APPENDIX 1
The Writing of the Bible
MOST SCHOLARS BELIEVE that the writing of the first part of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Pentateuch, took place at least five hundred years after the events it describes (such as the Exodus from Egypt and conquest of Canaan) could have taken place. It probably drew on older documents that had been preserved, as well on even older oral traditions.
Scholars have analyzed the text of the Pentateuch and discovered that there are at least four main strains, written by at least four authors or groups of authors between the ninth and sixth centuries BCE. These are generally called E, J, P, and D.
The author of E uses the name El for God, which is the name of the “Bull” God El, the chief God in the Canaanite pantheon. (Other forms of El he uses are Eloha and the plural Elohim.) He only adds the term YHWH to Elohim after the arrival of Moses on the scene. The author of E was probably a priest from the northern shrine of Shiloh, of the family of Moses. He projects great reverence and affection for Moses and promotes his priestly lineage – the Levites. It is E, for example, who portrays Moses as destroying the golden calf at Sinai, thus emphasizing Moses’ leadership and heroism in ridding the people of the unacceptable form of worship. E was probably written in the time just preceding the conquest and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria (northern Iraq) in 722 BCE.
The second strain in the Pentateuch is J, which uses the name YHWH for God (never Elohim or El)*, and establishes the priesthood of Aaron as the legitimate lineage. It does not insist on centralized worship at Jerusalem but assumes the existence of numerous shrines in the countryside. J was probably written at approximately the same time as E. When the refugees from the northern kingdom fled to Jerusalem, after the Babylonian conquests, E probably became merged with J.
P is the priestly strain of the Bible, and includes the priestly laws and stipulations. It was probably written a little later than the other two strains by a Jerusalem priest descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother, who was intent on consolidating the power of his lineage. It comprises most of Leviticus and much of Numbers, as well as selected sections of the other books of the Pentateuch. It emphasizes that worship of the one God YHWH must take place at the Temple in Jerusalem, where the priests of the lineage of Aaron were the only legitimate priests. P includes the grand story of the creation that has been enshrined in Genesis and presents a formal, cosmic, transcendent view of God.
D is the fourth strain, referring to the book of Deuteronomy, which repeats many of the stories found in the earlier, interwoven narratives of E, J, and P, but with a different bias. According to Israel Finkelstein in The Bible Unearthed, Deuteronomy “contains an uncompromising condemnation of worship of other gods, a new view of God as completely transcendent, and the absolute prohibition of the sacrificial worship of the God of Israel in any place but the Temple in Jerusalem.”521 D was supposedly “found” in the Jerusalem Temple during the reign of King Josiah in the late seventh century BCE.
It is believed that when the northern kingdom fell and its refugees streamed into Jerusalem, the consciousness of young King Josiah of the southern kingdom was awakened. Probably under the influence of the priests of YHWH and prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he attributed the conquest of Israel to its failure to adhere to the covenant. God’s love and compassion are emphasized for his “chosen people,” who are warned that nonadherence to the covenant would bring suffering and doom.
The biblical books that follow Deuteronomy – Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings – are written in the same style, and it is generally accepted that they were all written by the same person. Together they constitute a seamless account, starting with the death of Moses, through the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, the period of the judges, the early united monarchy, the division into two kingdoms, and the conquest of the northern kingdom by Assyria. The history ends with the glorious reign of Josiah, followed by the exile of the southern kingdom to Babylon. It is not known who the author of D was, but scholars believe that he was one of the priests of the northern shrine of Shiloh who had resettled in Jerusalem.
R is the name scholars have given to the Redactor, the Editor who brought together the opposing strains of J/E with P and masterfully combined them into one text. Then he added D at the end, with the story of Moses’ death tacked on to provide a fitting finale. R was probably active during the period of the exile in Babylon (sixth to fifth century BCE). Other scholars believe that the Pentateuch received its final editing even later.522
EDITING THE PROPHETS
The prophets of the Bible were active beginning in the eleventh
century BCE, the time of Samuel, and continuing for about seven
centuries. Their writings were heavily edited in order to make them
conform to the established religious view. So, although the prophets’
authentic sayings, which are couched in poetry and proverbs, reverberate
with their spiritual message, the narratives of their lives and the
historical events they lived through were heavily edited in later
centuries, with commentaries and interpolations added to the text. Often
they were made to predict distant political troubles or natural
disasters, meted out as divine punishment for nonadherence to the
covenant, when in fact these events had already taken place during the
time the editors were writing. They interpreted the suffering they were
experiencing as punishment for their unfaithfulness to God.
Many contemporary scholars believe that the objective of these scribes was to solidify YHWH as the Israelites’ sole god, whose worship was to be centralized in Jerusalem, under the priesthood descended from Aaron. Adherence to the covenant, in the sense of establishing the supremacy of YHWH and the royal lineage of David, was the underlying unifying theme emphasized by the scribes who brought the prophets’ writings in line. These editors, bent on creating strong religious institutions and a sense of nationality at a time when the people were in exile, may not have understood, or simply overlooked, the spiritual content of the prophets’ messages or their metaphorical and allegorical implications.
During the period of editing, from the seventh through the third centuries BCE, changes were entered into the text itself, thus significantly altering the reader’s understanding of the prophets’ teachings. However, as these works were finally shaped into their canonized form at the beginning of the second century BCE, the later generations of priests and editors could no longer alter or expand the original text. Their editorial “improvement” process took place through separate commentaries that were attached to the text.523