212 Bernard M. Levinson Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen: The Pfropfung of the Documentary Hypothesis By Bernard M. Levinson (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455–0125) The narrative of the renewal of the covenant in Exodus 34 affords an important opportunity to reflect on the intellectual history of pentateuchal theory.1 In the same way that Deuteronomy provided an Archimedean fixed point for dating the other pentateuchal sources, so now does Exodus 34, in a spate of recent publications, serve as a fulcrum for the important debate that is currently taking place, most actively in the European context.2 The position that became dominant within classical literary criticism regarded the legal proclamation of Ex 34,11–26 as an ancient »ritual Decalogue«, which was attributed to the Yahwist. That basic position continues to dominate. From the vantage point of the history of traditions, the unit has also come to be regarded as providing an ancient source for the Covenant Code (Exodus 21–23).3 Based on that view of its dating, some scholars regard it, con1 2 3 A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 16th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Oslo, August 2–7, 1998. I am grateful to the McKnight Foundation for the award of a University of Minnesota Faculty Summer Research Grant to permit the completion of the research. For a reaffirmation of Deuteronomy’s pivotal role, see E. Otto, Das Deuteronomium als archimedischer Punkt der Pentateuchkritik: Auf dem Wege zu einer Neubegründung der de Wette’schen Hypothese, in: M. Vervenne/J. Lust (eds.), Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature, FS C. H. W. Brekelmans, BEThL 133, 1997, 321–339. On the new role of Ex 34, see E. Blum, Das sog. »Privilegrecht« in Exodus 34,11–26: Ein Fixpunkt der Komposition des Exodusbuches?, in: M. Vervenne (ed.), Studies in the Book of Exodus: Redaction-Reception-Interpretation, BEThL 126, 1996, 347–366. N. Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5–11, AnBib 20, 1963, 309–310; J. Halbe, Das Privilegrecht Jahwes Ex 34,10–26: Gestalt und Wesen, Herkunft und Wirken in vordeuteronomischer Zeit, FRLANT 114, 1975, 449– 450. 502–505; Y. Osumi, Die Kompositionsgeschichte des Bundesbuches Exodus 20,22b-23,33, OBO 105, 1991, 219–220; and F. Crüsemann, Die Tora: Theologie und Sozialgeschichte des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes, 1992, 135–170. Note the important review essays of Osumi’s and Crüsemann’s work by E. Otto, Zur Kompositionsgeschichte des alttestamentlichen ›Bundesbuches‹ Ex 20,22b-23,33, WZKM 83 (1993), 149–165; and idem, Die Tora in Israels Rechtsgeschichte, ThLZ 118 (1994), ZAW 114. Bd., S. 212–223 © Walter de Gruyter 2002 Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 213 jointly with the Covenant Code, as a source for the legal corpus of Deuteronomy (chs. 12–26).4 Any secondary late accretions, like the post-Deuteronomic redefinition of Passover as a pilgrimage festival (xcph gx xbz »the sacrifice of the Festival of Passover« [Ex 34,25b]), are regarded as few in number and thus easily excised.5 More recently, a number of scholars have argued that the unit is late and post-Deuteronomic.6 This approach returns to one that was held prior to the consolidation of the dominant source-critical view at the end of the last century and which continued sporadically in the early part of this one.7 A third approach seeks a compromise. It recognizes extensive late additions to the unit but contends that they are merely extrinsic and superficial rather than intrinsic and structural; they are thus amenable to surgical removal.8 Whether such a surgically »restored« text finds clear literary or versional support, however – without requiring even more 4 5 6 7 8 903–910. The plethora of inaccuracies in the translation of Crüsemann’s book renders the author an unfortunate disservice: The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law, tr. A. W. Mahnke, 1996, 112–143. N. Lohfink, Zur deuteronomischen Zentralisationsformel, Bib 65 (1984), 297–328; republished in: idem, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur II, SBAB 12, 1991, 147–177, at 173–177; idem, Deuteronomy, IDBSuppl., 1976, 230; G. Braulik, Deuteronomium 1–16,17, NEB 15, 1986, 10; and B. R. Goldstein/ A. Cooper, The Festivals of Israel and Judah and the Literary History of the Pentateuch, JAOS 110 (1990), 27.29.31. On Goldstein and Cooper’s dating, see B. M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, 1997, 70–71. There is broad scholarly agreement that the phrase is a late, Deuteronomistic interpolation in the verse; see already J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 62001, 82 n. 1. More recently, Halbe, Privilegrecht Jahwes, 195–197; E. Otto, Das Mazzotfest in Gilgal, BWANT 107, 1975, 177 n. 1. 