How the Bible Is Written

How the Bible Is Written has the makings of a magnum opus for Gary Rendsburg, a scholar who epitomizes the depth and value to be had in a close reading of the text: from careful philological and dialectal readings to literary artistry to historical reconstructions of when and why the bulk of the Hebrew Bible was put in written form.So much of literary artistry is built on the structure and effect of strategic repetition and variation, and Rendsburg makes more of it than one might have thought possible. In the biblical text, he insists that one hallmark is the presence of repetition that is almost never a verbatim repetition. Whether large (e.g., type scenes) or small (e.g., word order) or minute (e.g., the presence or absence of a maqqef), the author will consistently engage in variation. Why? Rendsburg’s response may be anticlimactic to those who have devoted much of their lives to exegesis. “The answer, to my mind, is simply variation for the sake of variation. A mind game, as it were, is present. . . . In short, there are no hidden meanings or esoteric significances to these minor changes” (p. 20).One doubts how much he really adheres to this dismissal of underlying motivation or purpose, since he simultaneously produces gems demonstrating the reverse. In the story of Balaam and his talking donkey, the donkey sees and Balaam sees but always with variation, until the final instance, in which there is a (surprising) verbatim repetition, which “serves an excellent purpose: Balaam now sees precisely what the donkey saw from the outset!” (p. 61). Regarding Pharaoh and his hard heart, the text provides numerous varieties of articulating the continuing stubbornness. When a few iterations are, out of character, verbatim, they “indicate how Pharaoh remained stubborn. He does not change, and the language does not change—a stellar example of ‘form follows content’” (p. 49).If variation with repetition is the first pillar of the work, alliteration is the second. Nearly all students of the Hebrew Bible will have learned that the authors (and especially poets) employed alliteration, but Rendsburg takes this to a new level, almost suggesting that alliteration is as foundational to Hebrew poetry as rhyme is to English poetry. The quest for alliteration motivates extensive manipulation of the text, including atypical usage, rare words, and even hapax legomena, which “were specifically chosen by the writers to create or enhance soundplay” (p. 79). Where others have proposed emendations, for instance, the adverbial כָּלָה in Exod 11:1 (כְּשַׁ֨לְּחוֹ כָּלָ֕ה), Rendsburg demurs that “this atypical usage may be explained by the desire to produce alliteration” (p. 113).On the one hand, the artistry is art for art’s sake and has no further meaning, but on the other hand, the artistry must be fully accounted for as the work of intelligent minds and not happenstance. This notion has vast ramifications for scholarship of the Hebrew Bible. If one recognizes the role of variation to mark closure, for instance, then proposed emendation in order to harmonize may be seen as profoundly mistaken: as, for instance, in the census list of Num 1. The ancient versions tend to harmonize Num 1:42, thinking similarly to modern scholars, but Rendsburg insists: they are missing the point. The variation to mark closure is to be retained, as “a reminder of the creative abilities of the ancient Hebrew literati” (p. 283). He cites with approval Hurvitz’s discussion on the peculiar wording in Ruth 2:7 (וַתָּב֣וֹא וַֽתַּעֲמוֹד מֵאָ֤ז הַבֹּ֨קֶר֙ וְעַד־עַתָּה זֶ֛ה שִׁבְתָּ֥הּ הַבַּ֖יִת מְעָֽט׃) in which he insists that, so far from a textual corruption, the awkward wording is an intentional artistic device which the original author of Ruth devised, on purpose, for dramatic purposes: to convey the apologetic and confused tone of the overseer, who is anxious lest Boaz not approve of what has been done.In addition to arguing for the artistic quality of the running Masoretic Text as it now stands, and thus its claim to being the original text, Rendsburg reaches further. Given his oft-repeated insistence that grammatical peculiarities were intentionally employed for the sake of generating alliteration, the reader might be prepared for this claim: the superscription of Ps 121, the first “Song of Ascents,” differs from the superscription of every other of the 14 additional Psalms of Ascents in one intentional detail. Unlike the typical superscription, שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת, Ps 121 has שִׁיר לַמַּעֲלוֹת. The motivation is alliteration with the לַמִּלְחָמָה of Ps 120:7 and לַמּוֹת of Ps 121:3. “Strikingly, this exact concatenation of sounds, to wit, lamm-, will not be repeated anywhere else in the entire collection. . . . They cluster right here, at the bridge between Psalms 120 and 121, thereby supplying the reason for the variant lam-maʾalot ‘for ascents’ at precisely this spot, Ps 121:1” (pp. 350–51). Alliteration can be powerful.When word play is added to alliteration, along with repetition with variation and marking for closure, Rendsburg finds himself with an arsenal of arguments that directly challenge the Documentary Hypothesis. In the 10th century, enormous transitions were taking place in the land of Israel, from tribalism to monarchy, from decentralized worship to centralized worship, and from pastoralism to a new urbanism. A single king with a single temple of stone were altogether new to this people, and they could not arise without opposition. In order to enable this transformation, the choice was to provide a new national identity by writing “a national epic incorporating all of the earlier traditions back to Abraham, and embed into that narrative anticipations of the present” (p. 447). The result is what we now call Genesis (and the rest of the Pentateuch). “History plus epic, with an overlay of theology, all combined in a unique way, expressed in prose, and unparalleled in ancient literature—that is the creation of the brilliant Israelite literati of the tenth century B.C.E” (p. 466).Rendsburg has produced a feast from the text of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, sufficient for each scholar to savor.

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