01_Biblica_Hong_Layout 1 08/07/13 12:54 Pagina 335 01_B 335 ABRAHAM, GENESIS 20–22, AND THE NORTHERN ELOHIST south) and the Jacob tradition (from the north). The nature of these two cases of hiatus is analogous. In the exodus tradition, the land is presented as unknown 58, not connected to the land of the patriarchs in Genesis before the Priestly literary connections combined them together. Similarly, in the Jacob tradition, before literary combina- tions with the Abraham tradition were made, the land promised to him is unknown and unrelated to the land promised to Abraham59. The deity revealed to Jacob at Bethel does not presume an existing tie with the patriarch 60. The hiatus is of course a literary one. It does not mean an utter ignorance of the other tradition in the mind of the populace or in oral tradition; it simply points out that they were not necessarily con- ceived of as a continuous course of history until the decisive literary combination was made. This thesis directly challenges the traditional understanding that the Yahwistic and Elohistic corpora encompass both bodies of Israel’s past memory (i.e., of Jacob and Abraham). 2. Did Northerners Remember Abraham? With this, we come back to our original question: did northern- ers remember Abraham as their father? The foregoing discussion has made it clear that the source-critical equation of E with northern tradition is not justified 61. When the uncritical basis for assigning the Elohistic Abrahamic tradition to northern tradition is taken away, there remains no ground for positing that northerners remem- bered Abraham as their father. The northern tradition (Jacob-Joseph-Moses) formed before the fall of the kingdom did not remember Abraham as the founding father of Israel. That role was certainly given to Jacob, the bearer of the name RENDTORFF, Process of Transmission, 128; K. SCHMID, Erzväter und 58 Exodus. Untersuchungen zur doppelten Begründung der Ursprünge Israels innerhalb der Geschichtsbücher des Alten Testaments (WMANT 81; Neukir- chen – Vluyn 1999) = Genesis and the Moses Story (Siphrut 3; Winona Lake, IN 2009). CARR, Fractures, 203-211. 59 Gen 28,13*-14 where YHWH is introduced as the God of Abraham and 60 Isaac is generally considered a later insertion. For a succinct discussion, see, K.P. HONG, “The Deceptive Pen of Scribes: Judean Reworking of the Bethel Tradition as a Program for Assuming Israelite Identity”, Bib 92 (2011) 431-436. Cf. ALEXANDER, Abraham, 22-25. 61 © Gregorian Biblical Press 2013 - Tutti i diritti riservati