During the 1:00–3:30 slot, I attended the Biblical Law session. There were a couple of other sessions that looked attractive, but I always try to hear Baruch Schwartz at these meetings. I’m not totally convinced that Baruch is always right, but he is very persuasive and always has a clear and confident vision of how Torah texts make good sense when read according to the classic JEDP source divisions. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about source matters, and Baruch is probably my favorite documentarian these days.

In this session, Baruch examined the Sabbath commandments in the various Torah sources. According to Baruch’s analysis, J treats the Sabbath only in Exodus 16, the story about gathering manna. For J, the Sabbath “commandment”—linked specifically to the matter of gathering manna, not a generalized rule—constituted a test of Israel’s willingness to trust God and do what they’re told. I’ve known for some time that Baruch considers the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) an integral part of E, and he has some pretty strong arguments in favor of that thesis (which he presented either last year or two year ago at an SBL meeting, but as far as I know, has not yet published). What was new to me this year was his argument that R, the Torah’s “final” redactor, added the creation clause to the Sabbath commandment in Exodus 20′s Decalogue. For E, social concerns motivate the Sabbath. Baruch understands D to be based on E, so it’s not surprising that the Deuteronomic Decalogue repeats the Exodus Decalogue almost verbatim. D picked up on the social motive in E and expanded it. P knew the same practical reality as the others: “we take every seventh day off.” P found a theory of “sacred time” necessary; that is, P needed to identify an event in which the seventh day was “sanctified.” P finds that event in creation. Knowing the D material, which has a motive clause, and the P material, with its emphasis on creation, R created a motive clause for the E version when producing the final layer of Torah material. During the Q&A, one gentleman asked one of those annoying “Doesn’t my article of 19xx cause a problem for you?” questions, and Baruch gave the perfect answer: “Yes, that would be a challenge, but I think you are wrong!”

Shalom Holtz’s paper focused on the adverb יחד in juridical contexts. He argued that יחד can have an adversative sense in such contexts, that is, two parties who go to court “together” (יחד) are going in as opponents, not allies. I was certainly convinced. My only criticism would be that Holtz almost inundated us with data—not all of it necessary. He could have given fewer examples verbally and relied on his handout for the rest.

David Wright then read a paper on the relationship between the Book of the Covenant and the Code of Hammurabi. Wright focused on the case of aggravated miscarriage in Exodus 21, arguing that the author of the Book of the Covenant rewrote the Code of Hammurabi for a Judean audience. Wright really did argue for a direct literary dependence of the Book of the Covenant on the Code of Hammurabi, which is farther than most scholars go, as far as I can recall. During Q&A, Wright was challenged on the odds that Judean scribes would know Akkadian. Although Wright agreed that such knowledge would be rare, he argued that some Judean scribes would indeed be able to read Akkadian. Wright mentioned “lots of circumstantial evidence,” some detailed in a previous paper. He also referred to an article by Bill Morrow (pictured below), who has argued along similar lines. In fact, I base some of my Religion 101 Deuteronomy lecture on Bill’s take on the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon.

In the fourth paper, Mark Leuchter related a passage in Jeremiah to the slave manumission passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. As often happens in these sessions, my brain was tired and it was hard for me to concentrate any longer. Therefore, I can’t tell you much of what Leuchter’s paper was about. Sorry, Mark.

After the session, Keith Bodner (below) introduced himself and had some nice things to say about iTanakh and Dynamics of Diselection. I mostly know Keith’s work on Samuel and Kings.