A tale of two tales

By Shmuli Phillips and Daniel Abraham

Parashat Noach lies at the heart of the battle between traditionalists and bible critics over the structure, origin and authorship of the Torah. While it has always been a core tenet of traditional Judaism is that the Torah as a whole was revealed to Moshe, source criticism in recent centuries has developed a methodology through which, its adherents believe, they can identify a multiplicity of original sources from which the fabric of the received text of the Torah was subsequently woven. Scholars have considered that the application of this methodology to the narrative of Noach and the Flood is “foundational” to source criticism; they count it as being amongst this methodology’s most “brilliant achievements”.

In his recent works (Inconsistency in the Torah, Ani Maamin) Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman has challenged some of source criticism’s fundamental assumptions. In doing so he has identified what he claims to be serious methodological flaws in the critics’ interpretations of the Flood narrative. Motivated by what they understand to be widespread instances of contradiction and repetition, critics divide the narrative into 27 snippets of varying sizes. 14 of these snippets, they claim, originate with one source, while the other 13 emanate from the other. Yet, as Berman notes, the “unravelling” of the text into two sources “clearly does not provide us with two accounts, each free of contradictions and incongruities…”. He observes that, “…rather than walking back from the hypothesis, source critics have sought to buttress it by resort to a series of redactors, who are the agents responsible for the disruptive passages”. Citing other scholarly studies, however, Berman notes that the sort of redactive interference that critics propose in the Flood narrative is absent from other compositions which have reached us from the Ancient Near East.

It is on the subject of other ancient texts that Berman launches his most serious challenge to the claims of source criticism regarding the Flood narrative. Scholars have long noted strong thematic and structural parallels between the Torah’s account of the Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic, which originated in ancient Mesopotamia. Whether we assume that the Epic and the Torah are both independently reporting the same event, or whether the Torah is reworking a prior prototype from a monotheistic perspective, what stands out is that the discovered tablets similarly combine content which, the Torah’s source critics contend, originated from two distinct sources. As biblical scholar Gary A. Rendsburg put it:

We are supposed to believe that two separate authors wrote two separate accounts of Noah and the flood, and that neither of them included all the elements found in the Gilgamesh epic, but when the two were interwoven by the redactor, voila, the story paralleled the Gilgamesh flood story point by point. [The Biblical Flood Story p116]

While Berman’s rejection of source criticism’s attempt to have disassembled the Flood narrative may be persuasive, it nevertheless leaves us to address a further question. Why would the Torah – as a single source – present the episode in such an inconsistent and repetitious manner?

Judaism Reclaimed presents a fascinating explanation of this passage by Malbim which explains why the Torah might have adopted this style. The basis for Malbim’s approach is an ancient midrashic teaching that the divine names, YHVH and Elokim, represent different dimensions of the complex and multi-faceted relationship between God and humanity. The name Elokim is used when the Torah is describing God as a distant “First Cause”, relating to the world through the perpetual forces of nature. YHVH, by contrast, is employed by the Torah when it depicts God as a concerned providential deity, managing the lives of people in accordance with principles of reward and punishment. The Malbim utilises this distinction in order to contrast the first chapter of the Torah, which employs the divine name Elokim as part of its cold, factual account of Creation, with the use of YHVH in the subsequent chapter which examines creation specifically through God’s providential relationship with humanity (this theme is developed extensively by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in Lonely Man of Faith).

