176 JOEL S. BADEN makes these passages post-priestly aside from the a priori argument that all texts connecting the patriarchs and exodus must postdate P. Second, they both render the priestly texts with which they disagree narratively problematic — that is, after reading Exodus 3 the story of Exodus 6 is confusing at best and nonsensical at worst — and, at the same time, undermine their own claims to narrative truth: presumably the author of Exodus 3 thought that the call of Moses happened in the way described there, but that depiction is deeply undercut by the subsequent priestly text of Exodus 6. The purport- edly post-priestly canonical text does not present the post-priestly claims as the historical truth, because it also includes the contra- dictory priestly materials. (This is, of course, the difficulty with all supplementary models of the composition of the Pentateuch). At the same time, these supposedly post-priestly passages agree entirely with the non-priestly text in which they are now embedded. These passages not only do not contradict the non-priestly histori- cal claims as they do those of P, they also do not add anything new, priestly or otherwise, that was not already present in non-P. Fur- thermore, none of them narratively disrupt or otherwise stand out from their non-priestly contexts; there is no literary basis on which to consider them interpolations or secondary in any manner. They are completely in line with the non-priestly text; the most eco- nomical conclusion to draw from this is that they are in fact simply part of non-P. Although stylistic considerations should always be secondary to the historical claims put forward in the text, it is not a small mat- ter that the passages assigned to a post-priestly redactor follow the style of non-P throughout, and exhibit no signs of stylistic influ- ence from P whatsoever. The phrase “all his brothers”, kol-’eḥāyw, in Exod 1,6 appears five times in the non-priestly text of Genesis and nowhere in P; the description of the Israelites as “mighty”, ‘āṣûm, in Exod 1,9 is found three other times in the non-priestly text, and never in P; the use of hābâ as an exhortative particle as in Exod 1,10 is unique to the non-priestly text; as noted above, in non- P the Israelites are described as gērîm in Egypt, beginning in Exod 2,22, but they are never so designated in P; the designation of the mountain of God as Horeb in Exod 3,1 is known only from the non- priestly narrative, while in P it is always known as Sinai; the di- vine messenger, mal’āk, in Exod 3,2 (and Num 20,16) appears frequently in non-P, and never in P (this is of course more than a © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati