181 THE CONTINUITY OF THE NON-PRIESTLY NARRATIVE ously hold two views of Israel’s origins, especially when one, the patriarchs, clearly comes before the other. Finally, one could pro- pose that none of the prophets know any existing text at all, but are, rather, building off common traditions about the patriarchs and the exodus. To my mind this is a promising solution — yet it is unten- able for contemporary non-documentary scholarship, which has done away with the idea of pre-literary traditions altogether. Even if one did propose that the pre-priestly prophets, independent of any pre-existing text, combined the oral traditions of the patriarchs and the exodus, then there is no reason why the author of the non- priestly pentateuchal narratives could not have done the same. It is admitted, of course, that the prophets refer far more fre- quently to the exodus than they do to the patriarchs, which might lead some to conclude that there was no established connection be- tween the two. Yet we must keep in mind that the exodus story, with its themes of God’s salvation of Israel and Israel’s subsequent re- sponsibility to obey God’s commands, is far more relevant to the prophetic message than the patriarchal story. The extensive use of the exodus narrative in the prophets has everything to do with the nature of the prophetic message and nothing to do with the literary continuity or discontinuity of the exodus and patriarchal stories. This thematic argument is of course easiest to maintain if it is granted that the prophets knew only the patriarchal and exodus tra- ditions, perhaps even independently, rather than that they knew a fixed written corpus that combined those traditions into a single narrative. Indeed (with the exception of Ezekiel), this seems most likely. Yet it should be noted that even after the fixing of the liter- ary form of the narrative, even after the canonical Pentateuch had become authoritative, later authors wanting to appropriate its au- thority for their own rhetorical purposes have always picked and chosen those stories whose themes and theologies most closely matched their own: in the New Testament, for example, Paul in 2 Corinthians takes up the theme of the law-giving in chapter 3, and the theme of the garden of Eden quite separately in chapter 11; that he ignores the patriarchal narratives altogether in this letter is not a sign that he does not know the overarching narrative, but that cer- tain parts of it are more rhetorically useful in certain situations. Aside from the prophets, there is one more corpus of pre-exilic writing that significantly contributes to the discussion: D. It is en- tirely unnecessary to demonstrate that D knows the exodus story; © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati