Noble's monograph is a revised version of his doctoral thesis, supervised by Jon D. Levenson and submitted to Harvard University in 2013. At the heart of the monograph is a case study of the presentation of Ishmael by the priestly writers, through which Noble sets out to explore wider questions about the outlook of P. Noble engages with, and challenges, what he describes as “the more traditional perspective” that sees a “solipsistic attitude” in an essentially particularist P source that has “no interest in foreign nations” (151). Noble's case study encourages him to argue that this perspective on P no longer ought to be maintained. Instead, he suggests that it should be more widely recognized that P holds together a distinctive particularism with a developing universalism, and he argues that P's treatment and presentation of Ishmael offers an example of P's nuanced outlook.
This is a source-critical study that combines elements of diachronic and synchronic approaches. The source-critical assumptions upon which Noble proceeds are presented briefly toward the beginning of the monograph, “This investigation proceeds with the assumption that P is an independent source writing after and at least partly in response to the formation of the Hagar-Ishmael traditions represented in Gen. 16:1–2, 4–14 (J) and 21:8–21 (E)” (12). In a footnote Noble adds that he assumes the sources of the Documentary Hypothesis as presented by Joel Baden in The Composition of the Pentateuch: Reviewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale University Press, 2012), although he differs from Baden in maintaining that “P is sometimes responsive to non-P” (12, n. 37). The scholars with whom Noble engages most closely here are Levenson and Joel Kaminsky, with Noble assuming Kaminsky's tripartite classification of degrees of election (elect, nonelect, and antielect) as a “tentative framework.”
The monograph has six chapters. Following an introductory chapter, chapter 2 reviews and explores the presentation of Hagar and Ishmael by J and E, with a particular focus on parallels drawn by both sources with the story of Israel's experience in Egypt. Noble teases out what he sees as a number of ambiguities in the characterization of Ishmael by J and E. For example, Noble sees Ishmael as distinct from both nonelect and elect characters in Genesis—while Ishmael seems not to share the character flaws of his nonelect counterparts, his degree of blessing makes him resemble somewhat the very elect from whom he is distinguished and from whose presence he is banished.
Chapter 3 presents the discussion most crucial to Noble's thesis. Here Noble explores the presentation of Ishmael by P, with particular focus on the covenant narrative in Genesis 17, which Noble assumes draws on an earlier covenant narrative in Genesis 15. Noble sees here a continuation of the ambiguity he had seen in his study of the non-P traditions, and characterizes the approach of P as a “deliberate blurring” of the boundaries of the Abrahamic covenant as they are presented in Genesis 15. “Perhaps the most remarkable result of our study on P's Abrahamic covenant is that at every turn one finds some hint of paradox, narrative blurring or ambiguity” (80). Noble finds here a universalizing tendency, if not a wholehearted universalization, that is consistent with the approach of P elsewhere in Genesis.
In chapter 4 Noble undertakes a study of scholarly approaches to understanding P's covenant theology. It is perhaps unfortunate that, in the context of a good deal of recent discussion of the theology of P, the only recent work surveyed is that of Konrad Schmid. Schmid's work in this area is, of course, crucial, but a lack of any mention of Christophe Nihan's careful tracing of the development of priestly covenant theology across recognized strata of priestly material, for example, is a pity.Footnote 1 In chapter 5 Noble looks at narrative traditions relating to Ishmael and his descendants in the Hebrew Bible more generally. He concludes that the attitude demonstrated most clearly towards the groups known as “Ishmaelites” is one of ambivalence: “They are not to be trusted, by and large, but are known also to contribute at times in Israel's economy” (147).
In a brief final chapter, Noble concludes that Ishmael is presented as “a key figure in the Priestly covenantal architecture,” a “universal Noahide” within the more particularist setting of the Abrahamic covenant: “In this sense, he is representative of those in Abraham's house who, despite non-chosen status, are sufficiently included in the covenant to bear in their bodies the mark of circumcision, the sign of the covenant, and to have it in their power to ‘break the covenant’ without circumcision (Gen. 17:12–14)” (150–51). This presentation of Ishmael, Noble argues, is at odds with the traditional view of P as essentially particularist, but supportive of the notion, prominent in Kaminsky's work, that P understands the election of Israel as an election to divine service, in which Israel's vocation to holiness is intended to benefit not only herself, but also the nations among which she lives.
Noble's monograph will be of interest primarily to scholars of the Pentateuch and graduate students. His challenge to some of the more negative perceptions of P, crystallized by Wellhausen and still persisting, is timely and important, even if not entirely novel. Readers will appreciate Noble's close attention to a narrative figure who manages to be at once marginal and crucial to the wider arc of the ancestral story, and many will gratefully resonate with Noble's careful identification of what is ambiguous, elusive, and paradoxical about Ishmael's presentation in P and elsewhere. Those readers not persuaded by the arguments of the “documentarians,” of whom Baden is a prominent representative, may be frustrated by Noble's wholesale avoidance of questions about the dating (there is no attempt to offer an absolute date for P); strata (Are Noble's conclusions truly reflective of P or might they be just as well attributed to holiness legislators?); and status of P (literary source or redaction layer?); as well as his unsupported assumptions about the provenance of portions of the text (e.g., the attribution, without discussion, of Genesis 15 to E on p. 93). Noble's study might have been markedly stronger had it addressed some of these current issues, and had it engaged with scholars such as Mark G. Brett and Jakob Wöhrle, currently undertaking interesting, and often complementary, work on the priestly materials in Genesis.
