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In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 8, "Teaching School in a Stable and a Hen-House." In this chapter, Booker T. Washington talks about the contributions that he received for the struggling Tuskegee Institute---from both African-Americans and whites. At first, Washington narrates, many white people in Tuskegee, Alabama were skeptical about educating African-Americans. They feared that education would encourage African-Americans to leave the farms, and thus decline in terms of their economic value to the state. Moreover, when whites thought about an educated African-American, all they could really envision was someone "with a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid gloves, fancy boots, and what not—in a word, a man who was determined to live by his wits."
But Booker's goals were the opposite of this, for he states:
"We found that the most of our students came from the country districts, where agriculture in some form or other was the main dependence of the people. We learned that about eighty-five per cent of the coloured people in the Gulf states depended upon agriculture for their living. Since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to educate our students out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be attracted from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation of trying to live by their wits. We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people."
My impression from this chapter was that Booker T. Washington wanted African-Americans to learn the liberal arts, for he mentions the teaching of French at the Tuskegee Institute. But he also desired that they learn practical skills---good manners, how to apply mathematics to a concrete bank account, etc. Moreover, he seems to be trying to communicate to white society that the Tuskegee Institute would equip African-Americans to be useful for the plantation districts---as they would contribute ideas about agriculture, as well as display the knowledge and good character that they would have received from their education.
I wonder if W.E.B. Du Bois had problems with this. Some of what Du Bois says in The Souls of Black Folk overlaps with Booker T. Washington's goals in this chapter: educated African-Americans returning to their communities to help them to succeed, having higher values than material success, contributing what one has learned. Didn't Du Bois want the talented tenth to do these sorts of things, as they inspired the broader African-American community?
But Du Bois' problem was that Washington came to prioritize African-Americans learning manual skills and achieving economic success, over receiving a liberal arts education and engaging in political activity. Technically-speaking, in Washington's work, I don't see that---for he supports the liberal arts in addition to education in practical skills, and he promotes African-American suffrage. At the same time, his tone appears to be that practical skills are superior to the liberal arts, and he tells a couple of bad stories about the political process. With that sort of mindset, I can understand how he got to the point where he prioritized industrial education and economic success over the liberal arts and political activity---even though we should also remember that he promoted African-American suffrage in a clandestine manner. Some of his approach may have been rooted in his own beliefs, whereas other aspects were perhaps based on what he thought African-Americans could realistically achieve in a white society.
Another note: In this chapter, Booker T. Washington meets the lady who became his wife, Olive Davidson. Booker expresses his admiration for her compassion (especially for the sick) and her hard-work on behalf of the Tuskegee Institute.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Whybray and Oral Transmission
I'm still working my way through R.N. Whybray's Making of the Pentateuch. In my reading today, Whybray continues his critique of the Documentary Hypothesis. John Anderson has a summary of Whybray's problems with the Hypothesis here. And he also has an extensive outline on the history of scholarship regarding the composition of the Pentateuch here (this focuses on the past thirty years). I'll definitely be using his outline as I study for my Hebrew Bible comp---not as a substitute for my own reading and preparation, of course, but as a guide.
To set the stage for my discussion of my reading for today, I want to quote the back cover of the book. This may look like I actually didn't read today, but, believe me, I did! The back cover just sums up the issue in a way that I cannot right now, since I'm rather tired:
"The second part casts doubt upon the applicability of Olrick's Sage and Jolles' Icelandic saga studies to the Old Testament, and rejects the assumption that oral traditions can be transmitted in a recognizable form over a long period of time."
Whybray makes a lot of arguments in the second part of his book---against scholarly attempts to posit ancient oral traditions behind the stories in the Pentateuch, and even (if I'm not mistaken) to identify those oral traditions. What I essentially got from Whybray is that there's no proof for these oral traditions. There's no proof that ancient Hebrews told stories to each other on winter nights, or that a professional storyteller delivered them orally, and that those stories were passed on orally for generations until they found their way into the Pentateuch. There are scholars who have tried to say that the transmission of oral tradition in ancient Israel resembled that of the Icelandic sagas, or the oral transmission of other folklore. But there's no evidence that ancient Israel transmitted oral tradition in the same manner that the sagas and other countries' folklore were transmitted. Moreover, the Icelandic sagas are poetry---which is easy to remember and to pass on orally---whereas the stories of the Pentateuch are prose. Plus, there's really no evidence that the Icelandic sagas had a long oral history. I mean, we just have them in written form, right? How do we even know that they were passed on orally for a long period of time? "But there's stuff in the Bible that sounds like it would have been oral at one point," one can argue. Whybray's response to this is that perhaps stories in the Bible were written to be read aloud on occasions.
I'm not sure where Whybray is going on this, especially since he says on page 130 that the Documentary Hypothesis is problematic because "No allowance was made for the possibility that repetitions, doublets, and inconsistencies might have already been present in the oral stage of transmission of the materials used by the authors of the written text." I talked some about this yesterday. Whybray wonders: why should we assume that repetitions, doublets, and inconsistencies indicate the existence of multiple, continuous written sources? Maybe these bumps were present in the stories before they were even written down---in the time that they were still at the oral stage!
Even in the second section of his book, as he takes on the concept of a long oral tradition, Whybray appears to use this insight to take a swipe at the Documentary Hypothesis. On page 177, he notes that Hermann Gunkel said that doublets exist because a story took variant forms "in the course of diffused oral transmission". And so that's why there are doublets! It has nothing to do with multiple written sources! A variation of a story could have been floating around orally (you know what happens to stories when they're told repeatedly), without being a part of a second full-blown written source. But, believe it or not, Gunkel still believes in the Documentary Hypothesis: he thinks that the doublets originated orally, but that one version wound up in one source, while another version wound up in the other, and a redactor then put them together.
In any case, I'm puzzled that Whybray appeals to the oral stage of stories to critique the Documentary Hypothesis in the first part of his book, and he then challenges oral transmission in the second part. But is he challenging oral transmission, or only the idea that it was a long process? I notice on the back cover that he will argue that the sixth century author of the Pentateuch drew "upon folklore current in his own time but not of great antiquity."
UPDATE: On page 236, Whybray says that ancient Israel "possessed [oral] traditions like any other people", but "we have no certain method by which their antiquity can be discovered."
To set the stage for my discussion of my reading for today, I want to quote the back cover of the book. This may look like I actually didn't read today, but, believe me, I did! The back cover just sums up the issue in a way that I cannot right now, since I'm rather tired:
"The second part casts doubt upon the applicability of Olrick's Sage and Jolles' Icelandic saga studies to the Old Testament, and rejects the assumption that oral traditions can be transmitted in a recognizable form over a long period of time."
Whybray makes a lot of arguments in the second part of his book---against scholarly attempts to posit ancient oral traditions behind the stories in the Pentateuch, and even (if I'm not mistaken) to identify those oral traditions. What I essentially got from Whybray is that there's no proof for these oral traditions. There's no proof that ancient Hebrews told stories to each other on winter nights, or that a professional storyteller delivered them orally, and that those stories were passed on orally for generations until they found their way into the Pentateuch. There are scholars who have tried to say that the transmission of oral tradition in ancient Israel resembled that of the Icelandic sagas, or the oral transmission of other folklore. But there's no evidence that ancient Israel transmitted oral tradition in the same manner that the sagas and other countries' folklore were transmitted. Moreover, the Icelandic sagas are poetry---which is easy to remember and to pass on orally---whereas the stories of the Pentateuch are prose. Plus, there's really no evidence that the Icelandic sagas had a long oral history. I mean, we just have them in written form, right? How do we even know that they were passed on orally for a long period of time? "But there's stuff in the Bible that sounds like it would have been oral at one point," one can argue. Whybray's response to this is that perhaps stories in the Bible were written to be read aloud on occasions.
