Hexateuch, Sinai, Land Promises

I'm continuing my way through Volume I of Gerhard Von Rad's Old Testament Theology.

I'm still unclear about Von Rad's views regarding the Hexateuch. I get that Von Rad identifies throughout the Hebrew Bible (particularly in Deuteronomy 26:5-9 and such Psalms as Psalms 105 and 136) a creed that includes the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the Conquest. His view appears to be that J and E organized traditions according to this creed, and that P wrote some stuff that was later combined with them---which gets us Genesis-Joshua, the Hexateuch. But where's his evidence that ancient Israelite religion or Judaism believed in a Hexateuch? And when, according to Von Rad, did the Hexateuch get replaced by the Pentateuch? Did the post-exilic Jewish community make this move to convince the Jews' captors that they no longer had intentions of conquest?

Page 124 is interesting because it discusses Sinai. In Etched in Stone, David Aaron argues that the Sinai tradition is late because it does not appear that often throughout the non-Pentateuchal part of the Hebrew Bible. Von Rad believes that the Sinai tradition is independent: he notes that the creed in Deuteronomy 26:5-9 does not mention it, and also that other "variations on the old Credo do not mention the events of Sinai either." But he thinks that J and E contributed Sinai to Israel's story when they added details about it to what became the Hexateuch (which is not to say that they made Sinai up, but rather that they added traditions that they had). And yet, Von Rad states that, outside of the Pentateuch, as far as creeds go, "The first mention [of Sinai] is in Neh. ix.6ff." (I'm not sure what Von Rad does with Judges 5:5 and Psalm 68:8, 17---if he sees those references as interpolations, or what exactly.) But Von Rad goes on to say that Nehemiah 9:6ff. was "the first place where the picture which J and E expanded made an impression." David Aaron would probably ask how the stories about Sinai would not have made an impression until Israel's post-exilic period---when they loom so large in the Pentateuch! His solution is that the stories are late, and so many of the authors whose writings are in the Hebrew Bible did not know about them.

I talked yesterday about how Von Rad---like others---believes that there were a bunch of independent traditions, which were put together into a narrative. On page 122, he says that the traditions may have been independent, and yet they presuppose some knowledge of the whole story---Israel is in the wilderness, and that came after the Exodus. In my post yesterday, I talked about how Von Rad believed that even the patriarchal stories contain some theme of election. In my reading today, however, Von Rad states that the patriarchal land promise was different from how the Hexateuch as a whole portrayed the land promise. On pages 133-134, Von Rad states that the patriarchal land promise was made "with reference to an imminent realisation"---it said that some Israelite nomads would settle in the land and soon come to own it. For Von Rad, there was no sense that the Israelites would come to dwell in Egypt and then conquer the land of Canaan years down the road! (Von Rad would probably say that those parts about the Exodus in Genesis 15 were added later.)