166 JOEL S. BADEN esis and referred to regularly throughout Exodus and Numbers, these we will return to below. Even without these passages, there are ample connections be- tween the patriarchs and the exodus in the non-priestly text. In Gen- esis, the most obvious is of course the Joseph story in its entirety. The introduction to the non-priestly Joseph story in Genesis 37 is rife with clear links back to the preceding patriarchal narratives. To name but a few: it refers in 37,2 to Bilhah and Zilpah, characters in- troduced in the non-P narrative of Genesis 30 6; it refers in 37,3.13 to Jacob as Israel, agreeing with the change of name described in 32,29 7; its claim for Jacob’s excessive love for Joseph is based on Jacob’s preference for Rachel, established in Genesis 29 8; and, not least of all, it climaxes in 37,31–35 with the deception of Jacob by means of Joseph’s tunic, which, as has often been noted, harks back with heavy irony to Jacob’s own deception of his father, Isaac, in Genesis 27, also by means of a dead animal and the keyword n-k-r (hiphil), “recognize” (Gen 27,23) 9. The rest of the non-priestly Joseph story follows from Genesis 37 through the end of Genesis 50 (not to mention that any story Although P also knows of Bilhah and Zilpah (see Gen 35,25–26; 6 46,18.25), they are prominent characters in the account of the births of Jacob’s sons in Genesis 29–30, which is entirely non-priestly. P too has Jacob’s name changed to Israel, of course, in Gen 35,10; yet, 7 notably, P does not refer to the individual Jacob as Israel anywhere in the re- mainder of Genesis — Israel is used only as a designation for the entire peo- ple in P (Gen 36,31; 46,8; 47,27; 48,20). The non-priestly text, on the other hand, refers to Jacob as Israel frequently (Gen 35,21-22; 42,5; 43,6.8.11, etc.). In P there is no reference to Jacob’s preference for Rachel over Leah, or 8 for any one of his sons over the others. Such references are common in non- P, however: Gen 29,17–18.20.30–34; 33,2.7. Furthermore, in P there are no sibling rivalries at any stage of the patriarchal narratives. Such sibling rival- ries are, of course, virtually omnipresent in the non-priestly text. The explicit literary links between the Jacob story and Joseph story in non- 9 P far exceed anything found in the laconic priestly account of Joseph. If we were judging the relative continuity of P and non-P in this case, non-P is certainly the more continuous of the two; if we were further to use relatively, explicit conti- nuity as a test of literary unity, we would thus conclude that the priestly text from creation through Jacob’s settlement in Canaan was originally independent from the priestly text from Jacob’s descent into Egypt onward. Such an argument is manifestly ridiculous, of course. But it highlights the methodological problems of judging the priestly and non-priestly texts against each other. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati