06_Biblica_AN_Ska_Layout 1 01/04/14 12:04 Pagina 103 103 OLD AND NEW IN THE BOOK OF NUMBERS “If we were to take the Book of Numbers on its own, then we would not think so much of ‘continuous sources’ as of an unsystematic collection of innumerable pieces of tradition of very varied content, age, and character (‘Fragment Hypothesis’)” 5. I will come back to this sentence later on. It is however clear, accord- ing to M. Noth, that the Book of Numbers contains “fragments” rather than long coherent units. But M. Noth probably did not know that J. Well- hausen had expressed an opposite opinion a century earlier: “It is an established fact that the sources Q [the Priestly Writer] and JE con- tinue after Genesis up into the Book of Joshua. It is also proven that, in the book of Exodus and in the following books, JE is an independent source and not a complement to Q [the Priestly Writer]. This is still clearer in this case than in the Book of Genesis. [...] Had source criticism started with the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers instead of starting with the Book of Gen- esis, the so-called Complement Hypothesis would have never come to be” 6. This passage opens the discussion about the books Exodus — Num- bers, and Wellhausen was most probably thinking more of Exodus than of Numbers. He was also tired of discussing other hypotheses that arose, most of the time, in studies on the Book of Genesis. His enthusiasm abates, however, when he has to cope with the specific problems in Num- bers. For instance, he must admit that the source J — the Yahwist — dis- appears almost completely after Balaam’s blessing (Numbers 22–24), and can be found, perhaps, only in Num 25,1-5 and Deut 34,7b in the rest of the Pentateuch 7. What do we find in Numbers, besides P, if J — this “splendid narrative book” 8 — is absent? But the same M. Noth I quoted somewhat earlier corrects his first im- pression and comes to a more nuanced opinion: “But it would be contrary to the facts of the matter, as will be already clear from the account of the book, to treat Numbers in isolation. From the first, the book has belonged, in the Old Testament canon, to the larger whole of the Pentateuch, and scholarly work on the book has consistently main- tained that it must be seen in this wider context. It is, therefore, justifiable to approach the book of Numbers with the results of Pentateuchal analysis achieved elsewhere and to expect the continuing Pentateuchal ‘sources’ 5 M. NOTH, Numbers (OTL; London 1968) 4 [German original: 1966]. 6 WELLHAUSEN, Composition, 61. 7 WELLHAUSEN, Composition, 116. 8 “[…] dieses herrliche Erzählungsbuch” (WELLHAUSEN, Composition, 116).