The literary profile of the Priestly strand: A new perspective

This paper focuses on the narrative gaps in P and the challenge they pose to the concept of P as a continuous source. Adopting the ‘scroll approach’, it considers the material aspects of the transmission of the hypothetical P source. The paper suggests that, similar to other ancient literary scrolls, P was transmitted as a collection of sub-scrolls prior to the Hellenistic period. The main argument is that the narrative gaps may have arisen due to damage to the sub-scrolls containing the relevant textual sections, thereby explaining the inconsistency in the completeness of P across textual sections and the specific positions of the gaps in P.