By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips
Parashat Korach is traditionally taught as an episode involving a challenge by a coalition of disputants to Moshe’s supreme authority over the Israelites in the desert. There is, however, a widely held belief within academic source criticism of the Torah that the story of Dathan, Abiram, and Korach is comprised of two independent narratives that were later combined. Typically, the first of these stories involves Dathan and Abiram, who challenge Moses for failing to bring them to the promised land. This story concludes with them and their households being swallowed into the ground. The second story tells of Korach and 250 men challenging Moses and Aaron’s positions of authority, and results in their being consumed by a fire from God. A close reading of this section of the Torah reveals that not only that the evidence for this supposed division is weak, but that there are in fact a number of strong counter-indications which point instead to the unity of the text.
Right: The Argument (here)
As is often the case with critical theories that attempt to separate the text into distinct narratives, there is a great deal of disagreement among the source critics themselves as to how such a separation might be performed. Some, such as David Carr , simply divide the story between P (priestly authorship) and unspecified non-P sources. Others, such as Richard Elliot Friedman divide Numbers 16 between “J” and “P”. A third group, including Joel Baden, divide the text up as “E” and “P”. Carr notes that “Baden diverges from many prior source-critics in assigning all of the non-P story of Dathan and Abiram's rebellion in Numbers 16 to E”. A further group of opinions, such as that held by David Frankel, breaks the story up into seven redactional layers. If such claims, in the absence of any actual material evidence, sound incredulous Carr comments, “Some have found evidence of eight to fifteen (or more) layers of sources and redactional expansions in a single chapter or set of verses. Yet I suggest that these more complicated reconstructions of textual prehistory have not stood and will not stand the test of time.” Like Moshe’s challengers, it would appear that these fractious critics stand together only in their opposition to the traditional notion of a single biblical Author.One of the main arguments for this division involves the subsequent retelling of these events in Deuteronomy. There at verse 11:6 Moses recounts,
“and what He did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab son of Reuben, when the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them, along with their households, their tents, and every living thing in their train, from amidst all Israel.”
While Moshe mentions Dathan and Abiram he fails to mention Korach. Source critics will often assume that any possible discrepancies in the Torah must be a contradiction (except of course when such discrepancies are harmful to their source divisions, in which cases the critics develop some very creative, complex resolutions). In this case, the omission of Korach from the retelling of the narrative can be attributed to Moses wanting to strengthen the status of the loyal Levites – many of whom would have survived the desert years – as future leaders and teachers of the people, rather than running the risk of reigniting bygone grievances. The more personal challenges of Dathan, Abiram and the other protagonists, by contrast, are likely to have perished along with those who advanced them. Moses, in reminding the people of the results of such this earlier unsuccessful uprising, would have been considered as having administered an effective warning against future insurrections. Additionally, as Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffman suggests, Moses may have wanted to spare the sons of Korach, whom we are told survived the rebellion, from any embarrassment.
Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman addresses the claims of source critics that relate to apparently inconsistent recounting of earlier episodes from a different perspective. Berman draws on examples of Ancient Near-Eastern texts such as Hittite treaties from the 13-14th century BCE to show how ancient literary style regularly included a retelling of history that involved omission of certain facts and a retelling of others. In many instances, such inconsistent retelling occurs within a text which is known to be the unified work of a single author, and is understood as a literary tool to emphasize and convey particular messages.
Another important source in the context of this discussion is Psalm 106:17,18, where we see a similar omission of Korach:
“The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan, closed over the party of Abir׃ A fire blazed among their party, a flame that consumed the wicked.”
Once again we see a recounting of the story that only mentions Dathan and Abiram. Yet crucially we also find the author of this Psalm describing a fire burning up their congregation – an element of the episode that source critics relate specifically to Korach and not to Dathan and Abiram. Why would this passage also choose to omit any explicit reference to Korach? Perhaps again, to avoid embarrassment of the Levites, including the sons of Korah (some of them being authors of the Psalms) whom we know from archaeological finds were still around in Arad, 8th century BCE.
Dr. Ben Zion Katz demonstrates the textual unity of the Korach episode from a subsequent passage in the Book of Numbers, which clearly regards both Korach’s rebellion and that of the non-Levites as being part of a single challenge to Moshe’s position:
“when the daughters of Zelofchad complain to Moses about their lack of ability to inherit because of their gender (Numbers 27; P) they mention that their father was not a part of Korah’s rebellion (27:3). Yet Zelofchad was from the tribe of Menashe. He would not have been part of the rebellion of the Levite Korah against Aaron; he would have been in the rebellion of Datan and Abiram against Moses, and it would be extremely odd for source P to make this mistake.”
In response to those who question why the tribe of Reuben would have been associated with Korach and drawn into his alliance, it must be borne in mind that when camping in the desert, Korach and the Kohathites dwelt to the South of the Mishkan, as did the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, and Gad. This consistent close proximity would have allowed for such an alliance to form over time and thereby exposed these tribes to the complaints of Korach.
In conclusion, while the Korach narrative has gained acceptance and popularity among source critics as an important example of how individual stories were later combined in the Torah, persistent disagreement among critics themselves indicates that such theories are not at all self-evident. The counter-indications that we have offered from other biblical sources point strongly towards reading the rebellion as the action of a broad umbrella of malcontents, unified by their wish to unseat Moses, rather than as a carefully combined collection of independent challengers to Moses.
First posted on Facebook 13 June 2021, here.