Malbim uses the same technique to analyse the repetitious and contradictory phenomena which critics highlight throughout the story of Noach. In the passage that opens the parashah, God (as Elokim) relates to Noach as the “distant first cause” – concerned only with ensuring that the natural world continues:

Noach was a righteous man, perfect in his generations; Noach walked with Elokim … The Earth had become corrupt before Elokim … And Elokim saw the earth … All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth … Elokim said to Noach “The end of all flesh has come before Me ...”. From all that lives, of all flesh, two of each shall you bring to the ark … [Bereishit 6:9-19, selected text]

In the next chapter, the Torah again records that God instructs Noach to build an ark, but this time the deity carries the personal providential name of YHVH:

And YHVH said to Noach, come you and your household to the ark, for it is you that I have seen to be righteous before Me in this generation. Of every clean animal take with you seven pairs … [Bereishit 7:1-2]

Commenting on these parallel accounts of the world’s corruption and God’s instruction to Noach to prepare and enter the ark, Malbim appears to be following the approach of source critics in so far he separates them into two distinct passages. Each of these passages, however, plays an integral role in communicating the Torah’s core message: the multi-layered interaction and dynamic of the relationship between God and humanity.

While the Elokim passage, therefore, records Noach’s merit in cold, objective terms (“righteous in his generations”), the second passage describes it in terms of a personal providential relationship with God “I have seen that you are righteous before Me”.

In keeping with this approach, Noach is instructed by God in the Elokim passage to take two animals of each species. Malbim explains that this is because the perspective of the Elokim dimension of the God’s interactions with the world simply seeks to preserve and maintain the natural world. For this, a male and female of each species suffices. The YHVH passage, however, additionally commands Noach to take “seven pairs of pure animals”. This further requirement relates solely to the personal providential dimension of Noach’s relationship with God. As Malbim explains: Noach understood that “God had commanded me regarding more pure than impure animals so that I can offer them as sacrifices”.

This dichotomy continues through to the covenant(s) between God and humanity at the end of the Flood narrative. The Elokim description of the covenant (9:1-17) is essentially a detached divine commitment not to destroy the world’s natural order – animals and humans alike. This is in contrast to the second account of the covenant (8:20-22) which utilises the personal, providential YHVH name of God in order to relate God’s commitment specifically to humanity’s frailties. It is also significant that God’s commitment appears to be prompted by Noach’s sacrifices and by the providential dynamics that had been created by humanity’s good deeds.

Malbim’s approach offers a framework through which one can accept – and perhaps even expect – a degree of duality within a Torah narrative. Thus, where the Torah wishes to convey aspects of the Flood through different providential dynamics, it can do so within the flow of a single textual narrative. Adopting this approach also means that Malbim need not be troubled – as source critics are – by the presence of two apparently incompatible sets of storylines which cannot each tell a distinct and, free-standing version of the Flood episode.

First posted to Facebook 3 October 2021, here.

Scholarly stretches and the search for fugitive heroes

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

The dramatic biblical description of Moshe’s early years and his rise to prominence as leader of the Jewish people at the Exodus has long fascinated biblical scholars. Attempts have been made to draw thematic and textual comparisons between the Torah’s account and those of other Ancient-Near-Eastern texts, with the strong implication that the Torah simply replicated earlier stories and literary themes when seeking to portray its heroic saviour. Last year, we examined the claim that Moshe’s birth story was copied from earlier Near-Eastern legends telling of the birth of Sargon (among others).

This year we address another scholarly theory (by Professor Edward Greenstein, linked below) which attempts to identify numerous commonalities between Moshe’s fleeing Egypt and subsequent rise to power, and those of other ancient heroes: Sinuhe the Egyptian, Idrimi the Syrian, Hattushili III the Hittite Esarhaddon of Assyria and Nabonidus of Babylon. By depicting the episode as a repurposed ancient myth, Greenstein seeks to deprive the biblical details of Moshe’s life of any historical significance. More subtly, in implying that the Torah uses these characters as its basis for the Moshe narrative, Greenstein is challenging traditional Judaism’s belief in the Torah’s revelation at Sinai – since some of these fugitive heroes lived many centuries after the era in which the Torah is believed to have been revealed.

We must therefore examine the strength of the features common to these five stories. Do they demand us to conclude that Moshe’s journey from fugitive-to-hero was built upon a clearly identifiable mythical motif?

