For my write-up today about Ernest Nicholson's The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century, I want to share some thoughts that I especially appreciated. I was going to write a really technical post, but I'm rather tired, plus the technical stuff is in my notes, so I can access it in the future. Here are two points, both of which concern the Yahwist's wilderness narratives:
1. According to M. Rose, the JE "material in the Tetrateuch was composed after the Deuteronomistic History", meaning (I presume) late in the exile, and the Yahwist's aim was "to counter the theology of the Deuteronomists" (page 155). On page 155, Nicholson summarizes Rose's argument as follows:
"Rose focuses upon the theme of Israel's 'murmuring'. Deuteronomistic theology too knows of Israel's failure before Yahweh as expressed in a theme such as this. But whereas the Deuteronomists...still held out hope that Israel could choose to obey and be faithful to Yahweh, in the Yahwist's theology there is complete disillusion of any possibility of Israel's faithfulness to Yahweh. At the hands of the Yahwist, Rose argues, the period of the wandering in the wilderness is no longer characterized by occasional failures and offences; rather, the people are depicted as being fundamentally incapable of being the human partner of God's work of salvation. Hence, in the Yahwist's theology Israel's future depends solely upon the grace of Yahweh whose freely bestowed salvation was archetypally manifested in the exodus...This does not mean that the Yahwist sought to displace the Deuteronomistic History. Rather, according to Rose, as a prologue to the latter, the Yahwist's theology of Yahweh's faithfulness towards Israel provided the theological 'key' for the interpretation of the whole of God's dealing with his people from creation to the exile, that is, the theological key to the history recorded in Genesis-2Kings..."
This reminds me of something that one of my undergraduate religion professors said: In the story of the Ten Commandments, God has a conditional covenant and an unconditional covenant with Israel. Moses broke the tablets when Israel violated the conditional covenant. But God still stuck with Israel because of his unconditional covenant with her.
2. On pages 169, 171, and 245, Nicholson speculates that the stories about Israel's murmurings in the wilderness could have developed in the eighth century B.C.E. The stories are about Israel's lack of faith in God. And, in the eighth century B.C.E., Israel and Judah had a hard time trusting in God, due to the Assyrian threat. Isaiah criticizes Judah for running to Egypt to make an alliance, indicating its lack of trust in God.