Koog P. Hong, «The Deceptive Pen of Scribes: Judean Reworking of the Bethel Tradition as a Program for Assuming Israelite Identity.», Vol. 92 (2011) 427-441
Nadav Na’aman has recently proposed that the Judean appropriation of Israel’s identity occurred as a result of the struggle for the patrimony of ancient Israel. This paper locates textual evidence for such a struggle in the Judean reworking of the Jacob tradition, particularly the Bethel account (Gen 28,10- 22), and argues that taking over the northern Israelite shrine myth after the fall of northern Israel was part of the ongoing Judean reconceptualization of their identity as «Israel» that continued to be developed afterwards.
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432 KOOG P. HONG
promise that reminds the reader of another significant figure, Abraham.
In breaking down these fractures, I will mainly follow Blum’s recently
revised model of redaction history, which will set the stage for the real
agenda of the present contribution 20. Recently, Blum revisited Gen 28,10-
22, which was a foundational text for his earlier work 21, and significantly
modified his detailed reconstruction 22 into a modest, three-level model 23.
1984 Die Komposition 2000 “Noch einmalâ€
1 Kultgrundrungssage 11-13aα.16-19a
19b.20. 11-13a*.
2 Kompositionschicht 1 Jakoberzählung
21a.22 15*.16-22
722 B.C.E.
13aβ-14a
3 Vätergeschichte 1
4 Haran-Bearbeitung 10
587 B.C.E.
5 Vätergeschichte 2 14b 13b-14 2 Vätergeschichte
6 D-Bearbeitung 15, 21b 10.15*.21b? 3 Bearbeitung
20
For a more thorough redaction-historical reconstruction, K.P. HONG,
“Towards the Hermeneutics of Responsibility: A Linguistic, Literary, and
Historical Reading of Genesis 28:10-22†(Claremont Graduate University
2011) 295-342.
21
BLUM, Vätergeschichte, 7-65. The entire work was based on the
redaction-critical framework established by the initial study of the Bethel
tradition (i.e., Gen 28,10-22; 35,1-7). The founding observation was his
isolation of the self-contained Bethel episode in vv. 11-13aα.16-19a,
identified by means of extracting all the secondary additions (vv. 10.
13aβ.14.15.19b.20-22). Blum’s main criterion of identifying later elements
was a redaction-critical criterion of “narrative horizonâ€. For a critique of this
as an “outrageous principleâ€, see MCEVENUE, “Return to Sourcesâ€, 377 n. 6.
22
Blum stratified the promise (28,13aβ-15) into four redactional stages.
Together with two other stages, then, Blum established an exhaustive six-
level redaction model. BLUM, Vätergeschichte, 7-35, 88-98, 290-293. Cf. R.
RENDTORFF, “Jakob in Bethel: Beobachtungen zum Aufbau und zur
Quellenfrage in Gen 28:10-22â€, ZAW 94 (1982) 511-523; ID., The Problem
of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (JSOTSup 89; Sheffield
1990) 74-84; and CARR, Fractures, 181-182, 205-208, 258-259, 263-264.
Cf. C. WESTERMANN, The Promises to the Fathers. Studies on the Patriarchal
Narratives (Philadelphia, PE 1979).
23
E. BLUM, “Noch einmal: Jakobs Traum in Bethel — Genesis 28,10-22â€,
Rethinking the Foundations (eds. S.L. MCKENZIE – T. RÖMER) (Berlin 2000)
33-54. Reprinted: ID., Textgestalt und Komposition. Exegetische Beiträge zu
Tora und Vordere Propheten (FAT 69; Tübingen 2010) 21-41. See D.M. CARR,
“Genesis 28,10-22 and Transmission-Historical Method: A Reply to John Van
Setersâ€, ZAW 111 (1999) 399-403 for a similar modification.
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