Greenstein tells us that:

“all these texts share a common fugitive narrative pattern: They tell of a national leader or hero who is compelled to leave his homeland, spends a period in exile, receives an instruction or encouragement from a deity to return home, achieves leadership or fame at home, and founds or renews a cult or ritual”.

He then breaks down these common features into fourteen points of comparison.

As readers of history will confirm, such a narrative pattern is quite unremarkable given the political manoeuvering and machinations in ancient times. Unless the theory can be fortified by demonstrating the duplication of specific or unexpected details, it remains speculative and weak. Bearing this in mind, it is deeply disappointing that the single such distinctive feature in the list of fourteen commonalities – an exile of specifically seven years – is acknowledged not to have been replicated in the Moshe narrative.

Aside from this inconsistency, several of the other thirteen commonalities between the Moshe episode and its apparent ancient predecessors do not hold up to scrutiny. Moshe does indeed marry a daughter of his host Yitro – but this only features in two of the five ancient stories on which the Torah is allegedly based.

When Greenstein is unable to match up claimed common features between the narratives, he instead wrongly represents the evidence. Regarding the claimed commonality of the fugitive hero being protected by females he writes:

“When Moses reaches Midian, to the east, he is brought home by the daughters of the local priest, and probably the chieftain, Reuel/Jethro (Exod 2:18-20).”

This in stark contrast to the Torah’s actual narrative which describes Moshe rescuing Yitro’s daughters who then leave him to return home – it is only their father who subsequently insists on offering Moshe protection.

Several of the other elements of claimed similarity between the Torah’s account and the other stories from the ancient world demonstrate that Greenstein possesses a creative imagination. While the fugitive heroes fight off attacks from rival armies, Moshe is the subject of a mysterious divine visitation. And when Moshe, the proposed fugitive-hero, specifically fails to loot and enrich himself, his identity is conveniently melded with that of the Jewish people who claim their promised riches on their way out of Egypt.

Greenstein himself seems to sense the lack of a smoking gun – a remarkable or unexpected common feature or clear indication that the Torah’s narrative drew upon these other tales. He attempts to fill this void when describing Moshe’s meeting with Aharon prior to his return to Egypt (albeit at a different point to such meetings in other ancient tales).

“There is little if any real purpose to this encounter, prior to Moses’ arrival in Egypt, but it follows the elements of the fugitive hero pattern.”

The implication is that the inclusion of this meeting in the Torah’s account can only be explained in view of the fact that it is drawing on the ancient motif of fugitive hero stories. What this claim fails to recognise, however, is that Aharon’s joyous greeting of Moshe was earlier presented by God as a sign to Moshe – seemingly to reassure him that Aharon does not harbour any jealously or resentment over his ascent to leadership (see 4:14 and Rashi there).

Having satisfied ourselves that the comparison between Moshe and the other ancient stories struggles or fails entirely in several of the claimed fourteen features, and contains no remarkable unexpected commonalities, we now turn to a broader historical question. Taking a look at the political realities which prevailed throughout the ancient world (and indeed the Middle Ages), what options were available to a member of the royal or political elite who feared imminent death or imprisonment? Would he or she not be likely to seek refuge from nearby rival nations? Such nations might be happy to oblige because, if their investment paid off, they would have a powerful ally ruling a neighbouring nation.

Such patterns are evident later in the book of Kings I (chap. 11), with King Haddad of Edom fleeing his country, taking refuge with the King of Egypt and marrying the princess before returning with an army to reclaim his country. There is no suggestion there that the Edomite monarch is being depicted as a biblical returning hero.

But even looking at the history of the British monarchy in recent centuries, this motif can be seen to have occurred repeatedly. Princess Mary (born 1662) was exiled to Holland where she married her fellow Protestant cousin, William. She later returned together with William and an invading army to depose the Catholic King James in what has become known as the “Glorious Revolution” in which the Bill of Rights set the stage for the first constitutional monarchy in Europe. Two centuries earlier, Henry VII spent most of his life in exile in France before returning to England at the head of an invading army and securing a military victory which is generally regarded as heralding the beginning of the modern era.

