Ralph K. Hawkins, Discovering Exodus. Discovering Biblical Texts. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021. (original) (raw)
The Discovering Biblical Texts series provides basic introductions of biblical books by focusing on the interpretation and reception of the book, as well as the contents of the book. Ralph Hawkins’s Discovering Exodus introducing readers to the overall canonical shape of the book and briefly introduces them to key interpreting issues The book begins with a chapter on the structure and story of exodus before turning to exodus as literature. In chapter 2, Hawkins describes the rise of source criticism and the paradigm shift to literary criticism. This includes an overview of the origin and development of the documentary hypothesis, a theory which he considers flawed, even though he admits in North America the documentary hypothesis remains conventional wisdom. Following Brevard Childs’s work in the late 1970s, as well as the Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative (and similar works), he considers Exodus to be a sophisticated literary work whether or not historical Moses wrote the book. However, in this book, Hawkins is interested in the final form of the text and how Exodus contributes to the whole canon of scripture.
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Textual and Literary Criticism in Exodus
In the early third century Origen noted that in the LXX of the Church, the second Tabernacle account varied in length and content to that of the Hebrew text of his day. Origen was able to provide his readers with a Greek text that was closer to the Hebrew by drawing on later Greek versions of Exodus that matched the Hebrew quantitatively. In the modern period, the question whether the translator of the Old Greek had a Vorlage that was shorter than MT has been much debated, and varying conclusions have been drawn. This chapter will examine what textual criticism has to offer in relation to questions of literary development, taking the example of the Book of Exodus. The Qumran Exodus texts and the Septuagint versions of Exodus will be assessed as possible evidence for the literary development of the two Tabernacle accounts (Exod. chs 25-31, 35-40) towards what we now possess in the form of the early medieval, Masoretic Hebrew version of the Book of Exodus.
Exodus: A new translation with commentary
Highland Park, IL: The Middle Coast Press, 2021
This translation of Exodus follows a similar approach to my translations of Deuteronomy, Genesis and Samuel. In this, as in my other translations, my priority was always to express the ideas in the text in the most natural way in English, and at the same time to capture the energy and rhythm of the original Hebrew. In this book, my translation style has evolved further towards a true "functionally equivalent" approach. As a result, compared with my other translations, this translation is "freer" and departs further and more frequently from the literal meaning of the text. One unique aspect of all my translations is that they jettison the traditional chapter divisions and instead organize the material according to the Masoretic parashot. Organizing the text in this way, I believe, gets us closer to the ancient writers, and yields numerous insights into their composition approach. The commentary accompanying the translation focuses primarily on issues of translation and language. After the commentary I provide an essay that summarizes my views on the composition history of Exodus and that assigns each of the parashot to one of the four major compositional stages that I identify, which span a period of approximately 250 years, from the early sixth century to the mid fourth century BCE. In my treatment of the composition history, I make a number of unusual proposals. Specifically, I argue that (1) the earliest version of Exodus was composed in the first decades of the sixth century as part of the original composition of the "Deuteronomistic History" (Exodus plus Numbers though Kings in my proposal), and that (2) the Yahwistic priesthoods in Yehud and Samaria were jointly responsible for all other additions and edits made to the book between the late sixth century and the mid fourth century. For those who prefer physical copies of books, the print edition of this book is available at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1733441557/
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