247; and G. Braulik, Leidensgedächtnisfeier und Freudenfest: ›Volksliturgie‹ nach dem deuteronomischen Festkalender (Dtn 16,1–17), TP 56 (1981), 335–357; republished in: idem, Studien zur Theologie des Deuteronomiums, SBAB 2, 1988, 95–121, at 101 n. 110. H. L. Ginsberg, The Israelian Heritage of Judaism, 1982, 64– 66; M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 1985, 194–197; W. Johnstone, Reactivating the Chronicles Analogy in Pentateuchal Studies, with Special Reference to the Sinai Pericope in Exodus, ZAW 99 (1987), 16–37; E. Aurelius, Der Fürbitter Israels: Eine Studie zum Mosebild im Alten Testament, CB.OT 27, 1988, 116–126; E. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, BZAW 189, 1990, 67–70. 369–377; idem, Exodus 34,11–26, 347–366; and S. Bar-On, The Festival Calendars in Exodus XXIII 14–19 and XXXIV 18–26, VT 48 (1998), 161–195. Note the astute early analysis by N. M. Nicolsky, Pascha im Kulte des jerusalemischen Tempels, ZAW 45 (1927), 174 –175. R. H. Pfeiffer, The Oldest Decalogue, JBL 43 (1924), 294–310; A. Alt, Die Ursprünge des israelitischen Rechts (1934), in: idem, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel 1, 1953, 278–333 (317 n.1); and L. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, WMANT 36, 1969, 216–232. Otto, Kompositionsgeschichte, 154f. 214 Bernard M. Levinson extensive surgery upon other texts summoned in support of the hypothesis – is another question.9 The continuing lack of consensus warrants a fresh examination. As one part of such a reappraisal, this paper investigates the origin within intellectual history of the claim that Ex 34,11–26 is ancient.10 The Pfropfung of Young Goethe onto the Documentary Hypothesis The claim that Ex 34,11–26 represents an ancient ritual Decalogue goes back to Julius Wellhausen, the founder of the classical documentary hypothesis. The architectonic consistency of the documentary hypothesis all but necessitated that each pentateuchal source should have its own Decalogue: if E had an ethical Decalogue (Ex 20,2–17), it only stood to reason that J – otherwise a narrative denuded of law – should have its own Decalogue too. The covenant renewal of Ex 34,11–26 was mustered to the task. In the process, however, as Ariel sang of the shipwrecked King of Naples, it »suffer[ed] a sea-change / Into something rich and strange« (The Tempest, I.ii. 401 f.). The text that presents itself in derivative terms as the renewal and repetition of an earlier legal proclamation was transformed into an independant and original proclamation: 9 10 E. Otto’s attempt at literary separation does not draw the full implications of his careful redactional analysis. It becomes methodologically problematic to seek to reconstruct a pre-Deuteronomistic core for the chapter, as if the Deuteronomistic material were simply secondary accretions added to an original source. It is not clear that the text he reconstructs ever had any pre-Deuteronomic independent existence. Defending such a claim risks methodological dominoes. Otto deletes the calendar that concludes the Covenant Code (Ex 23,14–19) as a later addition to it. That redefinition of the textual compass of the Covenant Code is based upon the model of Ex 34,11–26, which is held to provide the earlier exemplar. Nonetheless, Otto deletes from that allegedly original exemplar what he concedes is its post-Deuteronomic designation of Passover as a pilgrimage festival (Ex 34,24b). That deletion of Passover actually brings Ex 34 back into conformity with the festival calendar of the Covenant Code, which, despite Otto’s deletion of it as secondary, distinctively preserves its pre-Deuteronomic integrity by making no reference to the paschal slaughter (contra E. Otto, Wandel der Rechtsbegründungen in der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des antiken Israel: eine Rechtsgeschichte des »Bundesbuches« Ex XX 22–XXIII 13, StB 3, 1988, 10–11.52–56.58; idem, tvivbw / ibw šaeba’/šābû’ ôt, ThWAT 7, 1992, 1022 f.; and idem, Kompositionsgeschichte, 154 f.). Accordingly, Otto’s proposal that a Deuteronomistic or later redactor had final disposition of Ex 23,14–19 provides no explanation of why that redactor failed to update the calendar by harmonizing Unleavened Bread with Passover, as he did at Exod 34,25b, where Otto deletes the reference as late. The larger study is the author’s The Revelation of Redaction: Exodus 34:11–26 as a Challenge to the Standard Documentary Hypothesis (under submission). Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 215 Exod. 34 ist die Dekalogerzählung von J. Sie ist hintangestellt und gleichsam in die Rumpelkammer geworfen, weil es unmöglich war, sie mit der Dekalogerzählung von E (Exod. 19 ss.) zu vereinigen. Die Korrespondenz der Parallelen von J und E legt bei dieser allerwichtigsten Perikope die Frage nahe, welches die ältere Version ist und welches die jüngere. E dominiert, J ist verdrängt. Das Vorurteil für die Priorität von J, welches damit erweckt wird, wird bestärkt dadurch, dass die Form der Offenbarung in J altertümlicher und zugleich einfacher ist als in E …11 Perhaps seeking an imprimatur for his still controversial project, Wellhausen several times emphasized that his »discovery« that Exodus 34 preserved the original Decalogue had been anticipated a century earlier by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest writer of the German literary tradition.12 As a young man of twenty-four, Goethe had anonymously published »Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen: zum erstenmal gründlich beantwortet, von einem Landgeistlichen in Schwaben. Lindau am Bodensee. 1773.«13 Despite its great importance to both Goethe’s development as a writer and the intellectual history of pentateuchal criticism, the essay has, astonishingly, never been translated.14 The fictional speaker of the letter writes a colleague about his concern for his son who recently graduated from a theological faculty but who lacks any historical understanding of religion. Dark wintry chill sets the tone as the father, anxious about his son’s future, comments that it is »betrübt die langen Winterabende so allein zu sein.«15 11 12 13 14 15 J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments, 41963, 334. J. Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten: 2. Die Composition des Hexateuchs, 1885, 84 n. 1. Wellhausen also refers to »das Goethesche Zweitafelgesetz in Exod 34« at p. 95. The studies underlying this publication had previously been published in Jahrbuch für Deutsche Theologie 21 (1876), 392–450.531–602; and 22 (1877), 407–479. They were subsequently published and are most conveniently available as idem, Composition des Hexateuchs (see previous note). This publication provides Wellhausen’s extensive and important supplements: the Nachträge (303–373), which date to 1900 and are not available in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. They establish that, now twenty-four years later, Wellhausen still recalls the pivotal role of Goethe’s essay in his own intellectual development (330). J. W. Goethe, Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, in: idem, Der junge Goethe 1757–1775, ed. G. Sauder, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, Münchner Ausgabe, 1.2, 1987, 434– 440. Accordingly, all translations that follow are my own. For initial advice, I am grateful to Claudia Rapp, Assistant Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles. For checking and discussion of the translation, I am indebted to Thomas P. Saine, Professor, Department of German, University of California at Irvine, the editor of Goethe’s autobiography and an officer of the Goethe Society of North America (http://www.hnet.uci.edu/tpsaine/gsna.html). »Distressing to be alone during the long winter evenings« (Goethe, Zwo … biblische Fragen, 434). 216 Bernard M. Levinson In a rhetorical question and answer format that evokes the catechism, Goethe’s pastor argues that the familiar Decalogue of Ex 20 could not possibly have been inscribed on the tablets of the covenant that God first made with Israel: »Nicht die zehen Gebote, das erste Stück unsers Katechismus!«16 The proprietary genitive already begins to hint at the direction of the following textual arguments: Goethe argues that the »Ten Commandments« central to the Christian catechism cannot properly be ancient Judaism’s Decalogue. But just before this catechism, and before turning to any direct textual study, the village pastor had begun to reflect on the theology of history. His prior assumptions there provide the foundation for the textual arguments that ensue. Das jüdische Volk seh ich für einen wilden unfruchtbaren Stamm an, der in einem Krais von wilden unfruchtbaren Bäumen stund, auf den pflanzte der ewige Gärtner das edle Reis Jesum Christum, daß es, darauf bekleibend, des Stammes Natur veredelte, und von dannen P[f]ropfreiser