READER IDENTIFICATION AND
ALIENATION
IN
THE LEGAL RHETORIC OF THE PENTATEUCH
James W.
Watts
a.
Three voices dominate the Pentateuch’s rhetoric in turn: the omniscient
narrator relates the stories of Genesis and Exodus, YHWH delivers
the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and Moses combines narrative
and law in Deuteronomy. There is much about the narrator’s discourse
which reinforces, and is reinforced by, the speeches of YHWH and
Moses. The very technique of omniscient narration
conveys a semi-divine perspective.
The narrator’s authorial control over the discourse invites
comparison with YHWH’s “authorial” control over the story world.
b.
The Pentateuch leaves the unification of speaking voices incomplete,
however, and as a result divides the audience in two.
God and Moses (or, at least, God through Moses) address the
people in the wilderness and also the readers who overhear their
speeches. Their audience comprises Israel throughout
time, from Sinai to the present, as Deuteronomy makes explicitly
clear (esp. Deut. 5:3). The
narrator, by contrast, addresses only the readers through a discourse
lying outside the story being narrated.
Thus the Pentateuch’s use of a third-person omniscient and
impersonal narrator resists the unifying rhetoric of the divine
and human speeches which it contains. By providing knowledge unavailable to the Israelites in the story,
the narrative alienates readers from wilderness Israel at the same
time that the laws identify them with the audience in the story. The resulting tension strengthens the persuasive
power of the Pentateuch’s rhetoric.
1.
Law and Rhetoric
1.1.
Torah
“law or instruction,” the Pentateuch’s traditional name in Judaism,
obscures the complex mixture of genres that make up the first five
books of the Bible. In quantitative terms, narrative competes with
legal and instructional material for dominance of the whole. The combination of genres forces readers to
decide by which generic conventions to read the text.
[1]
1.2.
Lawyers and judges do not usually read law books from beginning to end
like novels. Instead, laws
are collected, compared, harmonized, codified, and in general arranged
systematically so as to preclude the necessity of ever having to
read the whole code through from start to finish.
The laws of the Pentateuch have received similar treatment
from scholars, both ancient and modern.
Scholars arrange the provisions of Torah to produce, for
example, the traditional enumeration of 613 laws, codes of halakhah,
[2]
and comparisons of the regulations with their
biblical and extra-biblical parallels.
[3]
So in the academic as well as the legal spheres,
the legal genre invites readers to pick and choose, rearrange and
codify to suit their purposes.
1.3.
The laws of the Pentateuch offer fertile ground for such efforts because
they show remarkably few signs of codification. Of course, there are codes which pay attention
to systematization and organization (e.g. Lev. 1-7 or Deut. 12-26).
But taken as a whole, Pentateuchal law contains a bewildering
array of codes and independent provisions, and is marked by repetition,
variation, and occasional contradiction.
It seems fair to ask, then, how the writers of biblical law
expected it to be read. One major indication that sequential reading
was intended lies in the
narrative contexts of Pentateuchal law.
The laws placement within stories suggests reading the laws
within the narrative plot sequence.
1.4.
What does the lack of systematic codification indicate about the law’s
intended use? This question
raises the issue of ancient Israel’s reading practices, which apparently
emphasized (at least in the case of law) public recitations.
[4]
Thus questions about genre in the Pentateuch
point to the influence of oral rhetoric on Pentateuchal texts.
[5]
By ‘rhetoric’ I mean the features of texts
which are composed under the influence of conventions and genres
shaped by persuasive speech. In
this restrictive sense, rhetoric describes the way oral practices
influence the conventions of written genres.
[6]
1.5.
This restrictive definition of rhetoric carries
over from oral speech an emphasis on the relationship between speaker
and audience, both as construed within the text as well as apart
from it.
[7]
Rhetorical analysis therefore requires attention
to the text’s depiction of speakers, narrators, audiences and implied
readers, which include the primary concerns of this article.
[8]
It also requires historical analysis of the
relationship between the text’s writers and intended readers, an
agenda which cannot be addressed here.
The governing premise of such analysis is that persuasion
depends for its effect on identifying speakers with their audiences
in one or more ways.
[9]
The following discussion therefore aims to
answer this question: What rhetorical effects does the combination
of law and narrative intend to have on the Pentateuch’s readers?
2.
Speakers and Narrators
2.1.
The Pentateuch’s discourse never presumes to equate God and the narrator,
and in fact God and the narrator speak in quite distinct idioms
on quite different subjects: YHWH exhorts and commands, but rarely
tells a story; the narrator does the reverse.
[10]
This distinction occasionally blurs when YHWH’s
commands wander to subjects irrelevant to the wilderness generation,
but very applicable to ancient (and modern) readers (for example,
the Passover instructions of Exodus 12-13).
The conventional distinction between the roles of law-speakers
and narrators encourages one to find the narrator’s voice here,
but the markers of direct quoted speech are quite clear.
[11]
The shift, however, remains implicit: YHWH
and Moses never directly address the readers.
[12]
The narrator’s reticence is also best illustrated
where it breaks down. In
the context of a divine speech to Moses, Num. 15:22-23 speaks of
both in the third person while expanding the scope of a provision
from Leviticus 4, thus apparently ascribing legislation to the narrator. The shift in voicing is extremely subtle, however, and easily missed
by readers. By its rarity,
this exception emphasizes the rule that the narrator does not speak
law. Narratorial commentary appears only slightly
more often: see, for example, Num. 26:9-11, 63-65.
[13]
The first four books of the Pentateuch maintain
almost without exception the distinction between God and Moses on
the one hand, and the narrator on the other.
Nevertheless, the voices’ different roles do not divide their
message. The deity’s statements
and actions support the narrator’s omniscience, reliability and
control.
2.2.
This division of labor breaks down in Deuteronomy, where Moses’ speeches
poach on both the divine prerogative for law-giving and the narrator’s
monopoly on story-telling. Here
the three voices sometimes meld to the point of being indistinguishable:
for example, are the antiquarian notices in Deut. 2:10-12, 20-23,
in a context of Moses’ quotation of YHWH’s commands, voiced by YHWH,
Moses, or the narrator?
[14]
Such overlapping voices unify the text’s authority:
as Moses relates YHWH’s words, so also the narrator conveys the
words of both.
[15]
2.3.
However, what unifies the speakers’ authority
divides the identity of the audience.
The use of an omniscient narrator distinguishes the readers
of the Pentateuch from the Israelites who heard Moses at Sinai and
in Moab. The readers are more knowledgeable but also
more dependent on the narrator for their knowledge of YHWH’s and
Moses’ words as well as the story that contains them.
3.
Israel in the Wilderness
3.1.
The Pentateuchal story describes the law’s audience quite explicitly:
Israel in the wilderness (Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers) and on
the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy).
Though only Moses in Deuteronomy directly addresses the people
as a whole, God’s instructions to Moses in the preceding books address
the community as their ultimate, if indirect, audience (“Speak thus
to the Israelites...” Exod. 20:22; “These are the commandments which
you shall set before them...” 21:1; etc.). Occasional provisions address more limited
groups, such as the priests (e.g. Lev. 6:9), but their placement
within the context of the larger Sinai or Moab legislation reorients
their message to all Israel as well.
3.2.
Israel inherits the divine promises from their ancestors, but the laws
address only wilderness Israel.
Exodus through Deuteronomy refer to the ancestors only to
explain God’s behavior, never the people’s.
[16]
Despite the appearance of certain “Mosaic”
laws and practices already in Genesis 12-50 (e.g. circumcision in
Gen. 17:10, levirate marriage in Gen. 38:8), laws and their motive
clauses in the following books never refer back to them.
