Abraham in History and Tradition
Encyclopedia
Abraham in History and Tradition (Yale University Press
, ISBN 978-0-300-04040-1, 1975) is a book by biblical scholar John Van Seters
.
The book is divided into two parts, Abraham in History and Abraham in Tradition. In Part I part Van Seters argues that there is no unambiguous evidence pointing to an origin for the stories in the 2nd millennium BC. "Arguments based on reconstructing the patriarch's nomadic way of life, the personal names in Genesis, the social customs reflected in the stories, and correlation of the traditions of Genesis with the archaeological data of the Middle Bronze Age have all been found, in Part One above, to be quite defective in demonstrating an origin for the Abraham tradition in the second millennium B.C.". This finding has implications for certain then-current strands in Biblical criticism: "Consequently, without any such effective historical controls on the tradition one cannot use any part of it in an attempt to reconstruct the primitive period of Israelite history. Furthermore, a vague presupposition about the antiquity of the tradition based upon a consensus approval of such arguments should no longer be used as a warrant for proposing a history of the tradition related to early premonarchic times."
Part II forms a critique of "tradition-history" or "tradition-analysis", the theory current at the time that Genesis retained traces of oral traditions dating from the 2nd millennium. "There is virtually no way of deciding when oral narrative forms or motifs became associated with a particular person such as Abraham, and it could well have happened in every case when the story was first put in written form. The results of the literary examination of the Abraham tradition, in Part Two, would suggest that oral forms and motifs are confined to a rather small part of the tradition."
, since it challenged the dominant view, popularised by William Foxwell Albright, that the patriarchal narratives of Genesis can be identified on archaeological grounds with the Mesopotamian world of 2nd millennium BC. Van Seters noted that many of Albright's parallels were vague, and fit other regions than Mesopotamia
and other times than 2nd millennium. Specially devastating was his analysis of Genesis 14, where he pointed out that the political situation described in Genesis 14 - a Near East dominated by a coalition led by Elam
and including Hatti, Assyria
and Babylonia
- is not confirmed by any monuments, king lists, or other historical and archaeological sources. Van Seters also pointed out that the ten kings mentioned in Genesis 14 cannot be found in any ancient documents outside the Bible.
advanced most notably by Hermann Gunkel
and Martin Noth
: Van Seters "argues that Noth's (1948) idea of a "pentateuchal oral tradition" is flawed both historically (with respect to the history of Israel) and analogically (given Noth's comparisons with the development of Icelandic saga) [and] contends that traces of folkloric structure do not make it inevitable 'that the tradition as a whole, or even [certain] parts of it, derive from a pre-literate period'". Van Seters instead proposed that Genesis was an essentially literary work, but one based on a process of supplementation by successive authors rather on a redactorial process (i.e., on the combination of separate documents by an editor or editors). This in turn amounted to a major challenge to the Documentary Hypothesis
, the dominant theory concerning the origins of the Pentateuch.
. This held that the books of the Torah, including the Genesis accounts of Abraham
and the Patriarchs, were based on four independent sources. Each of these was originally a complete document in itself, dating from between the 10th and 7th centuries BC and combined into the final work by a Redactor (editor) in the Persian period, c.450 BC. Van Seters retained the idea of source documents but dropped the idea of a redactor, which meant dropping the documentary model itself. In its place he adopted a supplemental model, "a successive supplementation of one source or author by another," in which a Yahwist (not identical with Wellhausen's Yahwist) working in the period of the Babylonian exile was the major but not the final author of Genesis. Van Seter's schema is as follows:
A celebrated scholarly argument ensued between Van Seters and Rolf Rendtorff
over the role and existence of the redactors, Van Seters arguing that they did not exist, Rendtorff and his followers arguing that they were essential. Van Seters stated his position as follows:
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, ISBN 978-0-300-04040-1, 1975) is a book by biblical scholar John Van Seters
John Van Seters
John Van Seters is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, he was formerly James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his PhD at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies...
.
The book is divided into two parts, Abraham in History and Abraham in Tradition. In Part I part Van Seters argues that there is no unambiguous evidence pointing to an origin for the stories in the 2nd millennium BC. "Arguments based on reconstructing the patriarch's nomadic way of life, the personal names in Genesis, the social customs reflected in the stories, and correlation of the traditions of Genesis with the archaeological data of the Middle Bronze Age have all been found, in Part One above, to be quite defective in demonstrating an origin for the Abraham tradition in the second millennium B.C.". This finding has implications for certain then-current strands in Biblical criticism: "Consequently, without any such effective historical controls on the tradition one cannot use any part of it in an attempt to reconstruct the primitive period of Israelite history. Furthermore, a vague presupposition about the antiquity of the tradition based upon a consensus approval of such arguments should no longer be used as a warrant for proposing a history of the tradition related to early premonarchic times."
Part II forms a critique of "tradition-history" or "tradition-analysis", the theory current at the time that Genesis retained traces of oral traditions dating from the 2nd millennium. "There is virtually no way of deciding when oral narrative forms or motifs became associated with a particular person such as Abraham, and it could well have happened in every case when the story was first put in written form. The results of the literary examination of the Abraham tradition, in Part Two, would suggest that oral forms and motifs are confined to a rather small part of the tradition."
On "Biblical archaeology" and the Albright school
The book was a landmark in Near Eastern Studies and Biblical archaeologyBiblical archaeology
For the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see The Bible and history....
