172 JOEL S. BADEN for the Israelites being in Egypt where they will be enslaved. And after Exodus 1–6, there is no explicit reference in P to the patri- archs. Their names are never spoken; the promise to them is never mentioned 17. The sole textual unit that explicitly links the patri- archs and exodus in P is Exodus 1–6. We may take this opportunity to raise the issue of the promises to the patriarchs. It is frequently claimed that the non-priestly prom- ises in Genesis are all secondary insertions, designed to link the various independent patriarchal texts into larger blocks. Even for scholars who hold this view, however, the introduction of the prom- ises into the non-priestly patriarchal narrative is believed to have occurred before it was combined with P; that is, the promises are an integral part of the overarching non-priestly patriarchal account. The references back to the promises after Genesis, on the other hand, are generally taken to be even later additions, in part because they serve to connect the patriarchs and the exodus (and thus must be post-priestly), and in part because they are ostensibly modeled on the references to the promises found in D: as in D, the non- priestly promise texts in Exodus and Numbers refer almost exclu- sively only to the promise of land, not to the promise of increase. What has gone unobserved is that the very same distinction be- tween the promises in Genesis and the promise texts after Genesis is found in P as well: in Genesis, the priestly promises always refer to both land and progeny, while in Exod 6,2 and 8 only the prom- ise of land is mentioned. We thus have identical phenomena in the priestly and non-priestly promise passages: the disappearance of the promise of progeny after Genesis. Since the references to the promise in P are deemed original despite this shift between Gene- sis and Exodus, there is little reason why the promise texts in non- P should not be given the same consideration. Indeed, the same rationale serves to explain both the priestly and non-priestly (and The most explicit reference to the patriarchal promises in a priestly text 17 comes from Lev 26,42, and belongs firmly to H, not P. The single potential reference to the promise of the land after Exodus 6 in P is notable for its marked lack of specificity: “no one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you” (Num 14,30); the text does not say that this oath was made to the patriarchs, either generally or by name, nor does it mention when this prom- ise occurred — what’s more, there are no priestly promises in Genesis that are couched in oath language. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati