The Twice-Assembled Tabernacle

Abstract

Exodus 35–40, a text-critical and literary-historical crux, reports the construction of the Tabernacle in two forms, neither of which conforms exactly to the instructions for the Tabernacle that Moses receives in chapters 25–31. The two surviving forms of the construction report differ in both the length and the order of their reports: the shorter form of chapters 35–40, now attested only by the Old Greek (OG) translation of Exodus, and the longer, attested in all known Hebrew manuscripts. The most dramatic difference appears in the two forms of chapters 36–39, the manufacture of the Tabernacle’s components; but a similar pattern is also evident in the two forms of Exodus 40, where the assembly of the Tabernacle is related. In light of the evidence of textual pluriformity of scriptural books in the later Second-Temple claim and increasing scholarly confidence in the testimony of OG translators and its use, many now argue that literary edition, not translation, accounts for the diverging forms of Exodus 35–40. Further examination of Exodus 35–40 in light of this claim remains a desideratum. The present article examines Exodus 40 in its two forms, the shorter in OG and the longer in the Masoretic Text (MT) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), as a means of exploring the implications of the claim that OG and MT (etc.) represent variant literary editions of Hebrew texts of Exodus 35–40. Not only does a shorter Hebrew text of Exodus 40 appear to be both the Vorlage of OG and the basis of a revised, expanded edition now attested in MT and SP, but it also suggests an even earlier form of Exodus 40, part of which is now incorporated into Leviticus 8. Recognition of this multi-stage development of Exodus 40 suggests that an already composite, pre-pentateuchal Tabernacle Account (now found in Exodus–Numbers) stands before the Pentateuch represented by the MT especially in Exodus–Numbers. If so, scholarly accounts of both the composition and the transmission of the Pentateuch – or rather, its composition-and-transmission history – are due significant revision, beginning with reassessment of the textual evidence of the Tabernacle chapters in OG Exodus.