J, E, and the Redaction of the Pentateuch

Joel S. Baden addresses the relationship between the J and E documents in the Pentateuch. He demonstrates that, contrary to the standard claims of classical source criticism, the J and E sources were never combined into a 'JE' document. Rather, these two sources were combined with each other at the same time that they were combined with the P and D documents, in one process of redaction. After investigating the history of scholarly arguments regarding the existence and combination of J and E, the author goes on to argue in detail for the dependence of D on the separate, independent narratives of J and, primarily, E. Significant attention is paid to the issue of redaction. In particular, Baden critiques the manner in which passages have traditionally been attributed to redactors, and argues for a more restrictive concept of the redactor and his work. It is further argued that the literary evidence in the Pentateuch provides for the existence of only a single redactor, to whom the compilation of all four sources of the Pentateuch is to be attributed. In the course of this study, a number of important questions regarding the composition of the Pentateuch are addressed: the existence of E, the relationship between D and the narratives of Genesis-Numbers, and the nature of the redactor. In the end, this study stands as both a critique of traditional documentary analysis of the Pentateuch and a defense of its fundamental claims.

Born 1977; 2002 M.A. in Northwest Semitics from the University of Chicago; 2007 PhD in Hebrew Bible from Harvard University; currently Assistant Professor of Old Testament at the Yale Divinity School.