how the redactors understood the nature and function of their text and the role it was to have in the life of their community. The method used in this study will consider the content of the various canonical divisions mainly in the light of the contextualising redactions to which particular attention will be given. It is notoriously difficult to delineate the exact boundary between explicit redactional material, i.e., material the redactor composed and implicit material, i.e., traditional writing