I'm not sure where Whybray is going on this, especially since he says on page 130 that the Documentary Hypothesis is problematic because "No allowance was made for the possibility that repetitions, doublets, and inconsistencies might have already been present in the oral stage of transmission of the materials used by the authors of the written text." I talked some about this yesterday. Whybray wonders: why should we assume that repetitions, doublets, and inconsistencies indicate the existence of multiple, continuous written sources? Maybe these bumps were present in the stories before they were even written down---in the time that they were still at the oral stage!
Even in the second section of his book, as he takes on the concept of a long oral tradition, Whybray appears to use this insight to take a swipe at the Documentary Hypothesis. On page 177, he notes that Hermann Gunkel said that doublets exist because a story took variant forms "in the course of diffused oral transmission". And so that's why there are doublets! It has nothing to do with multiple written sources! A variation of a story could have been floating around orally (you know what happens to stories when they're told repeatedly), without being a part of a second full-blown written source. But, believe it or not, Gunkel still believes in the Documentary Hypothesis: he thinks that the doublets originated orally, but that one version wound up in one source, while another version wound up in the other, and a redactor then put them together.
In any case, I'm puzzled that Whybray appeals to the oral stage of stories to critique the Documentary Hypothesis in the first part of his book, and he then challenges oral transmission in the second part. But is he challenging oral transmission, or only the idea that it was a long process? I notice on the back cover that he will argue that the sixth century author of the Pentateuch drew "upon folklore current in his own time but not of great antiquity."
UPDATE: On page 236, Whybray says that ancient Israel "possessed [oral] traditions like any other people", but "we have no certain method by which their antiquity can be discovered."
"Early Days at Tuskegee"
In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 7, "Early Days at Tuskegee."
Booker T. Washington is known for his work with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In this chapter, he talks about its incredibly modest beginnings, as well as the poverty in Tuskegee. A recurring theme in his book is "rags to riches" (my phrase, not his): a person (usually Booker T. Washington) or an institution (usually one that Booker T. Washington is helping) is struggling in its early stages, but it rises to become prosperous, influential, and effective in helping people to succeed. Some may get the impression that Booker T. Washington is bragging, but Washington is also trying to inspire African-Americans not to give in to hopelessness, for they too can succeed, if they work hard and are given the right tools (i.e., education, manual skills).
I was interested in some of what Washington said about government. A significant part of the chapter is about the government's inadequate support for the Tuskegee Institute. I'm not sure if Washington is saying that the government should have helped more, for, in Chapter 6, he says that white society should help to lift up the "less fortunate" races.
Or Washington's point may be that African-Americans shouldn't look to the government but should rely on themselves, for, in the chapter on Reconstruction (Chapter 5), he is rather critical of the African-Americans who looked to the government for positions, rather than seeking to create positions for themselves. He also says that African-Americans were relying on the government during the Reconstruction Period, "very much as a child looks to its mother." Yet, he goes on to say that "Even as a youth, and later in manhood, I had the feeling that it was cruelly wrong in the central government, at the beginning of our freedom, to fail to make some provision for the general education of our people in addition to what the states might do, so that the people would be the better prepared for the duties of citizenship." So maybe his position was that the government should provide help, but African-Americans shouldn't count on it doing so, and they should thus practice self-reliance---which (for Washington) was probably better than childlike dependency in the first place.
Washington also talks more about African-American participation in politics. He refers to an African-American who was trying to get Booker to run for office, and the man said that he read no newspapers, but he just looked at how whites voted and voted the opposite way! Booker states: "I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races." I saw this sort of optimism about African-American political involvement in a previous chapter of Washington's book. Booker may be trying to convince white society that African-Americans will use suffrage in a responsible manner, so that it will remove restrictions on their voting. I wonder if there came a point when Booker decided not to advocate for African-American suffrage so openly, but rather to focus on battles he believed he could win: training African-Americans for jobs. That was what W.E.B. Du Bois' criticized about Washington, but, so far in Washington's book, I see more optimism about the political process---even though there is also skepticism.
Booker T. Washington is known for his work with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In this chapter, he talks about its incredibly modest beginnings, as well as the poverty in Tuskegee. A recurring theme in his book is "rags to riches" (my phrase, not his): a person (usually Booker T. Washington) or an institution (usually one that Booker T. Washington is helping) is struggling in its early stages, but it rises to become prosperous, influential, and effective in helping people to succeed. Some may get the impression that Booker T. Washington is bragging, but Washington is also trying to inspire African-Americans not to give in to hopelessness, for they too can succeed, if they work hard and are given the right tools (i.e., education, manual skills).
I was interested in some of what Washington said about government. A significant part of the chapter is about the government's inadequate support for the Tuskegee Institute. I'm not sure if Washington is saying that the government should have helped more, for, in Chapter 6, he says that white society should help to lift up the "less fortunate" races.
Or Washington's point may be that African-Americans shouldn't look to the government but should rely on themselves, for, in the chapter on Reconstruction (Chapter 5), he is rather critical of the African-Americans who looked to the government for positions, rather than seeking to create positions for themselves. He also says that African-Americans were relying on the government during the Reconstruction Period, "very much as a child looks to its mother." Yet, he goes on to say that "Even as a youth, and later in manhood, I had the feeling that it was cruelly wrong in the central government, at the beginning of our freedom, to fail to make some provision for the general education of our people in addition to what the states might do, so that the people would be the better prepared for the duties of citizenship." So maybe his position was that the government should provide help, but African-Americans shouldn't count on it doing so, and they should thus practice self-reliance---which (for Washington) was probably better than childlike dependency in the first place.
Washington also talks more about African-American participation in politics. He refers to an African-American who was trying to get Booker to run for office, and the man said that he read no newspapers, but he just looked at how whites voted and voted the opposite way! Booker states: "I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races." I saw this sort of optimism about African-American political involvement in a previous chapter of Washington's book. Booker may be trying to convince white society that African-Americans will use suffrage in a responsible manner, so that it will remove restrictions on their voting. I wonder if there came a point when Booker decided not to advocate for African-American suffrage so openly, but rather to focus on battles he believed he could win: training African-Americans for jobs. That was what W.E.B. Du Bois' criticized about Washington, but, so far in Washington's book, I see more optimism about the political process---even though there is also skepticism.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
High School, the Documentary Hypothesis, and Me
I started R.N. Whybray's Making of the Pentateuch. As I read this book, I was reminded of my first encounter with the Documentary Hypothesis.
I was a junior in high school, taking a class on Biblical Literature. Our teacher told us to look at Genesis 1-2, and to see if we think that there are contradictions between the two chapters---if there were two different creation accounts. At the time, I didn't know about the Documentary Hypothesis, but I did realize that there were apparent contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Maybe I learned that through my own Bible reading. I read the Bible a lot when I was a teen---and even before then---and so I knew that, in Genesis 1, God made man and woman last, after the animals and the plants, whereas, in Genesis 2, God made man before the plants and the animals. But I was a fundamentalist then, and so I figured that there were no real contradictions in the Bible. Like all contradictions, this one could be explained. And, when I looked at the NIV, I saw that Genesis 2:19 said that God "had made" the animals and the birds---had made, as in, before he made Adam! I didn't know Hebrew back then, and so I was unaware that Genesis 2:19 was a vav-consecutive, which often means that the event came after the event in the previous line (meaning that the animals and birds were made after Adam). I knew about biblical contradictions, but I thought that they could be harmonized.
The next day, in Bible literature class, we looked at Genesis 1-2. At the time, I figured that I knew everything that there was to know about the Bible. (Nowadays, my knowledge of the Bible looks a lot smaller to me, compared to all of the information and ideas that are out there!) And so I was a little surprised to hear my teacher say that some believed there were two sources: that P (the priest) wrote Genesis 1, and that J (the Yahwist) wrote Genesis 2. I never heard that before!
We had to do a final class project, and so I got permission to write a paper about the Documentary Hypothesis. I spent a lot of time on this paper, which turned out to be pretty lengthy. Essentially, I critiqued the Hypothesis, and then wrote in my final line that scholars who take apart the Holy Bible will one day face the judgment of God (or something like that). I got an "A" on it, and my teacher asked me for a copy, which she could keep for herself. When my brother had her years later for a class, she told him that she really enjoyed my paper on the Documentary Hypothesis. And I'm not surprised by this. Although she herself was fair to different viewpoints in class, she was a good conservative Baptist. Plus, my paper made good points (though, as I will show, it also had plenty of inadequate points).
For my paper, I used whatever sources I could find. There was the conservative International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, which, if I'm not mistaken, defined the Documentary Hypothesis, saying when many scholars believed that J, E, D, and P were written, and who the authors of the sources were. Then, there was this old commentary on the Pentateuch in my local public library, which was rather conservative. I may have also consulted encyclopedias. There was the Adam Clarke commentary. There was a volume of Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Several of my colleagues---even those on the right---will sneer at that, but this edition was actually quite good. No, it didn't prove the divine inspiration of the Bible, as if anything can. But it was a compendium of respected scholarship that critiqued the Documentary Hypothesis. Umberto Cassuto was quoted a lot in it, for example. And, finally, I borrowed from the Indiana State University library (or my Mom borrowed it for me, since she was a student there at the time) a modern commentary on the Book of Genesis, which I believe was by Michael Maher. Maher believed in the Documentary Hypothesis.
I don't have the paper in front of me, and so I'm going by memory when I describe the points that I made. I remember that I said that different names for God did not mean different sources, for the literature of other countries in the ancient Near East used different names for gods in the same story; moreover, I learned that ancient Near Eastern literature could also contain a general account of an event, followed by a more descriptive account of that same event---which I (and my conservative sources) thought was what was going on in Genesis 1-2. I pointed out that the alleged sources could not stand on their own. One of my conservative sources, for example, pointed out that Genesis 2 was not a complete story about creation, for it didn't mention the creation of the stars, the sun, the moon, and the seas; Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 needed each other, in short. And I myself noticed something: in "J's" version of the flood story, the ark just appears out of nowhere! God never tells Noah to build it! Therefore, the J story couldn't stand on its own as a source, I thought, and so the entire flood story was written by one author, whom I took to be Moses (and, if my memory serves me correctly, Josh MacDowell included arguments for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch).
What about the repetitions and the contradictions in the Pentateuch? I believe that I went with my conservative sources on the repetition issue: the repetitions are for dramatic effect, or to emphasize a point. As far as contradictions were concerned, I figured that they could be reconciled, and there were sources that essentially did that for me. I vaguely recall Adam Clarke saying, for example, that when God tells Moses in Exodus 6:3 that he was known to the patriarchs as El Shaddai, but not as YHWH, God did not mean that the patriarchs were unaware of the name of YHWH! After all, they use it in the Book of Genesis! For Adam Clarke, God meant there that the patriarchs did not know the full implications and significance of the name of YHWH!
In my opinion, the best part of my paper was when I looked at what Maher was identifying as J, E, and P. Keeping in mind that the division of sources was based in part on the different names for God, I noticed there were times when J used "El" or "Elohim," and when E and P used "YHWH." If these sources could use multiple names for God, I asked, why couldn't Moses as author of the entire Pentateuch? In some cases, my examples were pretty bad. For example, if J used the name "Israel," I counted that as J using the name "El" for God---when I doubt that J was that hung up on God's name in those instances. But I also supplied some good examples of sources using different divine names.
I also recall arguing that all of the stories in Genesis needed each other. I vaguely recall writing that, according to Maher, one source described how Jacob got the name of Israel, whereas, later in the Book of Genesis, another source calls Jacob "Israel." I wondered: Don't the two stories need each other? Don't we need to know how Jacob came to be called "Israel," so that we're not stumped by him being called "Israel" later in the story? I concluded that, indeed, these alleged multiple sources needed each other, and so there most likely were not multiple sources. In my eyes, there was only one author of the Pentateuch: Moses!
In retrospect, I can identify a number of problems with my high school paper. Granted, I didn't know about scholarly alternatives to the Documentary Hypothesis (i.e., the Supplementary Hypothesis), or other formulations of it (i.e., that of Van Seters), but, come to think of it, I didn't learn that stuff until my Jewish Theological Seminary days anyway. That was when I researched for a presentation on the Documentary Hypothesis, as well as heard from my colleagues about all the trouble it was in. At DePauw and Harvard, we got the standard Documentary Hypothesis---though I know that Jon Levenson took some swipes at it! But the impression I had was that the Documentary Hypothesis dominated critical scholarship. It was only later in my education that I learned otherwise (though I did hear about the literary approach as an undergraduate).
One problem I can identify with my high school paper was that I uncritically swallowed the conservative harmonizations of biblical contradictions. In my mind, if a harmonization could work, then it did work---it was the solution that made the contradiction go away! Nowadays, a lot of harmonizations strike me as mental gymnastics.
Second, I didn't take the time to learn how Wellhausen arrived at the conclusions that he did. In a sense, I cut right to the chase by looking at how a scholar divided the sources---to see if the division held any water---and there's something to be said for that. But I should have tried to understand the perspective of adherents to the Documentary Hypothesis, before I tried to knock it down (which would have been my agenda whatever I found, for I was out to defend the Bible!). There were legitimate reasons that Mosaic authorship was challenged, and it wasn't because the challengers were resisting God!
Third, I didn't realize that adherents to the Documentary Hypothesis had answers to some of my objections. For example, I said that J's flood story was incomplete, but a higher critic could respond that the redactor of the Pentateuch did not preserve the sources in their entirety, but only kept what he thought was needed. I believed that the sources needed one another, but a believer in the Documentary Hypothesis could say that a redactor merged the diverse sources together into a fairly continuous story, or say that there were common traditions that the authors of the sources knew about, and so a source that called Jacob "Israel" could have heard the story of how he got that name from some place other than the other source. Or some say he could have learned it from the other source, or that he just knew that Jacob was called "Israel," but he didn't know why.
The part about each source using different divine names is still a good point, in my opinion, and this is a point that Whybray identifies and develops (of course, he didn't get it from me, for he wrote this book years before I wrote my paper!). He also makes the point about the literary value of doublets and repetition, and he talks about possible literary reasons that there are duplicate stories in the Pentateuch (i.e., the Hagar story is repeated around two stories about the question of who Abraham's true heir is to be). In some cases, Whybray notes, a single "source" can have doublets---as when J tells a "wife/sister" story for both Abraham and Isaac---so how can we say that doublets indicate different sources---as if a single source can't repeat a similar story? Moreover, attempts to divide the sources on the basis of style fall flat, for the criteria is not consistently applied: J is cited for its brevity when the topic is Genesis 12:10-20, and yet J wrote a long story, Genesis 24, the story of Rebecca. Abraham's bargaining with the Hittites for the purchase of the cave at Machpelah has been attributed to P because it relates to legal matters, and yet we see deals and bargaining in stories attributed to J---Genesis 18:22-33 and 24. A single source can contradict itself---Exodus 9:16 and 9:19 contradict each other on whether or not the cattle died in a plague, and yet both are attributed to J, so why assume that contradictions must mean different sources?
Although Whybray says on more than one occasion that the ancients may not have shared our high regard for consistency, my impression is that he does not believe that an author deliberately contradicted himself. He just doesn't think that contradictions mean the existence of multiple full-blown literary documents, each telling a story in its own way. He wonders why different accounts couldn't have come together at an oral stage. Or maybe traditions got attached to a story---and the traditions weren't part of a full-blown alternative written source.
So Whybray is not really a harmonizer. He also doesn't believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He dates the Pentateuch to the sixth century B.C.E., and he prefers an exilic setting---a time when Israel would reflect on sin and its consequences, the divine promises, and how to believe in God amidst disappointment (page 96).
But I appreciated reading in Whybray's book some of the same points that I made in a paper as a high school student. Now, I can look back at that paper and not see it as totally bad!
I was a junior in high school, taking a class on Biblical Literature. Our teacher told us to look at Genesis 1-2, and to see if we think that there are contradictions between the two chapters---if there were two different creation accounts. At the time, I didn't know about the Documentary Hypothesis, but I did realize that there were apparent contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Maybe I learned that through my own Bible reading. I read the Bible a lot when I was a teen---and even before then---and so I knew that, in Genesis 1, God made man and woman last, after the animals and the plants, whereas, in Genesis 2, God made man before the plants and the animals. But I was a fundamentalist then, and so I figured that there were no real contradictions in the Bible. Like all contradictions, this one could be explained. And, when I looked at the NIV, I saw that Genesis 2:19 said that God "had made" the animals and the birds---had made, as in, before he made Adam! I didn't know Hebrew back then, and so I was unaware that Genesis 2:19 was a vav-consecutive, which often means that the event came after the event in the previous line (meaning that the animals and birds were made after Adam). I knew about biblical contradictions, but I thought that they could be harmonized.
The next day, in Bible literature class, we looked at Genesis 1-2. At the time, I figured that I knew everything that there was to know about the Bible. (Nowadays, my knowledge of the Bible looks a lot smaller to me, compared to all of the information and ideas that are out there!) And so I was a little surprised to hear my teacher say that some believed there were two sources: that P (the priest) wrote Genesis 1, and that J (the Yahwist) wrote Genesis 2. I never heard that before!
We had to do a final class project, and so I got permission to write a paper about the Documentary Hypothesis. I spent a lot of time on this paper, which turned out to be pretty lengthy. Essentially, I critiqued the Hypothesis, and then wrote in my final line that scholars who take apart the Holy Bible will one day face the judgment of God (or something like that). I got an "A" on it, and my teacher asked me for a copy, which she could keep for herself. When my brother had her years later for a class, she told him that she really enjoyed my paper on the Documentary Hypothesis. And I'm not surprised by this. Although she herself was fair to different viewpoints in class, she was a good conservative Baptist. Plus, my paper made good points (though, as I will show, it also had plenty of inadequate points).
For my paper, I used whatever sources I could find. There was the conservative International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, which, if I'm not mistaken, defined the Documentary Hypothesis, saying when many scholars believed that J, E, D, and P were written, and who the authors of the sources were. Then, there was this old commentary on the Pentateuch in my local public library, which was rather conservative. I may have also consulted encyclopedias. There was the Adam Clarke commentary. There was a volume of Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Several of my colleagues---even those on the right---will sneer at that, but this edition was actually quite good. No, it didn't prove the divine inspiration of the Bible, as if anything can. But it was a compendium of respected scholarship that critiqued the Documentary Hypothesis. Umberto Cassuto was quoted a lot in it, for example. And, finally, I borrowed from the Indiana State University library (or my Mom borrowed it for me, since she was a student there at the time) a modern commentary on the Book of Genesis, which I believe was by Michael Maher. Maher believed in the Documentary Hypothesis.
I don't have the paper in front of me, and so I'm going by memory when I describe the points that I made. I remember that I said that different names for God did not mean different sources, for the literature of other countries in the ancient Near East used different names for gods in the same story; moreover, I learned that ancient Near Eastern literature could also contain a general account of an event, followed by a more descriptive account of that same event---which I (and my conservative sources) thought was what was going on in Genesis 1-2. I pointed out that the alleged sources could not stand on their own. One of my conservative sources, for example, pointed out that Genesis 2 was not a complete story about creation, for it didn't mention the creation of the stars, the sun, the moon, and the seas; Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 needed each other, in short. And I myself noticed something: in "J's" version of the flood story, the ark just appears out of nowhere! God never tells Noah to build it! Therefore, the J story couldn't stand on its own as a source, I thought, and so the entire flood story was written by one author, whom I took to be Moses (and, if my memory serves me correctly, Josh MacDowell included arguments for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch).
What about the repetitions and the contradictions in the Pentateuch? I believe that I went with my conservative sources on the repetition issue: the repetitions are for dramatic effect, or to emphasize a point. As far as contradictions were concerned, I figured that they could be reconciled, and there were sources that essentially did that for me. I vaguely recall Adam Clarke saying, for example, that when God tells Moses in Exodus 6:3 that he was known to the patriarchs as El Shaddai, but not as YHWH, God did not mean that the patriarchs were unaware of the name of YHWH! After all, they use it in the Book of Genesis! For Adam Clarke, God meant there that the patriarchs did not know the full implications and significance of the name of YHWH!
In my opinion, the best part of my paper was when I looked at what Maher was identifying as J, E, and P. Keeping in mind that the division of sources was based in part on the different names for God, I noticed there were times when J used "El" or "Elohim," and when E and P used "YHWH." If these sources could use multiple names for God, I asked, why couldn't Moses as author of the entire Pentateuch? In some cases, my examples were pretty bad. For example, if J used the name "Israel," I counted that as J using the name "El" for God---when I doubt that J was that hung up on God's name in those instances. But I also supplied some good examples of sources using different divine names.
I also recall arguing that all of the stories in Genesis needed each other. I vaguely recall writing that, according to Maher, one source described how Jacob got the name of Israel, whereas, later in the Book of Genesis, another source calls Jacob "Israel." I wondered: Don't the two stories need each other? Don't we need to know how Jacob came to be called "Israel," so that we're not stumped by him being called "Israel" later in the story? I concluded that, indeed, these alleged multiple sources needed each other, and so there most likely were not multiple sources. In my eyes, there was only one author of the Pentateuch: Moses!
