Goethes analysis of Exodus 34 and its influence on Wellhausen: The Pfropfung of the documentary hypothesis

Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Volumn 114, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 212-223

  Levinson, Bernard M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 64349119714     PISSN: 00442526     EISSN: 16130103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1515/zatw.2002.011     Document Type: Review

References (68)

1. A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 16th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Oslo, August 2-7, 1998. I am grateful to the McKnight Foundation for the award of a University of Minnesota Faculty Summer Research Grant to permit the completion of the research.
2. For a reaffirmation of Deuteronomy's pivotal role, see E. Otto, Das Deuteronomium als archimedischer Punkt der Pentateuchkritik: Auf dem Wege zu einer Neubegründung der de Wette'schen Hypothese, in: M. Vervenne/J. Lust (eds.), Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature, FS C. H. W. Brekelmans, BEThL 133, 1997, 321-339.
3. On the new role of Ex 34, see E. Blum, Das sog. » Privilegrecht« in Exodus 34,11-26: Ein Fixpunkt der Komposition des Exodusbuches?, in: M. Vervenne (ed.), Studies in the Book of Exodus: Redaction-Reception-Interpretation, BEThL 126, 1996, 347-366.
4. N. Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5-11, AnBib 20, 1963, 309-310;
5. J. Halbe, Das Privilegrecht Jahwes Ex 34,10-26: Gestalt und Wesen, Herkunft und Wirken in vordeuteronomischer Zeit, FRLANT 114, 1975, 449-450. 502-505;
6. Y. Osumi, Die Kompositionsgeschichte des Bundesbuches Exodus 20,22b-23,33, OBO 105, 1991, 219-220;
7. and F. Crüsemann, Die Tora: Theologie und Sozialgeschichte des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes, 1992, 135-170.
8. Note the important review essays of Osumi's and Crüsemann's work by E. Otto, Zur Kompositionsgeschichte des alttestamentlichen 〉 Bundesbuches〈 Ex 20,22b-23,33, WZKM 83 (1993), 149-165;
9. and idem, Die Tora in Israels Rechtsgeschichte, ThLZ 118 (1994), 903-910.
10. The plethora of inaccuracies in the translation of Crüsemann's book renders the author an unfortunate disservice: The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law, tr. A. W. Mahnke, 1996, 112-143.
11. N. Lohfink, Zur deuteronomischen Zentralisationsformel, Bib 65 (1984), 297-328;
12. republished in: idem, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur II, SBAB 12, 1991, 147-177, at 173-177;
13. idem, Deuteronomy, IDBSuppl., 1976, 230;
14. G. Braulik, Deuteronomium 1-16,17, NEB 15, 1986, 10;
15. and B. R. Goldstein/A. Cooper, The Festivals of Israel and Judah and the Literary History of the Pentateuch, JAOS 110 (1990), 27.29.31.
16. On Goldstein and Cooper's dating, see B. M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, 1997, 70-71.
17. 62001, 82 n. 1.
18. More recently, Halbe, Privilegrecht Jahwes, 195-197; E. Otto, Das Mazzotfest in Gilgal, BWANT 107, 1975, 177 n. 1. 247;
19. and G. Braulik, Leidensgedächtnisfeier und Freudenfest: 〉Volksliturgie〈 nach dem deuteronomischen Festkalender (Dtn 16,1-17), TP 56 (1981), 335-357;
20. republished in: idem, Studien zur Theologie des Deuteronomiums, SBAB 2, 1988, 95-121, at 101 n. 110.
21. H. L. Ginsberg, The Israelian Heritage of Judaism, 1982, 64-66;
22. M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 1985, 194-197;
23. W. Johnstone, Reactivating the Chronicles Analogy in Pentateuchal Studies, with Special Reference to the Sinai Pericope in Exodus, ZAW 99 (1987), 16-37;
24. E. Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels: Eine Studie zum Mosebild im Alten Testament, CB.OT 27, 1988, 116-126;
25. E. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, BZAW 189, 1990, 67-70. 369-377;
26. idem, Exodus 34,11-26, 347-366;
27. and S. Bar-On, The Festival Calendars in Exodus XXIII 14-19 and XXXIV 18-26, VT 48 (1998), 161-195.
28. Note the astute early analysis by N. M. Nicolsky, Pascha im Kulte des jerusalemischen Tempels, ZAW 45 (1927), 174-175.