Most of Greenstein’s fourteen features are contained within these British royal stories too. Could this, by any chance be coincidental? An expected feature of palace intrigue and the political machinations of bygone eras?

Original article can be read here.

First posted on Facebook 23 December 2021, here.

Egyptian abominations and scholarly speculations

By Shmuli Phillips and Daniel Abraham

Parashat Vayigash features scenes of both confrontation and reconciliation between Yosef and his brothers. The warm sentiments of goodwill towards the Hebrews however, are insufficient for them to find full favour in the eyes of their Egyptian hosts. Just as we read earlier how Yosef dined apart from his brothers since “the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians”, the brothers are now advised to settle separately from the Egyptians in the land of Goshen “since all shepherds are abominable to the Egyptians”.

But what was the cause of the Egyptians’ whole-hearted hostility towards the Hebrews? In an article published on theTorah.com, Rabbi Zev Farber and Prof. Jan Assmann claim to have unravelled the deep biblical mystery of Egyptian abominations.

According to Farber, the account of Egyptians refusing to dine alongside Hebrews is not predicated upon any ancient Egyptian practice, since historically “no record exists of any such taboo”. Rather it must have been adapted from a far later Persian-era Puritanical Code and anachronistically superimposed back onto the biblical text by its authors.

The methodological weakness of constructing such a speculative edifice on the flimsy foundations of an absence of evidence in ancient Egyptian records cannot be overstated. Biblical scholar, Kenneth Kitchen, was of the view that that "99 percent of all New Kingdom papyri are irrevocably lost”. Sir Alan Gardiner, a respected scholar of Ancient Egypt, went so far as to say that: 

“It must never be forgotten that we are dealing with a civilization thousands of years old and one of which only tiny remnants have survived. What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters”.

In this instance, however, we do possess some evidence, with the Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt describing how at banquets “seating varied according to social status, with those of the highest status sitting on chairs, those slightly lower sat on stools and those lowest in rank sat on the raw floor”. It does not require a great leap of the imagination to suggest that disdained foreigners would not have been expected to dine at the table of the Egyptian Viceroy.

It should be noted that sharing of meals holds highly significant symbolic importance throughout the Torah. It demonstrated political, strategic or religious coalescence such as when pacts were formed between Yitzchak and Avimelech, Ya’akov and Lavan, Yosef’s brothers after casting him into the pit, and when Yitro joined the Jewish people in the desert (among other examples). If the Egyptians had dined together with Hebrews, this would have been an indication of shared ideological beliefs or political accord. Yet religiously and culturally, the Egyptians and Hebrews were worlds apart. A gulf attested to in a later statement of Moshe to Pharaoh significantly using the same word ‘’to’eivah’’ as the Torah employs to explain why Yosef and his brothers could not eat together:

"But Moses said [to Pharaoh], "It is improper to do that, for we will sacrifice the abomination/deity of the Egyptians to God our Lord. Will we sacrifice the abomination/deity of the Egyptians before their eyes, and they will not stone us?"

Is it readily apparent that the biblical reference to ‘’abomination’’ between Egyptians and Hebrews revolves around the religious status of the sheep which the Jews were set to sacrifice in Egypt in order to demonstrate their newfound religious and political freedom. For Egyptians, sheep enjoyed a position of great importance in their pagan pantheon – a fact that Farber and Assmann have themselves expounded upon elsewhere.

The ram-headed God Amun held pole position in the Egyptian pantheon for most of the New Kingdom, and together with Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods. Openly and publicly sacrificing the Paschal Lamb on Egyptian soil was an embodiment of Hebrew rejection of the pagan belief system, and an important stepping-stone on the path to monotheistic faith for which the nation was being prepared. Understood this way, sacrificing the lamb completed and complemented the Ten Plagues which went before it – which have been seen by scholars such as Professor Tom Meyer as representing a systematic dismissal of ancient Egyptian deities.

