scholars you should know: deane galbraith

7/27/2019 Scholars you Should Know: Deane Galbraith

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Scholars You Shoul d Know: Deane Galbraith

Deane Galbraith has recently completed his dissertation titledManufacturing Judean Myth: TheSpy Narrative in Numbers 1314 as Rewritten Tradition. It is a genuinely ground-breaking piece

of scholarship and I wanted to excerpt snippets of it and ask Deane Galbraith about them. By sodoing I hope to introduce you to a scholar you should know.

Accordingly, what follows are passages from his book (which hopefully will soon be published),

and questions about his work (in bold print, so as to set them off from citations and responses).

Deane, you write early on in your work1

When considering literary disunity within the Pentateuch, a possible explananswhich is seldom even raisedis that a single author might have createdtheperceived disunity within the text (p. 32).

This, as you know, flies in the face of the last 200 years of historical-critical work. How do

you justify such a sea change in our approach to the text?

May I first thank you, Jim, for your interest in my work, and for so kindly offering to interview

me on your blog.

In terms of the history of scholarship on the spy narrative in Num 1314, I agree: the approach Itake is fairly innovative. But I am influenced by a significant number of Hebrew Bible scholars

who, in recent decades, have challenged the prevailing historical-critical assumption that disunity

within a text should usually be interpreted as a sign of its evolution over time. Nahum Sarna,

Michael Fishbane, Jack Miles, and Robert Alter, for example, each question in their own waywhether historical critics, in reaching their conclusions, have adequately considered the

aesthetics of the ancient composers themselves. Jack Miles even entertains the idea that ancient

composers had an aesthetic ofwilled confusion; that to some extent they simply likedtheresulting unevenness in the text. If what Miles describes is a distinctive feature of much biblical

1Note- the pagination I am following is based on a PDF of the dissertation and will probably in no way correspond

to the published edition. I apologize for this but of course it cannot be helped.


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literatureas I think it isit would demand the kind of sea-change to which you refer.Moreover, all of this has especial applicability to Numbers. For, as commentators have

frequently observed, the book presents what appears to be a jumble of different narrative formsand traditions. If Numbers has the appearance of, as Martin Noth described it, an unsystematic

collection of innumerable pieces of tradition of very varied content, age and character (eine

unsystematische Zusammenstellung von zahllosen berlieferungsstcken sehr verschiedenenInhalts, Alters und Charakters), then I think we should also question whether this tendency tojuxtapose diverse material throughoutthe book applies to the method of composition withinindividual narratives.

You follow that statement up with

Num. 1314 is a compilation of multiple traditions combined according to anaesthetic of unity and disunity which is radically different from the sensibilitiesand techniques of modern critical scholarship (p. 33).

The dissertation spends a lot of time supporting and explaining and fleshing out this

skeletal statement. Convincingly, I might add. But what led you to this view?

In short, I found that both the traditional documentary hypothesisbased approach and the morerecent approaches which posit a series of redactional layers in Num 1314, did not satisfactorily

account for the peculiar literary features we find in the text.

As for the longer answer, it took me quite a while to come to this view, and I did so in a fairly

roundabout fashion. When I commenced the project, my primary focus was on how and why

stories about gigantic inhabitants of the promised landvery brief and allusive traditionshad

ended up in the biblical texts. Where did these strange traditions come from, and what promptedtheir inclusion in a story about the settlement of Israel in the land? Like most others before me,

I first proceeded on the basis that what we had in these references to giants was the vestige of

very old traditionand so I began by examining the references to the rpum at Ugarit and theRephaim of the poetic biblical books, in order to trace their development. The problem I ran into

was that these supposedly very oldtraditions about autochthonous rulers or giants consistentlyappeared to form a part of the very lateststage of literary developmentnot only in Numbers,but in Deut 1, Josh 14 and 15, and Judg 1. The late Lothar Perlitt had perceptively observed thesame phenomenon, although his explanation falls back on some traditional assumptions about a

progression from myth to history which I would dispute. At the same time, I noticed the

complexity of the integration of the various components of Num 1314: the purportedly verylatest levels of the text seemed to presume what is contained in purportedly the very latest levels.

So I eventually realized that the questions I had originally posed for investigation were

themselves misconceived. The facts were getting in the way! I needed to reexamine some of the

basic diachronic assumptions which were present in earlier studies of the spy narrative.Accordingly, my whole approach changed dramatically. Fortunately, I could find many of the

tools I needed to understand the development of the text in studies of inner-biblical interpretation

and rewritten Bible.


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You also say

The present study thus offers a distinct alternative to prevailing models for the

composition of Num. 1314, challenges existing theories of the relationship

between Numbers and Deuteronomy, and makes a new contribution to ourunderstanding of the composition of the Hexateuch (p. 41).

In a nutshell, what is that contribution?

The first edition of Numbers itself was written later than deuteronomistic Deuteronomy. That is,

most of Deuteronomy was written before Numbers was conceived. Only very minor

harmonisations were added to both Deuteronomy and Numbers when the two books were later

combined into a larger narrative unit (a Hexateuch [Genesis-Joshua] or Enneateuch [Genesis-Kings]).

My study of Num 1314 and Deut 1 provides what I think is a good argument for such anunderstanding of the development of Numbers and the Hexateuch. But I readily admit that this

conclusion needs to be corroborated by further studies of other narrative and legal sections of

Numbers, by employing a similar model of rewritten tradition (as indeed Benjamin Sommer

has done for Num 11 and Robert Alter for Num 16).

And then you say something I found really important:

the biblical reviser honours the past by reinterpreting it; he finds the past

authoritative only insofar as may be retold in ways that are consistent with the

contingencies of the present (p. 45).

This, I assume, is how you would view the entire Hebrew Bible. Is that assumption

correct?

This paradoxical manner in which authoritative tradition functions is, I think, an important

feature of the composition of most parts of the Hebrew Bible. And it occurs in many other

contexts as well; the paradox can be observed in almost any process involving the transmissionof culture, not just in those processes which are categorized as biblical or even religious. This

provides one very important reason why the study of reception history in any time periodof the

contextual factors which produce a certain use or influence of textspotentially offers valuablegrounds for understanding the processes by which the Bible itself was produced. For the ability

to examine the inner-biblical rewriting of tradition depends on the existence of the rewritten text

and its precursors, or at least our ability to satisfactorily reconstruct a precursor. But there are

only a limited number of these examples available within biblical literature. There are more if weextend our examination to Second Temple or later Jewish and Christian literature in general, but

more still if we extend our investigations further afield in order to compare certain elements of

textual production.


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Also interesting, for me at least, is your definition of myth:

I define myth as an ideological narrative that people in a given society, orsector of society, understand (often unconsciously) to be a credible and

authoritative truth claim and which both describes paradigmatic aspects of thatsociety or sector of society and prescribes its paradigmatic goals and ideals (p.61).

Do you care to unpack that a bit?

Yesin that rather dense formulation, which comes at the end of a longer discussion of the term

myth, Im building primarily on the conceptions of myth and ideology developed by Bruce

Lincoln and Louis Althusser. I also agree with Chiara Bottici that, despite the diverse range ofmeanings the term attracts, there is really no alternative which expresses the way in which

certain narratives provide significance and foster identity for a given community. My immediate

interest is, of course, how a particular subset of myththefoundingmyth of Israelitesettlementdeveloped over time.

So, to unpack the definition: myth typically has a narrative form, rather than a bare

propositional form. This is largely because myths potential to evoke emotions is as important as,or perhaps more important than, its ability to convey conceptual information. By ideological

narrative, I refer to those stories that are basic to the way that a community,people, or nation

functions. Such stories determine the very way wesee and experience the worldand so veryoften we just dont even notice them let alone think about them, as they seem natural; they

remain largely unconscious to us. They also determine our role in society, the very way we

conceive of ourselves as a subject within society. Sometimes it takes somebody looking in from

the outside to articulate these largely unseen rules, discourses, concepts, practices, andinstitutions that those on the inside take so much for granted. The perceived authority of such

