The Exodus and Biblical Theology: A Rejoinder to John J. Collins

Abstract

In his critique of Jon Levenson's essay on "Exodus and Liberation" in Biblical Theology Bulletin 25:4, 152-60, John J. Collins, Levenson here argues, provides a number of misstatements about the essay and misinterpretations of the biblical materials. In drawing attention to the familial-national dimension of the exodus, Levenson neither affirms the Jews as its rightful beneficiaries nor denies the possibility of fruitful analogies with other groups. He insists, however, on the distinction between analogical application and anachronistic retrojection, the latter being a violation of historical-critical principle. Collins' raising the Christian problem of appropriation of the exodus without acceptance of the full "yoke of the Law" arises not from historical criticism, but from valid concerns of the sort he brands as "confessional" and "theological apartheid" in Levenson's work. Collins' identification of Levenson with Brevard Childs's canonical method is inaccurate and misunderstands Childs's concept of intratextuality. The absence of enslavement as an item in the exodus story is not only typical of the old poem in Exodus 15 (which Collins a-historically harmonizes with narrative sources), but also of Amos (whom he stresses), Hosea, and Ezekiel 20, inter alia. Collins' attempts to read Amos as anti-particularistic and his contrast of the social orders of Egypt and Israel are exegetically unsound.