Documentary and Redactional Approach: Israel Knohl

General Description

The Israeli biblical scholar Israel Knohl in Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School has developed a model in which P has two stages: an original composition, which he continues to call P, and a supplement, which was never an independent document, called H.^[1] Knohl too suggests there were two independent stories: the story of Datan and Abiram’s rebellion against Moses’ authority, which was part of the J source, and a rebellion of 250 Israelite (not Levite) chieftains against the position of Moses and Aaron, which was part of the PT (Priestly Torah) source.^[2]

Where Knohl’s analysis differs from the classic Documentary Hypothesis outlined above is in his claim that this latter rebellion originally had no named leader.^[3] When the Torah’s editors combined these two sources, they also added phrases to help combine the two stories under one leader, Korah. Additionally, these editors—attributed to the HS (Holiness School) by Knohl^[4]—reframed the rebellion to be a Levitical rebellion against the appointment of Aaron as the exclusive founding father of the priesthood.

The Text

Below is the text of Numbers 16 as we have it in the Torah today, but with the two textual sources and the redactional layers clearly marked.

• The blue source is J,
• The red source is P,
• The indented black is the redactor’s new material (HS)
• The black in italics is the redactor’s additions into the sources (also HS).

Keep in mind that, unlike the source material, the supplementary redaction material never existed independently.

Analysis

Knohl’s approach yields three distinct rebellions/interest groups; the first two are:

1. The Datan and Abiram rebellion remains the same. In this account from the J source, these two men refuse to listen to Moses, since Moses—really God—reneged on the promise to bring them to the Promised Land following the scout incident. Moses goes to them and commands the earth to swallow them alive, which it does.
2. In the rebellion of the 250 chieftains, part of the PT source, the chieftains challenge the idea that Moses and Aaron should have a monopoly on service to God. All of Israel are holy, they claim. Moses tells them to show up with fire-pans filled with incense and light them, Aaron will do the same and God will choose. The 250 chieftains do this and God reacts by burning them all, thereby establishing Aaron as God’s chosen.

Before we discuss the redactional HS layer (Korah and the Levites), below are the two sources separated into discrete documents as they would have appeared before they were combined. (This time, for the J source we will begin with the rebellion and skip the narrative context, since this point has already been made above.)

Korah’s Levitical Rebellion – The HS Redactional Layer

In addition to combining two separate and different narratives of the rebellion, the redactors added the figure of Korah and the issue of Levites versus priests. The question of whether Levites are themselves kohanim (as the book of Deuteronomy suggests) or whether they are a lower class that serves the priests (as the Priestly tradition has it) was an important issue to the Holiness School.^[6] Since this school ultimately stemmed from the Priestly circle as well, it is not surprising that they would take the opportunity of a rebellion against Aaron to emphasize the issue that Aaron as the founding priest—not just as a Levite—is the person chosen by God to serve in the Tabernacle.

As part of the editorial effort, the HS editors not only added supplementary material, but they added glosses into the source texts at various points to insert Korah “and his group” into it. This has the effect of turning the 250 chieftains into Levites and placing Korah in the center of both this group and the Datan and Abiram rebellion. This also explains why it is so difficult to figure out how Korah died or where he was during the two divine punishments—the fire that burned the chieftains and the earth that swallowed Datan and Abiram—since they ostensibly happened at the same time. Korah, functioning as a literary bridge character, is everywhere at the same time. This addition was part of an attempt to create a smoother final text—in general, Torah redactors could do this by adding material; they were hesitant to delete material, a much easier way of creating a consistent final text.

Finally, this reading helps explain the extremely awkward opening sentence. There is a reason for the double verb use (“took” and “rose up”). The latter verb was the opening verb in the rebellion of the 250 chieftains. The former verb was part of the redactors’ attempt to insert Korah into the narrative and to connect him to Datan and Abiram.

Conclusion

The problems in the Korah, Datan and Abiram, and 250 chieftains story are many and palpable. In this piece, we explored two main possible solutions.^[7] Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but they both begin with the stark difference between the Datan and Abiram rebellion and the other rebellions, and resolve this problem by claiming that the text has at least two layers. Whether a reader finds these models compelling or prefers some other approach, this survey should give you some sense why source and redactional criticism developed—as responses to problems that readers encountered in the Torah text.

Archeology has not provided, nor do we expect it to provide, the original J or P text, or a manuscript marked up by a redactor; in that sense, these models, like many models in the humanities, the social sciences, and pure science are hypotheses. But given the ability of documentary models to explain a very broad array of problems, the Documentary Hypothesis is an extremely robust hypothesis. We know that other ancient Near Eastern texts went through processes of revision and redaction.^[8] The power of the models suggested above, which offer a single explanation for the many problems in Numbers 16, must be measured against the explanatory power of other answers that address these same issues, though typically in a much more piecemeal fashion.