In retrospect, I can identify a number of problems with my high school paper. Granted, I didn't know about scholarly alternatives to the Documentary Hypothesis (i.e., the Supplementary Hypothesis), or other formulations of it (i.e., that of Van Seters), but, come to think of it, I didn't learn that stuff until my Jewish Theological Seminary days anyway. That was when I researched for a presentation on the Documentary Hypothesis, as well as heard from my colleagues about all the trouble it was in. At DePauw and Harvard, we got the standard Documentary Hypothesis---though I know that Jon Levenson took some swipes at it! But the impression I had was that the Documentary Hypothesis dominated critical scholarship. It was only later in my education that I learned otherwise (though I did hear about the literary approach as an undergraduate).
One problem I can identify with my high school paper was that I uncritically swallowed the conservative harmonizations of biblical contradictions. In my mind, if a harmonization could work, then it did work---it was the solution that made the contradiction go away! Nowadays, a lot of harmonizations strike me as mental gymnastics.
Second, I didn't take the time to learn how Wellhausen arrived at the conclusions that he did. In a sense, I cut right to the chase by looking at how a scholar divided the sources---to see if the division held any water---and there's something to be said for that. But I should have tried to understand the perspective of adherents to the Documentary Hypothesis, before I tried to knock it down (which would have been my agenda whatever I found, for I was out to defend the Bible!). There were legitimate reasons that Mosaic authorship was challenged, and it wasn't because the challengers were resisting God!
Third, I didn't realize that adherents to the Documentary Hypothesis had answers to some of my objections. For example, I said that J's flood story was incomplete, but a higher critic could respond that the redactor of the Pentateuch did not preserve the sources in their entirety, but only kept what he thought was needed. I believed that the sources needed one another, but a believer in the Documentary Hypothesis could say that a redactor merged the diverse sources together into a fairly continuous story, or say that there were common traditions that the authors of the sources knew about, and so a source that called Jacob "Israel" could have heard the story of how he got that name from some place other than the other source. Or some say he could have learned it from the other source, or that he just knew that Jacob was called "Israel," but he didn't know why.
The part about each source using different divine names is still a good point, in my opinion, and this is a point that Whybray identifies and develops (of course, he didn't get it from me, for he wrote this book years before I wrote my paper!). He also makes the point about the literary value of doublets and repetition, and he talks about possible literary reasons that there are duplicate stories in the Pentateuch (i.e., the Hagar story is repeated around two stories about the question of who Abraham's true heir is to be). In some cases, Whybray notes, a single "source" can have doublets---as when J tells a "wife/sister" story for both Abraham and Isaac---so how can we say that doublets indicate different sources---as if a single source can't repeat a similar story? Moreover, attempts to divide the sources on the basis of style fall flat, for the criteria is not consistently applied: J is cited for its brevity when the topic is Genesis 12:10-20, and yet J wrote a long story, Genesis 24, the story of Rebecca. Abraham's bargaining with the Hittites for the purchase of the cave at Machpelah has been attributed to P because it relates to legal matters, and yet we see deals and bargaining in stories attributed to J---Genesis 18:22-33 and 24. A single source can contradict itself---Exodus 9:16 and 9:19 contradict each other on whether or not the cattle died in a plague, and yet both are attributed to J, so why assume that contradictions must mean different sources?
Although Whybray says on more than one occasion that the ancients may not have shared our high regard for consistency, my impression is that he does not believe that an author deliberately contradicted himself. He just doesn't think that contradictions mean the existence of multiple full-blown literary documents, each telling a story in its own way. He wonders why different accounts couldn't have come together at an oral stage. Or maybe traditions got attached to a story---and the traditions weren't part of a full-blown alternative written source.
So Whybray is not really a harmonizer. He also doesn't believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He dates the Pentateuch to the sixth century B.C.E., and he prefers an exilic setting---a time when Israel would reflect on sin and its consequences, the divine promises, and how to believe in God amidst disappointment (page 96).
But I appreciated reading in Whybray's book some of the same points that I made in a paper as a high school student. Now, I can look back at that paper and not see it as totally bad!
"Black Race and Red Race"
In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 6, "Black Race and Red Race." Hampton was a school for African-Americans where Booker T. Washington attended, and then taught. While Washington was teaching there, a leader of the school, General Armstrong (whom Washington praises in previous chapters) decided to educate Native Americans at Hampton. Washington at first is nervous, for he realizes that many Native Americans had a contemptuous attitude towards African-Americans, as well as owned slaves prior to its abolition. But, with time, Booker noticed that, like everyone else, the Native Americans responded well to good treatment, and a positive relationship was forged between the African Americans and Native Americans at Hampton. And Booker also observed that the Native Americans learned quickly, as African-Americans had. He may point this out to refute white bigotry, which presents non-white races as intellectually inferior.
Overall, Booker T. Washington is a lot more condemnatory of racial discrimination in this chapter than in the previous ones that I've read. He says that "no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion." This appears to be a lament, even though, in Chapter 1, Washington says that slavery has civilized Africans.
Washington appears to praise white Southerners for their polite treatment of their former slaves and their descendants, maintaining that "My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own." He then refers to an incident in which George Washington politely lifted his hat to an African-American, who had lifted his hat to him. When Washington was criticized for this, he said, “Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?” I'm not sure if Booker was criticizing George Washington in this story, but the story certainly doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about George Washington! I wonder if Booker is being sarcastic.
Booker also notes that Native Americans and visitors from foreign countries are treated better in America than African-Americans. I'm not sure why the situation was like that, or how this point fits into Booker T. Washington's wider argument. But it was an odd situation, and tragic, since white society regarded African-Americans as really low. Perhaps Booker was demonstrating the absurdity of white racism.
But Booker T. Washington encourages African-Americans in this chapter, for he says that they can he happy that at least they don't mistreat other races as white society does. He closes his chapter with an inspiring story about good students at Hampton, who worked hard all day, and then took night classes. They were so eager to learn that there were times when they wanted the class to go beyond their bed-times. Washington called them the "Plucky Class," which became a term of honor at Hampton, to which students aspired.
Something else to note: Booker expresses ambivalence about political office. When he was asked to run, he declined, and his reason was that "Even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment." At the same time, he says that he hoped to prepare the way for African-American Congressmen. On the one hand, Booker wants African-Americans to be politically active. On the other hand, he seems to hold that their economic advancement and their training for industry is more of a priority. W.E.B. Du Bois' concern was that Booker sacrificed his belief in African-American political activity for his goal of helping them to advance economically.
Overall, Booker T. Washington is a lot more condemnatory of racial discrimination in this chapter than in the previous ones that I've read. He says that "no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion." This appears to be a lament, even though, in Chapter 1, Washington says that slavery has civilized Africans.
Washington appears to praise white Southerners for their polite treatment of their former slaves and their descendants, maintaining that "My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own." He then refers to an incident in which George Washington politely lifted his hat to an African-American, who had lifted his hat to him. When Washington was criticized for this, he said, “Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?” I'm not sure if Booker was criticizing George Washington in this story, but the story certainly doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about George Washington! I wonder if Booker is being sarcastic.
Booker also notes that Native Americans and visitors from foreign countries are treated better in America than African-Americans. I'm not sure why the situation was like that, or how this point fits into Booker T. Washington's wider argument. But it was an odd situation, and tragic, since white society regarded African-Americans as really low. Perhaps Booker was demonstrating the absurdity of white racism.
But Booker T. Washington encourages African-Americans in this chapter, for he says that they can he happy that at least they don't mistreat other races as white society does. He closes his chapter with an inspiring story about good students at Hampton, who worked hard all day, and then took night classes. They were so eager to learn that there were times when they wanted the class to go beyond their bed-times. Washington called them the "Plucky Class," which became a term of honor at Hampton, to which students aspired.
