The Priestly Primeval History and Conflation of P and Non-P

The Formation of Genesis 1-11 ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190062545.003.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 250-264

Author(s):

David M. Carr

Keyword(s):

Genesis 1 ◽

Priestly Source ◽

Composition Process

This chapter surveys three main levels of Priestly or P-like composition in Genesis 1–11. It starts by reviewing the scope and possible date of the Toledot scroll discussed in chapter 4. The Priestly source built around this Toledot book source, preceding it with the Genesis 1 story of God’s creation of the cosmos and expanding it with a full flood narrative (rather than the likely brief mention of the flood in the Toledot book) and overview of post-flood peoples (Genesis 10*). The source then continued with new Priestly Abraham materials (e.g., Genesis 17) and multiple new Toledot of Abraham’s descendants leading up to Israel, which were then followed by a Priestly story of Moses, the Exodus, and the eventual construction of a wilderness Tabernacle in which God could dwell. At a later stage, the P and non-P materials were combined, using P as the basic superstructure for the primeval history and adding, at select points, elements that betray a particular affinity for Priestly concepts and/or ideology. In this sense, the conflation of P and non-P can be seen as a continuation of the Priestly composition process, creating a new, conflated narrative embracing non-P materials within a P framework.

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The Formation of Genesis 1-11

10.1093/oso/9780190062545.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

David M. Carr

Keyword(s):

Complex Interaction ◽

Historical Study ◽

Literary Traditions ◽

Genesis 1 ◽

Priestly Source ◽

Source Models ◽

Separate Source ◽

Textual Traditions ◽

P Sources

There is general agreement that study of the formation of the Pentateuch is currently in disarray. This book turns to the Genesis Primeval History, Genesis 1–11, to offer models for the formation of Pentateuchal texts that might have traction within this fractious context. Building on two centuries of historical study of Genesis 1–11, this book provides new support for the older theory that the bulk of Genesis 1–11 was created out of a combination of two originally separate source strata: a Priestly source and an earlier non-Priestly source that was used to supplement the Priestly framework. Though this overall approach contradicts some recent attempts to replace such source models with theories of post-Priestly scribal expansion, the author of this volume does find evidence of multiple layers of scribal revision in the non-P and P sources: from the expansion of an early independent non-Priestly primeval history with a flood narrative and related materials through to a limited set of identifiable layers of Priestly material that culminate in the P-like redaction of the whole. Finally, the book synthesizes prior scholarship to show how both the P and non-Priestly strata of Genesis also emerged out of a complex interaction by Judean scribes with nonbiblical literary traditions, particularly with Mesopotamian textual traditions about primeval origins.

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‘A disoriented vision of … fact’: Brian Friel, Francis Bacon, and Faith Healer

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2020.0473 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

pp. 319-336

Author(s):

Zosia Kuczyńska

Keyword(s):

Creative Process ◽

Francis Bacon ◽

Major Influence ◽

Artistic Practice ◽

Archival Research ◽

Faith Healer ◽

Brian Friel ◽

History Of ◽

Composition Process

The Brian Friel Papers at the NLI reveal a long and relatively unexplored history of major and minor influences on Friel's plays. As the archive attests, these influences manifest themselves in ways that range from the superficial to the deeply structural. In this article, I draw on original archival research into the composition process of Friel's genre-defining play Faith Healer (1979) to bring to light a model of influence that operates at the level of artistic practice. Specifically, I examine the extent to which Friel's officially unacknowledged encounter with a book of interviews with painter Francis Bacon influenced the play in terms of character, language, and form. I suggest that Bacon's creative process – incorporating his ideas on the role of the artist, the workings of chance, and the extent to which art does violence to fact – may have had a major influence on both the play's development and on Friel's development as an artist.

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Pablo Neruda's Transnational Modernist Networks: Colombo-Madrid-London-Buenos Aires (1927–1933)

Modernist Cultures ◽

10.3366/mod.2017.0168 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 198-225

Author(s):

Patricia Novillo-Corvalán

Keyword(s):

Chamber Music ◽

Latin American ◽

Buenos Aires ◽

Cultural Institutions ◽

Complex Composition ◽

British Colonial ◽

The One ◽

Composition Process ◽

In Transit ◽

Standing Question

This article positions Pablo Neruda's poetry collection Residence on Earth I (written between 1925–1931 and published in 1933) as a ‘text in transit’ that allows us to trace the development of transnational modernist networks through the text's protracted physical journey from British colonial Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to Madrid, and from José Ortega y Gasset's Revista de Occidente (The Western Review) to T. S. Eliot's The Criterion. By mapping the text's diasporic movement, I seek to reinterpret its complex composition process as part of an anti-imperialist commitment that proposes a form of aesthetic solidarity with artistic modernism in Ceylon, on the one hand, and as a vehicle through which to interrogate the reception and categorisation of Latin American writers and their cultural institutions in a British periodical such as The Criterion, on the other. I conclude with an examination of Neruda's idiosyncratic Spanish translation of Joyce's Chamber Music, which was published in the Buenos Aires little magazine Poesía in 1933, positing that this translation exercise takes to further lengths his decolonising views by giving new momentum to the long-standing question of Hiberno-Latin American relations.

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