Reading the Blood Plague (Exodus 7:14–25): The Hermeneutics of a Composite Text

This essay presents a methodological commitment to rethink the presuppositions about compositional practices with respect to the assembly and production of what we have come to call the Pentateuch. Throughout the article the authors present an account of the ancient biblical writers and readers as committed to producing difference—not to produce an overall seamless linear narrative. The textual example focuses on the blood plague but considers the composition of the Pentateuch and biblical composition more generally.