01_Biblica_Hong_Layout 1 11/07/13 12:34 Pagina 333 01_B 333 ABRAHAM, GENESIS 20–22, AND THE NORTHERN ELOHIST society. This idea is now highly contested. Baden recently said: “Wellhausen’s Enlightenment mindset prevented him from accept- ing the possibility, now accepted with little hesitation, that more than one concept of Israelite religion and history could have existed si- multaneously” 46. Wellhausen’s evolutionary scheme is rejected by most scholars47. Even today’s strongest proponents of the Documen- tary Hypothesis do not give this scheme much credit 48. So the re- jection of the evolutionary scheme seriously undermines the relative dating of J and E. In Baden’s words, “If we reject Wellhausen’s gross evolutionary framework as flawed — and the majority, if not the entirety, of scholarship has — then we should also reject his relative dating of J and E on these grounds” 49. Moreover, even if one successfully defends J’s earlier date, today an early date does not automatically translate into the Davidic period, an era that is increasingly slipping from the grasp of biblical historians. As opposed to earlier biblical historians who followed the biblical pres- entation of Israel’s history 50, which depicts Israel as the people of a common faith, a common ancestry, and a common historical experi- ence, today that presentation’s validity is seriously questioned 51. The historicity of founding narratives of the Bible has been challenged 52. Archaeology and social-science approaches consistently reveal the real picture behind the grand depiction of David and Solomon’s empire as a mere chiefdom that was “little more than Israel’s rural hinterland” 53. J.S. BADEN, Rethinking the Supposed JE Document (Ph.D. diss., Har- 46 vard University 2007) 241. Similarly, ID., J, E, and the Redaction, 308. Even earlier, not all accepted this. Notably, NOTH, Pentateuchal Tradi- 47 tions, 38, n. 143. E.g. BADEN, J, E, and the Redaction, 313; YOREH, The First Book of 48 God, 7. BADEN, J, E, and the Redaction, 33. 49 E.g. M. NOTH, The History of Israel (New York 21960) [German origi- 50 nal: Göttingen 1950]; J. BRIGHT, A History of Israel (Louisville, KY 42000). For a helpful synthesis of this recent development, see M.B. MOORE – 51 B.E. KELLE, Biblical History and Israel’s Past. The Changing Study of the Bible and History (Grand Rapids, MI 2011). E.g. T.L. THOMPSON, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives. The 52 Quest for the Historical Abraham (BZAW 133; Berlin 1974); VAN SETERS, Abraham. I. FINKELSTEIN – N.A. SILBERMAN, The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology’s 53 New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York 2001) 159. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2013 - Tutti i diritti riservati