The confession mandated in Deut. 26:5-10 formalizes the distinction
between those whom the worshipers call their ancestors and those
with whom they identify themselves: “My
father was a wandering Aramean ....
The Egyptians oppressed us
and afflicted us ....”
3.3.
The characterization of Israel provided by the Pentateuchal laws and sanctions
reflects the depiction of the wilderness generation in the stories
of Exodus and Numbers as God’s war booty, as a nation sanctified
by the divine covenant, and as rebels against YHWH.
The exodus story depicts YHWH’s defeat of Pharaoh in a battle
over possession of Israel, thus creating (Exod. 6:6-7) or revealing
(Deut. 7:6-8) Israel’s status as the people of God.
This theme introduces the Sinai episode: “You have seen what
I did to the Egyptians, and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and
brought you to myself. Now
if you listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured
possession of all the peoples” (Exod. 19:4-5).
A rehearsal of YHWH’s capture of Israel from Egypt also begins
the Decalogue (Exod. 20:1; Deut. 5:6; cf. 5:15), thus establishing
a direct link between the divinity’s victories and Israel’s obligation
to obey (cf. Deut. 7:7-11).
3.4.
Though the exodus has obligated Israel to YHWH, the people also obligate
themselves by agreeing in advance to the covenant stipulations (Exod.
19:8; 24:3; extended to future generations in Deut. 5:3-4). In Exodus and Leviticus, obedience to the law
defines Israel as God’s people (Exod. 19:5; Lev. 26:12), whereas
Deuteronomy makes that status the precondition and motivation for
obedience (Deut. 7:1-6; 14:1-2).
[17]
Making or keeping the covenant therefore distinguishes
Israel as YHWH’s, and defines the people as “holy” in the basic
sense of “dedicated, set apart” for God (“You shall be holy to me,
for I YHWH am holy and I have separated you from other nations to
be mine” Lev. 20:26). The
“kingdom of priests and holy nation” (Exod. 19:6) must be trained
by the covenant’s laws for divine service.
[18]
3.5.
As a result, Pentateuchal law defines the nation of Israel, rather than
the nation defining the scope and jurisdiction of its laws. Frank Crüsemann noted that, unlike ancient
or modern notions of national law, Israel’s “law was understood
as established before the nation and also as set over the nation.”
[19]
The Pentateuch hardly conceives of Israel as
a nation in the institutional sense at all (e.g. note the unrealistic
treatment of the duties of the king in Deut. 17:14-20).
The law describes Israel as the people in covenant relationship
with YHWH. All the other
trappings of nationality, most notably possession of land, depend
on fulfilling the stipulations of that relationship.
3.6.
Yet many of the commandments anticipate resistance from their hearers.
Dale Patrick observed that “The wording of the first commandment
projects an audience which would resist the commandment’s exclusivism.
It seems to assume the existence of other gods, or at least
the audience’s belief in them and attraction to them.”
[20]
Other laws also presuppose the attractiveness
of the religious or civil practices which they prohibit, as intermittent
exhortations make clear: e.g. tiV;merW
“be attentive” (Exod. 23:13), “keep and do them with your whole
mind (lb) and your whole being (npv)”
(Deut. 26:16). Indeed it is a truism of legal research that one does not outlaw
behavior that does not occur. Though
due allowance must be made for the preservation of antiquated legal
traditions, the bulk of Pentateuchal law nevertheless paints a lively
picture of practices that its audience might be reluctant to give
up (e.g. “Do not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you were
living, and do not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which
I am bringing you...” Lev. 18:3).
3.7.
The laws thus resonate with the narrative’s characterization of Israel
in the wilderness as a rebellious people.
As Samuel Sandmel noted, “the children of Israel, who are
protagonists, are never the heroes; the Wilderness wanderings are,
on the surface, an account of the infamous
deeds of the Hebrews.”
[21]
Israel’s complaints and misdeeds prompt miraculous
rescues in Exodus 14-17 but in Numbers, after the giving of law
at Sinai, they provoke divine punishments including the death of
an entire generation in the wilderness (Num. 14:32-35).
