Documentary and Redactional Approach: Israel Knohl
Published: June 19, 2014
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
In distinguishing P and H Knohl follows earlier scholars; his innovation was that H is later than P, and written to supplement it.
PT is the siglum Knohl uses for P. For Knohl’s discussion, see Sanctuary of Silence, 79-86.
For more on this, see Rachel Adelman’s TABS devar Torah, “The Mysterious Literary Life of Korah.”
According to Knohl, the source usually referred to as H was actually the work of a school of editors who not only added material to P but were the editors of the entire Torah. For more on this, see his book, Sanctuary of Silence.
In this reconstruction, J seems to be missing the opening of the story. Why is Moses calling for them?
For more on the differences between Deuteronomy’s conception of kohanim and that of the Priestly and Holiness schools, see A. Avreich’s TABS essay, “The Kohanim the Levi’im.”
See the additional more complex model suggested by David Frankel, The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School: A Retrieval of Ancient Sacerdotal Lore (Brill, 2002), chapter 4.
This is discussed in Jeffrey H. Tigay, Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (1988, 2005).