Relating the תועבת מצרים (abomination of Egypt) of the brothers’ sheep-exploiting occupation and תועבה היא למצרים (abomination to Egypt) regarding their eating arrangements to the תועבת מצרים (abomination/deity of Egypt) in the context of the Paschal Lamb offers a far more convincing and comprehensive explanation of the passage. An explanation which is thematically and linguistically consistent with other biblical passages, and which highlights why it is specifically the brothers’ occupation as shepherds – i.e. custodians of sheep – which is so offensive to the Egyptians. Further, it dispenses with the need for speculative historical somersaults and hypotheses about later biblical authorship. This in contrast to Farber’s far-fetched formulation, which supposes that Herodotus’s account, many centuries later, of ritual sensitivities related to cows can be seamlessly super-imposed on the biblical narrative of Hebrew shepherds.

First posted on Facebook 23 December 2020, here.

Song of the Sea and a point of no return

By Shmuli Phillips and Joshua Berman

In what is probably the most fascinating and significant section of Rabbi Dr Joshua Berman’s  recent Ani Ma’amin, a strong and consistent parallel is found between the Song of the Sea (Shirat HaYam) that we read yesterday and the Kadesh poem – an Egyptian celebration of Rameses great victory over the Hittite army. The commonality is seen both in terms of specific unusual phrases which are employed and also in the overall structure and pattern of the two commemorations.

Most notably, both passages open with an army being subject to a surprise attack and calling out for divine assistance. When this assistance is forthcoming, the aggressor recognises that its opponents are receiving supernatural assistance and attempts to flee, only to meet total annihilation in water. There are distinctive parallels in some of the metaphors and terminologies which are drawn upon: in no ancient text other than these two does “right hand” signal strength – nor do any other military accounts refer to defeated enemies as “chaff”. Both passages conclude with their peerless kings or gods leading troops back home and intimidating foreign lands in the process.

Berman makes a compelling case for the Song of the Sea having been directly influenced and inspired by the Kadesh poem. Based on archaeological findings from Egyptian temples of that period, he suggests that the Kadesh poem would have been well known throughout Egypt – an important and much publicised element of nationalistic pride and propaganda.

This close comparison can provoke feelings of discomfort in some traditional readers who approach every feature and phrase of the Torah as containing profound spiritual and mystical truth (a matter which we will seek to address in an upcoming post). Berman’s theory nevertheless provides a measure of support for the traditional account of the Exodus, which has often been challenged from academic quarters.

Most significantly, it demonstrates that those who composed the Song of the Sea possessed intimate and detailed knowledge of Egyptian culture from the Egyptian New Kingdom (approx. 1250 BCE) – the period of Egyptian history in which many consider that the Exodus would have occurred. Such awareness of close details of Egyptian belief is not limited to the Song of Sea, but can also be seen in the ironic mirroring of Egyptian religious concepts such as “mighty hand and outstretched arm”, “hardening of Pharaoh’s heart” and even prior details such as the ways in which the Torah describes the Jewish slavery, taskmasters and building materials. The parallels between the Song of the Sea and the Kadesh poem also represent a challenge to those such as David Rohl, who propose a far earlier date for the Exodus which precedes Rameses altogether.

An additional dimension to this early Israelite cultural appropriation may be psychological. The Torah makes it very clear that, after exiting Egypt, the newly-released slaves were vulnerable and had to be directed away from the shortest path to Canaan “lest the nation have a change of heart upon seeing war and return to Egypt”. Part of the project of the 40-year trek through the desert was to transform the weak and pagan-influenced Israelites, psychologically damaged by centuries of enslavement to the powerful Egyptians, into a warrior nation with belief in the God of Abraham. Whenever the nation faced hardship in the desert, the knee-jerk reaction was that they would be better off returning to enslavement. The Egyptians clearly had a strong psychological hold over them.

