The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch

ZONDERVAN®

The Torah Story

Copyright © 2006 by Gary Schnittjer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schnittjer, Gary Edward.

The Torah story : an apprenticeship on the Pentateuch / Gary Edward Schnittjer.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN-10: 0-310-24861-2 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24861-3 (hardcover)

1. Bible. O.T. Pentateuch—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS1225.52.S35 2006

222′.1061—dc22

2006011061

All maps by Mosaic Graphics. Copyright © 2006 by Zondervan.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.

06 07 08 09 10 11 12

To Cheri

Blessed is the person who finds wisdom.

She is a tree of life to those who embrace her.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE An Apprenticeship on the Torah

CHAPTER TWO Introducing the Torah

PART ONE Genesis

CHAPTER THREE Macroview of Genesis

CHAPTER FOUR The Beginning Genesis 1:1–2:4a

CHAPTER FIVE The Garden and the Exile Genesis 2:4b–4:26

CHAPTER SIX The Flood and the Nations Genesis 5–11

CHAPTER SEVEN The Abraham Narratives Genesis 12:1–25:18

CHAPTER EIGHT The Jacob Narratives Genesis 25:19–36:43

CHAPTER NINE The Sons of Jacob Narratives Genesis 37:1–47:26

CHAPTER TEN The Last Days Genesis 47:27–50:26

PART TWO Exodus

CHAPTER ELEVEN Macroview of Exodus

CHAPTER TWELVE The River and the Bush Exodus 1 – 4

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Plagues and the Sea Exodus 5:1 – 15:21

CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Wilderness and the Mountain Exodus 15:22 – 24:18

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Rebellion and the Dwelling Exodus 25 – 40

PART THREE Leviticus

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Macroview of Leviticus

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Sacrifice Leviticus 1-7

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Purity and Worship Leviticus 8–16

CHAPTER NINETEEN Holy Living Leviticus 17–27

PART FOUR Numbers

CHAPTER TWENTY Macroview of Numbers

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The First Generation at Sinai Numbers 1:1–10:10

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Two Generations in the Wilderness Numbers 10:11–21:35

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Second Generation on the Plains of Moab

PART FIVE Deuteronomy

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Macroview of Deuteronomy

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Words

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Ten Words and the Command

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Rules and Regulations

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A View of the Other Side Deuteronomy 29–34

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Reintroducing the Torah

Acknowledgments

Credits

List of Tables, Figures, Maps, and Sidebars

Scripture Index

Other Ancient Literature Index

Subject Index

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

An Apprenticeship on the Torah

GETTING STARTED

• Focus Question

How should one read the Torah story?

• Look for These Terms

extended echo effect

mirror imaging

narrative

Torah

• Advanced Terms

intertextuality

irreducibility of narrative

narralogic

INTRODUCING THIS BOOK

This book is designed to assist with studying the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, also known as the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch (this word based on Greek means five books). For some readers this book will be part of an apprenticeship in the form of a course on the Pentateuch, or on the Old Testament with attention to the first five books of the Bible. The book can be used, however, by any person who wishes to learn the Torah or at least how to hear it better.

The Five Books of Moses were the writings most read, most studied, and most quoted by the New Testament writers, and any and every practicing Judaic person at the turn of the era. The meaning of the Torah preoccupied both the followers and opponents of Jesus. The apostle Paul claimed that the Torah explained the human problem of sinfulness and pointed toward its remedy in the Messiah. Jesus proclaimed that Moses had written about him. For these teachers the Pentateuch was crucial to explaining the meaning of God, religion, messiah, life, death, hope, and every important aspect of the human phenomenon.

For these teachers the Pentateuch was crucial to explaining the meaning of God, religion, messiah, life, death, hope, and every important aspect of the human phenomenon.

Torah study was not new to the days of Jesus. For many centuries teachers, priests, prophets, poets, sages, storytellers, visionaries, kings, and ordinary persons studied Torah as the word of God that explained the meaning of humanity, Israel, and all of life and death in light of Yahweh the Creator. The reality of this epochal preoccupation with the Torah means that anyone who wishes to understand the faith and writings of the Judaic and Christian religions, or even to understand the life and teachings of Old or New Testament persons, must devote himself or herself to Torah study. For those who do not have a working knowledge of the holy writings that Paul, for example, studied throughout his entire life, Paul’s own writings will remain a mystery or be misread, as they often are.

This book serves as an invitation and guide—an apprenticeship or part of one—to the Five Books of Moses to challenge and assist the apprentice reader. I have tried to package the discussion in an accessible manner, even while engaging complicated and advanced matters. The book is not supposed to do everything—some things I have chosen not to pursue. It is not a commentary, it does not treat every verse, every law, or every problem in the Torah. Rather, it provides the tools and path for an apprenticeship on the Torah.

Each chapter, except this and the final one, has two parts in the main section of each chapter, plus special features at the beginning and end. The main sections are designated A Reading, which is oriented toward the biblical text itself, and Another Look, which steps back to consider selected items in relation to broader concerns—historical, chronological, cultural, theological, or, especially, connections to other biblical contexts.

The first section is entitled Getting Started. The reader will get more out of the chapters by using the tools in this first section.

Focus Question(s): This question suggests the key issue to think about when reading the chapter.

Look for These Terms: The reader should look for these terms in the chapter and notice how they are defined.

An Outline: A broad outline of the biblical material will alert the reader to what A Reading and Another Look sections are introducing.

Each chapter ends with an Interactive Workshop designed for students. Many of these tools also can benefit individuals, or church and Bible study groups.

