more than inadequate editing. Rendtorff assesses the substandard opinion in which these authors were held. In particular the authors of the text before us found themselves cast in the role of ‘editors,’ revisers, supplementers etc., who were considered of lesser value, and worthy of less attention, than the ‘original’ authors—despite the fact that in many cases the ‘authors’ are unknown or not traceable, or that, as in the case of the prophetic books, the composers of the ‘original’ words cannot generally be equated with the authors of the written texts.²⁵ This devaluation intensified a pursuit of the sources and theology of those sources that made up the Old Testament.

The role of the critical study of the Old Testament became an explanation of the sources and traditions that made up the Old Testament. A scholar was not primarily interested in what the final shape communicated but rather in the tradition underlying it. In an essay titled Die Nachgeschichte alttestamentlicher Texte innerhalb des Alten Testaments, H. W. Hertzberg puts it bluntly: It was not long ago when the interest in a passage which was considered artificial was essentially exhausted by merely explaining it as artificial. The text which was isolated held the interest. The magic word, gloss, gave the occasion to remove the doubtful verse from the task.²⁶ Rendtorff explains, The present form of the text is generally accorded the least intrinsic value; rather, it is viewed as the result of ‘secondary’ and often not ‘meaningful’ . . . revision and reshaping. The previous, earlier, ‘more original’ stages of the text which are discerned in the analysis of the text, are given a higher rating.²⁷ The focus of study was on a text that had been stripped of any compositional activity.

Wellhausen was not the only scholar to significantly influence the discipline. Gunkel focused scholarship on the forms