zur Befruchtung aller übrigen Bäume geholt würden. Die Geschichte und Lehre dieses Volks, von seinem ersten Keime bis zur Pfropfung ist allerdings partikular, und das wenige universelle, das etwa in Rücksicht der zukünftigen grosen Handlung mit ihm möchte vorgegangen seyn, ist schwer und vielleicht unnöthig aufzusuchen. Von der P[f]ropfung an wendet sich die ganze Sache. Lehre und Geschichte werden universell. Und obgleich jeder von daher veredelte Baum seine Spezialgeschichte, und nach Beschaffenheit der Umstände seine Speziallehre hat, so ist doch meine Meinung: hier sey so wenig partikulares als dort universelles zu vermuthen und zu deuten. * * * The Jewish people I regard as a wild, infertile stock [or »tribe«] that stood in a circle of wild and barren trees, upon which the eternal Gardener grafted the noble scion Jesus Christ, so that, by adhering to it, it ennobled the nature of the stock and from there slips were fetched to make all the remaining trees fertile. The history and teaching of this people, from its first shoots up to the grafting, is certainly particularistic, and the small amount of the universal [teaching] which may perhaps have been accorded it in anticipation of that future great deed is difficult and perhaps not even necessary to seek out. From the grafting on, the entire matter took a turn. Teaching and history became universal. And although each tree that was ennobled from it had its own special history and its own special teaching according to its circumstances, my opinion is nonetheless: Here [in the case of Christianity] there is as little particularistic to be suspected and interpreted as there is universal there [in the case of Judaism].17 16 17 »Not the Ten Commandments, the first paragraph of our catechism!« (Goethe, Zwo … biblische Fragen, 437). Goethe, Zwo … biblische Fragen, 436f. (emphasis and emendation in original). Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 217 Goethe’s pastor makes a proprietary claim about ethical universality. Consistent with the elaborate allegory of propagation by means of grafting, the religion of ancient Israel and that of Judaism are conflated. They are then jointly conceptualized as sterile, particularistic, and lacking in world-historical significance. Christianity is alone conceived of as fruitful and universally significant.18 The ethical, which is to say, the universal, cannot logically be Jewish. The Stamm – Israel as particular »tribe,« Israel as allegedly embodying particularity – cannot be the Stamm – the »root stock« – of ethics or the universal. Consequently, the ethical Decalogue of Exodus 20 – »das erste Stück unsers Katechismus!« – could not have been, now by definition, the original covenant that God made with the Jews. The proprietary force of the unsers is of course clear, both in its appropriation of the Decalogue and in the dispossession that accompanies it. By means of such exegesis on a cold wintry night, Goethe’s solitary pastor is relieved: »Wie gerne wirft man den beschwerlichen alten Irrtum weg: es habe der partikularste Bund auf Universalverbindlichkeiten … gegründet werden können« (»How gladly one dispenses with that ancient burdensome error: as if that most particular covenant could ever have been grounded upon universal ethical laws …«).19 This theology of history motivates the textual analysis that follows. Despite the text’s own claims, the covenant renewal of Ex 34,11–26 – whose focus is the Stamm, with its so very partikular ritual law – must actually have constituted the original of the covenant and not merely its inconsistent repetition. On that basis, Goethe reconstructs the »Decalogue« of ten laws in Ex 34,11–26 which, he asserts, were originally inscribed on the tablets of the covenant. Only in the later chaos of the Babylonian exile, as the literary materials of the Pentateuch were being assembled and traditions forgotten, did the fateful error occur that led to the ethical Decalogue’s being confused with the ritual text that was 18 19 On these grounds, N. Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age 1, 1991–2000, 142, is incorrect in his analysis of Goethe’s view of the Bible and its relation to Johann Herder (see below, p. 218). His interpretation of »Zwo … biblische Fragen« asserts: »The notion that the Bible is the vehicle of a universal rational and moral religion (such as the Ten Commandments might be held to summarize) is therefore rejected in favor of Herder’s cultural theory which gives value to particular and local traditions.« By reducing Goethe to Herder, Boyle overlooks the importance that Goethe attaches to Christianity: to the Incarnation viewed in philosophical terms as the indispensible means for local and particular cultures to achieve universal significance. Whereas for Herder, particular nations share in a larger human cause and thus implicitly participate in the universal, for Goethe, it is with the Pfropfung alone that the universal enters history. Prior to that point, there is only sterile particularity. Goethe, Zwo … biblische Fragen, 439. 218 Bernard M. Levinson properly the Jewish covenant.20 Goethe’s own dualistic and Romantic assumptions leave him, however, with no way to account altogether within Israel for the origins of the ethical Decalogue to which the original ritual Decalogue allegedly yielded its rightful, rite-full, place. The issue is never discussed.21 Like the young academic son about whom the troubled Swabian pastor wrote on this dark winter’s night of 1773, twenty-four year old Goethe was himself educated in the emerging field of the historical critical study of the Old and New Testaments.22 The fictional letter was written in Frankfurt just two years after Goethe’s return from Strasbourg, where he lived from 1770–1771 and completed a legal training that had been interrupted by ill health. The time in Strasbourg represented a major turning point in Goethe’s literary and intellectual life. He met Johann Gottfried Herder and became active in the Sturm und Drang movement, with its lasting impact upon German poetry and literature. During those years, Goethe studied law and political theology, while also working through Genesis and Exodus in Hebrew and reading widely, presumably also in emergent biblical scholarship.23 Indeed, the 20 21 22 23 Goethe, Zwo … biblische Fragen, 440. I owe this observation to Ms Molly Zahn, Religious Studies undergraduate major, University of Minnesota, for whose careful research assistance and proofreading I am thankful. Several times in his autobiography Goethe discusses his familiarity with the assumptions and methodology of the historical critical method and its divergence from the conventional view of the authorship of the Bible. He describes the Bible as a composite work that slowly grew together, as containing contradictions and as having undergone internal revision. See J. W. Goethe, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. P. Sprengel, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens 16, Münchner Ausgabe, 1985, 298 f.543 f.; transl., idem, From My Life: Poetry and Truth, Parts One to Three, tr. R. R. Heitner, introduction and notes by T. P. Saine, ed. T. P. Saine/J. L. Sammons, Goethe’s Collected Works 4, 1994, 208 f.377. Note the background provided by Gertrud Janzer, Goethe und die Bibel, 1929; and W. Schottroff, Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, EvTh 44 (1984), 463–485. While Goethe in his autobiography several times refers to Spinoza as an important influence, that is always done in the context of his ethical development; the reference is always implicitly to Spinoza’s Ethics (see Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 667 f.712–715.870). Goethe emphasizes the feeling of calm that came over him in perusing the posthumous works of Spinoza (Dichtung und Wahrheit, 713). The reference can only apply to Spinoza’s posthumously published Ethics (1677); his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was published anonymously (Amsterdam, 1670) during his lifetime. Nor does Goethe refer to the Tractatus, even where such an allusion might logically be expected, as in the discussion of historical criticism. Moreover, while Spinoza does distinguish between a divine and a ceremonial law, and views the latter as contingent and particularistic, he never equates the one with the Decalogue and the other with the text of Ex 34. Accordingly, the suggestion by the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe that Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 219 main lines of Goethe’s hypothesis about the Decalogue were originally submitted as a dissertation to the Faculty of Law at the University of Strasbourg. The dissertation was rejected.24 This original version seems, however, to have proposed that the original terms of the covenant were to be found not in the legal proclamation of Ex 34 but in the series of bans in Deut 27.25 Goethe subsequently disavowed that pastor’s letter when he reflected back on his Strasbourg years in Dichtung und Wahrheit, the well-known autobiography he wrote in his sixties: »With untold trouble and inadequate aids and