[22]
Thus those who first make the covenant break
it and die without receiving what YHWH had promised. The next generation hears Moses’ rehearsal of the stories, laws
and sanctions in Deuteronomy and is confronted with the same obligations.
3.8.
The Pentateuch’s characterization of Israel
serves to enhance and to justify its persuasive rhetoric. Israel’s rescue from Egypt and acceptance of
the covenant obliges the people to obey the law. Israel’s rebellious record demonstrates the critical need for persuasion.
By depicting such an audience, the Pentateuch defends its
rhetorical strategies as necessary for the people’s survival.
[23]
Near its end, Moses’ skeptical song (Deuteronomy
31-32) suggests that even this will not be enough.
4.
Readers as Israel
4.1.
Pentateuchal law identifies its readers with Israel, particularly the
Israel of the exodus story: “You were aliens/a slave in the land
of Egypt.”
[24]
Harry Nasuti demonstrated that “whereas biblical
narrative might imply (or invite) a reader, biblical law specifies
a reader.”
[25]
Through its exhortations to obedience, the
laws specify readers who will adopt as their own Israel’s covenant
and identity as the people of God and express that identity through
obedience.
4.2.
Part of the function of the legal material in the Bible is precisely to
keep the reader from “getting on with the story.” It forces the reader to stop and consider who he or she is and what
he or she does. It specifies
who such a reader must be if he or she wants to read the text correctly.
. . .
[26]
4.3.
Deuteronomy commands its audience to recite this identification in words
that connect the rescue from Egypt with obedience to the law (6:20-25;
26:1-11). Of course, readers
may choose not to obey, but in that case they also place themselves
outside of the story.
[27]
As Thomas Mann noted, “The reciprocity of law
and story is now transparent: obedience to law is rooted in the
recital of and identification with a story, an identification that
is vacuous without obedience to the law.”
[28]
4.4.
Thus Pentateuchal laws and Deuteronomy as a whole tend to equate the audience
in the story, wilderness
Israel, with the audience of
the story, the readers. Many
interpreters have noted details and themes which compound this effect. The people hear the law outside the land, like
exilic and diaspora Judeans who were most likely the first readers/hearers
of the Pentateuch as a whole.
[29]
Towards the end of Numbers, the wilderness
rebels are replaced by a new generation whose potential, like that
of the readers, for obedience and blessing or for disobedience and
curse remains untested.
[30]
The rhetoric of Deuteronomy brings together
Moses’ hearers and readers with its emphasis on collective responsibility
and its union of present and future generations (29:14-15) into
an idealized vision of Israel.
[31]
Readers are urged to feel as if they themselves
agreed to the covenant at Mt. Sinai and heard Moses’ sermon on the
plains of Moab.
4.5.
Yet other elements in the same texts put distance between the audience
in the story and the readers. First,
as Nasuti pointed out, the model for the readers’ behavior is not
Israel but God.
[32]
“You should be holy because I am holy” (Lev.
11:45) and similar exhortations make the imitation of God the explicit
standard of behavior in clear contrast to the rebellions of wilderness
Israel. Second, the dark threats that dominate the
last eight chapters of Deuteronomy hold out little hope that subsequent
generations will do any better, and likely reflect experiences already
in the first readers’ past.
[33]
The book then encourages readers to make a
break with their predecessors’ actions and not continue the practices
of the past.
4.6.
Third, the narrator’s mediation places readers in a relationship to the
law different from that of wilderness Israel.
Unlike Moses’ audience at Sinai and Moab, readers experience
law first as direct quotation of divine speech (Exodus through Numbers)
and only later as Moses’ reformulation (Deuteronomy).
