The Recent Study of Hebrew : A Survey of the Literature with Selected Bibliography

are settled in Goshen, a rich agricultural region in the northeastern delta (Ex 47:6). In the exodus story there is no longer any hint of such a pastoral life. When they finally escape from Egypt they are completely helpless in the wilderness and they constantly recall their prior settled agricultural life in Egypt. Coote and Ord understand the oppression in Exodus as Israelite bedouin forced to do corvee labor and link this with the notion that historically Egypt conscripted foreign bedouin for such labor. They state that, "in Egypt in the New Kingdom period, it was possible for Palestinians to be drafted from as far away as Palestine" (p. 44), and as support for this statement they cite an article by D. B. Redford on taxation which has nothing to do with corvee labor. Redford's point is that Pharaonic taxation was not restricted to Egyptians but could be levied on all parts of the empire as well. There is no example of corvee labor being imposed on a foreign population, including bedouin who entered Egypt to pasture their flocks in the delta. In the New Kingdom, prisoners of war, mostly from urban regions, furnished slave labor for the whole of Egyptian society, public and private. J's description of the type of enslavement of foreign labor in Ex 1 is not Egyptian in origin but Israelite, derived from the description of Solomonic building activity in 1 Kings 9:1522. Here the same term for "store-cities," Care miskenot, v. 19 (cf. Ex 1:11), is used, and Solomon specifically enslaved the non-Israelites (vv. 20-21) to do the building. The language and outlook is that of DtrH. An indication that J composed his understanding of the Egyptian oppression by using this late description is confirmed by the fact that Pithom, one of the two "store-cities" mentioned in Ex 1:11, was not built by the Egyptians until the time of Necho II, about 600 B.C.E. (See John S. Holladay, Jr., Cities of the Delta: Tell El-Maskhuta [Malibu: Undena, 1982].) The central thesis of this book is without any historical foundation. Once having set forth their dubious historical hypothesis the authors proceed to interpret the text with this dogma as the hermeneutical clue. This may be illustrated by the example of the Cain and Abel story. We are told that the reason why Abel's offering was acceptable and Cain's was not is that the Cainites represent the Egyptians who work the ground while Abel represents the bedouin, which is Israel's identity, so that the story is about Yahweh's choice of Israel over the Egyptians. "When the 'descendants' of Abel (Israel) are rescued from the descendants of Cain (Egypt), they are led by one who kills a descendant of Cain (Moses). Yahweh then kills the firstborn of the pharaoh, a descendant of Cain. Through this parallel J is asserting that Egyptian corvee is tantamount to murder" (p. 71). This is typological exegesis in which theological categories have been replaced by political ones. We are further told that "in J's history Yahweh has a distinct dislike for the firstborn sons because they are the result of humans usurping the divine prerogative of creating.... Ultimately we will hear Yahweh say, 'Israel my firstborn son, whom I have created,' in the story of the deliverance of the corvee workers. Yahweh could not tolerate human creating" (p. 69, authors' italics). This certainly looks like they are quoting a text from Exodus, but their memory is defective, for Ex 4:22 says nothing about God's creating Israel. That theme is in Second Isaiah which they have confused with the Yahwist! There is much more of this kind of exegesis throughout the book, but I think this is enough. This work is written for believers, not for scholarly dialogue. The faith consists of certainty in the great antiquity of the J document and its reflection of David's time, a particular sociological understanding of the emergence of ancient Israel and the monarchy, however sparse the evidence, and a rather naive approach to the issues of literary, form, and tradition criticism. The exegetical method is typology, the preferred style of dogmatic interpretation for millennia. Those who subscribe to the faith will enjoy reading it; those who do not will find it a waste of time.