Sample Chapter Start

Chapter Summary: A very brief review summarizing the basic contents.

Can You Explain the Key Terms? If you have difficulty, it is advisable to review the relevant portion(s) of the chapter before moving on.

Challenge Questions: The reader will find help for these questions in the chapter, though in most cases the biblical context will need to be read carefully.

Advanced Questions: Many of these questions will require advanced reader skills, such as comparing biblical contexts, and will often go beyond what is treated in the chapter itself.

Advanced Questions with an Asterisk (*): These questions provide an opportunity to exercise a variety of Hebrew language skills, some lexical and grammatical, but most are oriented toward semantic and exegetical or theological issues.

Research Project Ideas: The first step in pursuing these ideas can be consulting relevant resources listed in The Next Step.

The Next Step: Use this list of resources for advanced study with discernment—I do not agree with all materials suggested here, though I think they are useful in some manner. Often items listed here were referred to in the chapter, thus specific pages may be listed.

Sample Chapter Closing

Several items, like sidebars, tables, figures, illustrations, and other special features, occur throughout the chapters themselves. While most features are self-explanatory, two tools should be explained. First, American Stories and the Torah Story are exercises located in the Interactive Workshop sections of several chapters and are based on viewing selected movies along with questions directed toward difficult aspects of interpreting the Torah. They can be used as a part of class work or completed by individual readers, and are ideally suited for group discussions. Second, occasionally float image1 will appear after a paragraph and a question after the paragraph. If you can answer the question, you probably understand the discussion. If you have difficulty with the question, it is advisable to reread the preceding paragraph before moving on (in a few cases you may have to reread two or three paragraphs). float image1

float image2 How do the questions work that appear between paragraphs?

It seems right that I acknowledge my biases. I am committed to reading the Five Books of Moses as Christian scripture. This means, first of all, that I am not merely listening to how the Torah speaks as an example of ancient Near Eastern literature or to what it says within the Hebrew Bible. These are both important matters, but they are only part of my concern for reading the Torah within the framework of the entire Bible. Second, when I say I read the Torah as scripture, it means that, for me, it speaks with the authority of the word of God.

This book, then, is not all one will ever need, but simply a first step, an important step, for the apprentice.

This apprenticeship on the Torah focuses on narrative and biblical intertextuality (both of these matters are explained below). I am committed to the value of historical, cultural, archaeological, literary, and other background contexts but not at the expense of the scriptural presentation of the story. Part of the reason that this book is oriented toward the biblical story itself is my view of learning priorities. I think students need to have, first and foremost, a working knowledge of the scriptural narratives themselves, as well as an awareness of how they fit within the larger biblical context. Too many people know a lot about background matters without possessing a working knowledge of the biblical context and content (the same is true for many other fields of study). The history of compositional theories, for example, as important as they are to those who accept and to those who reject them, is not my object (see sidebar on The Documentary Hypothesis). Background studies—such as historical, tradition, source, redaction, and canonical criticism—can be best appropriated by those who know the story itself.

This book, then, is not all one will ever need, but simply the first step, an important step, for the apprentice. I hope the student who learns to read the Torah story faithfully will go on to work through advanced matters that bear on the first five books of the Bible. To this end I have selected many significant historical and other background matters that are introduced, in sidebars and the Another Look sections, throughout the book. I hope these teasers serve as an invitation to further studies on the Torah.

The storyteller told a story, the Torah. I intend, above all else, to focus on hearing the story and understanding how it functions for faithful readers. To arrive at this goal requires readerly skills, put to use here for a theological reading of the Five Books of Moses. In the next sections, I will describe selected basics and advanced features of theological reading of biblical narrative used in this book.

THEOLOGICAL READING OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE—BASICS

Reading stories is like breathing air; it is a natural part of life but we do not usually think about it. Basic human activities, when you think about them, seem exceptionally complicated. We can and should keep breathing and reading scriptural narratives even if we do not fully understand them. Knowing more about reading biblical narrative can help us do it better. For this purpose, I will introduce two basic issues: biblical narrative in general and literary patterns commonly used in scriptural narrative.

Biblical Narrative in General

Narrative or story can be thought of as an account of characters and events in a plot moving over time and space through conflict toward resolution (Fackre, 27). It is not quite correct to say that a biblical narrative has a theology. More properly, biblical narrative itself is a theological interpretation of the events narrated. I will briefly analyze the parts of this statement.

First, what is the relationship between event and narrative? A narrative is not the event itself but an account of the event. In some cases, the story itself—the world in front of the text—is the reader’s only way to know the event—the world behind the text. In the case of biblical narrative, therefore, theological interpretation targets the narrative feature itself. It is important that the reader recognize the difference between who the narrative is written about and who it is written for. This is often the biggest difference between the older kind of historical-critical investigation and the theological exegesis approach to biblical narrative. float image1

float image2 What is the difference between event and narrative?

Second, in what sense is a narrative an interpretation? Because a narrative is an account of an event, it therefore offers an interpretation of the event. Specifically, a narrative account of an event (real or fictional) offers a certain perspective and spin. The difference between Jesus died (a fact) and the Messiah died for sin according to the scripture (an interpretation of the fact) is all the difference in the world (see Hagner, 25). The opponents of Jesus who watched him die interpreted the significance of his death quite differently from the New Testament authors. For his opponents, and perhaps other onlookers, Jesus simply died a sinner’s death.

THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS

Many books on the Pentateuch spend a great deal of time stressing the rightness or wrongness of an older theory, from the modernist era, of how the pentateuchal books evolved into what we have in the Bible. The Documentary Hypothesis—or JEDP, after the supposed four main sources of the Torah, namely, J = the Jehovah (Yahweh) source, E= the God (Elohim) source, D = the Deuteronomistic source, and P = the priestly source—dominated pentateuchal studies throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was thought that what we call the Torah was edited together out of four (or more) sources—written and put together in a particular order, J then E, then JE, then P, and so forth—over the course of centuries in the development of Israel’s religion (see Friedman, 1992, 1996, 2003). Books and courses on the Pentateuch often focused on isolating pentateuchal sources and determining their historical and theological origin. For example: When and where was the P writer(s) from? How exactly did P get edited together with J and E? Was P first a stand alone text or is P only additions to JE? and so forth. As a result, studying the Torah itself was often neglected (see Nicholson).

Whereas at one time source criticism was thought to be the product of objective scientific analysis of the Torah, the biases it reflected are now visible to many. Isolating what was called P and dating it late, in the postexilic period, made it more viable, for some, to scorn the more Jewish parts of the scriptures. The arguments for putting P late were in some cases tinged with anti-Semitism, because they tended to devalue rabbinic Judaism, seeing it as a degeneration of the more ideal, early Hebrew religion (Brettler, 5).

Stated differently and oversimplified, the earliest parts of the Pentateuch—in the older is better view of historical criticism—were fashioned in the image of the liberal Protestants that were discovering them. It is not surprising that one of the significant moves among scholars of source criticism in the post-Holocaust era has been to relocate P earlier, during the kingdom period, before or maybe contemporaneous with D. It is one thing to reject the Documentary Hypothesis, as many scholars have, it is another to unpack what these interpretive theories say about the interpreters.

__________

Brettler, Marc Zvi. Introduction. Pp. 1–7 in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Study Bible. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004.

Enns, Peter. "Some Thoughts on Theological Exegesis of the Old Testament: Toward a Viable Model. Reformation & Revival Journal 14 (2005): 81–104, esp. 81–91.

Friedman, Richard Elliot. The Bible with Sources Revealed: A New Look into the Five Books of Moses. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

______. Some Recent Non-Arguments Concerning the Documentary Hypothesis. Pp. 87–101 in Michael V. Fox et al., eds. Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996.

______. Torah (Pentateuch). Pp. 605–22, vol. 6, in David Noel Freedman, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Nicholson, Ernest. The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.

The difference between Jesus died (a fact) and the Messiah died for sin according to the scripture (an interpretation of the fact) is all the difference in the world.

Both the degree and kind of spin in a narrative may vary. For example, a security video, eyewitness account, news report, and dramatized motion picture of the same event may each offer different degrees and kinds of interpretations. The Gospels of Mark and Luke, for example, differ in that Mark regularly explains matters in direct address to readers while Luke allows the story to speak for itself. The skills that it takes to interpret the meaning and significance of a movie are similar to those that aid the reader of biblical narrative. Reading story comes naturally, but like most other things can be improved with practice. float image1

float image2 How does narrative function as interpretation?

Third, in what sense is the narrative interpretation of the events theological? In the case of biblical narrative, the interpretation of events is guided by the theological vantage point of the story itself. Biblical narrative places the human phenomenon within divine perspective. It is, in a real sense, God’s story. Biblical story presents the reader with a narrative world that challenges, motivates, and directs. The narrator expects the reader to think and live according to the shape and vision of the story. Biblical narrative is the story into which everything, including the world of the reader, fits.

Fourth, if a biblical narrative itself is a theological interpretation of the events narrated, then how can readers hear its theology? In short, the theology of a narrative can be learned by discovering how scriptural story works.

Literary Patterns Commonly Used in Scriptural Narrative

Recognizing literary patterns commonly used in biblical narrative can help interpretation, as long as one does not get carried away. Literary structure is not the object of biblical study. At the same time, it is impossible to separate content from form. We study a story’s structure, therefore, because it is the shape or the vehicle used to present the story itself. Here is a description of several patterns that are typical within biblical narrative (also see Bauer, 8–54; Powell, 32–33; Neusner, 212).

Cause to effect or effect to cause links narrative elements together in a specific kind of relationship.

Climax is the point to and from which the text ascends and descends. The climax becomes the focal point for considering the narrative function of each part of the story when considering the book as a whole. The books of Genesis and Exodus are good examples of narratives that are oriented toward their respective highpoints (see Chapters 3, 9, and 11).

Comparison juxtaposes similar elements. The use of the same or similar elements—words, imagery, and so forth—invites the reader to consider the narrative elements together. Important examples of this phenomenon are discussed as special words in Chapter 4 and concerning the term pledge in Chapter 9. Also see repetition, below.

Contrast juxtaposes dissimilar elements. The use of contrasting elements—terms, imagery, tenses, and so on—creates irony and/or discontinuity depending on its application by the storyteller.

Extended echo effect is the parallel repeated ordering of elements or features (similar to type-scenes; see Alter, 107–30).

The effects of this kind of parallel in biblical narrative are significant for the reader’s view of humanity, God, and faith. The sequential parallels exhibit the sinful bent of humankind. In the Torah narrative, for example, Abraham the deceiver had a son, grandson, and great-grandchildren who were deceivers, caught up in webs of deception. Also, the second generation of wilderness wanderers turned out to be just like their parents’ generation, only worse. The repetitions also demonstrate that God’s acts in the past are the surest guide of his acts in the future. All of the major biblical expectations are built on this model—new creation, new exodus, a new prophet like Moses, new covenant, and so forth. Thus, lives of faith and prayer are built on trusting that he will once again act as he has. Compare to mirror imaging, below. float image1

float image2 How does extended echo effect work? What are the theological significances of this literary pattern?

