I am reporting on my read of The Poetic Priestly Source by Jason M. H. Gaines.
In between the very specialized analysis of Hebrew passages in P according to his yardstick for what constitutes poetry and what constitutes prose, Gaines gives a useful survey of the ways previous scholars have understood the priestly source. He includes a number of scholars I have read and interacted with.
One of them is Frank Moore Cross. Cross, if his theory is correct, undermines the whole idea that P was ever a source separate from non-P. Cross noticed that in the Jacob story, for instance, P has no story of the birth of Jacob and Esau nor of Jacob acquiring wives. So Cross thought P had put his material into an already-existing narrative as a supplement. So P used non-P as a source, but was not itself a source.
To this Gaines responds:
He…
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