29. R. H. Pfeiffer, The Oldest Decalogue, JBL 43 (1924), 294-310;
30. A. Alt, Die Ursprünge des israelitischen Rechts (1934), in: idem, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel 1, 1953, 278-333 (317 n.1);
31. and L. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, WMANT 36, 1969, 216-232.
32. Otto, Kompositionsgeschichte, 154f.
33. E. Otto's attempt at literary separation does not draw the full implications of his careful redactional analysis. It becomes methodologically problematic to seek to reconstruct a pre-Deuteronomistic core for the chapter, as if the Deuteronomistic material were simply secondary accretions added to an original source. It is not clear that the text he reconstructs ever had any pre-Deuteronomic independent existence. Defending such a claim risks methodological dominoes. Otto deletes the calendar that concludes the Covenant Code (Ex 23,14-19) as a later addition to it. That redefinition of the textual compass of the Covenant Code is based upon the model of Ex 34,11-26, which is held to provide the earlier exemplar. Nonetheless, Otto deletes from that allegedly original exemplar what he concedes is its post-Deuteronomic designation of Passover as a pilgrimage festival (Ex 34,24b). That deletion of Passover actually brings Ex 34 back into conformity with the festival calendar of the Covenant Code, which, despite Otto's deletion of it as secondary, distinctively preserves its pre-Deuteronomic integrity by making no reference to the paschal slaughter (contra E. Otto, Wandel der Rechtsbegründungen in der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des antiken Israel: eine Rechtsgeschichte des »Bundesbuches« Ex XX 22-XXIII 13, StB 3, 1988, 10-11.52-56.58;
34. idem, šaeba'/šābû'ôt, ThWAT 7, 1992, 1022f.;
35. and idem, Kompositionsgeschichte, 154f.). Accordingly, Otto's proposal that a Deuteronomistic or later redactor had final disposition of Ex 23,14-19 provides no explanation of why that redactor failed to update the calendar by harmonizing Unleavened Bread with Passover, as he did at Exod 34,25b, where Otto deletes the reference as late.
36. The larger study is the author's The Revelation of Redaction: Exodus 34:11-26 as a Challenge to the Standard Documentary Hypothesis (under submission).
37. 41963, 334.
38. J. Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten: 2. Die Composition des Hexateuchs, 1885, 84 n. 1.
39. Wellhausen also refers to »das Goethesche Zweitafelgesetz in Exod 34« at p. 95. The studies underlying this publication had previously been published in Jahrbuch für Deutsche Theologie 21 (1876), 392-450.531-602; and 22 (1877), 407-479. They were subsequently published and are most conveniently available as idem, Composition des Hexateuchs (see previous note). This publication provides Wellhausen's extensive and important supplements: the Nachträge (303-373), which date to 1900 and are not available in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. They establish that, now twenty-four years later, Wellhausen still recalls the pivotal role of Goethe's essay in his own intellectual development (330).
40. J. W. Goethe, Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, in: idem, Der junge Goethe 1757-1775, ed. G. Sauder, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, Münchner Ausgabe, 1.2, 1987, 434-440.
41. Accordingly, all translations that follow are my own. For initial advice, I am grateful to Claudia Rapp, Assistant Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles. For checking and discussion of the translation, I am indebted to Thomas P. Saine, Professor, Department of German, University of California at Irvine, the editor of Goethe's autobiography and an officer of the Goethe Society of North America (http://www.hnet.uci.edu/tpsaine/gsna.html).
42. »Distressing to be alone during the long winter evenings« (Goethe, Zwo ... biblische Fragen, 434).
43. »Not the Ten Commandments, the first paragraph of our catechism!« (Goethe, Zwo ... biblische Fragen, 437).
44. Goethe, Zwo ... biblische Fragen, 436f. (emphasis and emendation in original).
45. On these grounds, N. Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age 1, 1991-2000, 142, is incorrect in his analysis of Goethe's view of the Bible and its relation to Johann Herder (see below, p. 218). His interpretation of »Zwo ... biblische Fragen« asserts: »The notion that the Bible is the vehicle of a universal rational and moral religion (such as the Ten Commandments might be held to summarize) is therefore rejected in favor of Herder's cultural theory which gives value to particular and local traditions.« By reducing Goethe to Herder, Boyle overlooks the importance that Goethe attaches to Christianity: to the Incarnation viewed in philosophical terms as the indispensible means for local and particular cultures to achieve universal significance. Whereas for Herder, particular nations share in a larger human cause and thus implicitly participate in the universal, for Goethe, it is with the Pfropfung alone that the universal enters history. Prior to that point, there is only sterile particularity.
