1 - The Journey Begins

Summary

This chapter is a reading of the sea episode (Exodus 14) as a largely coherent narrative in which the Israelites move from self-determination, to dread, and finally to wonder and trust in both God and Moses because of what they witness at the sea. It was added as a new introduction relatively late in the literary history of the wilderness narrative. The case for this reading is grounded in the idea that productive tensions are an element of how literature works, while unproductive tensions can show us historical depth in the literary landscape. This chapter also addresses the relationship between literature and history, which is not mimetic but a matter of play with cultural repertoire from diverse historical and social contexts. Finally, the anonymous authorship of the Torah is usually attributed to the role of scribes as tradents, but this chapter draws on the idea that they transformed what they preserved and argues that those transformations could be as much political acts as literary ones. It proposes that the authors are implied in the literature, and that anonymity may be a function of genre (or mode).