I'm reading Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? for the third time. In this post, I want to talk about his characterizations of J and E.
How can one tell J and E apart? You can't necessarily by grouping the stories that use "YHWH" under J, and the stories that use "God" under E, for there are times when E uses "YHWH"---after E's story in Exodus 3 about God revealing the name of YHWH to Israel through Moses. As Friedman states on page 84, characterizing the two writings according to their style also is not helpful, for the styles of J and E are similar. (Freidman refers to possible scenarios to account for this, such as one writer imitating the style of the other, or both drawing from a common source.)
Essentially, Friedman argues that J is a Southern writer, whereas E is a Northern one. J highlights the prominent Judahite city of Hebron in its patriarchal stories, whereas E features the Northern cities that Jeroboam built (I Kings 12:25): Peni-el and Shechem, the capital of Israel. I found Friedman's discussion of Shechem interesting: J portrays the Israelite possession of Shechem as bloody (Genesis 34), presumably to attack Northern Israel, whereas E says that Jacob simply bought it (Genesis 33:19). E talks a lot about the Northern tribes, whereas J's stories focus on the Southern ones, along with Levi. J highlights the prominence of Judah, whereas E presents Ephraim as a tribe that will gain renown. Joshua, an Ephraimite, is big in E's wilderness stories, whereas Caleb (whose territory included Hebron, in Judah) is in J---and, in the story of the spies, the spies only explore territory in Judah, so it must be J (according to Friedman). J features the Ark of the Covenant, which was in Judah's sanctuary in Jerusalem, whereas E talks about the Tent of Meeting, which at one point was in the Northern sanctuary at Shiloh. J prohibits molten gods, which implies that God disapproves of Jeroboam's calves, which were molten, but does not ban Judah's cherubim, which were not molten (for the gold covered the wood). E presents Moses shattering the tablets of the Ten Commandments, implying that the tablets in the Ark at Jerusalem were fake or non-existent, whereas J's story of the Ten Commandments (in Exodus 34) does not have Moses shattering them (and, for Friedman, that part in Exodus 34 about Moses replacing the shattered tablets is from a redactor, not J). E also fleshes out the character of Moses, for it values him as a character.
For Friedman, E was a Levite in Shiloh, which was in Northern Israel. The Shilohite priesthood was expelled by King Solomon when he booted out Abiathar (I Kings 2:26), and that may be why the prophet Ahijah of Shiloh supported Jeroboam, who led Northern Israel to secede from the Davidic kingdom. But, as king of Northern Israel, Jeroboam also rejected the Levites of Shiloh, preferring to make priests of the lowest of the people (II Kings 17:32). Consequently, the Levites of Shiloh did not care for Jerusalem---which included the monarchy and the Aaronic priesthood---for the Jerusalem establishment had expelled them. But they also didn't care for Jeroboam's calves, for they were excluded from that cult as well. But they felt that they at least had a fighting chance of eventually being accepted in the North, for Shiloh was in Ephraim, whereas, in the South, the Aaronic priesthood was firmly entrenched. And so E supported the North rather than the South, even as it opposed Jeroboam's golden calves. In its Golden Calf story, Aaron and the golden calf are depicted in a negative light, whereas Moses and the Levites are elevated as heroes. According to Friedman, this reflects their political views. And, for Friedman, the Shilohite Levites may have believed that they were descended from Moses, and that could account for their exaltation of him in their writings.
That's a sampling of Friedman's argument so far. I don't dismiss it completely, but here are some of my reactions:
1. Friedman says that Joshua is in E, whereas Caleb is in J. But, in Numbers 14:6, Joshua and Caleb appear together. Friedman attributes that to P. Why? I don't think "Because it fits Friedman's thesis that Joshua and Caleb don't appear together in J and E" is satisfactory (not that Friedman says that). But what is his reason? Maybe I'll see when I get to his discussion on P!
2. Ever since I read Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena, I've been thinking about the Tabernacle. Wellhausen's argument is that it did not exist---that an exilic or post-exilic priest inserted it into the Pentateuch in order to place a mini-version of Israel's sanctuary in the wilderness, a cumulative time in Israel's history. Wellhausen wonders why the Ark of the Covenant is never placed inside of the Tabernacle in the historiographic parts of the Bible that date to Judah's pre-exilic period, and his conclusion is that the pre-exilic authors were not aware of the Tabernacle, for it had not been invented yet.
But, after reading Gerhard Von Rad and now Friedman, I wonder: Maybe the priest did not invent the Tabernacle. Perhaps the Ark and the Tent of Meeting were believed to be separate before the exile, and P's contribution was that he made the Tent of Meeting into a sanctuary that contained the Ark.
2. Friedman portrays the Shilohite Levites as poor because they were rejected by the North and the South. Would poor Levites be able to write a history? And why would they write their history down? I can see Jews in exile, afraid that they might lose their traditions through assimilation, committing their traditions to writing, in order to preserve them. But why would a bunch of disaffected Levites write their history down? Were they similarly afraid of losing their traditions? I'm not saying that there aren't answers to these questions, but those are things that I wonder---especially when one of my professors emphasizes that writers in the ancient world needed a sponsor.
4. If there is a J and an E---as Friedman argues---then I think that they used older sources. Why does J feel a need a present Judah supplanting Reuben in importance? Couldn't he or she have presented Judah as important at the outset? And why does E make Jacob look odd for blessing Ephraim more than Manasseh---the older of the two? Why not just portray Ephraim as older? I believe that J and E were dealing with a reality (or old traditions) in which Reuben and Manasseh were at one point prominent, and they had to deal with that to explain how Judah and Ephraim became so powerful. They couldn't say that Judah and Ephraim had always been the most prominent tribes in Israel, for that was not the case, and many people knew that it wasn't the case. Friedman acknowledges that J and E could have used old traditions, but his tone often is that J and E were active (maybe even creative) writers of their histories, not mere compilers.