Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings.

• Author: Whisenant, Jessica
• Position: Book review

Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings. Edited by THOMAS B. DOZEMAN; THOMAS ROMER; and KONRAD SCHMID. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 8. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2011. Pp. x + 313. $39.95 (paper).

The essays contained in this volume are loosely bound by an interest in identifying literary works in the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and the Former Prophets (Joshua-Kings). The contributions are unified by little other than their adherence to a model of composition that emphasizes the formative role played by editors (or "redactors") in the composition process. The redactor steps into the role of the author, adapting and reshaping the earliest sources to the point that their origin is forever obscured. The focus of this research is therefore on discerning the latest redactions that shaped the Pentateuch and other literary productions. As noted by the editors in their introductory remarks, this type of historical-critical interpretation represents a marked shift from older methods of interpretation such as source criticism and tradition-historical criticism. The former focused on the source documents J, E, and P within the literary context of the Hexateuch, which offered a narrative of a land promised and finally attained by conquest in the book of Joshua. Tradition history sought to demarcate separate blocks of tradition, separating the books from Genesis through Kings into a Tetrateuch (Genesis-Numbers) and the books from Deuteronomy through Kings into a Deuteronomistic History (henceforth, DtrH).

While moving beyond the constraints of the traditional divisions made by the source-critical and tradition-historical methods, most modern redaction-critical scholarship has encountered new and perplexing difficulties in locating the boundaries of the literary works in Genesis through Kings. The eleven contributions to this volume, which are the outcome of a two-year consultation between the Pentateuch Section and the Deuteronomistic

History Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, represent an attempt at a rapprochement. They seek to use the new presuppositions of redaction criticism to examine anew the larger literary units in Genesis-Kings, and to identify the compositional processes that gave us these books as they exist today. The editors have organized the essays into two categories. In the first category ("Methodological Studies"), the four contributors tackle broad questions regarding the appropriate methodology for isolating literary works in Genesis through Kings. In the second category ("Case Studies"), the...