John Van Seters, Author or Redactor?

In two recent articles and in his book, The Edited Bible,Van Seters challenged the existence of a redactor in antiquity and thesubsequent development of redaction criticism as a viable method in biblicalliterary criticism. This debate between whether a source of the Pentateuch, suchas J, or the writer of the Deuteronomistic History should be understood asauthor or editor is reflected in the responses to Van Seters by Jean-Louis Ska,Eckart Otto and Christoph Levin. In this essay Van Seters seeks to answer thevarious points raised by these scholars and to clarify what is meant by anancient author as well as the view that the concept of editor is anachronisticbefore the modern period. He also defends his view that both von Rad and Noth,in the case of J, and Noth, in the case of Dtr, believed that the Yahwist andDtr were authors and historians and not merely editors.