Biblica_1:Layout 1 21-11-2011 12:59 Pagina 329 329 EISODUS AS EXODUS: THE SONG OF THE SEA tion of Deut 32 must have occurred at a time when these linguistic changes were already entrenched in the poem. If we accept a similar oral/cultic background to Exod 15, then the fact that its textual form shows no later linguistic features — a completely unique feature in the canon of biblical Hebrew poetry — can best be explained by the fact that it was committed to text at an early point in time, i.e., before later linguistic conventions could bleed into the normative form of the poem through prolonged recitation. There can be little doubt that Exod 15 continued to be recited orally down to the 8th and 7th centuries; the fact that a later scribe in- corporated it into the Exodus narrative indicates that it continued to be well known in the scribe’s time and that its inclusion would im- mediately command the attention of the scribe’s intended audience 33. However, the linguistic features ossified in the canonical form of the poem reveal that an antique version of this work was utilized by this scribe. The scribe in question must have drawn from an archival tex- tual source rather than a contemporaneous oral rendition, the latter of which would have invariably included later linguistic forms from the scribe’s own day 34. By contrast, the poem’s early textualization 33 This phenomenon is common to the incorporation of older poetry into narrative contexts elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. J.W. WATTS, “Song and the Ancient Reader”, Perspectives in Religious Studies 22 (1995) 146, puts the mat- ter well when he remarks: “the inclusion of poetry within narrative expanded the latter’s representational scope and, especially, its affective impact on hearers and readers”. The literary logic governing the inclusion of poetry into prose narrative changes over time, however. See S. WEITZMAN, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative. The history of a literary convention in Ancient Israel (Bloomington, IN 1997) for a full discussion. 34 On the matter of a textual archive available to the later – probably priestly – scribe who shaped the Exodus account, see VAN DER TOORN, Scribal Culture, 63-65, 69-70, 86-89. Van der Toorn notes the centrality of temple archives and temple-based scribal “workshops” where sacred texts were preserved and trans- mitted over long periods of time in a variety of ancient loci, and there is no rea- son to suppose that this was not also the case in Jerusalem. This would especially be the case during the late pre-exilic period given the deep impact of both Egyptian and Mesopotamian political culture on the state institutions of Judah by that time. Carr, Tablet of the Heart, 168, is skeptical that texts produced by temple scribes in the late pre-exilic period would have been taken with the exiles to Babylon. However, if written works had obtained a ritual-iconic status as argued recently by J.W. WATTS, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus. From Sac- rifice to Scripture (New York – Cambridge 2007) 193-214, then it is reasonable to assume that some important written works were brought to Babylon by the