ability I worked my way through the Pentateuch, meanwhile falling into the strangest notions. I believed I had dis- 24 25 Goethe’s position corresponds to Spinoza (Tractatus, books 1, 4, and 5) in distinguishing the contents of the tablets of the covenant from the Decalogue is inaccurate (Sauder’s notes in Goethe, Der junge Goethe, 851). Similarly, the analogies suggested by Schottroff take insufficient account of the dialectical structure of Spinoza’s thought (Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, 472). In his autobiography Goethe discusses his decision to undertake the licentiate in law at the University of Strasbourg, his father’s urging him to submit a doctoral dissertation in addition, the ensuing dissertation on political theology that he submitted in Latin to the Faculty of Law, and his relief at its rejection. Although the publication of the dissertation was denied, Goethe was permitted to hold a pro forma oral defense and thereby, on August 6, 1771, obtained the licentiate permitting him to practice law. (See Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 504–508; transl., Poetry and Truth, 350–352.) Gerhard Sauder, in his annotation to the essay, holds the arguments of Goethe’s Zwo … biblische Fragen to derive from that rejected dissertation, De legislatoribus. Sauder’s observation is based on the report of Franz Christian Lerse (1749–1800), Goethe’s nearly inseparable friend during the Strasbourg years. (See G. Sauder [ed.], Der junge Goethe, 851. The dissertation’s rejection is also noted by M. Buber, Moses, 1946, 119.) Lerse reported that the first draft of Goethe’s dissertation for the Doctor juris degree maintained that: »die zehn Gebote nicht eigentlich die Bundesgesetze der Israeliten waren, sondern daß nach Deuteronomium zehn Ceremonien eigentlich die zehn Gebote vertreten hätten« (as reported by K. A. Böttiger [1760–1835], Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen: In Schilderungen aus Karl Aug. Böttigers handschriftlichem Nachlasse, ed. K. W. Böttiger, 1838, vol. 1, 60 [entry dated: »Lerse im Club den 30. Nov. 1798«]). If this account is correct, Goethe must have had in mind the ritual text of Deut 27,15–26 as the original terms of the covenant (where, however, there are not ten but twelve ritual curses). In writing without further qualification concerning Zwo … biblische Fragen that »Dieselbe These« was previously presented as the rejected dissertation, the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe of Goethe’s work seems to have misunderstood Lerse’s reference to Deuteronomy (Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. P. Sprengel, 1010). Lerse’s report, if accurate, raises further issues. It is not easy to see how the series of bans in Deut 27,15–26 could be interpreted as purely »ceremonial« rather than ethical in concern. They prohibit idols; disobedience to mother and father; removal of boundary markers; abuse of the blind; exploitation of alien, orphan, and widow; incest; bestiality; assault; hired murder; and violation of the Torah. 220 Bernard M. Levinson covered that it was not our Ten Commandments written on those tablets …«26 But it is that recycled dissertation, written with youthful exuberance and rejected first by the University of Strasbourg and then by Goethe himself, which, a century later, Wellhausen – curiously never citing Goethe’s renunciation – claimed that his investigations »confirmed« (bestätigt).27 Just as the patriarchal narratives have their doublets and repetitions, to be source-critically resolved as independent and parallel versions, so does the Decalogue, symmetrically, have its different versions, which are equally easily resolved as J (Ex 34), E (Ex 20), and D (Deut 5). That Ex 34 presents itself as a repetition and renewal of older law28 – not as an independent, let alone the original, legal proclamation – was explained away as a product of redactional disorder. The ritual Decalogue thus narrates not the »third, but the first and only divine revelation on Sinai,« misplaced from its original context by an exilic redactor.29 Given this doubling of Decalogues within Exodus, the last must be made first for a proper reconstruction of the literary history of the Pentateuch. Wellhausen urges the sharpest possible distinction (am schroffsten) between Ex 20 and Ex 34 in language that recalls Goethe’s own dichotomy between »here« and »there« in the history of religions: »dort sind die Gebote fast nur moralisch, hier ausschliesslich ritual.