Professor Graham I. Davies discusses the background and discoveries of his long-awaited commentary on the first twenty chapters of the second book of the Torah, in Exodus 1-18: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary Volumes I and II.
1. How do you think this commentary could be described - in just one sentence?
Exodus is the centre of the Pentateuch/Torah (perhaps even of the whole Hebrew Bible) and this is a detailed commentary which provides an up-to-date scholarly explanation of the Hebrew text, backed up by a full analysis of the extensive manuscript resources and an independent discussion of theories about the book’s sources and layers of editing.
2. What drew you to creating such an extensive commentary on Exodus?
The short answer is that I was lucky enough to be asked to do it! The Old Testament Editor at the time, Professor John Emerton, wished especially to commission commentaries to fill the gaps in the original ICC and Exodus was one of them. I suppose he knew from my doctoral work that I was interested in the Pentateuch, especially Exodus and the following books. He would also have known that I also had an interest in textual criticism, at that time the ancient translations of it like the Septuagint and the Targums, and this has always played an important part in ICC commentaries.
3. Are there any new insights that you realised while writing your book?
Yes, many things that were new to me at least. For example, I see one of the expressions for the ‘hardening of Pharaoh’s heart’ as referring not to his stubbornness but to his lack of understanding, which fits in with the positive, educational role of the plagues in one strand of the narrative. This also contributes to my further argument that the main plague-narrative in chapters 7-12 comes from the so called ‘E’ source, which thus turns out to be something that does not only survive in fragments but makes a substantial contribution to the present text.
4. How were you able to navigate the textual issues of Exodus?
In the first half of Exodus there are relatively few cases of uncertainty about the original reading of the Hebrew text of the completed book, far fewer than in a poetical book like Hosea or Job. The problem, or rather the great interest, of textual criticism in Exodus 1-18 lies (as in the Pentateuch generally) in the extensive and varied evidence that ha survived from the development of the text and its translations over the centuries. There are Samaritan as well as Jewish texts and a complex range of Targums, as well as the Dead Sea manuscripts mentioned earlier. These all reflect the process of study and interpretation of the text in the early centuries and need careful analysis. In my Introduction to the commentary I have provided general studies of each of these texts and then in special sections of the verse-by-verse commentary I give detailed comments on particular points of interest. It is hard work but very rewarding!
5. What do you hope this commentary will contribute towards current scholarly debate on Exodus?
Let me start with something it doesn’t do! It doesn’t directly answer the historical question ‘Was there an Exodus?’ I had a go at that some years ago in an essay I was invited to write for a volume on controversial issues in contemporary biblical scholarship, but a commentary can only make indirect contributions to that kind of question. One thing a commentary must do is to explain what a text is saying, which includes what it was saying in the time when it was written and compiled. I have tried hard to keep this always in mind, which is necessary because there are so many debates about Exodus just now. So I hope that the ‘Notes on the translation’ and the ‘Explanatory Notes’ will help readers to understand the text from which we all start better, both in its details and in its larger perspectives. It should not, for example, be overlooked that Exodus is a religious book, but it is not just one author’s ‘take’ on the religious meaning of the story it tells: it represents at times different religious perspectives which it is helpful to distinguish – which brings us to the debates!
The commentary takes a fresh look at questions about sources and redaction, in the light of both older and newer scholarship, as well as appropriate methods for literary analysis which do not push beyond what is reasonably certain. The widely accepted distinction between the Priestly and non-Priestly accounts is central to my analyses, as well as some supplementation in each case. But unlike many, perhaps now most, recent scholars, I also believe that there is a good deal of evidence for the old distinction between Yahwist (J) and Elohist (E) material which, like the basic Priestly source, originally existed separately. This, I believe, still provides the most satisfying account of the origin of the written traditions and I propose a major refinement of it in the commentary on chapters 7-12 (see above) which, if it is accepted, should persuade many that this general approach is viable. I am now at work on chapters 19-34 and early results suggest that further support for it may be forthcoming from there.
Both volumes of Exodus 1-18: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary are available for pre-order, and will be published on 23rd January 2020!
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