stories, and this is Bruce Lincolns claim, is what distinguishes a mythic narrative from other

truth claims. As for myths describing functions, Im utilizing here Bronislaw Malinowksisconception of myth as a social charter. Malinowski opposed those earlier theorists who just

dismissed myth as a primitive error, or as science done badly, reclaiming it as a symbolic map of

the social order. Lincoln adds that myth is not only descriptive of society, but that it isprescriptive; it not only provides a model ofsociety but also an ideaforsociety (in CliffordGeertzs words). Myth is not, for Lincoln, only a taxonomy of society in narrative form, it also

reflects and enforces hierarchies and power relations; it is also ideologyin narrative form. Thislast distinction is important when we come to consider changes between the deuteronomistic spynarrative in Deut 1 and the version we find in Num 1314. For we are not getting a mere

variation of some underlying master myth; these changes are in fact reflections ofspecific

changes in societal relations, economic structures, and ideology. These elements in my definition

of myth usefully complement the inner-biblical interpretation and rewritten Bible models onwhich I also rely.

Your work turns out to be meticulously researched and your arguments are supported by a

virtual army of textual support. Might I ask, how long have you worked on this project?


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The PhD took just over four years. Also, the year before that I worked on the Ugaritic texts and

language.

The mastery of the various languages involved itself is astonishing, as you demonstrate

facility in Greek, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Syriac among others. How necessary do you thinkmastery of the languages is to researchers? Or, to put it differently, what would you say

about language study to a budding scholar?

If I didnt know Greek, Hebrew, and Ugaritic I couldnt begin to properly understand the verytexts which are the subject matter of my dissertation. I would not only have to rely on the

secondary commentary of scholars, but I would have no real means of evaluating their various

conclusions. It would be impossible! So, in short, a knowledge of the language of the primary

texts you study is essential, and I definitely encourage doing so from the very beginning ofundergraduate level. Having said that, your particular language requirements will be dependent

on what you eventually study at postgraduate levelwhich complicates things. If youre into

apocryphal Egyptian Christian literature, then Greek and Coptic might be what you need; but ifyoure into John Miltons use of the Bible, then some basic Hebrew and Greek would be of some

but limited use, but English and Latin would probably be more useful. This makes it kind of

difficult, but for anybody beginning biblical studies, Id definitely recommend at least a year of

Hebrew and Greek.

I noticed, and I sure you intended me to, that you date the materials youre dealing with

rather late. For instance, you write

Numbers 1314s integration of four deuteronomistic or Persian-period precursor

traditions, and its complex transformation of those traditions, is better explained

as the product of a unified and coherent project of rewritten tradition carried outduring the post-deuteronomistic stage of Pentateuchal composition (p. 153).

And unless I have misunderstood you, you date that stage to the late Persian period or

Hellenistic era. Do you consider yourself a minimalist in terms of the dating of the

Hebrew Bibles texts?

I date the origin of the spy narrative in Numbers on the grounds that it is post-deuteronomisticand reliant on more than one Persian-period precursor, and so provide a relative dating to the late

Persian period or early Hellenistic era, say from ca 450300 BCE. In addition, I see significant

ideological connections between Numbers and the book of Chronicles which might suggest adate which is closer to the end of that period (and so towards the early Hellenistic era).

Comparable dates have been offered in the detailed analyses by Eckart Otto and Reinhard

Achenbach, albeit that they divide the text of Numbers into multiple levels from the mid-fifth to

early fourth centuries BCE. The still later hexateuchal additions, and the formation of theHexateuch, are quite plausibly, then, an early Hellenistic development.

But I am not a minimalist. I think that the term minimalist is largely meaningless, a term ofpolemic employed only by uptight and defensive reactionaries, providing about the same level of


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semantic value as a child who puts her hand over her ears and shouts la la la la la la at the

world. In dating these texts as I do, I am simply making what I think are the best judgments in

light of the available evidenceand this is properly neither minimalist nor maximalist.

