The Wilderness Itineraries: A Comparative Study -- By: G. I. Davies

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 25:1 (NA 1974)
Article: The Wilderness Itineraries: A Comparative Study
Author: G. I. Davies


The Wilderness Itineraries:
A Comparative Study1

G. I. Davies

The Tyndale Old Testament Lecture 1973*

* Delivered at Tyndale House, Cambridge, on 13 July 1973

The title of this lecture requires clarification in two ways:

a. The word ‘itinerary’ is often used as an equivalent to ‘route’. A person who has just returned from a touring holiday might be asked: ‘What was your itinerary?’, which would mean no more than ‘Where did you go?’ But there is another older use of the word, in which it refers to a written account of a route, either one already traversed by a particular individual or group or one that would be suitable for use in the future. It is in this second sense that I have used ‘itinerary’ in my title. In other words, this lecture will not, for the most part, be concerned with geographical questions connected with the route of the Exodus and the wilderness journeys, but rather with some literary aspects of passages in the Old Testament which purport to be records of the route of the Israelites.

b. I have described these passages as ‘wilderness itineraries’ out of deference to general custom. This is accurate in so far as most of the movements described are located in ‘the wilderness’. But the places named both at the beginning and at the end of the itineraries are not in ‘the wilderness’. The full itineraries open with references to important places in Egypt, the ‘edge of the wilderness’ only being reached at the third camping-place (Ex. 13:20, Nu. 33:6); while their closing stages are already set in land that was distributed among the Israelite tribes. There is nothing in the texts themselves which would justify us in regarding them as exclusively wilderness

itineraries. It is therefore mistaken to argue that the limits of the ‘wilderness theme’ should be extended to take in, for example, the deliverance at the Red Sea (Exodus 14) and the narratives about Balaam, on the ground that these events are located at places mentioned in the itineraries.2 On the contrary, the itineraries are to be seen as one of the elements in the Pentateuch as it stands which serve to bind into a single unit the whole complex of narratives from the Exodus to the Conquest.

It is desirable to define the term ‘itinerary’ a little more precisely. Some records of journeys (and descriptions of possible routes) do a great dea...

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