Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Bill Rea wrote:  “[A]t least one of these sources who are designated J, E, P, 
or D had a northern outlook. Usually the northern view is assigned to E.”
 
In this post I will rely upon Richard Elliott Friedman’s “The Bible with 
Sources Revealed” (2003), which is the most stalwart recent defense of the 
venerable JEPD theory of the authorship of the Patriarchal narratives.
 
1.  As Prof. Friedman sees it, there were 6 authors of most of the Hebrew 
Bible.  To JEPD add first RJE, who edited what the oldest authors, J and E, 
had 
done, and then also add R, who edited what the other 5 authors had done.  
According to Friedman, 5 of these 6 authors of the Patriarchal narratives 
were from 
Jerusalem or environs.  Only one, E, was from northern Canaan.
 
If 5 of the 6 authors of the Patriarchal narratives were from Jerusalem, and 
if 4 of the 6 authors basically witnessed the Hebrews becoming Jews as they 
were reduced to only having Jerusalem, then why on earth doesn’t the text of 
the 
Patriarchal narratives seem to know anything about Jerusalem?
 
Genesis 13: 3, 18 features Abraham moving from Beth-el to Hebron.  Given the 
traditional location of Hebron that scholars support, south of Jerusalem, how 
can the text fail to even mention Jerusalem?  If Abraham passes within 
eyesight of beloved Jerusalem, why doesn’t the text of the Patriarchal 
narratives 
mention Jerusalem?
 
Later, according to the traditional view of the Patriarchal narratives that 
scholars support, Rachel dies on the road to Bethlehem of Judea.  Why no 
mention of Jerusalem, if Rachel died within eyesight of Jerusalem?  Even if, 
oddly 
enough, Prof. Friedman claims that the only northern Canaan author, E, wrote 
that passage, why wouldn’t one of the 4 authors/editors from Jerusalem that 
post-date E have added a comment that Rachel died near beloved Jerusalem?
 
If the Patriarchal narratives were really written by 6 authors, 5 of whom 
lived in Jerusalem, it is inconceivable that all 5 of those Jerusalem-based 
authors would have “forgotten” to mention Jerusalem in the text of the 
Patriarchal 
narratives when the Patriarchs, on the traditional view, pass right by 
Jerusalem.  (In fact, the Patriarchal narratives were composed by a single 
author, 
who lived in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, and the Patriarchs are never 
portrayed in the text as sojourning in southern Canaan, near Jerusalem or 
near the 
site of the modern city of Hebron.)
 
2.  But now let’s look at the one source, E, who on the JEPD theory is viewed 
as being from northern Canaan.  Things get really exciting at this point.  
Page 61 of Prof. Friedman’s book tells us that the very first sentence in the 
Bible that was written by E, in northern Canaan, is as follows:
 
“and he lived between Kadesh and Shur and resided in Gerar.”
 
(a)    If the author of that sentence lived in northern Canaan, then why 
wouldn’t he think that a reference to living between Qadesh and Sur would 
make his 
northern Hebrew audience think of Lebanon?  Qadesh and Sur were the two most 
famous independent city-states in the entire world when E was living.  Sur 
was 
the most famous place in all of northern Canaan, and Qadesh, just north of 
Canaan, was super-famous as well.  Why would E, and E’s audience of northern 
Hebrews, be thinking about a Qadesh between the far-away Negev Desert and the 
Sinai Desert, when the secular history of the ancient world knows of no 
“Qadesh” 
or “Kadesh-barnea” as the name of any place close to the Negev Desert?  
Similarly, why would E, and E’s audience of northern Hebrews, be thinking 
about a 
Sur or Shur on the west edge of the far-away Sinai Desert, when the secular 
history of the ancient world knows of no “Sur” or “Shur” as the name of any 
place close to the Sinai Desert?  Note that at pp. 55 and 71, Prof. Friedman 
explicitly denies that E wrote, or knew about, the references to Sur/Shur at 
Genesis 16: 7 or 25: 18 (attributed to J), where Sur/Shur is used to refer to 
the 
Sinai, or to the western part of the Sinai.     
 
