Double Narratives in the Old Testament: The Foundations of Method in Biblical Criticism (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Fur Die Alttestamentliche wissensch (Beihefte ... Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 273.)

A study of the importance of variant forms of Old Testament narratives in prompting the development of the criticism of the Bible. The recognition of the recurrence of stories in variant forms in the Old Testament has been seminal to the birth and development of biblical criticism. The author assesses the role of the “double narrative phenomenon” in the evolution of Old Testament methodology, from its earliest documentary theories to its most recent literary ones, with the help of current literary, folklore and textual studies. Preface 7 Abbreviations 9 Introduction 13 Chapter 1: Double Narratives in the Rise and Development of Biblical Criticism 18 1.1 Early Biblical Criticism 18 1.2 Source Criticism: Wellhausen 24 1.3 Source Criticism After Wellhausen 28 1.4 Form and Tradition-historical Criticism: Gunkel 35 1.5 Form and Tradition-historical Criticism After Gunkel 39 1.6 Scandinavian Scholarship 48 1.7 Koch, Van Seters 58 1.8 “Holistic” Approaches to Double Narratives 66 1.9 Summary 82 Chapter 2: Double Narratives as Indicators of Documents or Literary Artistry 85 2.1 The Nature of Biblical Criticism: The Role of Models in Methodology 85 2.2 The “Nature” Model: Spinoza 98 2.3 The “Archivist-Historian”: Simon and Astruc 103 2.4 “The Historian”: Wellhausen 105 2.5 “Literary Artist”: Alter 115 Chapter 3: Double Narratives as Oral Variants 127 3.1 Oral Genres and the Old Testament Narrative 129 3.2 Old Testament Narrative Genres as Oral Genres: A Reevaluation 138 3.3 Oral Composition and Transmission: The Dynamics of Variant Development 146 3.4 Gunkel’s Concept of Oral Variants: An Evaluation 162 3.5 Summary 172 Chapter 4: Double Narratives: Towards a Definition 174 4.1 Double Narrative Terminology in Old Testament Scholarship 175 4.2 Towards a Definition 178 4.3 Literary and Textual Variants 190 4.4 Appraisal 200 4.5 Textual Variants and Double Narratives – An Interface? 201 Conclusion 204 Bibliography 209 Index 1: Biblical References 227 Index 2: Authors 232 Index 3: Subjects 236 The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world. BZAW welcomes submissions that make an original and significant contribution to the field; demonstrate sophisticated engagement with the relevant secondary literature; and are written in readable, logical, and engaging prose. Double narratives were first recognised as a potentially important phenomenon for the understanding of biblical composition in the seventeenth century.