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The Documentary Hypothesis
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  The Priestly Source

• Contents • Later Echoes
• Typical Passages • New Questions
• Themes & Identifying Traits • Sources
• Historical Context • Notes

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Contents
 
Of all the sources proposed in the Documentary Hypothesis, the Priestly source is the most distinctive and substantial. Its main concern is to establish the central cult around which post-exilic Judaism will be organized. Thus these scribes are responsible for the account of the rules for and construction of the wilderness sanctuary in Exodus 25–31 and 35-40 (set in the past but about their present), the entire book of Leviticus which spells out the ritual law, and the censuses, lineages and purity rules that will govern the personnel and practices in the sacred space (Numbers 1–10). In addition to these cultic sections, they offer their own renditions of the creation and flood and intervene in the accounts of the patriarchs and Moses, weaving together prior tradition with their own distinctive outlook.1
 
  Genesis
  • Creation:
1:1–2:4a
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  • Fall, spread of humans:
 		5:1-32
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  • Flood:
 		6:9-22
7:6, 11, 13-16a, 17a, 18-21, 24
8:1-2a, 3b-5, 7, 13a, 14-19
9:1-17
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  • Tower of Babel:
10:1-7, 20, 22-24
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  • Abraham and Sarah:
11:10-27, 31-32
12:4b-5
13:6, 11b-12
16:1a, 3, 15-16
17:1-27
21:1b-5
23:1-20
25:7-11a, 12-18
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  • Isaac & Jacob:
25:19-34
26:34-35
27:46–28:9
35:1-15 (with E)
36:1-5
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  • Joseph (and his brothers):
46:1–48:22 (with J and E)
49:29–50:26 (with J)
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  Exodus
  • Slavery:
1:1-7, 13-14
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  • Call of Moses:
2:23-25
6:2–7:7
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  • Moses Confronts Pharaoh, Plagues:
7:8-13, 19-20a, 21b-22
8:5-7, 16-19
9:8-12
11:9-10
12:1-20, 28, 40-51
13:1-16
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  • Exodus to Sinai:
14:1-4, 8-10, 15-18, 21-23, 26, 28-29
15:22-27
16:1-3, 6-27, 32-35a
17:1
18:1-27
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  • The Sinai Covenant:
19:1-2a
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  • Rules for the Wilder-ness Tabernacle:
25:1–31:18
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  • Building the Wilder-ness Tabernacle:
35:1–40:38
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  Leviticus
  • [Entire book]
1:1–27:34
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  Numbers
  • Organization of the People under a Priestly Hierarchy:
1:1-54
2:1-34
3:1-51
4:1-49
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  • Purity of the Camp:
5:1-31
6:1-27
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  • Cultic Preparations for Departure from Sinai:
7:1-89
8:1-2
9:1-23
10:1-28
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  • Scouting the Land:
13:1-17a, 21, 25-26, 32-33
14:1a, 2-3, 5-10, 26-38
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  • A Revolt, and the Role of the Priests:
16:1a, 2-11, 16-24, 27a, 35
17:1-28
18:1-32
19:1-22
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  • The Waters of Meribah:
20:1a-b, 2-13
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  • Death of Aaron:
20:22-29
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  • Fiery Serpents:
21:4a
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  • Passage through Transjordan:
21:10-11a
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  • Apostasy at Baal Peor:
25:6-18
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  • Preparation for Con-quest, Ritual Calendar:
25:19–31:54 36:13
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  • Settlement of Gad and Reuben in Transjordan:
32:28
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  • Division of Land, Daughters of Zelo-phehad:
33:1–36:13
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  Deuteronomy
  • Date Formula:
1:3
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  • Commissioning of Joshua and Death of Moses:
32:48-52
34:1, 7-9
 
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Typical Passages2
Typical phrases appear in red
Genesis 1:28

God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 3		 Genesis 9:1-2

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered."
A partial version of this same formula is given to Abraham (Gen 17:2), Ishmael (Gen 17:20-21), Jacob (Gen 28:3-4; 35:11; 48:3-4), Joseph (Gen 47:27) and the generation of Moses (Exod 1:7).
There is some similiarity between the connection of land and blessing in the Priestly and the Deuteronomistic sources. To differentiate them, look for differences in the associated vocabulary. The Deuteronomist mentions how obedience to "laws, statutes, decrees, and ordinances" results in the blessing of land possession, whereas the Priestly authors presume fidelity and so do not mention obedience to the law as a prerequisite. Both emphasize blessing, but the form of it in the Deuteronomist is an abundant land ("flowing with milk and honey"), while the form of the blessing in the Priestly source is more a series of authorizations, to "be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion."
Exodus 37:1-9

Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood; it was two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. He overlaid it with pure gold inside and outside, and made a molding of gold around it. He cast for it four rings of gold for its four feet, two rings on its one side and two rings on its other side. He made poles of acacia wood, and overlaid them with gold, and put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark. He made a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half was its length, and a cubit and a half its width. He made two cherubim of hammered gold; at the two ends of the mercy seat he made them, one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat he made the cherubim at its two ends. The cherubim spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. They faced one another; the faces of the cherubim were turned toward the mercy seat.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1981
Leviticus 11:1-8

The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them: Speak to the people of Israel, saying: From among all the land animals, these are the creatures that you may eat. Any animal that has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed and chews the cud—such you may eat. But among those that chew the cud or have divided hoofs, you shall not eat the following: the camel, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you. The rock badger, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you. The hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you. The pig, for even though it has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed, it does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch; they are unclean for you.

Kosher Apps

Kosher Apps
 
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Themes & Identifying Traits4
 
  • Archaic names for God are used initially, such as Elohim (an old Canaanite term for the gods) before the flood and El Shaddai ("the Almighty") during the time of the patriarchs. The tetragrammaton (יהוה/YHWH/LORD) is introduced at the burning bush (Exod 3:14). From that point on, the Priestly authors tend to use the phrase "YHWH Elohim," or LORD God.

  • More important than the name of God is the character of God in the Priestly source. This God is more distant or remote, creating by fiat, with only a word, rather than by getting his hands dirty like the intimate anthropomorphic God of Genesis 2. This may be related to the disappointment of the exile and its aftermath.

  • Yet while God is more distant, God's intent with humans is to bless them. This appears to be counterintuitive, given the actual post-exilic circumstances. Nevertheless, it is the Priestly authors' firm belief that the community must be organized in this hope. Brueggemann offers that the five characteristic blessings of the Priestly authors articulated in Gen 1:28 are a nice summary defying their real circumstances:
    • be fruitful no more barrenness
    multiply no more lack of heirs
    fill the earth no more being crowded out
    subdue no more subservience
    have dominion no more being dominated5
  • The obligation of the people in the Priestly covenant is to maintain their holiness before God by socially just action and care for the poor and vulnerable. Proper worship is important, but is secondary to justice.

  • Laws and regulations relating to religious spaces, rituals and personnel are prominent features in the priestly source. Proper worship is so important that in the Priestly source there is no sacrifice until the first proto-Temple is built in the Sinai wilderness (Exod 35–40).

  • Genealogies feature prominently in the Priestly strands of the Torah. Being able to trace a consistent lineage establishes purity, legitimacy and order, and is particularly important for the priesthood if the relationship with God is to be maintained properly. In this source—that is, after the exile— the priesthood is limited to the descendents of Moses' brother, Aaron (and a particular line within that family), but there is no reason to presume that only Aaronids exercised the priesthood in the earlier monarchy. The Priestly source will offer many other genealogies beyond just that of the priesthood, as it seeks to (re-)establish a history and a hierarchy after the chaos of exile.

  • The sense of order and structure in the Priestly source indicates to some interpreters that it came from a more settled, urban and cosmopolitan moment in Israel's history, in contrast to the more agricultural, earthy, and somewhat unstructured feel of the Yahwist materal.
 
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Historical Context
 
The Priestly source is traditionally associated with Babylonian Exile (587–539 BCE) or with the early post-exilic period from 539–450 BCE.6 In this time, the Babylonians pressured the leading citizens in exile to assimilate to the Babylonian religion and culture. The priestly class resisted, asserting instead those practices that would keep the Jews' distinctive ethnic identity, such as sabbatch observance, dietary laws, and their own traditions. When the Persian Achaemenid Empire took over, they allowed the refugees to return to the land of Israel. They would not allow Judah to be an independent kingdom, but did allow its priests to rebuild the Temple and "govern" society through control of the agricultural cycles, commerce and culture. Thus, we expect to see concern for the calendar in their writings—particularly the cycle of sabbaths, religious-agricultural festivals, and sabbath/jubilee years that mark their ethnic identity and were preserved so carefully in exile—as well as great concern for the sacrificial cult and Temple and the laws that govern the maintenance of purity in the land, such as the dietary laws or kashrut, laws of mixture, and social ethics. Purity and ethics are more important now, since there are foreigners in charge whose presence and control jeopardize the sanctity of Israel as such.
 
In the post-exilic imperial period, the Jewish people are more thoroughly exposed to the cosmopolitan culture of the far-flung Persian Empire. Because the Persian (and subsequent Greek and Roman) Empire controlled such a vast swath of territory with so many subcultures, writings of this period tend to reflect a more global sensibility and a more cosmic scope, and incorporate more elements from these other cultures with greater freedom. This may explain the more cosmic, less anthropomorphic God in Genesis 1, who creates not merely a garden but the entire cosmos. The tale borrows elements more self-consciously from the Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, as well.
 