«30 Wellhausen’s thesis of the antiquity, priority, coherence, and originality of the legal revelation of Ex 34, as prompted by Goethe, has effectively defined the subsequent course of the history of scholarly interpretation. Direct challenges have been few.31 Even those analyses that did not accept Wellhausen’s attribution of Ex 34 to the J source held fast to something more essential: the assertion that the chapter, far from 26 27 28 29 30 31 »Ich arbeitete mich mit unsäglicher Mühe, mit unzulänglichen Hülfsmitteln und Kräften durch die fünf Bücher und geriet dabei auf die wunderlichsten Einfälle. Ich glaubte gefunden zu haben, daß nicht unsere Zehn-Gebote auf den Tafeln gestanden …« (Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, 546; Poetry and Truth, 378). Goethe’s disavowal is also noted in the polemic against source criticism by J. H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary, 1938, 368 (with thanks to Prof. G. Rendsburg, Cornell University, for this reference). Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, Nachträge, 330. Ex 34,1; note also the citation tag of 34,18b. »Es will nicht die dritte, sondern die erste und einzige Gottesoffenbarung am Sinai erzählen« (Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, 84). »There the commands are almost exclusively moral; here, exclusively ritual« (Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, 96; my translation). Astutely, A. Alt explicitly rejects Goethe’s position, describing the unit as »ein sekundäres Mischgebilde« (Die Ursprünge des israelitischen Rechts, 317 n.1). See also n. 7 above. Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 221 being a repetition of earlier law – as the text itself asserts – represents an original and independent legal source: in fact, the most ancient Israelite law. Halbe’s influential traditio-historical study pushed the date of Ex 34,11–26 back to the early settlement period, regarding it as a chiastically-structured ancient tradition of Yahweh’s »Law of Privilege« (Privilegrecht, a model derived from medieval European feudalism). In this radical claim for priority and originality, Ex 34 functioned as a legal source for the Covenant Code.32 Similarly, Christoph Dohmen’s recent redaction-historical study proposes that the Law of Privilege in Ex 34 comprised part of the original Sinaitic theophany, even if one not yet understood as a covenant and not originally identified with the tablets of the covenant. On his opening page, he credits Goethe for first raising the question.33 Even Frank Crüsemann’s recent major study, although questioning the notion of a Decalogue structure and disputing Halbe’s pre-monarchic dating, affirms that the unit belongs to the eighth century as Israel’s earliest law and argues that it represents a pre-Deuteronomic source for the Covenant Code.34 Goethe’s proposal, which was eagerly grafted onto the documentary hypothesis by Wellhausen and which has since vigorously propagated itself, raises some interesting issues. The horticultural allegory clearly draws on one employed by Paul in reflecting on his mission to the gentiles (Rom 11,17–24). Nonetheless, it completely inverts the terms of the original.35 In Paul’s epistle, it is the gentile addressee who is figuratively described as »a wild olive shoot« that is grafted onto Judaism, »the rich root of the olive tree« (Rom 11,17). Paul frames the unit with an inclusio which contrasts the »wild olive tree« with its root stock, the »cultivated olive tree.« Paul cautions his gentile addressees against pride: »Do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you« (Rom 11,18). In his reuse of Paul’s allegory, Goethe has transformed the original’s brilliantly dialectical thought into an approach that is dualistic and self-contradictory in its assumptions about history, faith, and Spirit. How does Goethe’s theology of history understand the universal to emerge historically, when it quite literally has no roots or antecedents? Goethe’s youthful Romanticism is essentially 32 33 34 35 Halbe, Privilegrecht Jahwes, 449f.502–505. C. Dohmen, Was stand auf den Tafeln vom Sinai und was auf denen vom Horeb? Zur Geschichte und Theologie eines Offenbarungsrequisits, in: F-L. Hossfeld (ed.), Vom Sinai zum Horeb: Stationen alttestamentlicher Glaubensgeschichte, 1989, 9–50. Crüsemann, Die Tora, 135–170. The relation is noted, although the complete inversion of the terms is not, by Schottroff (Goethe als Bibelwissenschaftler, 472 n. 40) and by the editor of the Münchner Ausgabe (Sauder, Der junge Goethe, 851). 