Ellipsis occurs when a major element or part is dropped with the expectation that the reader will supply it. This technique emphasizes what is not said (see example in Chapter 19).

Foreshadowing suggests elements that will later come to fruition (see discussion of second reading, below).

Framing or bracketing (sometimes called inclusio) refers to repetition of features or elements at the beginning and end of a unit, causing a framing effect or full circle.

Generalization moves from the specific to the general; particularization moves in the other direction. The book of Genesis as a whole is an example of narrative particularization. The story moves from a universal context to the story of a particular family. The significance includes setting the story of the chosen family within the framework of all humankind. The meaning of the chosen family cannot be separated from the broader human concerns of the larger story.

Groupings or numbers—two, three, five, seven, ten, twelve, forty, and so on—are used in literal and symbolic ways (see discussion of special numbers in Chapter 4).

Interchange employs an alternation of elements that can cause a heightened literary irony or develop comparative imaging, and so forth.

The back and forth shift between scenes built around Joseph and Judah and his brothers in Genesis 37–45, for example, creates irony and suspense in the story. Readers are invited to consider together both subplots—a readerly perspective not available to any of the characters within the story—creating irony within the ultimately interrelated stories (see Chapter 9). When moviemakers interchange between two or more subplots to create the larger story, it is called montage.

Janus is something like a bidirectional turning point, looking back and looking ahead, simultaneously pointing in both directions (see discussion on turning point, below). This literary term is named after the double-faced Roman god Janus, for which the month of January is named (January is a time to look back at the old year and ahead to the new). A janus may be a small pivot point within an episode or it may be aptly applied to an entire book (e.g., Deuteronomy). The major poems embedded within the Torah—the blessing of Jacob’s sons (Gen. 49), the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15), Balaam’s oracles (Num. 23–24), and the Song of Moses (Deut. 32)—look backward and forward and provide significant poetictheological interpretation.

Leading word is repetition of a key thematic word within a section. The use of eyes, seeing, and related terms within the Abraham narratives function as a leading word cluster that ties together many of the most significant elements of the story (see especially Gen. 22).

Mirror imaging has a mirroring effect by repeating elements in reverse order. It is something like looking at a mountain reaching toward the sky and seeing its reflection descending across the lake.

The parallel elements may be verbal (exact words), similar words, conceptual, rhetorical (e.g., biblical quotation); the parallel can be synonymous or antithetical; the center may be a double or single element. Mirror imaging is sometimes referred to as inverted parallelism or chiasmus, after the Greek letter chi (X), which crosses in the middle. The biggest mistake many people make with mirror imaging is thinking that the main point is always in the middle. Sometimes it is. In narrative, however, the reader needs to realize that story moves between beginning and end. If a middle is important, it only is so as a turning point in a story that continues to reach from its beginning toward its ending. Although mirror imaging (a-b-c, c-b-a) and extended echo effect (a-b-c, a-b-c) exhibit similar characteristics on the surface, the significance of these phenomena differs widely. The former encloses and the latter points beyond itself. float image1

float image2 How does mirror imaging relate to narrative?

Mountain and reflection

Proportion quantitatively highlights a writing’s emphasis. The largest quantities of pentateuchal material are associated with events at Mount Sinai (Ex. 19–Num. 10) and on the plains of Moab (Num. 22–Deut. 34). The proportion of material devoted to these events accents the importance of instructing God’s people with his word. The same kind of observations can be made by discerning the proportional emphases within smaller narrative sections.

Repetition refers to the recurrence of similar or identical elements. Whereas comparison (see above) is oriented toward relationships between episodes and larger blocks of material, repetition is focused within a given context. In Genesis 4, for instance, the repetition of the word brother seven times emphasizes a significant aspect of Cain’s crime. This repetition should also be compared to the rivalry between the brothers of Israel’s family at the end of Genesis. Moreover, repetition that extends across several episodes is called leading word (see above).

Summary, statement of purpose, and question and answer each may begin or end a unit. Many chapters in Leviticus begin or end with a statement concerning the purpose of the instructions within the chapter. Question and answer is used for several instructional contexts within Deuteronomy (see Deut. 4:32–34; 10:12–13).

Turning point (pivot, hinge, or the like) involves a change in direction within the plot—for example, positive to negative, or vice versa. The turning point within the sons of Jacob narrative (Gen. 37–50) is simultaneously the turning point for the entire book of Genesis (see Chapter 9). The book of Numbers is also narrated around a surprising turning point (see Chapters 20 and 23).

Wordplays of many kinds—rhyming, alliteration, similar sounds, and so forth—shape the text, link its contents, and perform many other functions. I sometimes refer to wordplays as special words; actually ordinary words are used in special ways within biblical narrative (see Chapter 4).

THEOLOGICAL READING OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE—ADVANCED

The basic components of biblical narrative discussed above are narrative itself and common literary patterns of biblical story. Other general issues include: the functioning of story, intertextuality, and the irreducibility of story. The discussion of these latter three are for the advanced reader. If you are just getting started with studying biblical narrative, I recommend that you skip this section of the chapter and pick up with the section entitled Story and Reader below. I invite you to return to these more advanced items after developing your reading skills by studying the Torah, some or all of it, with this book.