 
The goodness of creation and God's desire to bless the people with fertility and abundance is signalled over and over, with the characteristic phrase, "be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it" (Gen 1:28). In contrast to the historical reality of subjection to Persia, a modest and disappointing Second Temple, and a slow path to economic recovery, the priestly authors assert the hope they would preach—that God wants to help his people thrive in this new world order.
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Later Echoes
 
The following passages were not written by the Priestly writers, but reconstruct the earlier Priestly themes in new contexts. Can you identify the original Priestly theme, and analyze how it is repurposed in the new situation? Click on the image of the ancient key to see an explanation.
 
Psalm 107:35-43
(This is likely a post-exilic addition to an earlier prayer of thanksgiving, and is thus contemporary with the Priestly source of Torah) 		Babatha Key

He turns a desert into pools of water,
   a parched land into springs of water.
And there he lets the hungry live,
   and they establish a town to live in;
they sow fields, and plant vineyards,
   and get a fruitful yield.
By his blessing they multiply greatly,
   and he does not let their cattle decrease.
When they are diminished and brought low
   through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
he pours contempt on princes
   and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
but he raises up the needy out of distress,
   and makes their families like flocks.
The upright see it and are glad;
   and all wickedness stops its mouth.
Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
   and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
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Matthew 1:1-17
(Written by a Jewish-Christian scribe c.75–85 CE, perhaps in Antioch, Syria under the Roman Empire) 		Babatha Key

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos,e and Amosf the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
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Matthew 28:16-20
(Written by a Jewish-Christian scribe c.75–85 CE, perhaps in Antioch, Syria under the Roman Empire) 		Babatha Key

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
 
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New Questions7
 
Since the Priestly source was first proposed, some scholars have wondered if strands of it can be traced to the reforms of King Hezekiah during the pre-exilic period (715-686 BCE). There is a stronger tendency afoot to minimize claims of any literary sources before the exile, placing the composition of the entire Torah after the exile. While that minimalist position affects our reading of the Yahwist and Elohist sources, and to a lesser extent the Deuteronomist (which was always thought to have continued into the post-exilic period), it does not damage the thesis of the Priestly source with its exilic/post-exilic date.

More "damaging" to the Documentary Hypothesis in general is the concern raised since the 1970s that picking apart the sources of Torah is a speculative enterprise akin to dissecting an animal in a biology lab. You learn alot, and it has its place, but at the end of the day the living frog in his ecosystem may be of greater interest, thus the books of Torah in their final form as literary works, or their role within the complete biblical canon, or their function as persuasive stories within the living faith community, may be of greater interest.
 
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Sources
 
Blenkinsopp, Joseph.  "The Structure of P."  Catholic Biblical Quarterly 38 (1976) 275-92.
 
Brueggemann, Walter.  "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers."  In The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions (Walter Brueggemann and Hans Walter Wolff, 2d ed.; Atlanta: John Knox, 1982; original, 1975) 101-113.
 
Clifford, Richard J.  "Exodus."  In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990) 44-60.
 
Clifford, Richard J. and Roland E. Murphy.  "Genesis."  In NJBC, 8-43.
 
Faley, Roland J.  "Leviticus."  In NJBC, 60-79.
 
L'Heureux, Conrad E.  "Numbers."  In NJBC, 80-93.
 
Metzger, Bruce M. et al., eds.  The Holy Bible (NRSV).  Washington, D.C.: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989.  Online, http://biblia.com/books/nrsv/, accessed 29 November 2016.
 

   1 The summary of the contents of the Priestly source is from Walter Brueggemann, "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers," in The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions (Walter Brueggemann and Hans Walter Wolff, 2d ed.; Atlanta: John Knox, 1982; original, 1975) 101-113. The subsequent chart of the contents of the Priestly source has been compiled from the following essays: Richard J. Clifford and Roland E. Murphy, "Genesis," Clifford, "Exodus," Roland J. Faley, "Leviticus," and Conrad E. L'Heureux, "Numbers," in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990) 8-93.
 
   2 The passages are discussed by Brueggemann, "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers," 101-107.
 
   3 Bruce M. Metzger et al., eds., The Holy Bible (NRSV) (Washington, D.C.: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989), online, http://biblia.com/books/nrsv/Ge12.1, accessed 3 December 2016.
 
   4 The themes are summarized from Brueggemann, "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers," 101-112, 159-67, and from Douglas A. Knight and Amy-Jill Levine, The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (New York: HarperCollins, 2011) 71, 199.
 
   5 Brueggemann, "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers," 104.
 
   6 Brueggemann, "The Kerygma of the Priestly Writers," 101-113.
 
   7 Brueggemann, "Addendum to the First Edition: Recent Developments," in The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions (Walter Brueggemann and Hans Walter Wolff, 2d ed.; Atlanta: John Knox, 1982; original, 1975) 130-32, 135-41
 
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