, since it challenged the dominant view, popularised by William Foxwell Albright, that the patriarchal narratives of Genesis can be identified on archaeological grounds with the Mesopotamian world of 2nd millennium BC. Van Seters noted that many of Albright's parallels were vague, and fit other regions than Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
and other times than 2nd millennium. Specially devastating was his analysis of Genesis 14, where he pointed out that the political situation described in Genesis 14 - a Near East dominated by a coalition led by Elam
Elam
Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...
and including Hatti, Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
and Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
- is not confirmed by any monuments, king lists, or other historical and archaeological sources. Van Seters also pointed out that the ten kings mentioned in Genesis 14 cannot be found in any ancient documents outside the Bible.
On "Tradition history"
The book was also a criticism of the school of Tradition historyTradition history
Tradition history or criticism is a methodology of Biblical criticism that was developed by Hermann Gunkel. Tradition history seeks to analyze biblical literature in terms of the process by which biblical traditions passed from stage to stage into their final form, especially how they passed from...
advanced most notably by Hermann Gunkel
Hermann Gunkel
Hermann Gunkel was a German Protestant Old Testament scholar. He is noted for his contribution to form criticism and the study of oral tradition in biblical texts. He was an outstanding representative of the "History of Religion School."...
and Martin Noth
Martin Noth
Martin Noth was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews. With Gerhard von Rad he pioneered the traditional-historical approach to biblical studies, emphasising the role of oral traditions in the formation of the biblical texts.-Life:Noth was...
: Van Seters "argues that Noth's (1948) idea of a "pentateuchal oral tradition" is flawed both historically (with respect to the history of Israel) and analogically (given Noth's comparisons with the development of Icelandic saga) [and] contends that traces of folkloric structure do not make it inevitable 'that the tradition as a whole, or even [certain] parts of it, derive from a pre-literate period'". Van Seters instead proposed that Genesis was an essentially literary work, but one based on a process of supplementation by successive authors rather on a redactorial process (i.e., on the combination of separate documents by an editor or editors). This in turn amounted to a major challenge to the Documentary Hypothesis
Documentary hypothesis
The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
, the dominant theory concerning the origins of the Pentateuch.
On the "documentary hypothesis" and the formation of the Torah
At the time Van Seters published "Abraham in History and Tradition" the dominant scholarly theory regarding the composition of the Pentateuch was the Documentary HypothesisDocumentary hypothesis
The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
. This held that the books of the Torah, including the Genesis accounts of Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
and the Patriarchs, were based on four independent sources. Each of these was originally a complete document in itself, dating from between the 10th and 7th centuries BC and combined into the final work by a Redactor (editor) in the Persian period, c.450 BC. Van Seters retained the idea of source documents but dropped the idea of a redactor, which meant dropping the documentary model itself. In its place he adopted a supplemental model, "a successive supplementation of one source or author by another," in which a Yahwist (not identical with Wellhausen's Yahwist) working in the period of the Babylonian exile was the major but not the final author of Genesis. Van Seter's schema is as follows:
- i. Pre-Yahwistic first stage: 12:1, 4a, 6a, 7, 10-20; 13:1-2; I6:1-3a, 4-9, IIab, 12; 13:18; 18:1a, 10-14; 21:2, 6-7 (all except the references to Lot). These represent a small unified work with three episodes and a brief framework.
- ii. Pre-Yahwistic second stage ("E"): 20:1-17; 21:25-26, 28-31a. This represents one unified story that originally came after the adventure in Egypt (13:1), to which it was added. It was subsequently transposed to its present position by the Yahwist, who added 20:iii. Ia ("From there ... Negeb") as a transition.
- Yahwist:
- a. brief secondary additions to previous works: 12:2-3, 6b, c8-9; 16:7b, 10, 11c, 13-14; 20:Iaα; 21:I.
- b. larger episodic units: 13:3-5, 7-17; chap. 15; 18:Ib-9, I5-19:38; 21:8-24, 27, 3Ib-34; chap. 22; chap. 24; 25:I-6, II; (chap. 26). All incorporated with some new arrangement of the materials.
- iv. Priestly:
- a. secondary genealogical and chronological additions: 11:26-32; 12:4b-5; 13:6; 16:3b, 15-16; 21:3-5; 25:7-10.
- b. larger episodic units: chaps. 17 and 23.
- v. Post-Priestly: chap. 14 (of which vv. 18-20 are secondary).
A celebrated scholarly argument ensued between Van Seters and Rolf Rendtorff
Rolf Rendtorff
Rolf Rendtorff is Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg. He has written frequently on the Jewish scriptures and is notable chiefly for his contribution to the debate over the origins of the Pentateuch Rolf Rendtorff (born 10 March 1925) is Emeritus Professor of Old...
over the role and existence of the redactors, Van Seters arguing that they did not exist, Rendtorff and his followers arguing that they were essential. Van Seters stated his position as follows:
See also
- Biblical criticismBiblical criticismBiblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...
- Biblical minimalism
- Source criticismSource criticismA source criticism is a published source evaluation . An information source may be a document, a person, a speech, a fingerprint, a photo, an observation or anything used in order to obtain knowledge. In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid, reliable or...
- ChedorlaomerChedorlaomerChedorlaomer "a handful of sheaves", was a king of Elam according to the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis Chapter 14. He ruled fourteen years, from the East in southwestern Persia, occupying the regions east of the Jordan river, in the days of Abram...
- Ipuwer PapyrusIpuwer papyrusThe Ipuwer Papyrus is a single papyrus holding an ancient Egyptian poem, called The Admonitions of Ipuwer or The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All. Its official designation is Papyrus Leiden I 344 recto...