Though the narrator mediates divine law, the dramatic differences
between the narrative and legal idioms (see above) emphasize the
authenticity of the divine quotations: that is, because the reticent
narrator sounds very unlike YHWH, the latter’s words sound more
authentic than Deuteronomy’s merging of narrative and law in Moses’
voice. Thus the self-characterizations
of the three principle voices in the Pentateuch, like the work’s
overarching rhetorical structure, draw attention to the laws of
Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers as the original divine revelation
and categorize Deuteronomy as a secondary revision.
[34]
Unlike wilderness Israel, readers hear both
YHWH and Moses through the narrator’s presentation.
4.7.
Robert Polzin and Edgar Conrad have detected in this presentation of divine
law a strategy for enhancing the narrator’s authority not only in
the Pentateuch but in the books which follow as well.
[35]
Though in one sense the narrator mediates everything
in these books, the disparate voicing of law and narrative in the
Pentateuch points rather to narratorial reticence. Unlike Moses, the narrator does not presume to be the authoritative
interpreter of divine legislation. The narrator’s omniscient insight into divine and human affairs
does not extend to legal reasoning.
4.8.
Thus the Pentateuch tries to persuade readers to both identify with and
to alienate themselves from aspects of wilderness Israel. The readers’ past becomes the exodus story
which the text urges them to claim through repetition and ritual,
and to identify their origins in the stories of ancestors and more
universal tales stretching back through Genesis.
The readers’ present then becomes governed by divine laws
which specify those who obey them as Israel.
The sanctions describe the readers’ possible futures, culminating
in Deuteronomy’s rousing call to “Choose life!” (30.19) and reject
wilderness Israel’s death-wish (Exod. 16.3).
This dialectic of identification and alienation intends to
persuade readers of who they are and what they should do.
The Pentateuch’s rhetoric aims to convince its readers to
be true Israel.
ABSTRACT
Three
voices dominate Pentateuchal discourse in turn: the omniscient narrator
relates the stories of Genesis and Exodus, YHWH delivers the laws
of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and Moses combines narrative
and law in the rhetoric of Deuteronomy.
These three dominant voices of the Pentateuch are interdependent
and almost interchangeable: the anonymous narrator, like Moses the
scribe, requires both divine inspiration and reader acceptance for
authorization of the story; the divine law-giver requires reader
acceptance of human mediation of the commandments; the prophetic
scribe depends on authority delegated by both God and readers to
interpret the stories, the laws, and the sanctions.
The Pentateuch leaves the unification of speaking voices
incomplete, however, and as a result divides the audience in two. God and Moses (or, at least, God through Moses) address the people
in the wilderness and also the readers who overhear their speeches. Their audience comprises Israel throughout
time, from Sinai to the present, as Deuteronomy makes explicitly
clear. The narrator, by contrast, addresses only the
readers through a discourse lying outside the story being narrated. Thus the Pentateuch’s use of a third-person
omniscient and impersonal narrator resists the unifying rhetoric
of the divine and human speeches which it contains.
By providing knowledge unavailable to the Israelites in the
story, the narrator persuades readers to both identify with and
to alienate themselves from aspects of wilderness Israel.
Notes:
[1]
. Twentieth century research has
tended to focus on the instructional and narrative texts separately. This tendency was already well-advanced by
the time of Rudolph Smend’s source-critical analysis of “Hexateuchal”
narratives in 1912 (Die
Erzählung des Hexateuch auf ihre Quellen untersucht, Berlin:
G. Reimer, 1912). It was exacerbated by the subsequent rise of
form-critical study of the oral traditions underlying the written
documents (e.g. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis,
5th ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1922; Martin Noth,
A History of Pentateuchal Traditions [tr.
B. W. Anderson; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981, orig. 1948],
especially pp. 8-10). The forms and oral transmission of legal
and narrative material differ considerably and invite separate
analysis. Despite a resurgence of interest in the written sources, this situation
still obtains for the most part today: though radical revisions
of the Documentary Hypothesis have been suggested, they are based
primarily on studies of the narratives alone (e.g. John Van Seters,
Abraham in History and Tradition, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1975; idem, The Life of Moses: the Yahwist as Historian in Exodus-Numbers, Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1994; Hans Heinrich Schmid, Der sogennante Jahwist, Zürich: Theologisher
Verlag, 1976; R. N. Whybray, The
Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study, JSOTSup
53, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987).
It has been left to critics of the Documentary Hypothesis
to discuss the history of the combined narrative and legal materials
(e.g. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, ed. & tr. M. Greenberg, Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1960; Ivan Engnell, “The Pentateuch,” A Rigid Scrutiny [ed. & tr. J. T. Willis;
Nashville: Vanderbilt, 1969], pp. 50-67; Rolf Rendtorff, The Problem of the Process of Transmission
in the Pentateuch, tr. J. J. Scullion; JSOTSup 89; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1990 [orig. 1977]; Erhard Blum, Studien
zur Komposition des Pentateuch, BZAW 189, Berlin: de Gruyter,
1990). Meanwhile, the increasing popularity of literary
methods of analysis, which were developed for modern fiction and
poetry, have reinforced the tendency to focus primarily or even
exclusively on Pentateuchal narratives (an exception: Joe M. Sprinkle,
‘The Book of the Covenant’: A Literary Approach, JSOTSup 174, Sheffield:
JSOT, 1994). The exceptional
works which attempt to read the Pentateuch as a whole do so from
a narratological perspective (e.g. David J. A. Clines, The
Theme of the Pentateuch, JSOTSup 10; Sheffield: JSOT, 1978;
Thomas W. Mann, The Book
of Torah: the Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch, Atlanta:
John Knox, 1988; John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological
Commentary, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992).
[2]
. E.g. the Shulhan Arukh by Rabbis Joseph Karo and Moses Isserles (16th century).
[3]
. For examples of the former, see
Charles Foster Kent, Israel’s
Laws and Legal Precedents (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907);
of the latter, Shalom M. Paul, Studies
in the Book of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical
Law (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970).
[6]
. In literary studies, rhetoric has
come to have a much broader definition, “as the means by which
a text establishes and manages its relationship to its audience
in order to achieve a particular effect” as Dale Patrick and Allen
Scult put it (Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation [JSOTSup 82; Sheffield: Almond,
1990], p. 12). My narrower
focus derives not from a theoretical critique but rather from
evidence in the Hebrew Bible for a tradition of public law readings
in ancient Israel.
[7]
. Rhetoric’s focus on the persuasive
force of texts necessarily invokes the intentions that shaped
the texts: “Through the shape into which speakers cast their message
they tell the audience how they mean it to be engaged and therefore
to be understood. Of course, the auditors are free to interpret
the language of the discourse in any way they wish, but the speaker
or author attempts to constrain that freedom and direct interpretation
by giving the audience cues and indicators as to how he or she
means the discourse to function for them. ...
Thus in order for the critic to comprehend the nature of
a text’s authority fully in this case, he or she needs to find
those conventions of engagement through which the text might have
originally exercised its authority over an audience. From a rhetorical perspective, then, a text’s
genre becomes the code that must be broken in order to bring its
word to life” (Patrick and Scult, Rhetoric,
p. 15).
[8]
. See also James W. Watts, “The Legal
Characterization of God in the Pentateuch,” HUCA 67 (1997) 1-14, and “The
Legal Characterization of Moses in the Rhetoric of the Pentateuch,”
JBL 117 (1998) 415-26.
My attention to characterization and narration employs
many concepts derived from literary analysis, but remains fundamentally
rhetorical in its orientation. M. M. Bakhtin distinguished the rhetorical
genre’s use of “authoritative discourse” from the novel’s avoidance
or parody of it, and rhetoric’s formal use of multiple voices
for purposes of persuasion from the novel’s emphasis on “the mutual
nonunderstanding represented by people who
speak in different languages.” “For this reason it is proper to speak of a
distinctive rhetorical
double-voicedness, or, put another way, to speak of the double-voiced
rhetorical transmission of another’s word (although it may involve
some artistic aspects), in contrast to the double-voiced representation of another’s word in the novel with its orientation
toward the image of a language”
(The Dialogic Imagination [ed. M. Holquist;
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981], pp. 356, 354; also 284,
342-44). My rhetorical
analysis therefore points to a unified persuasive intention behind
the multiple voices of the Pentateuch, in contrast to some literary
analyses which, in novelistic fashion, have emphasized irreconcilable
tendencies in its discourse (e.g. Robert Polzin, Moses
and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History
[New York: Seabury, 1980], pp. 38-39; Dennis T. Olson, Deuteronomy
and the Death of Moses: A Theological Reading [OBT; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1994], pp. 178-82; Nanette Stahl, Law
and Liminality in the Bible [JSOTSup 202, Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995], pp. 21-24, who noted Bakhtin’s objections
and commented: “where the Bible is concerned, one must first refute
Bakhtin in order to apply him” [p. 24 note 25]).
Attempts to use Bakhtin’s theory of polyphany while ignoring
his analysis of genre undermine one of the major goals of his
work, namely his explanation for the distinctive nature of the modern novel.
[9]
. Kenneth Burke made the case most
effectively for identification as the key to persuasion, though
he built upon the clear precedents in classical rhetorical theory
(A Rhetoric of Motives [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950],
pp. xiii-xiv, 20-31 and passim). Burke argued, however, that at least a degree
of alienation (his terms were “standoffishness” and “self-interference”)
“is necessary ... because without it the appeal could not be maintained. For if union is complete, what incentive can
there be for appeal? Rhetorically,
there can be courtship only insofar as there is division” (p.
271; see also p. 274).
[10]
. Meir Sternberg has argued at length
for the literary and theological implications of the biblical
narrator’s omniscience, concluding, for example, that “The very
choice to devise an omniscient narrator serves the purpose of
staging and glorifying an omniscient God” (The
Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the
Drama of Reading [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985],
p. 89; also p. 92, and on the differences between deity and narrator,
pp. 117, 123, 155-59). Patrick
and Scult distinguished between the narrator’s characteristics
in various Pentateuchal sources, interpreting them as theological
differences (Rhetoric, pp. 108, 116-17).
[11]
. So Patrick: “the narrator steps
out of the narrative world here to address the reader. This address is performative, requiring the
readers to define their identity (through ritual) in relationship
to this story” (“The Rhetoric of Revelation,” HBT
16 [1994], p. 39 n. 26). However,
it is not the narrator, but rather YHWH and Moses who voice these
laws and “break frame.”
[12]
. As one expects in narrative, where
characters do not address readers.
In legal texts, however, readers are usually at least part
of the intended audience addressed by the law-giver.
[13]
. Mann, Book of the Torah, p. 141.
[14]
. It certainly sounds like the narrator, which prompted
the interpretations of Polzin (Moses,
p. 31) and Norbert Lohfink (“Die Stimmen in Deuteronomium 2”,
BZ 37 [1993], pp. 209-35). A similar situation obtains in Deut. 10:6-9
(Polzin, Moses, p. 34)
and 29:5-6 (Timothy A. Lenchak, “Choose
Life!” A Rhetorical-Critical Investigation of Deuteronomy
28,69-30,20 [AnBib 129; Rome: Pontificio Istitutio Biblico,
1993], p. 106).
[15]
. Polzin argued that Deuteronomy
employs this strategy in order for the narrator to gain Mosaic
authority to narrate the rest of the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua
through Kings) (Moses, pp. 27-29, 70). However, the effect in the Pentateuch as a
whole of the dual voicing of law tends to subordinate the human
law-speaker to the divine (see my “Legal Characterization of Moses”). The legal and religious result is nevertheless
the same, as Michael Fishbane noted: in the narrator’s voice,
“the authority for the traditio
is indistinguishable formally from the authority of a historical
traditum” (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985],
p. 437).