Something else to note: Booker expresses ambivalence about political office. When he was asked to run, he declined, and his reason was that "Even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment." At the same time, he says that he hoped to prepare the way for African-American Congressmen. On the one hand, Booker wants African-Americans to be politically active. On the other hand, he seems to hold that their economic advancement and their training for industry is more of a priority. W.E.B. Du Bois' concern was that Booker sacrificed his belief in African-American political activity for his goal of helping them to advance economically.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friedman's Pre-Exilic P, Part II
I finished up Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? There are many things that I can write about, but I want to continue to focus on Friedman's view on P. Here are four points:
1. Friedman sees two points to P's story of the heresy of Peor in Numbers 25: to say that the priesthood belongs to the line of Aaron forever, and to criticize Moses, the alleged ancestor of P's Levite competitors. After all, Numbers 25 condemns Israelite intermarriage with Midianite women, which was exactly what Moses did! But I wonder why a pre-exilic priest would condemn intermarriage in the first place. One reason that there are scholars who date P to the post-exilic period is that intermarriage was a big issue at that time. Overall, I like how Friedman assumes the historicity of large parts of the biblical narrative. (He doesn't do this with the Pentateuch, mind you, but rather with the biblical history from David through Israel's post-exilic period.) Personally speaking, I get a little tired of always having to be suspicious of sources, plus I think that the history that the Hebrew Bible portrays is a believable historical context for the biblical writings.
But I wish that Friedman would at least ask questions. Don't get me wrong---he does that a lot, and he tries to cover as many bases as he reasonably can. But I was disappointed that he did not address the issue of intermarriage. He should have demonstrated that it could have been an issue in Israel's pre-exilic period, which is when he dates P. Instead, he just assumes that it was, and proceeds from there. Friedman should have asked if intermarriage was frowned upon in other ancient Near Eastern nations prior to Israel's exile. If not, why would it dawn on pre-exilic Israel to oppose intermarriage? My impression of Friedman is that he views ancient Israel as unique: he says that its religion was different in that it refused to absorb foreign gods in exile, and that the Israelites created the first history (whereas Van Seters would argue that the Israelite history emerged after Herodotus had written his history).
I'm not sure if I'm being clear here, but I am hitting upon an issue that seems to underlie different scholarly opinions: When Israel differs from her ancient Near Eastern neighbors, how did that difference emerge? I suppose that there are plenty of religious people who will just say "God commanded it," but there are scholars who aren't comfortable with that---and so some of them look to Israel's exile as a setting for her nationalistic opposition to intermarriage: Israel was trying to preserve her national identity in exile, amidst the challenge of assimilation. For these scholars, that wasn't as much of a problem before Israel's exile, since Israel had a religion, a king, borders, etc., and so pre-exilic Israel probably wasn't as concerned about intermarriage. But some think that she was always concerned about it, since God called her from the beginning to be a separate people, and warned that intermarriage could draw Israel away from her covenant God. Is that Friedman's view? Why does he think that there would be opposition to intermarriage in pre-exilic Israel?
Then again, ancient Israel wasn't always against intermarriage, since Moses married a Midianite. When did opposition to intermarriage become a part of Israelite religion, and why?
2. A few posts back, I referred to Friedman's treatment of the spies story in Numbers 13-14. He said that Joshua appears in E (a Northern source) because he's an Ephraimite hero, whereas Caleb shows up in J, a Southern source, because he had land in Judah. But what about the parts of the spies story in which Joshua and Celeb appear together? Friedman attributed that to P. I thought initially that this looked rather arbitrary, but I learned about Friedman's reasoning in today's reading. On page 206, he says that P was trying to find some reason that God rewarded and honored Joshua, for JE's reasons weren't good enough for him. In JE, Joshua does not join along in the Golden Calf heresy, and he also stands guard at the Tabernacle. P doesn't like either one of those scenes. For one, P doesn't want to draw attention to the Golden Calf story, in which his ancestor Aaron appears in a not-so-flattering light. And, second, P doesn't like the idea of Joshua standing guard at the Tabernacle, which (according to P) only a priest can enter. And so P comes up with another reason that God exalted Joshua: because Joshua (along with Caleb) had faith when the other spies were descending into despair and rebellion.
3. According to Friedman, the Deuteronomist, who wrote Deuteronomy 1-11 as a preface to an earlier Shilohite law code, knew of P. Deuteronomy 1:39 has language that is similar to Numbers 14:31 (which, according to Friedman, earlier scholars attributed to JE, but later scholars ascribed to P): both talk about the fear of the Israelites that their babies would become a prey. So why couldn't P be drawing from Deuteronomy in that instance? On page 273, Friedman says that the Deuteronomist is trying to harmonize the sources in front of him, including P. Numbers 14:24 says that Caleb will enter the Promised Land, without even mentioning Joshua, and Deuteronomy 1:36 makes that same point. But then Deuteronomy 1:38 says that Joshua, too, will enter. Friedman views this as evidence that the Deuteronomist has P and other sources in front of him (and these sources had not yet been combined by the redactor, whom Freidman regards as Ezra), and he's seeking to make sense of them, with their contradictions.
Friedman believes that the Deuteronomist was Jeremiah---or Jeremiah in collaboration with Baruch. According to Friedman, Jeremiah did not like P, for "The Priestly laws excluded him and his family from the priesthood" (page 209). (Remember that Jeremiah was a Levite who was not descended from Aaron.) As we saw yesterday, Friedman believes that Jeremiah quotes P: "Jeremiah plays upon P expressions, reverses the language of the P creation story, denies that God emphasized matters of sacrifices in the day that Israel left Egypt" (page 209). But he thinks that Jeremiah did not accept P "as a source of law or history", but regarded it as the product of the pen of lying scribes (Jeremiah 8:8)!
But I have some questions about this scenario. First, if Jeremiah did not view P as a reliable source of history, then why does he refer to Numbers 14:31 in Deuteronomy 1:39? And, second, why did Jeremiah's Deuteronomistic History support the Josianic reform, which centralized worship at Jerusalem, the stronghold of the Aaronids? Jeremiah's exclusion from the Aaronic priesthood did not hinder his support for Josiah's program, right? Or did Jeremiah expect for Josiah to follow Deuteronomy's inclusive policy towards Levites, which Josiah did not end up doing?
4. Friedman dates P to the time of Hezekiah. He believes that P was the document that inspired Hezekiah's reform of centralization, and he notes that, while the Deuteronomist emphasizes Josiah, the Chronicler (who is from Aaronic priestly circles) heavily glorifies Hezekiah. Friedman also sees some political rivalry over the Nehushtan, the bronze serpent that Moses set up in Numbers 21: Hezekiah destroyed it (II Kings 18:4), whereas Josiah married a woman named Nehushta (II Kings 24:8). According to Friedman, the Shilohite E and Dtr circle loved the Nehushtan---in fact, Jeremiah 8:17-22 refers to the story in Numbers 21! But Hezekiah, the man of the Aaronides, destroyed it. And yet, Josiah, the man of the Shilohites, married a woman with the name of Nehushta, which was probably Shilohite in origin (considering that Shiloh Levites loved the Nehushtan).
I'm not sure what to do with this. After all, the Deuteronomist (according to Friedman) is from Shilohite circles, and he's the one who cites Hezekiah's destruction of the Nehushtan as an example of his righteous deeds as king.
