Abstract
One of the shortcomings of Documentary and Neo-Documentary models of the Pentateuch has been a focus on identifying the different sources (J, E, D, P) without much discussion of their interrelationship. Although studies examining law codes in the Pentateuch have demonstrated that later Pentateuchal legal materials used and revised earlier law materials, very little work has been done to determine if the same phenomenon holds true for narratives. This dissertation contributes to the field of Pentateuchal scholarship by arguing that the Priestly narrative (P) of the Pentateuch, as a self-standing and independent narrative, knew and built on the Yahwist (J) Pentateuchal narratives. It accomplishes this by applying source critical and tradition historical methods to the narratives of the plagues of Egypt (Exod 7–11) and the surrounding episodes of Moses’ call (Exod 3–6). I chose the texts of the plagues of Egypt for this study because there is near consensus among scholars regarding source ascription for the core plague stories in Exod 7–10, which belong to either J or P. Furthermore, these passages show little intervention from the Redactor, which facilitates a comparison of the events to determine whether one of these sources, in this case P, utilized the other in formulating its own tradition.
In the process of demonstrating the different literary and rhetorical methods that P employed to revise J, it becomes clear that P is not a supplementary or redactional layer, but an independent source. The Priestly scribes produced a text that was designed to suppress its Yahwistic counterpart and not coexist with it. Thus, it becomes clear that J and P were in conversation with one another, and despite the presence of clear ideological differences, the similarities between the two traditions extend beyond the realm of coincidence or common oral traditions.