178 JOEL S. BADEN priestly exodus narrative. And every additional bit of text that gets assigned to the post-priestly layer makes this problem more press- ing: every passage that is removed from the non-priestly narrative takes with it the necessary introduction of elements required for comprehension of the subsequent passages. Finally, there is the overarching question of how a post-priestly redactional layer may have come into being and functioned in the first place. Since the premise of the post-priestly layer is that it is aware of both the priestly and non-priestly texts, there are two pos- sibilities: either the post-priestly material was added in the process of combining the priestly and non-priestly texts, or it was added after the priestly and non-priestly texts had already been combined. If the post-priestly material was added in the process of combining P and non-P, then we must wonder at the consistent contradictions between the post-priestly material and P. These contradictions do not con- tribute to the creation of a single canonical text; rather, they actively hinder it, by reinscribing the underlying inconsistencies between the two pre-existing corpora. If, on the other hand, the post-priestly ma- terial was added after P and non-P had already been combined, then we must ask how it is that these additions were made exclusively in the non-priestly text; after all, once P and non-P were combined, there was no longer a distinction between them (such a distinction would not re-emerge until the advent of modern critical scholar- ship). How could it be that the post-priestly redactor managed to make his changes in a variety of non-priestly texts across the Pen- tateuch while avoiding any contact with P — even in texts, such as the plagues narrative, in which P and non-P are closely interwoven? In both cases, there is one further question: Whether P and non-P were already combined or were in the process of combination, why would anyone feel the need to provide explicit, secondary links be- tween the patriarchs and the exodus at all? Once the decision was made to combine P and non-P — even if non-P were originally two separate literary works — the result would be a text running con- tinuously from the patriarchs into the exodus (and beyond on both ends). No reader would ever wonder if the patriarchs really led into the exodus, because the two would already be continuous in the combined P and non-P narrative, as they are today. The passages that link the non-priestly patriarchal and exodus narratives — which demonstrate no knowledge of P, which contra- dict P regularly, and which are entirely in accord with the non- © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati