Exodus 31:12-17: The Sabbath according to H, or the Sabbath according to P and H?

Journal of Biblical Literature

Volumn 124, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 201-209

  Olyan, Saul M ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63149132110     PISSN: 00219231     EISSN: 19343876     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/30041010     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Israel Knohl, "The Priestly Torah Versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and the Festivals," Shnaton 7/8 (1983/84): 109-46
2. published in English in HUCA 58 (1987): 63-117
3. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991)
4. Knohl, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992)
5. revised, expanded, and translated as The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995)
6. Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000)
7. The older view of the relationship of the "Holiness Code" to the Priestly Writing may be found in such works as Milgrom's article "Leviticus," IDBSup, 543
8. Several scholars who published before the contributions of Knohl and Milgrom also believed that H postdated P, though none came up with a theory as comprehensive as Knohl's and Milgrom's. Most important among them is Karl Elliger (Leviticus [HAT 4; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1966], 14-20, esp. 16)
9. A helpful survey of the history of scholarship up to the present on this issue is to be found in Andreas Ruwe, "Heiligkeitsgesetz" und "Priesterschrift": Literaturgeschichtliche und rechtssystematische Untersuchungen zu Leviticus 17,1-26,2 (FAT 26; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 5-35, who integrates some of Knohl's and Milgrom's published work into his discussion
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 13, 39-40, 696
11. Leviticus 17-22, 1340, 1343
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1344)
13. See also Knohl, Sanctuary, 101-2, who cites the creation of transition passages by H as an indicator of H's editorial activity
14. Knohl, Sanctuary, 16, 67, 105
15. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 13, 696
16. Yairah Amit, however, building on Knohl's theory, has argued that Gen 2:1-3 is to be attributed to H rather than P. In this, she has been followed in part by Milgrom, who sees 2:2-3 as an H interpolation in the P narrative of creation (Amit, "Creation and the Calendar of Holiness," in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Grcenherg [ed. Mordechai Cogan et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997], 138 pointed star sign-298 pointed star sign;, esp. 258 pointed star sign
17. b (Die Priesterschrift im Hexateuch literarisch untersucht und theologisch gewertet [BWANT 65; Stuttgart/Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1934], 63)
18. b (in Georg Beer and Kurt Galling, Exodus [HAT 3; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1939], 151)
19. Knohl and Milgrom are by no means the only scholars to see Exod 31:12-17 as a single unit of tradition. See, e.g., Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), 416
20. Ronald E. Clements, Exodus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 200
21. See also van den Eynde, "Keeping God's Sabbath," 505
22. The Sabbath as a "sign", common both to P in Exod 31:17 and H in Exod 31:13, may be compared to circumcision as a sign of the covenant in Gen 17:11, a verse likely derived from H (on this, see the argument in Saul M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000], 154-55 n. 23)
23. On the expression, see Baruch Schwartz, "The Priestly Account of the Theophany and Lawgiving at Sinai," in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (ed. Michael V. Fox et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 126-27. Schwartz has pointed out to me that transitional verses such as Exod 31:18 are as easily assigned to a redactor who is neither H nor P as to H or P (oral communication)
24. In addition to P's and H's, we find the expressions and in passages whose attribution is uncertain for Milgrom, though Knohl would attribute them to H (e.g., Num 9:15; 10:11). On these expressions, see Schwartz, "Priestly Account," 126 and n. 51