You do, after all, draw on a lot of Hellenistic materials. Indeed, you seem to find parallelsto many of the Pentateuchs stories in Greek literature. So, for instance, you say

These abundant similarities between and of Miletos provide further

good grounds to conclude that is a cognate of the title . The sons ofAnak would accordingly refer generically to descendants of elite rulers or

lords, and in particular autochthonous rulers from antiquity (p. 300).

Recent scholarship has also tended to see parallels between Greek literature and the

Hebrew Bible with the result being that many see the Old Testament as borrowing its

stories, in various degrees of dependence, from Greek tales. Do you see any peril in this

sort of parallelomania? Or do you think that any hesitance is the consequence of anoverabundance of caution or a desire to protect the uniqueness of the Hebrew Bible?

To be precise, I draw on a fair bit ofHellenic orGreekmaterial, not so muchHellenistic material(the latter refers to the period after the death of Alexander), and, moreover, I do so in respect of arelatively limited number of elements in Num 1314. But you are quite right to identify the two

opposite dangers of employing Greek comparisons. By avoiding Greek materials altogether, one

risks buying into the modern separation of East and West with all of its modern Orientalistunderpinnings, and falsely imposing this conception on antiquity. And one would miss out on an

important part of the background to the book of Numbers. Morton Smith notes the presence of

numerous Greek and Roman parallels in pre-twentieth-century commentaries, lamenting that

they reflect the happier days of Biblical scholarship, before the specialization of ancient neareasternstudies had entailed ignorance of half the Old Testaments Umwelt. Moreover,archaeology has provided evidence of significant Greek influence in Palestine well before

Alexanders conquests, so we need to appreciate that the Persian period is also a time ofsignificant Greek influence. On the other hand, by simply listing Greek parallels willy nilly, the

risk would obviously be a lack of discriminationwhich would add more confusion than light to

the biblical passage under consideration. What converts the bare possibility of an etymological

relation between the HebrewAnakand the GreekAnax into a plausible option is a detailedcomparison of the semantic range of each term and evidence of multiple common elements in the

conception of each. That is what I set out to do. After all, the book of Numbers is the one book of

the Pentateuch which explicitly mentions the contemporary Greeks (as Kittim: 24:24)sothere is all the more reason not to ignore the Hellenic portion of the Hebrew Bibles Umwelt.

Without unduly revealing too much (I dont want to rob potential readers of your work the

joy of discovering your conclusions for themselves), you write, in part, at the end of the

volume:

The spy narrative in Num: 1314 is essentially a unified composition, composedby a single author in the late Persian period or early Hellenistic era. This author


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was also responsible for the framework of the book of Numbers in its current

form, including its two censuses of successive generations of Israelites, and

therefore responsible for the first edition of Numbers as a whole. The changeswhich the author made to his five precursor myths introduce an emphasis on an

elect remnant within Israel which was not present in earlier Pentateuchal

traditions. The elect remnant is exemplified by Judah, thereby also revealing apro-Judean bias in the composition of the book of Numbers. The divine electionof Israel, however, is not limited to Judah, as it extends to members of other tribes

of Israel who, according to the standards of the author, were considered to follow

Yahweh fully (p. 433).

Having finished your work, and having had time to reflect on the entire project, do you still

see things that way? If not, what would you change or adjust?

Im not that long finished, so I wont claim that I have the critical distance necessary to answer

this question. Im sticking by it for now!

What are you working on now?

While I was working on the dissertation, I made a list of ideas that could be developed into

articles, but which I had no time to work on. So I am working on some of these now. Forexample, I am writing on a specific example of the use of the LXX in the Gospel of Petera

refreshing break from Pentateuchal matters. In addition, editorial work forRelegere: Studies inReligion in Reception occupies a bit of my time.

Have you any possibilities for publishers for your dissertation which, I imagine, will be

revised at least in some respect?

In fact, the dissertation is currently under peer review with a well-known publisher, and I will let

you know when there are further developments. Read about it on this blog first!

Thanks for your time, and thanks for your willingness to interact. We look forward to

more from you in the future. Its my opinion that you are a scholar people should know,

and keep an eye on (for a lot of reasons)

Thank you, Jim.

scholars you should know: deane galbraith

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