The Nature of the Priestly Tradition in the Pentateuch: A Case Study of the Flood Narrative (Gn 6,5–9,17)

This study focuses on the nature, i.e., the original literary character, of the Priestly tradition (P) in the Pentateuch by taking the flood narrative (Gn 6,5‒9,17) as a test case. The redaction-historical approach serves as the major method and the text-critical approach as the minor. The opening chapter investigates the fundamental methodological issues that are involved with in the reconstruction of literary formation of biblical texts, and demonstrates the intricate relation of redaction criticism to textual criticism on the one hand, and to source criticism on the other, in Pentateuchal studies. The scrutiny of the history of research concerning the nature of P both in the Pentateuch in general and in the flood narrative in particular demonstrates that in the flood narrative, three hypotheses have been proposed: (1) the two-source hypothesis that considers non-P and P as two originally independent sources within the conventional framework of the Documentary Hypothesis; (2) the hypothesis of P as a redaction to non-P; and (3) the hypothesis of non-P as a redaction to P. The present author's text-critical investigation of the flood narrative in the different textual witnesses such as the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls has found that the Masoretic Text has preserved the majority of the preferable readings, and thus it can be taken as the working text for the subsequent redactional analysis. However, the occurrences in which it does not preserve the preferable readings are considered in the redactional analysis as well. The redaction-historical study of the flood narrative by the author begins with a presentation of the Hebrew text in a clause hierarchy and an English translation, followed by a detailed redactional analysis of the text (the account before the flood, Gn 6,5‒7,5; during the flood, Gn 7,6‒8,19; after the flood, Gn 8,20‒9,17), and concludes with a summarization and further analysis of the redaction history of the flood narrative as reconstructed by the author, with a special concern of the nature of the two literary strands (Strand I and Strand II) that have been separated out in the previous analysis. Following on, the results of the author's redactional analysis are compared with those in the history of research. The majority of verses in Strand I correspond to the conventionally assigned non-P, and the majority of verses in Strand II to P. The comparison shows the affinity of the final position of the author with that of the two-source hypothesis. However, such affinity does not necessarily indicate the endorsement of the overall validity of the Documentary Hypothesis. To avoid such confusion, the term "an originally independent account" is used instead of "a source, document". The Priestly texts in the flood narrative originally belonged to an independent account. It was kept complete, continuous, and coherent during its combination with the other originally independent account of non-P. The latter was kept relatively complete. The two accounts were composed together later by a third redactor, who made use of various redactional techniques such as juxtaposition, omission, reordering, changes, and additions.status: publishe