ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) (11/30/90)
(In response to my question the moderator writes:) >[I haven't seen the Hermeneia Genesis, but generally the series tends >to be briefer, so I'd be surprised to find the rather extensive >introduction that is present in Speiser. --clh] First, in answer to my own question, it appears that the Hermeneia series hasn't got around to the "Genesis" volume yet. Anyway, after class on Weds. I trundled on over to HDS's Sperry Library to see if I could come up with any additional sources on tabulations of the textual data supporting the DH. The bad news is that it appears that I may have been right in my previous post: that there isn't a single source that spells out in detail why each and every verse is assigned to its respective DH-source (a suspicious that is confirmed by discussion with my instructors). This, of course, is not to say that the data isn't there, it just doesn't appear to be convienently centrally located. The standard references have it for the "famous" cases (e.g. the Noah and Creation stories) but anyone interested in a specific instance is probably going to have to start digging out old monographs. That said, I did come up with a few interesting books. First a pair of massive books edited by J. E. Carpenter (note the initials ;) and G. Harford-Battersby. _The Hexateuch According to the Revised Version_ (This contains the complete Hexateuch divided into its component Sources: J, E, P and D.) and _Composition of the Hexateuch_ These both contain much detailed information (for example, extensive concordances of characteristic words and phrases for each source) and discussion of the techniques used, etc. However, these books were both written in the opening years of the century, so 1] while specifics like the word-lists and general discussion of technique may still be helpful, they're not, um, ideally up-to-date sources and 2] they're likely to be *very* hard to find outside a very well-stock biblical library. (BTW, these books were published by Longman, Green & Co of London whose address is given on the title page as "39 Paternoster[!] Row". ;) Somewhat easier to find are a couple of books in the "Guides to Biblical Scholarship" series. This is a series of cheap (~$5), concise (<~100pp) introductions to various techniques and mechanisms employed in biblical studies. Wrt the question of the DH I'd recommend the volumes _Literary Criticism of the OT_ and _Form Criticism of the OT_. The second of these is somewhat less useful wrt the DH, but it is still interesting. Another book whose description in the card catalogue at least _appeared_ interesting was Leslie Brisman's _The Voice of Jacob_. Unfortunately it was checked out so I didn't get to look it over, but from the description it sounded quite similar to Friedman's _Who Wrote the Bible_. Cheers NICHAEL nichael@bbn.com -- deep autumn my neighbor, what does she do?