In some respects, again, reading story is like breathing air. People usually do not need to think about breathing. If they did, in any serious way, there would be many complicated things that would need to be accounted for, like physiological and anatomical features of the human respiratory and cardiovascular systems, the molecular makeup of the earth’s atmosphere, the significance of location relative to sea level, and so forth. Studying basic activities like breathing air and reading biblical story may make them seem complex. Most human actions are incredibly intricate if one thinks about them. But, in fact, to breathe air or to read stories are usually easy, normal, natural. We do not study things like breathing and reading to make them difficult. We want to learn to do them better.

Narralogic refers to the way biblical story works. Narralogic is my term, invented by combining the Latin terms narro (story) and logica (reasoning), which references its ancestors, the Greek words logos (word, idea, reason) and logikē (reasoning). The meaning of narralogic plays off the threefold idea of the word itself, namely, story-words, story-rules, and the story rules.

Narralogic, first and foremost, refers to the function of the story-words themselves. Narratives are something more than the persons, the events themselves, the culture, and the history of all of these elements together. Narration is the presentation of a storied world. The story-words themselves, the telling that holds together all the elements of the narrative world, is the something more.

Second, narralogic means that stories operate according to story-rules. Narrative worlds are controlled by rules. The rules are not necessarily constant from one story to the next, but a given narrative world is storied according to its rules or logic. Storyrules govern things like narrative time, narrative space, narrative phenomena, and even the kinds of characters that are possible. An example of each of these may be helpful. float image1

float image2 How do story-rules function in general?

In the external world, at least as it was conceived by older modernist standards, time and space were each constants that could be measured, by the movement of the earth—days, years, and so on—or by segments of distance—inches, feet, miles, and so forth. Narrative time is not constant per se, but is a function of the story. Eighty years elapse in Exodus 2, for example, while the next thirty-eight chapters tell the story of selected events in a period of a little more than a year. Narrated events, moreover, are not always in chronological order, but are arranged according to the emphases or needs of the story. More importantly, narrative time and narrative space can refer to more than mere dimensions of reality; they may convey symbolic significance—like east of the garden or forty days and forty nights.

Narrative phenomena, while not necessarily in accord with a modernist scientific worldview, make sense within the scriptural storied world. A person can talk to a snake or turn water into blood by the power of God. One of the leading features of biblical narrative is the privilege granted to readers of frequently seeing into the heart and private thoughts of persons. These examples do not imply that anything goes. Not at all! Rather, the possibility and potentiality of narrative phenomena are strictly controlled by the story-rules.

The storyteller controls what readers hear and what they do not hear and how they hear what they hear.

Third, narralogic means that the story rules. That is, the story itself exercises dominion over all elements of the storied world. The storyteller controls what readers hear and what they do not hear and how they hear what they hear. Readers are not free to apprehend the events or other elements of the story any way they want. The elements need to be seen and heard within their storied context.

There is, of course, much more to learn regarding how biblical stories work. A student may learn the ins and outs by studying scriptural narrative itself. Specific aspects of narralogic are developed further as indicated in the following list.

Dialogical and analogical patterns of discourse and thought respectively characterize the aftermath of the rebellion at Sinai narrative (see Chapter 15) and the sacrifice instructions of Leviticus (see Chapter 17). Analogical thought denotes a kind of meaning based on analogous relationships or similarities. Dialogue between characters—especially between persons and God—can help the reader see complexities which would be hidden otherwise.

Narrative selectivity is discussed in several forms, such as the point of view of the flood narrative (see Chapter 6) and background and foreground in the Abraham narratives (see Chapter 7). The Abraham narratives, for example, are not designed to present all of the biographical or historical facts of his life. Genesis 12–25 is not the story of Abraham’s life. Rather, certain biographical and historical facts from his life were selected to tell a crucial part of the Genesis story. Biblical stories omit many things about which readers are curious. What is there is what is needed to tell the story.

Narrative space is a multifunctional dimension of story. Spatial elements of story are used according to their literal referents but often with symbolic force. Directions (like up or east), proximity to or from God (especially in the case of the tabernacle), and even place designations (like Egypt or the wilderness) carry theological overtones. Important examples are discussed in the chapters covering Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (especially Chapters 11, 17, and 20).

Narrative surprise is a function of first reading or reading forward (reading in relation to the beginning only) versus second reading or reading backward (reading in relation to the end, or whole story). When we read a story or watch a movie for the first time, we expect, for the most part, to be surprised by the ending. If we figure it out—which most of us try to do—we consider it an example of poor storytelling. The surprise element is so dominant in North American culture that we become frustrated by those who give away the ending. When we read or view a story for the second (or third) time, we enjoy it in a different way. This time we see things we did not see the first time, by which we mean we understand them in light of the ending. Elements early in a story are seen as foreshadowing later elements in the narrative. The surprise phenomenon is discussed in relation to the sons of Jacob story in Chapter 9.

Aristotle described the turning point of complex plots as having two components: reversal and recognition—something like what I mean by narrative surprise. Reversal is a change to the opposite direction of events (Poetics 11 [p. 65]). Recognition is the discovery or surprise of an element that turns or transforms the narrative. Aristotle lists several typical kinds of recognition (see Poetics 17 [pp. 82–87]). The first three are related in that they each require a contrived element of some sort in the story—a token (like a necklace or scar, and so on), through dialogue, and by a character’s memory. The fourth is recognition by reasoning. In this case the narrative can use compound recognition: the audience’s mistaken recognition (which may be set up in the story) reversed by a character’s reasoned recognition. The fifth, and for Aristotle the best, kind is recognition coming from events themselves.