222 Bernard M. Levinson Marcionite in its dualistic theology.36 It finds no vital connection between ritual and ethical, between particular and universal, between Old and New Testament, between Judaism and Christianity.37 Given the logic of the excluded middle, it is no wonder that the horticultural allegory should require something completely external to history as a way of accounting for the universal’s coming into existence from a sterile Stamm. The allegory provides an all but supernatural, if hardly biblical, edle Reis (»noble scion«) ex machina. The history of reception of Goethe’s proposal raises further issues. In the pastor’s letter, it is the cluster of theological assumptions that drives the textual analysis: the exegesis does not begin with the text.38 But that textual proposal, now severed from its theological motivation, is what alone has entered the history of biblical scholarship, from Wellhausen to the most recent writers who cite young Goethe’s essay, whether 36 37 38 What motivates Wellhausen’s appropriation of this model strikes me as primarily a Romantic yearning for originality and antiquity. In this model, creativity is equated with orality, such that textuality is deemed a secondary fossilization. The paradoxical goal of the literary method is to reach the preliterary stage assumed by the text. Following his change of chairs from Greifswald to Halle and then Marburg, the same spirit motivated Wellhausen’s attempt to recover the oral poetry of the Arabic Jāhiliyyah, and thus to penetrate beneath the alleged overlay of Islamic literate culture (see K. Rudolph’s observation that »there was no difference in the method which Wellhausen employed in the two fields of research …«; Wellhausen as an Arabist, Semeia 25 [1982], 111–155, at 112.) In this way, I do not regard Wellhausen’s brilliant scholarship as driven by simple anti-Semitism, but as adhering primarily to Romantic assumptions about literature and culture. In sharp contrast, Wellhausen used the same metaphor of grafting very differently. In accounting for his shift from Old Testament to Arabic studies, he stresses that the reconstruction of the Stamm is essential for understanding the growth of the Reis. PreIslamic Arabic culture provides the best way of gaining access to the original Semitic stock out of which Israelite religion developed: »Den Uebergang vom Alten Testament zu den Arabern habe ich gemacht in der Absicht, den Wildling kennen zu lernen, auf den von Priestern und Propheten das Reis der Thora Jahve’s gepfropft ist. Denn ich zweifle nicht daran, dass von der ursprünglichen Ausstattung, mit der die Hebräer in die Geschichte getreten sind, sich durch die Vergleichung des arabischen Altertums am ehesten eine Vorstellung gewinnen lässt.« See J. Wellhausen, ed. and tr., Muhammed in Medina: Das ist Vakidi’s Kitab alMaghazi in verkürzter deutscher Wiedergabe herausgegeben, 1882, 5. Note the valuable study by R. Smend, Julius Wellhausen and his Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Semeia 25 (1982), 1–20, adducing this citation (p. 8). In this regard, it is important to indicate that the concern of this investigation is only to address the intellectual history of the claim for the antiquity of Ex 34. Clearly, this analysis does not necessarily mean that such claims are incorrect. Still less should this analysis be viewed, conversely, as defending the antiquity or originality either of the Decalogue of Ex 20 or of the Sinai Pericope, whether in composition or in redaction. Goethe’s Analysis of Exodus 34 and Its Influence on Wellhausen 223 in agreement or in disagreement, while either overlooking or remaining silent about its non-textual rationale. This history of scholarly silence mandates a new look at Ex 34. This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Ex 34,11–26. In the contemporary debate about pentateuchal theory, a question that remains insufficiently addressed is how and why the idea originally developed that the unit represents an ancient, independent, pre-Deuteronomic legal source. Wellhausen credited the idea to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s »Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen …« (1773). Like Goethe, Wellhausen regarded the unit as a »ritual Decalogue,« in contrast to the »ethical Decalogue« of Exodus 20. The distinction helped Wellhausen consolidate the classical model of the documentary hypothesis: he attributed the cultic Decalogue to the Yahwist and the ethical to the Elohist. Despite the importance of Goethe’s essay to the history of pentateuchal criticism, it is not clear that its arguments have previously been investigated.