Source: http://thetorah.com/source-criticism-its-in-the-plague-of-blood/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:52:38+00:00

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I am fond of Parashat Va’era—it was my Bar Mitzvah parashah forty-four years ago. That may be bashert (predetermined good fortune)—after all, it is one of the most important Torah portions for understanding the utility of source-criticism.
Its initial verses claim that the patriarchs in Genesis did not know God by the name YHWH, which is flatly contradicted by many verses in Genesis where the ancestors and others use this name. This has long been recognized as one key indicator of the multiplicity of sources in the Bible; the beginning of our parasha come from P, the Priestly source, which in Genesis knows God as Elohim (translated by convention “God”) or El-Shaddai, but never as YHWH. One of the ways that P marks the era beginning with Moses as special is by claiming that God’s true name was only revealed then.
To my mind, another equally compelling indication of the existence of sources is found in the following chapter, in the blood plague in Exodus 7:14-25, which is reproduced here in the translation of Everett Fox. His translation is very literal, and attempts to render each Hebrew word with a unique English word, and thus is especially useful for anyone attempting a source-critical analysis using an English Bible. As you read the text in Hebrew or English, please be open to seeing “bumps” or problems in the narrative.
Pharaoh’s heart is heavy-with-stubbornness—he refuses to send the people free.
Send free my people, that they may serve me in the wilderness! But here, you have not hearkened thus far.
and it will change into blood.
18 The fish that are in the Nile will die, and the Nile will reek, and the Egyptians will be unable to drink water from the Nile.
and let them become blood!
There will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt—in the wooden-containers, in the stoneware.
20 Moshe and Aharon did thus, as YHWH had commanded them.
and all the water that was in the Nile changed into blood.
the blood was throughout all the land of Egypt.
22 But the magicians of Egypt did thus with their occult-arts, and Pharaoh’s heart remained strong-willed, and he did not hearken to them, as YHWH had spoken.
23 So Pharaoh turned and came into his house, neither did he pay any mind to this.
24 But all Egypt had to dig around the Nile to drink water, for they could not drink from the waters of the Nile.
1. Did Only the Nile Turn to Blood or All the Water in Egypt?
Let me start at the end, with v. 24, which suggests that only the Nile water was affected by the plague. That flatly contradicts v. 19b, which claims that the blood plague affected all the water in Egypt: “There will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt—in the wooden-containers, in the stoneware,” where the last phrase suggests that even water stored in various containers turned into blood!
If the reader is not absolutely committed to the unity of the text, this contradiction suggests that multiple sources are present—in this case, one source that has a plague that affects the Nile only, while in the other, all Egyptian water is contaminated. This observation alone helps to determine that particular verses belong together, especially vv. 17-18, 20b, 21, and 24, where the plague affects the Nile only, while in v. 19 it affects all the Egyptian water-sources. However, the presence of sources should not be determined by one problem alone, and it is thus significant that a careful reading indicates other problems that intersect with this one.
The previous contradiction corresponds to the contrast between the word ye’or (יאור), the Egyptian word for the Nile, in the former verses, in contrast to its plural ye’orehem (יאוריהם), “Nile canals,” in v. 19—in the former the word is a proper noun, while in the latter the very same word is treated as a common noun, and is in the plural. This sort of distinction—where slightly different words or forms of words are used—also may mark separate sources.
Moses is told to initiate the plague twice—once in v. 14, and then again in v. 19. The directive is then followed twice in the same verse, once by Moses and Aaron (20a; the first half of v. 20), and again by “him” (=Moses) in 20b.
Some commentators, attempting to read the entire passage as a unit, suggest that vv. 14-18 is God commanding Moses to warn Pharaoh, whereas v. 19 is the command to perform the plague, but this is not compelling. The transition between verses 18 and 19 is choppy, and we would have expected verse 19 to be followed by a notice that Moses fulfilled God’s command, which is indeed present—but only several verses later, in v. 20b.
20 is especially helpful for distinguishing the two stories. It reads: “Moshe and Aharon did thus, as YHWH had commanded them. He raised the staff and struck the water in the Nile, before the eyes of Pharaoh and before the eyes of his servants, and all the water that was in the Nile changed into blood.” The singular “he,” following “Moshe and Aharon” is problematic, and hints that in one source, reflected in the beginning of the verse, Moses and Aaron are working in tandem, while another portrays a single actor: Moses (see vv. 14-18).
5. Is the Staff for Hitting or Stretching?
According to the first, Moses strikes the Nile with his staff (v. 17), while in the second account, in v. 19, the action is initiated when Aaron takes his staff, but does not use it to strike the water, but instead stretches out his hand.
7. What is the Plague?
We are used to thinking of this as the blood plague—and indeed that is how it is typified in v. 19. But in vv. 14-18, the blood is the cause of the real problem: the contamination of the Nile as a result of fish that die in the bloody Nile. Thus, these verses really describe two slightly different plagues: blood versus stinky fish.
If we put together the clues noted so far—doublets, namely episodes recited unnecessarily twice, and contradictions—we can see that the text as we have it is comprised of two complete, largely parallel documents. As you can see below, in one source, Moses alone is the protagonist, and in that source, which narrates a stinky fish plague, only the Nile is affected, while in the other Moses and Aaron work together, and all Egyptian water is affected by blood.
14 YHWH said to Moshe: Pharaoh’s heart is heavy-with-stubbornness—he refuses to send the people free. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, here, he goes out to the Nile, station yourself to meet him by the shore of the Nile, and the staff that changed into a snake, take in your hand, 16 and say to him: YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying: Send free my people, that they may serve me in the wilderness! But here, you have not hearkened thus far. 17 Thus says YHWH: By this shall you know that I am YHWH: here, I will strike—with the staff that is in my hand—upon the water that is in the Nile, and it will change into blood. 18 The fish that are in the Nile will die, and the Nile will reek, and the Egyptians will be unable to drink water from the Nile. 20b He raised the staff and struck the water in the Nile, before the eyes of Pharaoh and before the eyes of his servants, and all the water that was in the Nile changed into blood. 21a The fish that were in the Nile died, and the Nile reeked, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile; 23 So Pharaoh turned and came into his house, neither did he pay any mind to this. 24 But all Egypt had to dig around the Nile to drink water, for they could not drink from the waters of the Nile.
19 YHWH said to Moshe: Say to Aharon: Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their tributaries, over their Nile-canals, over their ponds and over all their bodies of water, and let them become blood! There will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt—in the wooden-containers, in the stoneware. 20a Moshe and Aharon did thus, as YHWH had commanded them. 21b the blood was throughout all the land of Egypt. 22 But the magicians of Egypt did thus with their occult-arts, and Pharaoh’s heart remained strong-willed, and he did not hearken to them, as YHWH had spoken.
Each source is complete, consistent, and lacks redundancies and contradictions. The fact that the longer story can be separated into two complete, self-consistent stories is one of the strongest indications of the validity of the source-critical model—try dividing almost any story you may know into two or more complete stories—this is almost always impossible.
The interweaving of stories, as done here in Exodus 7:14-25, is less usual than placing longer blocks or complete episodes one after another, as in the creation stories in Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-3:24. The redactor interweaves stories when it would be awkward from a narrative perspective to place them consecutively, as here, where a blood water plague would have been immediately followed by another blood water plague. Thus, the accounts were interwoven or collated—as in the flood narrative, where one flood (with a promise that another flood will never follow) could not be followed by a second flood story.
Identifying a narrative strand as P or Priestly is often easier than identifying non-P, since P has several striking telltale characteristics, some of which appear in this story. The Priestly story (in blue) has Aaron, the founder of the Priesthood, as a significant protagonist, while the non-P story depicts Moses alone in this role. This connects with the earlier account in P (6:12, 30), where Moses complains that he cannot speak well and God tells Moses that Aaron will be his prophet.
In addition, P is characterized by a desire for order, as represented in the first creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a. It is thus not surprising that this author defines all of the different types of water-bodies in Egypt: “over the waters of Egypt, over their tributaries, over their Nile-canals, over their ponds and over all their bodies of water” (v. 19).
I must admit that at the age of thirteen, I was concerned about getting the vowels and cantillation right, and I did not see these contradictions. My traditional Jewish education did not encourage or even allow me to see as a possibility that the Torah text is composite, encompassing different documents with different theologies and styles. But once I was introduced to this possibility in a serious way, about five years later, it has been hard for me to read the text otherwise. When I see doublets and contradictions, I do not look for ad-hoc answers that reconcile each individual problem; instead, source-criticism is my powerful general tool for discerning and hearing the different voices and traditions embedded in the text. As result, in many ways, the Torah text is richer, and more meaningful to me now than it was forty-four years ago.
14 YHWH said to Moshe: Pharaoh’s heart is heavy-with-stubbornness—he refuses to send the people free. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, here, he goes out to the Nile, station yourself to meet him by the shore of the Nile, and the staff that changed into a snake, take in your hand, 16 and say to him: YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying: Send free my people, that they may serve me in the wilderness! But here, you have not hearkened thus far. 17 Thus says YHWH: By this shall you know that I am YHWH: here, I will strike—with the staff that is in my hand—upon the water that is in the Nile, and it will change into blood. 18 The fish that are in the Nile will die, and the Nile will reek, and the Egyptians will be unable to drink water from the Nile. 19 YHWH said to Moshe: Say to Aharon: Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their tributaries, over their Nile-canals, over their ponds and over all their bodies of water, and let them become blood! There will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt—in the wooden-containers, in the stoneware. 20 Moshe and Aharon did thus, as YHWH had commanded them. He raised the staff and struck the water in the Nile, before the eyes of Pharaoh and before the eyes of his servants, and all the water that was in the Nile changed into blood. 21 The fish that were in the Nile died, and the Nile reeked, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile; the blood was throughout all the land of Egypt. 22 But the magicians of Egypt did thus with their occult-arts, and Pharaoh’s heart remained strong-willed, and he did not hearken to them, as YHWH had spoken. 23 So Pharaoh turned and came into his house, neither did he pay any mind to this. 24 But all Egypt had to dig around the Nile to drink water, for they could not drink from the waters of the Nile.
 A similar tradition appears in the E sections of Exodus 3, which is a composite text. Only for the J source was God’s “true” name, YHWH, always known.
 See Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses (The Schocken Bible; NY: Schocken, 1995). That translation prints the Bible as poetry, in breath-units; these are reproduced here.
 It is not unusual for a source to end or begin in the middle of a verse; the verse divisions were formed at a later period.
 Many scholars consider the non-P account to be J, the work of the Yahwist, though some (e.g. William Propp and Richard Elliott Friedman) feel that the non-P strand in the plague narrative is E.

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