06_Biblica_AN_Ska_Layout 1 01/04/14 12:04 Pagina 114 114 JEAN LOUIS SKA it seems to me realistic to look for sections of the Priestly Writer in the Book of Numbers, especially in Numbers 13–14. As for the other objections, let me summarize what I have developed elsewhere at length 47. (1) The vocabulary is not always a decisive element in the attribution of a text to a given source. Style is decisive, vocabulary is not, because the vocabulary depends on the topic developed. On the basis of vocabulary only, it would be possible to demonstrate that War and Peace and Anna Karenina, or Middlemarch and Scenes of Clerical Life, were not written by the same authors 48. By the way, the same T. Pola recognizes that his post-priestly redactor in Numbers “grundsätzlich in der Stilistik von Pg [bleibt].” In other words, Pola’s objections against the presence of P in Numbers are all in all more ideological that literary. (2) The atmosphere in Numbers is negative, whereas it is more positive in the Priestly texts in Genesis – Leviticus. This is a tricky argument since “atmosphere” is a very vague concept. Nonetheless, it seems to me some- what daring to affirm that P cannot be negative. For what reason? This looks likes a petitio principii: it cannot be, and therefore it is not present. On the other hand, there are negative elements in the Priestly Writer, such as the violence that fills the universe (Gen 6,11.13: smx) and the Egyptians’ bru- tality (Exod 1,13.14: $rp). There are negative elements in the wilderness narratives as well, in Numbers 13–14 (“calumny of the land”, #ra-tbd; Num 13,32; cf. 14,37), and in Numbers 20 (20,12, lack of faith) 49. (3) Israel becomes an ecclesia militans in Numbers. This means dis- regarding one of the main features of the Priestly Writer, namely its con- ciliatory and pacifist tendency 50. In Numbers 13–14, the exploration of the land has nothing to do with the sending of spies to prepare for the con- quest. The twelve representatives of Israel go through the whole land and take possession of it in a juridical procedure similar to the ambulatio. The latter word is a technical term borrowed from Roman Law that describes the way a piece of land becomes somebody’s property de iure, and not yet de facto, when he or she goes walking through this whole piece of land. The rest of Numbers 13–14 explains the reason why Israel does not take possession of the land de facto. 47 SKA, “Une histoire sans fin”, 636-653. 48 For the style of the Priestly Writer, the basic work is still the one by S.E. MCEVENUE, The Narrative Style of the Priestly Writer (AnBib 50; Rome 1971). 49 See N. LOHFINK”, Die Ursünden in der priesterlichen Geschichtserzählung”, Die Zeit Jesu. Festschrift Heinrich Schlier (Hrsg. G. BORNKAMM – K. RAHNER) (Freiburg 1970) 38-57 = Studien zum Pentateuch (SBAAT 4; Stuttgart 1988) 169- 189. 50 See N. LOHFINK, “Die Schichten des Pentateuch und der Krieg”, Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit im Alten Testament (Hrsg. N. LOHFINK) (QD 96; Freiburg i. Br. 1983) 51-110 = Studien zum Pentateuch (SBAB 4; Stuttgart 1988) 255-315.