P – non-P – proto-P – post-P

Against the background of the current debate on the literary character of P, the paper revisits the question of »P as a source« or »P as a redaction.« It takes up Jürg Hutzli's recently published new approach and, by using textual examples from the Primeval history and the Exodus story, it discusses and refines his idea of Proto-P compositions. The paper concludes that in all parts of the Pentateuch, the Priestly authors developed their work by taking up older traditions in various ways. In the primeval history and for the exodus account, they took up older proto-Priestly material, while in the ancestral narrative they took up the older non-Priestly Abraham-Jacob narrative as well as the Joseph story. The non-Priestly primeval history and the non-Priestly exodus story as well as further traditions about the ancestors were then added to this Priestly work only at a later, post-Priestly stage.