Thursday, March 17, 2016

Strands of JE in PE

It was natural to combine the text of PE with strands of JE, giving the background of the text and containing Bereshit 15:13 and Bereshit 25:26, as explained here. These strands of JE became part of PE, and later of the P scroll. When the redactor combined P with JE, these strands were readily recognized. This can explain the apparent gap in P regarding the birth of Ya'akov and Esav. It was in the P scroll, but was a strand of JE. The next post is a possible combination of PE with strands of JE. The bold Pasuk would have been added by PE to JE, an introduction to the text that describes the life of Yitzchak. P has two such introductions:

25:19: "Avraham begot Yitzchak. And Yitzchak was ..."
25:13: "And it was after Avraham death and G-d blessed Yitzchak, his son."

It makes sense that one of the two is from PE.