Friday, October 24, 2008

Fishbane's Chronology of Sources 2

In Fishbane's Chronology of Sources, I said that today I'd look at times when Michael Fishbane seems to contradict his usual chronology of which sources preceded what. Remember that my source is Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford, 1988):

Here's an example:

According to Fishbane, "Exodus 22:24 is both the source of one deuteronomic rule and the beneficiary of another; in totality, it is a harmonization of two independent Pentateuchal rules within the Pentateuch itself" (177). What Fishbane means is that a later reviser incorporated a deuteronomic prohibition on interest into Exodus' covenant code. Usually, Fishbane assumes that the covenant code preceded Deuteronomy. Here, he says that a later hand can put a deuteronomic law into the covenant code.

But Fishbane has a whole chapter on glosses. He also says that scribes could incorporate their traditio into the traditum. Is chronology meaningless, then, since a later hand can always insert his stuff? Maybe. But Fishbane has criteria to determine when one source uses another.

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