Part of the function of the Splitting of the Sea and its subsequent ironic celebration may therefore have been an attempt to shatter this psychological hold. By appropriating the Egyptians’ song of supremacy, the Israelites could embark upon their own national project, confident that “the way you look at the Egyptians today, you shall no longer perceive them for eternity”.

As explained by Rambam in his Guide, a major function of many biblical commandments, such as the sacrifices, which the nation was soon to receive, was to withdraw the people gradually from the pagan belief and practice of the culture in which they had been immersed in Egypt. The ironic appropriation of Egypt’s paen to its god-king may thus have been an exercise in breaking free from the psychological stranglehold of Egypt. This would now give the Israelites an opportunity to flourish as an independent nation and fulfil its role as a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” – entering into a monotheistic covenant and marching confidently into Canaan to be a light unto the other nations of the world.

First posted to Facebook 16 January 2022, here.

A tenuous tale of two Tabernacles

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

After several weeks of lengthy elaborations on details of Mishkan construction, one could be forgiven for assuming that all details of God’s desert residence had now been unambiguously resolved. This is certainly not the case however according to Dr. Jaeyoung Jeon, a senior researcher at the University of Lausanne's Institute for Biblical Studies, writing on TheTorah.com (here). Dr. Jeon claims that two free-standing tales of tabernacle-tents can be identified in the Torah: a priestly version focused on rituals and sacrifices, and the Tent of Meeting at which Moshe received divine communications.

According to Dr. Jeon the distinguishing features of the priestly tent, whose construction was a national project, include its elaborate and intricate design as well as its central location for national sacrifice. Moshe’s tent, by contrast, was a simple tent pitched by Moshe alone at the edge of the camp. Instead of sacrificial ritual, Moshe’s tent was a place of prophetic encounter at which God communicated with Moshe and, by extension, the nation that he led. While the ‘’priestly tent’’ is depicted as a permanent resting place for God’s Presence, God must ‘’descend’’ in a pillar of cloud to appear at Moshe’s abode.

Most importantly, writes Dr. Jeon, the Torah’s accounts of events at ‘’Moshe’s tent” do not directly relate to their surrounding narratives. This, he claims, is evidence that the verses containing those accounts were later additions to the Torah’s text by an anti-priesthood school of scribes looking to challenge priestly control of religion in the early second Temple era.

Setting aside the author’s far-fetched claims of inter-scribal strife, this article on TheTorah.com is a perfect exhibit of the extent to which many academic source-critics are prepared to ignore far simpler ways of resolving the text internally. Rather than seeking to read and understand the text in its own terms, they let their pre-conceived (and often academically disputed) hypotheses propel them towards the creation of convoluted contradictions that compel them to carve up verses and passages to fit their arguments.

There are two obvious flaws in Dr. Jeon’s thesis. First of all, it ignores a verse (Exodus 38:8) in which both tents are described:

“And he made the washstand of copper and its base of copper from the mirrors of the women who had set up the legions, who congregated at the entrance of the tent of meeting”.

Which group of scribes, according to Dr. Jeon’s hypothesis, might have been responsible for referencing Moshe’s tent in the context of the construction of the priestly tabernacle?

Furthermore, while Dr. Jeon claims that “Exodus 33 is not directly related to the Golden Calf episode which it ostensibly continues”, an overview of the dynamics surrounding God’s communications with Moshe in the desert shows that the moving of Moshe’s tent plays an integral part in the narrative surrounding the construction of the Tabernacle.

In the initial months following the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, none of God’s communications with Moshe appear to relate to any particular area or tent within the camp. It is only in the aftermath of the sin of the Golden Calf that God warns (Exodus 33:3) “I will not go up in your midst since you are a stiff necked people, lest I destroy you on the way”. Immediately following God’s disclosure that He will no longer be entering the camp “Moshe took the tent and pitched it for himself outside the camp, distancing [it] from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting, and it would be that anyone seeking the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp”.

