Antoine Compagnon (Paris, Collège de France)

"Vanité de Montaigne" : la présence de l'Ecclésiaste dans les Essais.
RRENAB 2010 / Vendredi 11 juin de 9h00-10h30. Salle 1129.

Bernard M. Levinson (University of Minnesota)

“And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant”: Writing, Rewriting, and the Trope of Revelation in Exodus 34
RRENAB 2010 / Vendredi 11 juin de 10h30-12h00. Salle 1129.

The account of the renewal of the covenant following the episode of the Golden Calf in Exod 34:10–28 remains critical to any adequate model of pentateuchal theory. The unit was long seen as one of the oldest documents in the Pentateuch: in fact, as the original of the Decalogue and as providing a literary source for the Covenant Code. Newer approaches have challenged that approach from a number of different perspectives, situating the unit in the post-exilic period, as reflecting concerns to exclude foreigners (Blum). Some scholars see the unit as primarily ancient and as providing, along with the Covenant Code, a source for Deuteronomy (Lohfink/Braulik); others, still holding it to be largely ancient, regard the late material that they identify in the unit as minor interpolations, easily removed (Otto). A new step was taken by Bar-On (Gesundheit), whose “midrashic” approach opens valuable new possibilities of analysis. It is essential, however, also to address the unit’s diachronic relation to both Deuteronomy and the Priestly corpus. The range of methodological approaches that have been applied to the unit suggests that it mirrors the history of the discipline of biblical studies: in effect, it has become a palimpsest. This paper argues that the composition of Exod 34 forces a new model and cannot be separated from the composition of the larger Pentateuch. Closer analysis demonstrates that the unit provides a programmatic “re-redaction” of earlier legal sources, which it seeks to integrate and harmonize, while presenting that reworking as divinely revealed. From that perspective, the unit’s closest affinities may ironically be found in Second Temple texts, like the Temple Scroll from Qumran, that were concerned with the reception, systematization, and reinterpretation of biblical literature.

Corina Combet (Institut protestant de théologie de Paris)

Les alliances de l'ancien et du nouveau. L’Ecriture selon la Bible.
RRENAB 2010 / Samedi 12 juin de 9h00-10h30. Salle 1129.