Joel Baden explores the history of the Pentateuch's literary composition, offering both detailed analyses of specific passages and broad theoretical and methodological reflections. His essays also serve as a record of the recent growth of the neo-documentary hypothesis in Pentateuchal scholarship.

In these collected essays, Joel Baden explores the history of the Pentateuch's literary composition. Including detailed analyses of specific passages as well as broad theoretical and methodological reflections, these essays offer a glimpse of both the mechanisms by which the Pentateuch came into being and the scholarly frameworks through which the Pentateuch is viewed. Spanning the first fifteen years of his career, this volume also represents a record of the recent trends in pentateuchal scholarship, especially the growth of the neo-documentary hypothesis.

Autorentext
Born 1977; 2007 PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Hebrew Bible) from Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University.

Inhalt
Preface
Why Is the Pentateuch Unreadable; or, Why Are We Doing This Anyway?
Continuity Between the Gaps: The Pentateuch and the Kirta Epic
A Narrative Pattern and Its Role in Source Criticism
An Unnoticed Nuance in Genesis 2:21-22
The Tower of Babel: A Case Study in the Competing Methods of Historical and Modern Literary Criticism
The Morpho-Syntax of Genesis 12:1-3: Translation and Interpretation
The Death of Isaac
The Continuity of the Priestly Narrative from Genesis to Exodus
Evaluating the "Transition" between Genesis and Exodus
From Joseph to Moses: The Narratives of Exodus 1-2
Identifying the Original Stratum of P: Theoretical and Practical Considerations
The Original Place of the Priestly Manna Story in Exodus 16
On Exodus 33:1-11
The Purpose of Purification in Leviticus 16: A Proposal Pertaining to Priestly Prepositions
The Structure and Substance of Numbers 15
Source Stratification, Secondary Additions, and the Documentary Hypothesis in the Book of Numbers: The Case of Numbers 17
The Narratives of Numbers 20-21
The Deuteronomic Evidence for the Documentary Theory
Deuteronomy Reads the Pentateuch
Sources without Authors
Secondary Additions: Form and Function