Julius Wellhausen, on pages 46-47 of his Prolegomena, argues against a scholar who dates P to the time of Hezekiah. My impression is that Wellhausen is skeptical that Hezekiah tried to enforce centralization. For one, Hezekiah's contemporary, Isaiah, does not call for centralization, but rather for the cleansing "of the local sanctuaries from molten and graven images..." Centralization wasn't even on people's radar in the time of Hezekiah, Wellhausen argues. Second, if Hezekiah had tried to enforce centralization, why doesn't the Book of Kings harp on it, when centralization is a topic of interest to him? Why does it portray Josiah's reformation as so revolutionary and profound, if Hezekiah had tried the same thing not long before? Regarding II Kings 18:4, 22, which affirm that Hezekiah abolished the high places, Wellhausen attributes that to the Deuteronomist redactor, who was bringing Hezekiah's cleansing of Jerusalem from idolatry more into line with the Deuteronomistic agenda (i.e., get rid of the high places, matzebot, and asherot).
Friedman's answer to Wellhausen would probably be that the Deuteronomist liked Josiah better than Hezekiah, and that's why the Deuteronomist in II Kings emphasizes Josiah's reform.
I'll stop here.
1. Friedman sees two points to P's story of the heresy of Peor in Numbers 25: to say that the priesthood belongs to the line of Aaron forever, and to criticize Moses, the alleged ancestor of P's Levite competitors. After all, Numbers 25 condemns Israelite intermarriage with Midianite women, which was exactly what Moses did! But I wonder why a pre-exilic priest would condemn intermarriage in the first place. One reason that there are scholars who date P to the post-exilic period is that intermarriage was a big issue at that time. Overall, I like how Friedman assumes the historicity of large parts of the biblical narrative. (He doesn't do this with the Pentateuch, mind you, but rather with the biblical history from David through Israel's post-exilic period.) Personally speaking, I get a little tired of always having to be suspicious of sources, plus I think that the history that the Hebrew Bible portrays is a believable historical context for the biblical writings.
But I wish that Friedman would at least ask questions. Don't get me wrong---he does that a lot, and he tries to cover as many bases as he reasonably can. But I was disappointed that he did not address the issue of intermarriage. He should have demonstrated that it could have been an issue in Israel's pre-exilic period, which is when he dates P. Instead, he just assumes that it was, and proceeds from there. Friedman should have asked if intermarriage was frowned upon in other ancient Near Eastern nations prior to Israel's exile. If not, why would it dawn on pre-exilic Israel to oppose intermarriage? My impression of Friedman is that he views ancient Israel as unique: he says that its religion was different in that it refused to absorb foreign gods in exile, and that the Israelites created the first history (whereas Van Seters would argue that the Israelite history emerged after Herodotus had written his history).
I'm not sure if I'm being clear here, but I am hitting upon an issue that seems to underlie different scholarly opinions: When Israel differs from her ancient Near Eastern neighbors, how did that difference emerge? I suppose that there are plenty of religious people who will just say "God commanded it," but there are scholars who aren't comfortable with that---and so some of them look to Israel's exile as a setting for her nationalistic opposition to intermarriage: Israel was trying to preserve her national identity in exile, amidst the challenge of assimilation. For these scholars, that wasn't as much of a problem before Israel's exile, since Israel had a religion, a king, borders, etc., and so pre-exilic Israel probably wasn't as concerned about intermarriage. But some think that she was always concerned about it, since God called her from the beginning to be a separate people, and warned that intermarriage could draw Israel away from her covenant God. Is that Friedman's view? Why does he think that there would be opposition to intermarriage in pre-exilic Israel?
Then again, ancient Israel wasn't always against intermarriage, since Moses married a Midianite. When did opposition to intermarriage become a part of Israelite religion, and why?
2. A few posts back, I referred to Friedman's treatment of the spies story in Numbers 13-14. He said that Joshua appears in E (a Northern source) because he's an Ephraimite hero, whereas Caleb shows up in J, a Southern source, because he had land in Judah. But what about the parts of the spies story in which Joshua and Celeb appear together? Friedman attributed that to P. I thought initially that this looked rather arbitrary, but I learned about Friedman's reasoning in today's reading. On page 206, he says that P was trying to find some reason that God rewarded and honored Joshua, for JE's reasons weren't good enough for him. In JE, Joshua does not join along in the Golden Calf heresy, and he also stands guard at the Tabernacle. P doesn't like either one of those scenes. For one, P doesn't want to draw attention to the Golden Calf story, in which his ancestor Aaron appears in a not-so-flattering light. And, second, P doesn't like the idea of Joshua standing guard at the Tabernacle, which (according to P) only a priest can enter. And so P comes up with another reason that God exalted Joshua: because Joshua (along with Caleb) had faith when the other spies were descending into despair and rebellion.
3. According to Friedman, the Deuteronomist, who wrote Deuteronomy 1-11 as a preface to an earlier Shilohite law code, knew of P. Deuteronomy 1:39 has language that is similar to Numbers 14:31 (which, according to Friedman, earlier scholars attributed to JE, but later scholars ascribed to P): both talk about the fear of the Israelites that their babies would become a prey. So why couldn't P be drawing from Deuteronomy in that instance? On page 273, Friedman says that the Deuteronomist is trying to harmonize the sources in front of him, including P. Numbers 14:24 says that Caleb will enter the Promised Land, without even mentioning Joshua, and Deuteronomy 1:36 makes that same point. But then Deuteronomy 1:38 says that Joshua, too, will enter. Friedman views this as evidence that the Deuteronomist has P and other sources in front of him (and these sources had not yet been combined by the redactor, whom Freidman regards as Ezra), and he's seeking to make sense of them, with their contradictions.
Friedman believes that the Deuteronomist was Jeremiah---or Jeremiah in collaboration with Baruch. According to Friedman, Jeremiah did not like P, for "The Priestly laws excluded him and his family from the priesthood" (page 209). (Remember that Jeremiah was a Levite who was not descended from Aaron.) As we saw yesterday, Friedman believes that Jeremiah quotes P: "Jeremiah plays upon P expressions, reverses the language of the P creation story, denies that God emphasized matters of sacrifices in the day that Israel left Egypt" (page 209). But he thinks that Jeremiah did not accept P "as a source of law or history", but regarded it as the product of the pen of lying scribes (Jeremiah 8:8)!
But I have some questions about this scenario. First, if Jeremiah did not view P as a reliable source of history, then why does he refer to Numbers 14:31 in Deuteronomy 1:39? And, second, why did Jeremiah's Deuteronomistic History support the Josianic reform, which centralized worship at Jerusalem, the stronghold of the Aaronids? Jeremiah's exclusion from the Aaronic priesthood did not hinder his support for Josiah's program, right? Or did Jeremiah expect for Josiah to follow Deuteronomy's inclusive policy towards Levites, which Josiah did not end up doing?
4. Friedman dates P to the time of Hezekiah. He believes that P was the document that inspired Hezekiah's reform of centralization, and he notes that, while the Deuteronomist emphasizes Josiah, the Chronicler (who is from Aaronic priestly circles) heavily glorifies Hezekiah. Friedman also sees some political rivalry over the Nehushtan, the bronze serpent that Moses set up in Numbers 21: Hezekiah destroyed it (II Kings 18:4), whereas Josiah married a woman named Nehushta (II Kings 24:8). According to Friedman, the Shilohite E and Dtr circle loved the Nehushtan---in fact, Jeremiah 8:17-22 refers to the story in Numbers 21! But Hezekiah, the man of the Aaronides, destroyed it. And yet, Josiah, the man of the Shilohites, married a woman with the name of Nehushta, which was probably Shilohite in origin (considering that Shiloh Levites loved the Nehushtan).