46. Goethe, Zwo ... biblische Fragen, 439.
47. I owe this observation to Ms Molly Zahn, Religious Studies undergraduate major, University of Minnesota, for whose careful research assistance and proofreading I am thankful.
48. Several times in his autobiography Goethe discusses his familiarity with the assumptions and methodology of the historical critical method and its divergence from the conventional view of the authorship of the Bible. He describes the Bible as a composite work that slowly grew together, as containing contradictions and as having undergone internal revision. See J. W. Goethe, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. P. Sprengel, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens 16, Münchner Ausgabe, 1985, 298f.543f.;
49. transl., idem, From My Life: Poetry and Truth, Parts One to Three, tr. R. R. Heitner, introduction and notes by T. P. Saine, ed. T. P. Saine/J. L. Sammons, Goethe's Collected Works 4, 1994, 208f.377.
50. Note the background provided by Gertrud Janzer, Goethe und die Bibel, 1929;
51. and W. Schottroff, Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, EvTh 44 (1984), 463-485.
52. While Goethe in his autobiography several times refers to Spinoza as an important influence, that is always done in the context of his ethical development; the reference is always implicitly to Spinoza's Ethics (see Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 667f.712-715.870). Goethe emphasizes the feeling of calm that came over him in perusing the posthumous works of Spinoza (Dichtung und Wahrheit, 713). The reference can only apply to Spinoza's posthumously published Ethics (1677); his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was published anonymously (Amsterdam, 1670) during his lifetime. Nor does Goethe refer to the Tractatus, even where such an allusion might logically be expected, as in the discussion of historical criticism. Moreover, while Spinoza does distinguish between a divine and a ceremonial law, and views the latter as contingent and particularistic, he never equates the one with the Decalogue and the other with the text of Ex 34. Accordingly, the suggestion by the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe that Goethe's position corresponds to Spinoza (Tractatus, books 1, 4, and 5) in distinguishing the contents of the tablets of the covenant from the Decalogue is inaccurate (Sauder's notes in Goethe, Der junge Goethe, 851). Similarly, the analogies suggested by Schottroff take insufficient account of the dialectical structure of Spinoza's thought (Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, 472).
53. In his autobiography Goethe discusses his decision to undertake the licentiate in law at the University of Strasbourg, his father's urging him to submit a doctoral dissertation in addition, the ensuing dissertation on political theology that he submitted in Latin to the Faculty of Law, and his relief at its rejection. Although the publication of the dissertation was denied, Goethe was permitted to hold a pro forma oral defense and thereby, on August 6, 1771, obtained the licentiate permitting him to practice law. (See Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 504-508;
54. transl., Poetry and Truth, 350-352.)
55. Gerhard Sauder, in his annotation to the essay, holds the arguments of Goethe's Zwo ... biblische Fragen to derive from that rejected dissertation, De legislatoribus. Sauder's observation is based on the report of Franz Christian Lerse (1749-1800), Goethe's nearly inseparable friend during the Strasbourg years. (See G. Sauder [ed.], Der junge Goethe, 851. The dissertation's rejection is also noted by M. Buber, Moses, 1946, 119.)
56. Lerse reported that the first draft of Goethe's dissertation for the Doctor juris degree maintained that: »die zehn Gebote nicht eigentlich die Bundesgesetze der Israeliten waren, sondern daß nach Deuteronomium zehn Ceremonien eigentlich die zehn Gebote vertreten hätten« (as reported by K. A. Böttiger [1760-1835], Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen: In Schilderungen aus Karl Aug. Böttigers handschriftlichem Nachlasse, ed. K. W. Böttiger, 1838, vol. 1, 60 [entry dated: »Lerse im Club den 30. Nov. 1798«]). If this account is correct, Goethe must have had in mind the ritual text of Deut 27,15-26 as the original terms of the covenant (where, however, there are not ten but twelve ritual curses). In writing without further qualification concerning Zwo ... biblische Fragen that »Dieselbe These« was previously presented as the rejected dissertation, the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe of Goethe's work seems to have misunderstood Lerse's reference to Deuteronomy (Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. P. Sprengel, 1010). Lerse's report, if accurate, raises further issues. It is not easy to see how the series of bans in Deut 27,15-26 could be interpreted as purely »ceremonial« rather than ethical in concern. They prohibit idols; disobedience to mother and father; removal of boundary markers; abuse of the blind; exploitation of alien, orphan, and widow; incest; bestiality; assault; hired murder; and violation of the Torah.
