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Bill Arnold on the Composition of Genesis

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I have written quite a bit about this topic on this blog, and am also doing a series related to it on my Threads blog, so I was glad to see another summary article (HT:  Dr. Platypus).  Most lay people are not well acquainted with critical theories about the Pentateuch, as they get the briefest of descriptions followed by either a dismissal from one side or an assertion of scholarly consensus on the other.

Bill Arnold’s article is very useful for several reasons.  He outlines the overall theory very well along with traditional dating of the various sources.  He discusses some of the possibilities for the history of those sources, and alternative dating.  He does take up some non-traditional views, but in several cases (looking at the dating of P, and some of what he says on H), I happen to agree.  It’s always nice for the non-specialist to find some fine scholar agreeing with his much less sophisticated opinions!  I was convinced by the linguistic arguments from Dr. Jacob Milgrom in his Leviticus commentary from the Anchor Bible series, whose praises I sing from time to time.

Having said all that, I commend the article to those who would like to know more about this topic.

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2 responses to “Bill Arnold on the Composition of Genesis”

  1. Jeremy Pierce Avatar
    Jeremy Pierce

    He doesn’t seem to show any recognition of Wenham’s arguments that Genesis 1-11 stem from very ancient traditions that seem even to come from the very time period that they’re about. I found those arguments pretty convincing when I was reading the introduction to Wenham’s commentary. Whoever put those materials together with the rest of the book might have reshaped them considerably, and perhaps that’s what leads people to attribute them to the same sources they propose for the rest of the book and the rest of the Torah, but it was hard for me to resist Wenham’s conclusion that they had an ancient character to them when compared with the rest of the book and the narratives in the rest of the Torah and former prophets.

    I’m generally of the view that the arguments most scholars now accept for revising Wellhausen’s hypothesis are in fact strongly indicative of a more radical conclusion, that the source-hypothetical reconstructions are at best speculative to begin with. There are alternative reconstructions of why there are different vocabulary, names of God, and stylistic devices in different parts of the text. I haven’t been convinced that Genesis had to have been composed from separate sources. I’m not sure there’s a good argument for Mosaic authorship of the bulk of the Pentateuch, but I actually haven’t seen any convincing arguments against a single author/editor who was much earlier than the monarchy, and I don’t see any reason why the editorial indications of a later hand have to mean much more than some editorial editions to a largely complete earlier work.

    That being said, if you have to go with a multiple-source view, I think Arnold’s approach, like Wenham’s, is one of the better ones.

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  2. Henry Neufeld Avatar
    Henry Neufeld

    While I have great respect for Wenham, I would probably come down approximately where Dr. Arnold does on this matter.

    I see the evidence for multiple sources and layers of redaction as quite convincing, while I think the more specific and detailed arguments are weaker, which is natural due to the amount of text available to work with.

    Milgrom, for example, is extremely thorough and I think his overall outline has much to commend it.

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