[16]
. E.g. Exod. 2:24; 6:8; 32:13; 33:1;
Lev. 26:46; Num. 32:11; Deut. 1:8; 6:10; etc.
[17]
. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (AB 5. New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 61; Brevard
S. Childs, Biblical Theology
of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992),
pp. 421-23.
[18]
. Moshe Greenberg, “Three Conceptions
of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures,” in Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1995), p. 16.
[19]
. Die Tora: Theologie und Sozialgeschichte des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes
(Munich: Kaiser, 1992), p. 25 (my translation).
[20]
. Dale Patrick, “Is the Truth of
the First Commandment Known by Reason?” CBQ
56 (1994), p. 429.
[21]
. Samuel Sandmel, “The Enjoyment
of Scripture: an Esthetic Approach,” Judaism
22 (1973), p. 466.
[22]
. For discussion and bibliography,
see Mark S. Smith, “The Literary Arrangement of the Priestly Redaction
of Exodus: A Preliminary Investigation,” CBQ
58 (1996), pp. 32-33.
[23]
. Patrick described the same effect
as a form of literary suspense: though the end of the story is
already known, “a successful narrative produces new types of suspense
which cannot be resolved by knowledge of the outcome.
One way the exodus narrative creates suspense is by portraying
Moses and Israel as less than ideals of religious piety” and thus
prompting readers to self-examination (“Rhetoric of Revelation”,
p. 31).
[24]
. Exod. 22:20 [EV 21]; 23:9; Lev.
19:34; Deut. 5:15; 10:19; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22.
[25]
. “Identity, Identification, and
Imitation: the Narrative Hermeneutics of Biblical Law,” Journal of Law and Religion 4/1 (1986) 12.
[26]
. Nasuti, “Identity,” p. 23; cf.
Patrick, “Rhetoric of Revelation”, p. 39 n. 26.
[27]
. Patrick, “Is the Truth”, pp. 432-36.
[28]
. Mann, Book of the Torah, p. 151; cf. Patrick and Scult, Rhetoric, p. 52; Patrick D. Miller, Jr.,
“The Place of the Decalogue in the Old Testament and Its Law,”
Int 43 (1989) 232.
[29]
. Terence E. Fretheim noted that
“The implied readers of the Pentateuch bear a family resemblance
to the exiles in Babylon (587-538 BCE), but it seems just as clear
that these exiles do not ‘exhaust’ the identity of the implied
readers .... This lack of specificity leaves more room for other readers to hear
themselves addressed” (The
Pentateuch [Nashville: Abingdon, 1996], p. 40; so also Polzin,
Moses, p. 72, and many others).
[30]
. Dennis T. Olson noted that the
new generation remains untouched by rebellion and argued that
the contrast between the generations, emphasized by the census
lists of each in Numbers 1 and 26, establishes the large-scale
structure of the book (The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book
of Numbers and the Pentateuch [BJS 71; Chico: Scholars Press,
1985], pp. 83-125).
[31]
. Dale Patrick, “The Rhetoric of
Collective Responsibility in Deuteronomic Law,” in D.P. Wright,
D.N. Freedman, A. Hurvitz (eds.), Pomegranates
and Golden Bells: Studies ... in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Winona
Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995), pp. 421-36; Lenchak, “Choose
Life!”, pp. 85-86, 90-93, 102-3.
[32]
. He suggested a dialectic between
Egyptian slavery and the imitation of God: “The laws work to define
Israel’s present identity in terms of its past status and its
future goal” (Nasuti, “Identity,” p. 18).
[33]
. Fretheim, Pentateuch, pp. 41-42.
[35]
. Polzin, Moses; Edgar W. Conrad, “Heard But Not Seen: the Representation of
‘Books’ in the Old Testament,” JSOT
54 (1992), pp. 45-59.
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