But that isn't always the case in #BiblicalHebrew.

I found an example in Gen. 14, the battle of our kings against five.

Gen. 14:10-11:
וְהַנִּשְׁאָרִ֖ים הֶ֥רָה נָּֽסוּ׃ וַ֠יִּקְחוּ אֶת־כָּל־רְכֻ֨שׁ סְדֹ֧ם וַעֲמֹרָ֛ה וְאֶת־כָּל־אָכְלָ֖ם וַיֵּלֵֽכוּ׃
"And the rest fled to the mountain, and they took all the livestock of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food and they left."

On Baden's reasoning re 37:28, it must be the refugees who took the livestock and food!

2/?

Abram pursues in v.15, and he is credited in v.17-18 with regaining the livestock from the victors of the earlier battle, not the refugees.

In other words, the wayyiqtols of v.11-12 changed subject without marking it. This could also have happened in 37:28, if Joseph's brothers are the subject.

In other words, I think Baden overplays the grammatical point in order to manufacture a plot problem here.
3/?

Is it a bad sign when Baden's very first example of a contradiction that requires a document source difference (the name of Moses's father-in-law) I think is more probably resolved by challenging a few Masoretic dots? I'm not opposed to a documentary hypothesis! But the text is ancient, so first establish the text with #TextualCriticism.

#HebrewBible

Reading Joel Baden's Composition of the Pentateuch (2012), I am less than persuaded. I am not a reactionary who would reject any source criticism a priori. I appreciate his emphasis that a documentary hypothesis is only accepted if it most plausibly explains the text's shape.

I was initially put off by unqualified assertions about what's in (& more importantly NOT in) various sources (23-24), without acknowledging that these are stipulations from interpretation, not facts,

1/?
#HebrewBible

But I take this to be the advance statement of his thesis, to be demonstrated later.

I appreciate his emphasis that the Documentary Hypothesis must be based on difficulties in the text, not on themes, vocabulary, style, names chosen (e.g. p.30). But as he acknowledges, these other considerations played a large role in the historical development of the DH, with mixed results.

2/?

So the challenge is whether he can logically extricate an argument for the Documentary Hypothesis based only on narrative flow, without basing his reasoning on these other features which he identifies as secondary. Reading Case Study I: The Sale of Joseph, I do not think he was quite successful.

First we have to back up to what he identifies as the difficulties in the narrative of #Genesis 37, in his Introduction.

3/?

He asserts that Joseph's brothers decide to kill him twice, once in narrative (v. 18) and once in dialogue (v. 20). Why can't vv.19-20 be dialogue demonstrating v.18's claim?

I see only one decision by the brothers to kill Joseph, mentioned once by the narrator and then demonstrated by dialogue. Must we say Abraham left for Canaan twice in #Genesis 12:4 and 12:5? Must we divide Gen. 20:4a from 4b-5 as two vindications of the king of Gerar? What's difficult in 37:18-20?
4/?

Baden objects that "Reuben's plan to save Joseph" in the pit (37:22) "is identical to the brothers' original plan to kill him" in a pit (v.20), and again, I don't see the narrative difficulty. Surely Reuben could plan to save Joseph from what he had heard the brothers were planning to do?

5/?

The Ishmaelites & Midianites are a real difficulty!

I'm not persuaded that 37:28 must be read to mean that the Midianites drew Joseph from the pit. It is possible to read the verse that way, but there are plenty of examples where the subject of vayyiqtol verbs changes implicitly.

But did Potiphar by Joseph from Ishmaelites or Midianites? A real q!

In summary, where Baden sees many doublets & difficulties in Genesis 37, I only see one: the overlapping roles of Ishmaelites and Midianites.
7/?

Moving to his solution: he proposes to link up one of each set of doublets. But what if there are no doublets?

He divides 37:28 before "they sold" because the direct object is repeated before and after the verb, but it's also repeated after the next verb "they brought" without requiring a break there as well. But he says there must be a break because the Midianites couldn't have sold him to Ishmaelites.

One could use that reasoning to say the Midianites didn't take Joseph from the pit!
8/?

Although Baden had rejected using style to discern sources, he links Judah's speech in v.26 to the plan in v. 20 because both have 2 parts, a weak argument with no narrative difficulty to justify it.

He asserts baselessly that everyone other than Reuben thought that the pit into which they put Joseph had water (p.35), but the text doesn't say so. He asserts that it's not the same pit as in v.20 because they planned to dispose of his corpse there, which is only logical if plans can't change.
9/?

Baden asserts that putting Joseph in the pit, as Reuben suggested, makes Judah's suggestion not to kill him impossible, because "the brothers think that it is already a fait accompli" (p.36), but do they? Why would they think he was dead immediately upon being put in the pit?

Baden again relies on stylistic considerations in delimiting sources when he connects the 37:23 to v.19 based on the verb "come."

10/

The argument that the meal cannot follow stripping Joseph of his tunic depends on a narrative difficulty not in the text, but manufactured by the division of sources.

While Baden's main text presents each of these arguments as merely logical, his arguments do in fact employ stylistic considerations that he disclaimed, not only narrative problems, and his notes document that other source critics have separated the two putative sources differently.
11/

His reconstructed sources read smoothly enough, although I'm unclear whether it makes sense to have Reuben refer to "this pit" without any earlier reference to pits, but the fact that other critics divide the sources differently suggests that the process is not as inevitable as he presents it.

12/

I realized that one model for the #DocumentaryHypothesis is Tatian's treatment of the four gospels in his #Diatessaron . But if we only had the Diatessaron, would we be able to reconstruct four gospels, using Hebrew Bible scholar methods? The answer is no, in part because gospels share material.

I'm struck by how many times Baden asserts that this or that detail is "only in J." If the source documents agreed verbatim, why would a compiler duplicate them?
#HebrewBible

He contrasts "advanced age" with "barrenness" as mutually exclusive explanations.

How does a married woman get to an advanced age childless, except by barrenness?

Unless he's imagining (with no evidence) that Abraham and Sarah had earlier children who died young, Sarah's infertility is not a concept unique to J. If the conception was a miracle, there was a problem earlier.

The absence of a mention does not change the realities of life.
2/2