57. »Ich arbeitete mich mit unsäglicher Mühe, mit unzulänglichen Hülfsmitteln und Kräften durch die fünf Bücher und geriet dabei auf die wunderlichsten Einfälle. Ich glaubte gefunden zu haben, daß nicht unsere Zehn-Gebote auf den Tafeln gestanden ...« (Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 546; Poetry and Truth, 378). Goethe's disavowal is also noted in the polemic against source criticism by J. H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary, 1938, 368 (with thanks to Prof. G. Rendsburg, Cornell University, for this reference).
58. Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, Nachträge, 330.
59. Ex 34,1; note also the citation tag of 34,18b.
60. »Es will nicht die dritte, sondern die erste und einzige Gottesoffenbarung am Sinai erzählen« (Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, 84).
61. Halbe, Privilegrecht Jahwes, 449f.502-505.
62. C. Dohmen, Was stand auf den Tafeln vom Sinai und was auf denen vom Horeb? Zur Geschichte und Theologie eines Offenbarungsrequisits, in: F-L. Hossfeld (ed.), Vom Sinai zum Horeb: Stationen alttestamentlicher Glaubensgeschichte, 1989, 9-50.
63. Crüsemann, Die Tora, 135-170.
64. The relation is noted, although the complete inversion of the terms is not, by Schottroff (Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, 472 n. 40) and by the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe (Sauder, Der junge Goethe, 851).
65. What motivates Wellhausen's appropriation of this model strikes me as primarily a Romantic yearning for originality and antiquity. In this model, creativity is equated with orality, such that textuality is deemed a secondary fossilization. The paradoxical goal of the literary method is to reach the preliterary stage assumed by the text. Following his change of chairs from Greifswald to Halle and then Marburg, the same spirit motivated Wellhausen's attempt to recover the oral poetry of the Arabic Jāhiliyyah, and thus to penetrate beneath the alleged overlay of Islamic literate culture (see K. Rudolph's observation that »there was no difference in the method which Wellhausen employed in the two fields of research ...«; Wellhausen as an Arabist, Semeia 25 [1982], 111-155, at 112.) In this way, I do not regard Wellhausen's brilliant scholarship as driven by simple anti-Semitism, but as adhering primarily to Romantic assumptions about literature and culture.
66. In sharp contrast, Wellhausen used the same metaphor of grafting very differently. In accounting for his shift from Old Testament to Arabic studies, he stresses that the reconstruction of the Stamm is essential for understanding the growth of the Reis. Pre-Islamic Arabic culture provides the best way of gaining access to the original Semitic stock out of which Israelite religion developed: »Den Uebergang vom Alten Testament zu den Arabern habe ich gemacht in der Absicht, den Wildling kennen zu lernen, auf den von Priestern und Propheten das Reis der Thora Jahve's gepfropft ist. Denn ich zweifle nicht daran, dass von der ursprünglichen Ausstattung, mit der die Hebräer in die Geschichte getreten sind, sich durch die Vergleichung des arabischen Altertums am ehesten eine Vorstellung gewinnen lässt.« See J. Wellhausen, ed. and tr., Muhammed in Medina: Das ist Vakidi's Kitab alMaghazi in verkürzter deutscher Wiedergabe herausgegeben, 1882, 5.
67. Note the valuable study by R. Smend, Julius Wellhausen and his Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Semeia 25 (1982), 1-20, adducing this citation (p.8).
68. In this regard, it is important to indicate that the concern of this investigation is only to address the intellectual history of the claim for the antiquity of Ex 34. Clearly, this analysis does not necessarily mean that such claims are incorrect. Still less should this analysis be viewed, conversely, as defending the antiquity or originality either of the Decalogue of Ex 20 or of the Sinai Pericope, whether in composition or in redaction.