Thus Moshe’s pitching of his tent outside the camp is a direct reaction to the fall-out from the Golden Calf sin. Moshe then prays that God will once again enter the camp and be amongst the people – a prayer that God appears to accept (33:15-17).

It is only months later however – in the second year following the Exodus – that the Tabernacle is constructed and God is once again willing to “reside” in the midst of the camp and communicate with Moshe there:

“And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst.” [Exodus 25:8]

“I will arrange My meetings with you there, and I will speak with you from atop the ark cover from between the two cherubim that are upon the Ark of the Testimony, all that I will command you unto the children of Israel.” [Exodus 25:22]

And immediately following the Tabernacle’s inauguration ceremony:

“When Moses would come into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the covering which was over the Ark of Testimony, and He spoke to him.” [Numbers 7:89]

From this point onwards, Moshe no longer appears to have a personal tent of any significance. The proposed distinctions between “Moshe’s tent” and the “Priestly tent” by Dr. Jeon become ever weaker and ignore considerable counter-indications from within the text itself that there is one single tabernacle where all these events take place.

Crucially it is Moshe alone and unaided who finally erects the “Priestly tent” in the closing sections of Exodus 40, and it is also Moshe who performs a high proportion of the sacrifices at its inauguration ceremony. This is a strong challenge to any hypothesis that seeks to identify Moshe and his tent as representing “lay leaders” in opposition to the exclusive and elite priestly caste.

While it is true that certain events highlighted by Dr. Jeon (Miriam and Aharon’s rebuke, the appointment of 70 elders, and the appointment of Yehoshua) do describe God descending or appearing in a cloud, this does not contradict the notion that God’s presence was ever-present in the Tabernacle. As the verses (above and elsewhere) make clear, God’s Presence resided within the Holy of Holies “between the two cherubim above the covering which was over the Ark of Testimony”. The events in which God descended in a cloud however took place at the “entrance of the tent” or “surrounding the tent” – which were not the regular places for prophetic communication.

A careful reading of the text also demonstrates that these events at “Moshe’s tent” are not described as taking place outside the Israelite encampment as Dr. Jeon claims. When the Torah seeks to signify people exiting the entire encampment it employs the phrase “יצא אל/מחוץ למחנה” as can be seen repeatedly in Leviticus 13-14, Numbers 5, 15, and regarding Miriam’s leprosy in Numbers 12). This too is the phrase used to describe Moshe removing his tent from the camp in the aftermath of the sin of the Golden Calf in Exodus 33. This phraseology is to be contrasted with the language used in the episode of the 70 elders and God’s rebuke of Aharon and Miriam (Numbers 11 and 12) where they are described merely as “יצאו”, going out to the tent, while Eldad and Meidad remain in the camp. This terminology indicates, as Ibn Ezra writes, that the people are being described as leaving the main Israelite camp and entering the area of the Mishkan (Machane Shekhinah) rather than departing from the entire encampment.

It is not merely the text of the Torah itself that invalidates the theory of Dr. Jeon. His claims that the verses describing Moshe’s tent are very late additions are disputed from within academic source criticism too. Rival biblical scholars theorise that the supposed "E" [Elohist] source is the one of the oldest sources—preceding other parts of the Torah by hundreds of years. Additionally, a further group of scholars argue that there never was an independent "E" source at all. Yet other scholars, such as Gary Rendsburg, are of the opinion that all narrative portions of the Pentateuch are from a single author, which would undermine Dr. Jeon’s claims.

In short, what we see here is scholarly willingness to ignore the simple flow of the narrative in Exodus 33 in order to isolate the descriptions of Moshe’s tent from the surrounding narrative and frame the passage as a contradiction between texts authored by rival scribal groups. Rather than examine possible ways of understanding the text that avoid claims of contradiction, the author ignores inconvenient verses that challenge his ideas and proceeds to construct outlandish theories, unsupported by evidence or credibility, which relate these verses to supposed power-struggles in the early second temple era.

First posted on Facebook 14 March 2021, here.