Narrative time is a key feature of the Abraham and the wilderness stories and is discussed in Chapters 7, 20, and 22. Narrative time does not operate as a constant as it seems to in the external world. Narrative time speeds up, slows down, or leaps forward based on the needs of the story. Stories, moreover, are not bound to chronological sequence (see examples in Chapters 14, 15, and 20).

Poetry, songs, and laws within narrative are controlled by the context of the stories in which they are embedded. A song by itself, for example, will not be read in the same way as the same song within a particular narrative context. Readers will hear it through the ears (that is, from the perspective) of those listening within the story itself. The relationship of these genres to their narrative settings are discussed in several places: poetry in Chapters 10 and 23; song in Chapters 13 and 28; and law in Chapters 14, 16, and 24, as well as in several other chapters.

Scholars have interacted with Aristotle’s Poetics through the centuries. Perhaps Aristotle’s best known description of narratives is that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Narralogic denotes, in sum, how biblical stories work. It takes seriously the fact that narration is purposefully selective in detail, style, and point of view, and it considers that arrangement itself affects narrative meaning. Reading biblical story as story and as scripture is basic to theological exegesis.

Biblical intertextuality refers to the way in which later biblical writers rewrote, commentated on, reused imagery from, and otherwise dialogued with their scriptures, especially the Five Books of Moses. The Torah was the Bible, or at least part of it, for biblical writers like David, the prophets, the Gospel writers, and Paul, whose writings offer an opportunity for us to apprehend how the Bible read the Bible. Some readers may find certain examples of intertextuality surprising and a little tricky. It is important to be patient and to resist arriving at conclusions too early. When readers come across difficult examples of intertextuality in studying the Torah, it may be useful to refer back to the following discussion.

Mastering the content of the biblical books themselves, even when all of them are mastered, is only an intermediate achievement.

One of the reasons I emphasize biblical intertextuality throughout this book is that mastering the content of the biblical books themselves, even when all of them are mastered, is only an intermediate achievement. Biblical writings, especially the narratives, are not worlds unto themselves. The Torah story itself must be heard first, but then it needs be heard within the biblical intertextual network of which it is part. The student reader should begin to make the larger connections at the center of the art of reading scripture.

Many of the sorts of intertextuality characteristic in the scriptures—explanation of previous terms or passages, sermonic exposition, fulfillment of predictions, and so forth—do not need to be discussed here. The most challenging kind of intertextuality for North American readers is figural or typological literary relationships—namely, when one story alludes to a previous story by use of echo (above I referred to this phenomenon as extended echo effect, similar to type-scenes).

The traditional approach to figural biblical connections was called typology—observing how the narrative patterns of the Hebrew scriptures foreshadowed the Messiah (see Schnittjer). The basis of typology is the belief that stories of biblical persons or events point toward the Christ. Traditional typology made each connection singularly between particular narrative elements and Jesus the Messiah. Biblical readers were invited to consider the relationship, for example, between Jacob and Jesus, or Joseph and Jesus, or Judah and Jesus, or David and Jesus, and so forth (see Figure 1-a). One of the problems with the exclusively Jesus and x approach to the relationship between the Testaments was that it flattened the biblical narratives into many small units that each said the same thing. It prevented readers from hearing the interconnected and dynamic story that culminated in the Messiah.

The stories of Jesus let readers hear echoes of the narratives of the Hebrew scriptures, including the sounds of Jacob, Joseph, Judah, David, and many others. These biblical stories, however, interrelate in ways that make their ultimate relationship to the story of the Messiah much more theologically significant. Specifically, the story of Joseph rings with the sounds, in places, of his father’s story. The expected descendant of Judah sounds like both his father and his younger brother, in certain ways. The careful reader, moreover, hears in the stories of David echoes of each of these, along with others. Later biblical storytellers demonstrate the relationship between persons like Jacob and David within the larger context of the acts of God. The narrators show many of these interrelationships by allusion to earlier stories within their own narration. The sequence of biblical narratives presents a progressively growing set of theological interrelationships. Jacob, for example, is a type of David before Jacob and David are seen as pointing beyond themselves to the Messiah.

Polyacoustic reading—hearing multiple and complementary sounds—is the attempt to hear the building echoes of biblical narrative that culminate in the Messiah. It replaces the monophonic (single voice) view that finds each narrative saying the same thing. The former focuses on hearing and complexity and the latter on saying and simplicity (compare Figures 1-a and 1-b). Figure 1-b presents two aspects of polyacoustic reading. float image1

float image2 What is the difference between monophonic typology and polyacoustic reading?

The first, progressive imaging in biblical narrative, refers to the way that biblical narratives build one upon another when they are read from the beginning. The arrows point backward rather than forward because figural or typological relationships are actually the later writer’s retrospective connecting of the new story with previous stories. That is, the writer realizes the relationship between, for instance, David and Jacob and narrates the story of David to sound like the Jacob story. This does not mean that later writers invented details, but simply that they told the new narratives in a way that their readers could rightly hear. Recognizing the Jacob-shaped aspects of David’s life is part of learning how David’s story fits in its biblical context. The echoes of the Jacob story in the David story are a part of the progressive imaging that reaches its summit in the story of Jesus the Messiah (see Chapters 8, 9, and 10). float image1

float image2 What is progressive imaging?

