Le Pentateuque en Question: Les origines et la composition des cinq premiers livres de la Bible à la lumière des recherches récentes (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 181 Reviews genre. Even though he reads 1 Samuel in its final fonn and as a part of the canonical fonn of the Deuteronomic History, he nonetheless interprets it from the historical perspective of the Deuteronomist's audience which is "presumably in exile with their national house in ruins" (p. 198). With regard to genre he considers the Deuteronomic History a "remarkable generic innovation" (p. 149) and identifies "a new kind of writing that is thoroughly imbued with ... 'the internally persuasive word' as opposed to the purely 'authoritative word'" (p. 148). If one measure of a successful reading is whether or not it is convincing , I remain ambivalent about Polzin's literary analysis. On one hand, I cannot unqualifiedly say, "Yes! I now understand; this makes sense." On the other hand, I also cannot say, "No! This is just too idiosyncratic to ring true." Overall though, Polzin offers biblical scholars a distinctive and challenging interpretation of 1 Samuel, one which future scholars will need to take seriously and one which they will want to engage in debate. Richard G. Bowman Augustana College Sioux Falls, SD 57197 LE PENTATEUQUE EN QUESTION: LES ORIGINES ET LA COMPOSITION DES CINQ PREMIERS LIVRES DE LA BIBLE ALA LUMIERE DES RECHERCHES RECENTES. Albert de Pury, ed. La Monde de la Bible 19. Pp. 421. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1989. Paper, Fr 60. The essays in this volume are the result of a year-long seminar in 19861987 between the Universities of Fribourg, Geneve, Lausanne, and Neuchtel which focused on the current state of research in the Pentateuch. The book provides a clear summary of pentateuchal research in Europe, with special focus on Switzerland and Gennany. Many of the faculty members at the sponsoring institutions have written extensively elsewhere on the Pentateuch (Rose, de Pury, Romer), and they were joined in this conference by a number of other scholars who have also published significant works on the topic. The book is organized into four sections: a history of research; questions with regard to the literary fonnation of the Pentateuch; themes and traditions; and two concluding essays of a more synthetic nature Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 182 Reviews regarding the designation of the Pentateuch as Torah and the present prospects for constructing pentateuchal theology. In the first section de Pury and Romer provide a quick but insightful overview of pentateuchal research in the past century. After describing the Graf-Wellhausian model of source criticism (with its modifications through Gunkel, Noth, and von Rad) they turn their attention to other hypotheses that have received less prominence in the history of scholarship. They note early criticism of the documentary hypothesis by Klostermann, doubts with regard to the independence of the Elohist by Volz, Rudolph, and Mowinckel and, perhaps most importantly, the research of the Scandinavian School. The emphasis on minority voices in the history of pentateuchal scholarship provides a spring board for summarizing a wide range of current theories regarding the formation of the Pentateuch, including: interest in deuteronomistic tradition (Perlitt, Weinfeld); modifications of source criticism to include distinct stages of redaction (Zenger, Weimar, Vermeylen); more thoroughgoing reevaluations of pentateuchal tradition in which the formation of the literature is viewed as being complementary in nature and late in formation (Van Seters, Schmid, Rose); and, finally, a more fragmentary hypothesis in which distinct traditions are interrelated by late redactors (Rendtorff, Blum, Criisemann). The authors end the brief history of scholarship by highlighting three especially problematic areas in current research: the relationship of history and law; the final form of the Pentateuch (the identity of the redactor[s] and the relationship of this redaction to priestly and deuteronomistic traditions); the origin of pentateuchal traditions (oral tradition, nature of early literature; and the evaluation of pentateuchal traditions throughout the Hebrew Bible). In the second section, five scholars have contributed essays on literary problems. R. Rendtorff focuses on the priestly redaction of Genesis 1-11 in "L'histoire biblique des origines (Genesis 1-11) dans Ie contexte de la redaction 'sacerdotale' du Pentateuque" (pp. 83-94). J.-L. Ska raises the question of whether P is the final redactor of the Pentateuch in "Quelques remarques sur Pg et la...