Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations

Gathering and Fitting Unhewn Stones

by Benjamin D. Giffone

Book cover: Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations

Extent: 287 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies

Series: Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2.Reihe

Series volume number: 142

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(July 2023)

ISBN: 9783161562389

9.09 x 6.06 inches

Price: $118.00

In stock

How did the use of earlier narrative and legal material within Chronicles and other Second Temple texts illumine instances of unevenness that later interpreters smoothed but still retained in the text? This book shows how community memory existing outside the written texts provided limits on the changes that could be introduced by scribes.


In this volume, Benjamin D. Giffone shows that the coexistence of at least three cultic centralization models within the Pentateuch, including Northern, Benjaminite, and Southern traditions, helps to calibrate the level of theological consistency that may reasonably be expected of biblical texts. The scholarly tendency to view biblical narratives as late, tendentious fictions is not sufficient to explain the texts’ final forms. The author explains how the use of earlier narrative and legal material within Chronicles and other Second Temple texts illumines instances of unevenness that later interpreters smoothed to a degree but retained in the text. Community memory existing outside the written texts provided limits on the changes that could be introduced by scribes but was sufficiently malleable to allow for changes. Narrativity as a key feature of the texts allowed certain memories to be retained, framed by various techniques to suit the storymakers’ aims.

  • By (author) Benjamin D Giffone