The second aspect of polyacoustic reading presented in Figure 1-b is multiple imaging in biblical narrative. In short, it refers to the multiple simultaneous echoes that careful biblical readers can hear when considering the whole Bible. This second diagram includes all of the relationships depicted in Figure 1-a on monophonic typology. The differences between the approaches represented in Figures 1-a and 1-b show that the latter recognizes the relationships as retrospective interpretations—that is, it takes seriously the idea of progressive revelation. Moreover, apprehending multiple imaging aims at holistic reading versus regarding comparative relationships only in isolation. Reading this way is an attempt to appreciate the dynamic, developmental, and interrelated nature of scriptural narrative.

It is important for biblical readers to be patient and cautious in their intertextual thinking. The two biggest problems are underreading and not making necessary connections, and overreading and seeing connections that are not there. I recommend, first, that readers be able to demonstrate connections with textual signals. Then ask trusted exegetes to think through questionable intertextual observations with you. Theological exegesis is, in this sense, a communal activity (at least it should be).

The irreducibility of biblical story is characteristic of God’s word. The word is eternal. The nature of its eternality is not simply temporal longevity but the integrity of the word itself. Consider the eternality of God’s word as it is framed in two discrete contexts.

A voice says, Cry out! And I said, What shall I cry?

All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of Yahweh blows upon it; surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isa 40:6–8 NRSV, italics added)

I tell you the truth, [said Jesus,] "until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Torah until everything is accomplished" (Matt. 5:18, NIV, italics added).

The permanence of God’s word means both that it will endure through the generations and that it will testify in the same way that it always has. The Torah speaks today just as it has through the centuries.

The reader’s goal is not merely to find the moral of the story, to boil it down to a list of propositional ideas, or to outline it correctly according to Western modernist conventions. There is nothing wrong with these activities. But they are not the goal of studying biblical story. The meaning of a particular narrative, for example, is not in discovering five reasons why we should not lie—however valid the reasons—but is the depicted story itself. Leland Ryken says it well: The story is the meaning (88).

The significance of the irreducibility of biblical narrative can be illustrated in order to explain it. In class sessions my students usually catch it when I read aloud and discuss with them the place of the museum in the following excerpt from The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.

Whenever anyone reads Genesis 22, the angel of Yahweh always stops Abraham just before he kills his son.

I walked all the way through the park over to the Museum of Natural History…I knew that whole museum routine like a book…We used to go there all the time…You’d pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket…[Then] you passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in the icy lake, and he was fishing through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he’d already caught…There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter…The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole…and that squaw…would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat on this time…Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way. (155–58, italics mine)

Going to a museum is like a book, in certain senses. Specifically, just as people see the same exhibits each time they walk through a museum, so too books denote the same story each time they are read. This observation says something about the story and the reader.

First, the biblical story remains the same through the generations. Earlier generations may have read it in Hebrew and we usually read it in English, but the kings of Israel, the Jews suffering in exile, the apostle Paul, and we as North American readers—all who have ever heard the word of God—read the same story. Whenever anyone reads Genesis 22, the angel of Yahweh always stops Abraham just before he kills his son. The pharaoh always resists God’s word until his own son is killed in the tenth plague against Egypt. When we read the scriptural story, we join all those through the ages who have been confronted by the word of God.

Because biblical story is irreducible, we should not strive to do something to it but learn how to hear it. If reading biblical story creates a narrative world for the reader to enter, then we need to figure out how to travel through it and embrace it. We can get help from outlines and other study tools, but it is our reading journey through the story itself, not the outlines and such, that is the aim of biblical study.

Second, the reader does not stay the same, even when reading the same story. The contrast in Isaiah 40:6–8, which I quoted above, is between people who are like grass and the word of Yahweh that endures forever. How should the reader relate to the story? We need to learn how scriptural narrative explains the world and situates us within it.

STORY AND READER

How should biblical narrative affect readers? I am interested here in how it should affect those who engage in faith reading, that is, those who read it as scripture. The irreducibility of biblical story, in part, determines how it should affect readers. I think it is useful first to consider some of our common strategies for misreading.

Readers too often are ruled by what they bring to the text with themselves. When we hear a song, it can take us back ten years or more and remind us of our younger days. We may say this song means such and such to me. The fact that we associate a given song with part of our own lives has nothing to do with the meaning of the song itself. It is not a big deal to misinterpret popular music. Many, unfortunately, do the same kind of thing with the scriptures. We may choose to teach or preach on a given passage because of what it meant to us in our own younger days; thus, sometimes even the selection of texts reflects our bias. There is nothing wrong with the associations between our lives and scripture, unless we think that our readings of the scriptures are the meaning. They are not.

Biblical story is the meaning. It explains the human situation and offers a right view of life in at least three ways. First, biblical story explains the identity of all humanity. It narrates the creation and fall of humankind. It situates the human world in relation to its Creator. Readers learn who they are in relation to Yahweh, humanity, the chosen family of Israel, the nations, and the Messiah. Second, scriptural narrative offers readers a view of the destiny of humankind and the human world. It points, with the certainty and power of God’s own word, to restoration and redemption because of his tenacious love. Third, biblical story defines the direction for human life. When we know our identity—who we are—and our destiny—where we are going—we are in a position to apprehend the direction that our lives should be going. float image1

float image2 How do the scriptural narratives explain human life?

How should readers relate to scriptural narrative? It is not just the most important book in our lives. Rather, our lives fit within its narrative explanation. For those who read it as scripture, it is the story of the world in which humankind lives. We apprehend ourselves and envision life from the worldview offered by biblical story.

Biblical narrative, therefore, is the story—God’s story. The Torah is the beginning of the story. To understand ourselves, the meaning of life, individually and socially, and God himself, we need to devote ourselves to the biblical narrative. This book is an invitation and a guide for anyone who wishes to accept an apprenticeship on the first five books of the word of God.

INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP

• Chapter Summary

This book is an invitation and guide to the Torah story. There are at least six important aspects of theological reading of biblical narrative to consider when approaching the Torah: narrative itself, common literary patterns, how stories work*, intertextuality*, the irreducibility of story*, and how story should affect readers (those marked with asterisks are for advanced readers as noted above).

• Can You Explain the Key Terms?

extended echo effect

mirror imaging

narrative

Torah

• Advanced Terms

intertextuality (related terms = typology, monophonic typology, polyacoustic reading)

irreducibility of narrative

narralogic

• Challenge Questions

What is the difference between narrative and the events depicted in the narrative? How does recognizing this distinction aid the biblical reader?

What are the dangers of studying literary patterns often found in biblical narrative? Explain, in light of this, how we should focus on literary patterns in biblical study.

Why should biblical narrative shape readers? How can they shape readers rightly?

• Advanced Questions

How does biblical narrative function? Select one aspect of narralogic and explain it in your own words with a specific biblical example.

What is biblical intertextuality and how does it work? Why is it important to pay attention to intertextuality when approaching biblical narrative?

What does it mean to say that biblical narrative is irreducible? How does it impact theological reading of scripture?

• Research Project Ideas

Explain the abuses and rightful uses of inverted parallelism or chiasmus.

Examine the abuses and rightful uses of typology.

Evaluate the function of intertextuality in biblical narrative.

• The Next Step

Alter, Robert. The World of Biblical Literature. New York: BasicBooks, 1992, 107–30.

Aristotle, Poetics. Ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.

Bauer, David Robert. The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel: A Literary-Critical Examination. Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va., 1985, 8–54.

Berlin, Adele. Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994.

Fackre, Gabriel. The Christian Story: A Narrative Interpretation of Basic Christian Doctrine. Vol. 1. 3d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996, 27.

Fokkelman, Jan P. Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide. Trans. Ineke Smit. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1999.

Hagner, Donald A. Introduction. P. 25 in George Eldon Ladd. A Theology of the New Testament. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

Neusner, Jacob. The Mishnah: An Introduction. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1989, 212.

Powell, Mark Allan. What Is Narrative Criticism? Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990, esp. 32–33.

Rosenberg, Joel. Biblical Narrative. Pp. 31–81 in Barry W. Holtz. Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts. New York: Summit, 1984.

Ryken, Leland. Words of Delight. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992, 88.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1945, 155–58.

Schnittjer, Gary E. The Narrative Multiverse within the Universe of the Bible: The Question of ‘Borderlines’ and ‘Intertextuality.’ Westminster Theological Journal 64 (2002): 231–52.

• A Note on Style, Translations, and Related Matters

I do not capitalize word of God and related terms. I want to avoid a distinction between the authority of the Bible as God’s word versus the authority of his word of creation, law, promise, and so forth. The power and authority of the word of God within the Torah story is necessary to interpreting the Pentateuch. Moreover, I believe that the interplay between the word of God in scripture and scripture as the word of God is an idea formulated in the scriptures themselves. I capitalize the Bible, on the other hand, because the term denotes the posture of faith by those who read it as the word of God.

I use the New International Version (NIV) for scripture quotations unless stated otherwise, in which case I use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) or Today’s New International Version (TNIV). I chose to replace the words the LORD, law, and Christ with Yahweh, Torah, and Messiah respectively, when I quote from these three translations, for interpretive reasons (see explanation of these terms in Chapters 2, 12, and 18). I felt I needed to make these changes because of the importance of these terms for interpreting the Torah, and because of the way that language itself shapes meaning. In addition I have occasionally used translations by Everett Fox and Robert Alter (abbreviated as Fox and Alter; bibliographic information in Credits). Further information concerning the translations is provided in the Credits near the end of the book.

The abbreviations BCE and CE stand for before the common era and common era respectively. The new student should note that dates denoted by BCE count down and by CE count up, in each case moving toward the present (for example, the northern kingdom of Israel fell in 722 BCE, more than a century before the southern kingdom of Judah fell in 586 BCE). On occasion, when it seemed important, I included parenthetical references to Second Temple Judaic literature like the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, targums, Dead Sea Scrolls, and so on (as well as other writings of late antiquity). I have not explained such references as they are for advanced readers. Those who are just getting started with their scriptural studies should skip over these references without concern.

CHAPTER TWO

Introducing the Torah

GETTING STARTED

• Focus Question

What is the Torah? What is the Torah story?

• Look for These Terms

Pentateuch

torah

Torah

Septuagint

AN OVERVIEW

The Torah is sometimes conceived as a single work, the Torah scroll. Jesus called it the book of Moses in Mark 12:26. This single work—the Torah—is comprised of five books, hence, Pentateuch (see Blenkinsopp, 42–47; Childs, 128–32). It is viable to study each book of the Torah as well as the Torah as a whole (see Fox, 31–40; Rendtorff, 22–35). The five books constitute a serial narrative—the Torah story.

The name of each of the five books captures some sense of the book itself. The traditional Hebrew names derive from the opening words of the respective books, and the traditional Christian names are each based on some aspect of the content of the books. The Christian names come from the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. float image1

float image2 In what sense is the Torah five books and in what sense is it one story?

The setting of the Torah story in the ancient Near East

In the beginning (the traditional name from the Hebrew word berēšît)

Genesis (meaning origin) is taken from 2:4: "This is the account