Biblica_2:Layout 1 21-11-2011 13:02 Pagina 436 436 KOOG P. HONG bridge. Why did Judean scribes try to combine the two ancestral traditions in the first place? Put differently, why did these Judean scribes decide to re- member their past in that particular way? II. Judean Reworking of the Bethel Account Redaction critics have given little attention to this transitional period (i.e., the post-722/ pre-587 B.C.E. era) between the northern Israelite layer and the southern exilic layer. It appears that most critics take for granted an identity already common to Judah and Israel 36, and thus they further assume northern traditions would have been naturally transferred into the south in the wake of the Assyrian threat, which then resulted in a combined “improved version” 37. Against this backdrop, the advantage of Na’aman’s proposal lies in its efficacy in explaining this elusive question as to why Judeans took over the Israelite tradition during this transitional period. Na’aman helps us realize that the Judean takeover of the Israelite tradition was not a matter of course: behind the literary takeover lies a great deal of struggle of Judah to overcome the memory of dominant Israel and their desire to take over the prestigious identity as Israel. Following Na’aman, I propose that the establishment of this exilic patriarchal narrative (Vg), with a decisive combination of the Abraham and Jacob traditions, can be understood as an outgrowth of the post-722 B.C.E. Judean identity reconstruction. That is to say, had there not been such an identity redefinition for Judah — in other words, had Judah been felled by Assyria as well — Judeans would have remembered their ancestral story very differently from what we now have. The fall of Samaria provided a rare opportunity for Judeans to rethink their identity, and a creative appropriation of the northern tradition was an important part of establishing a countermemory to overcome the pre-existing memory. If the Judean reworking of the Bethel account is read in this particular framework, the insertion of an Abrahamic promise in 28,13*-14 takes on added significance, certainly more than a mere redactional bridge. One can see it as a literary sign of the Judean scribes’ claim to ownership 36 To see, again, how this idea has been recently challenged, see Na’aman, “Patrimony”, 1-2. 37 R.N. WHYBRAY, The Making of the Pentateuch. A Methodological Study (JSOTSup 53; Sheffield 1987), 49. E.g., for those scholars who support the classical source criticism, J and E are thought to have been combined at this stage, e.g., R.E. FRIEDMAN, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York 1987) 87. See BADEN, J, E, and the Redaction, 287-303 for a critique of the unstated assumption behind this.