 (b)    And this same verse is the first mention in the Bible of “G-R-R/Gerar”
.  Why wouldn’t an author in northern Canaan think of G-R-R/Gerar as being 
G-L-L/Gaililee?  Note that at p. 84, Prof. Friedman explicitly says that it 
was 
E, the northern Canaan author, who portrays the old generation, Laban, as 
using a G-R word, Y-G-R, to mean the area east of the Sea of Galilee, and the 
younger generation of Jacob uses a G-L word, gal-ed, to reference the area 
east of 
the Sea of Galilee.  (That point was nicely made by Isaac Fried.)  So a 
northern Hebrew author would be expected to associate G-R and G-L with 
G-L-L/Galilee and with G-R-R/Gerar. 
 
(c)    And why would it be the only author from northern Canaan who 
supposedly knows a prior name of Bethlehem, namely Ephrath, at Genesis 35: 
19?  If this 
is Bethlehem of Judea (as opposed to Bethlehem of Galilee), then Prof. 
Friedman has E, from northern Canaan, talking about Bethlehem of Judea south 
of 
Jerusalem, and even giving us a more ancient name for the same place.  Does 
that 
make sense?  Moreover, there is nothing in secular history to suggest that “
Ephrath”/aleph-peh-resh-tav/A-P-R-T is an earlier name for Bethlehem of 
Judea.  
On the contrary, A-P-R-T looks like E-P-R in the Thutmosis III list of 
Canaanite cities in the mid-15th century BCE, which is E-P-L/Afula 
(ayin-peh-vav-lamed-he in modern Hebrew) in northwestern Canaan.  The phrase 
“now Bethlehem” is 
very suspect, and looks like a late gloss, added into the text many centuries 
after the composition of the Patriarchal narratives.
 
(d)    And how would we know that when a northern Hebrew author, E, tells us 
that Abraham lived at Beersheba (Genesis 21: 31-33, attributed to E), that 
northern Hebrew author was not thinking of Beersheba of Galilee, in E’s 
backyard, 
rather than the Beersheba of the far-away Negev Desert?  Or, if historical 
Beersheba of Galilee did not then exist, the place that Abraham nicknames “
Beersheba” could be the site of a well in northern Canaan, rather than being 
historical Beersheba in the Negev Desert.  
 
The point is that if E, from northern Canaan, is the one saying “Sur” and “
Qadesh” and “G-R-R/Gerar” and “Ephrath”/A-P-R-T/E-P-R/E-P-L/Afula and “
Beersheba”, all those places make perfect sense in a northern Canaan context. 
 Even 
“Bethlehem” might be Bethlehem of Galilee rather than Bethlehem of Judea, in 
the hands of an author from northern Canaan.
 
The closer you look, the more impossible is the venerable JEPD theory of the 
authorship of the Patriarchal narratives.  J, P, D and their two editors, all 
being from Jerusalem, could not have “forgotten’ about Jerusalem’s existence 
and failed to mention Jerusalem, in a text which portrays the Patriarchs as 
often sojourning at a place called “Hebron”.  And if E, as a northern Hebrew, 
starts out his storyline with the very first sentence referencing “Qadesh” 
and 
“Sur” and “G-R-R/“Gerar”, then to a northern Hebrew, and to his northern 
Hebrew audience, why wouldn’t that be the real Qadesh, in northern Lebanon, 
the 
real Sur, in southern Lebanon, and the real G-R-R/Gerar, namely greater 
Galilee/G-L-L?  
 
The JEPD theory of the authorship of the Patriarchal narratives is untenable 
on all counts.  The Patriarchal narratives are not late fiction composed by 
multiple authors, most of whom were from Jerusalem, as the JEPD theory would 
have it.  Rather, the Patriarchal narratives are early history, composed by a 
single author, a northern Hebrew in the Late Bronze Age, who had never been 
to 
Jerusalem and could care less about Jerusalem, since at the time the truly 
ancient Patriarchal narratives were composed, no Hebrew had yet set foot in 
Jerusalem.
 
The more one looks at the Patriarchal narratives, the more one is amazed at 
their pinpoint historical accuracy, in a Late Bronze Age northern Canaan 
context.  There was only one author of the Patriarchal narratives, and he 
lived in 
Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, centuries before J, E, P or D were born.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




**************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family 
favorites at AOL Food.      
(http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)