The Documentary Hypothesis In Detail - Numbers

Here is a table showing all the verses in Numbers and which source they are from. Again, I have used two separate classifications: Richard E. Friedman's from The Bible With Sources Revealed (2003) and Samuel Driver's from Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (9th ed 1913). I have also marked the verses with an asterisk where they differ, and finally included some explanatory notes by Friedman and Driver.

Here's information about the table.

F - Friedman
D - Driver
Diff - Different. * if Friedman and Driver are difference; nothing if they are the same.

Sources:
J - J
E - E
RJE - Redactor of J and E
P - P
R - Redactor
O - Other

Here's the table.

Documentary Hypothesis
Chapter	Friedman	Driver	Difference?	Notes
Numbers
1:1 - 2:34	P	P
3:1	R	P	*
3:2 - 9:14	P	P
9:15-23	R	P	*
10:1-12	P	P
10:13	R	P	*
10:14 - 27	P	P
10:28	R	P	*
10:29 - 33	J	JE	*
10:34	J	P	*
10:35-36	J	JE	*
11:1-11	E	JE	*
12:1-15	E	E
13:1-16	P	P
13:17a	R	P	*
13:17b-20	J	JE	*
13:21	J	P	*
13:22-24	J	JE	*
13:25-26a	P	P		to "Paran"
13:26b	P	JE	*
13:27-31	J	JE	*
13:32a	P	P
13:32b	P	JE	*
13:33	J	JE	*
14:1-2	P	P
14:3	P	JE	*
14:4	J	JE	*
14:5-7	P	P
14:8-9	P	JE	*
14:10	P	P
14:11-25	J	JE	*
14:26-30	P	P
14:31-33	P	JE	*
14:34-38	P	P
14:39-45	J	JE	*
15:1-31	R	P	*
15:32-41	P	P
16:1a	P	P		to "son of Levi"
16:1b-2a	J	JE	*	to "in front of Moses"
16:2b-11	P	P
16:12-14	J	JE	*
16:15	P	JE	*
16:16-24a	P	P
16:24b	R	P	*	"Dathan and Abiram"
16:25-26	J	JE	*
16:27a	P	P
16:27b	R	P	*	"Dathan and Abiram"
16:27c-32a	J	JE	*	to "and their households"
16:32b	P	P
16:33-34	J	JE	*
16:35	P	P
17:1-27	P	P		Note: Jewish 17:1-15 are numbered in Christian bibles as 16:36-50. Jewish 17:16-28 are numbered in Christian Bibles as 17:1-13
18, 19	P	P
20:1a	R	P	*	to "in Kadesh"
20:1b	P	JE	*
20:2	P	P
20:3a	P	JE	*
20:3b-4	P	P
20:5	P	JE	*
20:6-13	P	P
20:14-21	J	JE	*
20:22	R	P	*
20:23-29	P	P
21:1-3	J	JE	*
21:4a	R	P	*	F: to "Edom"; D: to "Mt Hor"
21:4b-9	E	JE	*
21:10-11	R	P	*
21:12-35	J	JE	*
22:1	R	P	*
22:2	J	E	*
22:3-21	E	E		F: except for 4 "to the elders of Midian" (R), 5 "and he sent messengers" (J), 7 "and Midian's elders" (R), 15 "And Balak went on again" (J)
22:22-35a	E	J	*	F: except for 26 "to turn right or left" (J)
22:35b-41	E	E
23, 24	E	JE	*
25:1-5	J	JE	*
25:6-19	P	P
26:1-7	P	P
26:8-11	R	P	*
26:12-65	P	P
27	P	P
28,29	R	P	*
30:1	R	P	*
30:2-17	P	P
31	P	P
32:1	J	JE	*
32:2	P	P		D: part may be JE
32:3	J	JE	*
32:4	P	P		D: part may be JE
32:5	J	JE	*	F&D: except for "let this land be given to your servants for a possession" (P)
32:6	P	JE	*
32:7-12	J	JE	*	F & D: except for 12 "and Joshua son of Nun" (R); D: except for 11 "from 20 years old and upward" (P)
32:13-24	P	JE/P	*	D: mainlly JE with some P additions
32:25-27	J	JE	*
32:28-32	P	JE/P	*	D: mainlly JE with some P additions
32:33-42	J	JE	*
33:1a	O	P	*	F: list of travels that R used to organize the wilderness episodes chronologically
33:1-2	R	P	*
33:3-49	O	P	*
33:50-56	P	P
34, 35, 36	P	P

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Children and the Torah Service

I have been thinking about the problem of smaller children and the Torah service. The basic problem is that children can easily get bored and be disruptive at a Saturday morning service. There seems to be several ways of handling this problem, and I was wondering what other synagogues did.

1. Synagogues can let children attend, expect a certain amount of disruption, and simply try to minimize it or live with it.

2. Synagogues can provide some kind of age-appropriate activities for children: day care, singing, children's services, Saturday religious school, etc. Smaller children simply go to their activity, and the adults go to the service. This had the advantage (especially important in more liberal synagogues) of having younger children see adults go to services, even when there is no bar- or bat-mitzvah.

3. Synagogues can provide "family services" that the whole family can attend. The advantage is that this allows the family to attend services together. But the disadvantage, as a friend of mine noted, it that there really is no such thing as "family services." There are only "children's services." Adults get very little out of them (other than watching their children), and children get the subtextual message that Judaism is geared for children. This is an especially bad problem if the only services the parents attend are "family services."

4. Synagogues can provide "family services" at times other than Saturday morning that are less lengthy. They can provide a family service Friday evening or a family havdalah service Saturday evening. Children are better able to sit through a shorter service. However, this still leaves the adults with a problem for Saturday morning services.

5. Synagogues can not allow children (or at least not tolerate occasional interruptions well) and not provide activities at the synagogue for the children. This leaves the parents with several options.

- One of the parents can watch the children at home, and the other can go to services. This tends to work in Orthodox or more traditional synagogues where families and synagogues have adopted more traditional gender roles. It also works in more liberal or moderate synagogues where one spouse (regardless of gender) is interested in attending services and the other is not. But this results in separating one spouse from the other spouse and kids.

- The parents can hire a babysitter. This is costly and results in separating the parents from the children.

- Both parents can simply stay home. This keeps the family together, but also keeps them out of the synagogue on Saturdays.

How does your synagogue handle this problem, what do you and others do, and how is it working?

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The Avot Prayer and Barack Obama's Speech

Barack Obama invoked a powerful image in his victory speech in Chicago. He mentioned 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, who "was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin." He then summarized the great progress that had occurred in her lifetime, and mentioned several historical events, culminating with the following: "And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change."

After tracing progress through the last century, Obama looked forward to the next. "So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? [¶] This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment."

Obama presented a powerful way of thinking about history and the importance of the present moment. He remembered the great achievements of the past, and looked forward --- with his own children specifically in mind --- to even better improvements in the future.

This is exactly how I think about the first prayer of the Amidah, the Avot.

After praising the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob for loving kindness, the last sentence (from the Conservative Siddur Sim Shalom) is "You remember the pious deeds of our ancestors and will send a redeemer to their children's children because of Your loving nature."

In other words, we start the prayer by recalling the Patriarchs of the distant past and their pious deeds. We then think forward from their time, noting how God will redeem "their children's children" (livnei v'neihem) because of his loving nature. The referent of "their" is of course the Patriarchs, and so their children's children include all of our ancestors, us, and our children.

During prayer, I do not find it helpful to think about God as an active supernatural force that magically changes the world while I sit passively on the sidelines. Instead, I primarily think of prayers like the Amidah as a reminder to me of specific aspects of godliness that I should be helping to bring into the world. With all this in mind, I tend to conflate the different parts of the Avot: acts of loving kindness, our ancestor's pious deeds, redemption, and a loving nature. After all, my children and future descendants will hopefully think of my acts as part of their ancestors' pious deeds. And so one key question that I think about when I say the Avot (or at least try to think about - it's too easy to get distracted) is what can I do to help "their children's children": my immediate family, my extended family, and others in my community.

And so --- like Barack Obama --- I look backward to the past, think of great deeds of loving kindness and pious ancestors, and then focus on what I can do along the same lines for the next generations. This places the present solidly between the past and the future, not only in time, but along a continuum of progress and good deeds. Not a bad way to start the day.

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Amusing Posts on the Flood

The attempts to reconcile science and a literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis (the creation stories, Noah's flood, Tower of Babel) are quite silly. When I was in my teens and early 20s, I was intrigued by this debate. But now in my 40s, I am now amazed that this debate even occurs, especially by otherwise intelligent and serious people.

I understand why young people might be interested in this problem. Just out of childhood, they face the conflict between a childish literal view of these stories and some newfound knowledge about science. They thrash about a bit trying to resolve this conflict, and derive some silly theories along the way: maybe if this verse is read that way, and there was only a small miracle here, and days don't mean literal days, and some of the animals on the ark were in some sort of suspended animation, and dinosaurs were more dense than mammals and sunk faster, and ....

What I don't understand is why serious grown-ups would take on this issue. Dr. Harvey Babich (who appears to be a serious grown up - a professor of biology at Stern College with some impressive credentials) wrote a silly piece along these line, entitled How Many Animals Were There On The Ark?. In short, he argues that perhaps Noah simply took a set of each "kind" of animal, rather than a set of each species. These "kinds" then rapidly diversified after the flood and --- dare I say --- evolved into all the species were see today. Voila! This solves the problem of how Noah fit so many animals into a too-small ark.

My reaction is simply to roll my eyes. There are lots of problems with this specific argument, and this general approach, none of which I particularly want to discuss. Some other bloggers have already taken a whack at those. See XGH (in his most recent incarnation): YU on the Mabul with Hagaos Hagodol and Frum Heretic: Dang, He Busted My Mabul Crapometer! My questions is why would a serious biologist write such a piece?

The only thing I can think of is a slippery-slope problem. If people believe the creation stories and the flood are not literally true, the argument goes, then maybe they will believe the revelation at Sinai is not literally true either. So we need to draw the line at the former.

The tactical problem is that this argument is likely to backfire. If people start to think that Orthodox Judaism believes that the world is 6,000 years old and that there was a global flood that killed everyone in the world except 8 people on a boat in 2300 BCE, they are more likely, not less likely, to conclude that the revelation at Sinai did not occur.

If anyone else has any thought on why otherwise serious people take these positions, leave a comment.

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