I'm not sure what to do with this. After all, the Deuteronomist (according to Friedman) is from Shilohite circles, and he's the one who cites Hezekiah's destruction of the Nehushtan as an example of his righteous deeds as king.
Julius Wellhausen, on pages 46-47 of his Prolegomena, argues against a scholar who dates P to the time of Hezekiah. My impression is that Wellhausen is skeptical that Hezekiah tried to enforce centralization. For one, Hezekiah's contemporary, Isaiah, does not call for centralization, but rather for the cleansing "of the local sanctuaries from molten and graven images..." Centralization wasn't even on people's radar in the time of Hezekiah, Wellhausen argues. Second, if Hezekiah had tried to enforce centralization, why doesn't the Book of Kings harp on it, when centralization is a topic of interest to him? Why does it portray Josiah's reformation as so revolutionary and profound, if Hezekiah had tried the same thing not long before? Regarding II Kings 18:4, 22, which affirm that Hezekiah abolished the high places, Wellhausen attributes that to the Deuteronomist redactor, who was bringing Hezekiah's cleansing of Jerusalem from idolatry more into line with the Deuteronomistic agenda (i.e., get rid of the high places, matzebot, and asherot).
Friedman's answer to Wellhausen would probably be that the Deuteronomist liked Josiah better than Hezekiah, and that's why the Deuteronomist in II Kings emphasizes Josiah's reform.
I'll stop here.
"The Reconstruction Period"
In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 5, "The Reconstruction Period." In this chapter, Washington presents his views on suffrage and education.
On suffrage during Reconstruction, Washington states the following:
"Still, as I look back now over the entire period of our freedom, I cannot help feeling that it would have been wiser if some plan could have been put in operation which would have made the possession of a certain amount of education or property, or both, a test for the exercise of the franchise, and a way provided by which this test should be made to apply honestly and squarely to both the white and black races."
Washington is not the only person to feel this way, for W.E.B. Du Bois also said that he can understand African-Americans being refused the right to vote if they are ignorant, but that's why he believes in education. (This is in The Souls of Black Folk, in the essay "Of Booker T. Washington and Others.") Both Washington and Du Bois are not so much against literacy tests, but they are critical of how white society applied them in an unfair manner.
Both Washington and Du Bois discuss the ill effects of Reconstruction. Washington says that African-American voters under Reconstruction were manipulated to put corrupt whites into office, and that there were African-Americans who were elected who were far from qualified. Du Bois states that several African-Americans in his day were apathetic towards voting, on account of the political corruption that existed in the time of Reconstruction.
But both Washington and Du Bois also believe in the importance of suffrage. Washington affirms that African-Americans of his day are stronger and wiser than during the time of Reconstruction, and so they will not attempt to alienate white Southerners, who should trust African-Americans with a political voice, without fearing a repeat of the Reconstruction days. The seriousness with which Washington takes this issue is evident in the following quote:
"More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the states in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for."
Du Bois encourages African-Americans to value the right to vote, notwithstanding its misuse in the past, for they have to live under the laws and policies of elected officials, and so it is only proper that they have a say in who those officials are.
But part of the division between Washington and Du Bois was that Du Bois felt that Washington abandoned the fight for suffrage, focusing instead on the industrial advancement of African-Americans. Washington may have openly supported African-American suffrage in Up from Slavery before he made that sort of move. Perhaps at some point, he preferred to focus on battles that he thought he could win, or he felt that alienating white society would be counter-productive. And yet, Washington secretly promoted African-American suffrage.
On the issue of education, Du Bois accused Washington of not supporting higher education, and of focusing instead on training African-Americans for industry. In the chapter of Washington's book that I read today, however, Washington expressed support for the liberal arts, but he also voiced his disappointment that African-Americans weren't learning skills for manual labor. As he noted, a person can learn Greek and Latin, but that's not all he should know! Did this sort of attitude eventually lead Washington to favor African-Americans learning industrial skills instead of the liberal arts, since industrial skills put food on the table? Or did he think that the skills to put food on the table were the priority, whereas liberal arts could come later?
Another thing to note: Washington does not appear to be against the government helping people, but he does express some disappointment that African-Americans under Reconstruction depended on the federal government, and that they looked for the government to create positions for them rather than creating those positions themselves. I think this sort of view explains why many African-American conservatives admire and draw from the ideas of Booker T. Washington.
On suffrage during Reconstruction, Washington states the following:
"Still, as I look back now over the entire period of our freedom, I cannot help feeling that it would have been wiser if some plan could have been put in operation which would have made the possession of a certain amount of education or property, or both, a test for the exercise of the franchise, and a way provided by which this test should be made to apply honestly and squarely to both the white and black races."
Washington is not the only person to feel this way, for W.E.B. Du Bois also said that he can understand African-Americans being refused the right to vote if they are ignorant, but that's why he believes in education. (This is in The Souls of Black Folk, in the essay "Of Booker T. Washington and Others.") Both Washington and Du Bois are not so much against literacy tests, but they are critical of how white society applied them in an unfair manner.
Both Washington and Du Bois discuss the ill effects of Reconstruction. Washington says that African-American voters under Reconstruction were manipulated to put corrupt whites into office, and that there were African-Americans who were elected who were far from qualified. Du Bois states that several African-Americans in his day were apathetic towards voting, on account of the political corruption that existed in the time of Reconstruction.
But both Washington and Du Bois also believe in the importance of suffrage. Washington affirms that African-Americans of his day are stronger and wiser than during the time of Reconstruction, and so they will not attempt to alienate white Southerners, who should trust African-Americans with a political voice, without fearing a repeat of the Reconstruction days. The seriousness with which Washington takes this issue is evident in the following quote:
"More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the states in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for."
Du Bois encourages African-Americans to value the right to vote, notwithstanding its misuse in the past, for they have to live under the laws and policies of elected officials, and so it is only proper that they have a say in who those officials are.
But part of the division between Washington and Du Bois was that Du Bois felt that Washington abandoned the fight for suffrage, focusing instead on the industrial advancement of African-Americans. Washington may have openly supported African-American suffrage in Up from Slavery before he made that sort of move. Perhaps at some point, he preferred to focus on battles that he thought he could win, or he felt that alienating white society would be counter-productive. And yet, Washington secretly promoted African-American suffrage.
On the issue of education, Du Bois accused Washington of not supporting higher education, and of focusing instead on training African-Americans for industry. In the chapter of Washington's book that I read today, however, Washington expressed support for the liberal arts, but he also voiced his disappointment that African-Americans weren't learning skills for manual labor. As he noted, a person can learn Greek and Latin, but that's not all he should know! Did this sort of attitude eventually lead Washington to favor African-Americans learning industrial skills instead of the liberal arts, since industrial skills put food on the table? Or did he think that the skills to put food on the table were the priority, whereas liberal arts could come later?
Another thing to note: Washington does not appear to be against the government helping people, but he does express some disappointment that African-Americans under Reconstruction depended on the federal government, and that they looked for the government to create positions for them rather than creating those positions themselves. I think this sort of view explains why many African-American conservatives admire and draw from the ideas of Booker T. Washington.
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