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I chose the first reading assignment from “The Book of the Torah” by Thomas Mann to respond to for the first of the three response papers. The biggest insight that I gained from this reading had to do with the origin of the Pentateuch. I was not aware of the oral history of the Pentateuch and that the original “authors” of the Pentateuch were actually not authors in the traditional sense but were probably a lot more similar to editors or as Mann refers to them in his book, “redactors.” In some ways this seemed to clarify certain aspects of the Pentateuch, but in other ways it made some aspects seem a lot less clear.
The fact that the original authors of the Pentateuch acted more in an editorial manner seemed to me to lend itself to certain structures that are present in the Pentateuch, such as the order of Genesis. One might assume that the original oral presentations of Genesis might have been done in chronological order. However, since some of the “stories” of Genesis seem to have been told in a narrative fashion and some seem to have been told from a historical perspective it would seem that there were probably several different oral presenters, for lack of a better word, of the early versions of Genesis. Yet, with all the different stories from so many different perspectives there still seems to be a certain order and structure to Genesis.
I also can’t help but wonder how different the text that we know today is from the original oral presentations. To be certain, oral presentation was a precursor to the written word and in a pre written-word culture those who verbally recited news and stories became fairly skilled and were probably able to maintain consistency from one oral presentation to the next of the same text. But, over such a vast amount of time there would have to have been major modifications to the text. I also can’t help but wonder about what we know about the original oral presenters of the Pentateuch.
I will definitely read the Pentateuch in a different way now. I will look for inconsistencies and I will try to find points where the authorship changes. I will also try to find points where it might look like the “redactors” chose to put some of their own material in the text.