DISSERTAZIONI DI DOTTORATO
2025-2026

FOGIELMAN Charles-Antoine

The Oral Redaction of the Pentateuch: Ex 25–31 ; 35–40 as a Case Study

Mod.: Prof. R.P. GIUNTOLI Federico

The Hebrew “Scriptures,” as do most texts of the ancient world, entertain a more complex relationship with the spoken word than the the term might suggest. The phenomenon of orality has been the subject of much study for the Classics, but less so for the Bible. Parry and Lord’s oral-formulaic theory revolutionized Homeric studies, yet few now believe the Iliad was composed entirely in performance by an Iron Age singer. Modern scholarship sees it as the outcome of a transition from oral tradition to written text spanning centuries. Features like formulae, epithets, and dialect mix, all testify to orality; meanwhile, complex composition schemes and interpolations reflect gradual textual sedimentation. The shift from orality to literacy changed the epics’ social function, from sacred performance to entertainment and philological object, while older functions partly persisted.

The same transitional dynamics apply to the Pentateuch. Its main narrative canvas, the P source, emerged within a scribal culture strongly influenced by Babylonian chancery practices, operating in imperial Aramaic. Scribal skills included not only the knowledge of writing, but also the ability to produce oral texts in their native language extemporaneously. If the key architects of the Pentateuch were Judaean scribes in Babylonian and Achaemenid service who, after the Exile, repositioned themselves as cultural elite and heirs to the disrupted Levitical tradition, they may have used their textual expertise to produce Hebrew didactic material on the traditions and rituals of their nation, originally in an oral setting.

Applying the tools of oral analysis to the P source reveals it to consist of several layers, the earliest of which exhibit abundant oral features. It forms a narrative outline onto which teachings on a variety of matters are to be tacked, making it prone to accretions. Five main Bearbeintungen (PB) are distinguished within P:

• PB¹ (exilic): basic Origins–Exodus outline
• PB²: moral/identity teachings of Ezra’s circle
• PB³: cult-focused teachings of the next generation
• PB⁴: later priestly narrative layer
• PB⁵: latest, end-Persian or early Hellenistic.

PB² and PB³ stand out by oral criteria (repetitions, additive style, didactic tone) and quantitative stylistic analysis. Their didactic, tuition-setting origin facilitated incorporation of Achaemenid-period ideas. Far from insular, these oral-didactic strata made the emerging Pentateuch receptive to selective cultural synthesis. PB² in particular appears to have actively compiled preexisting written traditions around an oral instructional core, producing a deliberately multivocal yet coherent patchwork that could serve as the community’s foundational text. Later post-Priestly redactions built on this flexible P foundation, while gradually transitioning from living oral performance to fixed written scripture. Thus oral analysis proves to be a useful tool for the current exegetical endeavor of teasing out the Pentateuch’s complex composition process.