Читать книгу A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible - Colleen M. Conway - Страница 49

At this point we are discussing Israel’s earliest history in the land. This is the time when Israel lived in villages and did not yet have a king, a period described in the biblical books of Joshua and Judges. These books, however, date from around 600 bce at the earliest, at least five hundred years after the events they describe. They are different from each other, and each builds on diverse oral and written traditions to tell its stories. For example, the books tell up to three different stories of the conquest of several cities: e.g. Hebron in Josh 10:36–7, 15:13–14, and Judg 1:10 or Debir in Josh 10:38–9, 15:15–17, and Judg 1:11. Because of problems like these historians of ancient Israel are ever more careful about how they use information from Joshua and Judges. Also, the discipline of archaeology has provided an important control for helping such historians evaluate the historical usefulness of biblical traditions. Later in this Introduction we will return to look at the books of Joshua and Judges as theological texts addressed to the people of the seventh century.

These oral traditions were in flux, as they were sung and told from year to year amidst constantly cycling generations. At one time scholars used to think that nonliterate cultures, such as the early Israelites, had unusual powers of memory that allowed them to memorize and precisely recite oral traditions over hundreds of years. Careful study of such cultures, however, has revealed that people who memorize traditions through purely oral means change those traditions constantly and substantially. To be sure, some elements may be preserved because they are anchored in a name, topographical feature, or ongoing cultural practice. Nevertheless, the singers of oral cultures regularly adapt the traditions they receive – telling versions of the same story about different figures and/or in different settings, revising what those figures say, conforming the story over time to certain broader types of tales (e.g. adding trickster themes), etc.

This means that the early traditions of ancient Israel, whatever they were, evolved in their journey across the centuries of the late second and early first millennia, passing from one set of lips to another. A name such as “Moses” might stick, even the name of a long-abandoned Egyptian city – “Rameses” – but the story of the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt would evolve as they faced new enemies and challenges in later centuries. In the process of oral telling and retelling, the “Moses” of the story might start to resemble leaders or liberators at the time of retelling, and the “Egypt” of the retold story might resemble later enemies. Similarly, the story of Jacob wrestling God at the Jabbok (now in Gen 32:22–32) explains the place name “Penuel,” and because the place name implies a divine encounter (Penuel is interpreted as Hebrew for “face of God”), that part of the story may have stayed stable over time while other details changed in the retelling process.