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1. The
Old Testament
The
Old Testament is central to three religions: Judahism, Christianity (Section
III) and Rabbinic Judaism (Section IV).
Judahism
was the religion practiced in and around Jerusalem in the period from
approximately 587 BCE (the destruction of the First Temple) and 70 CE (the
destruction of the Second Temple). It
centers on the worship of the god Yahweh. It
is important to keep in mind that the worshippers of Yahweh in this period were
as different from modern Jews as they are from modern Christians. Despite the closeness of spelling,
Judahism is different than Judaism.
Who is Yahweh? Yahweh
actually comes from the Hebrew consonants YHWH. (Please recall that the original Hebrew scriptures lacked
vowels.) As best we can determine,
the proper vowels for its pronunciation makes it “Yahweh”. In the Old Testament, Yahweh announces
his name to Moses. Yahweh
means “I am who I am” in Hebrew. As
the scripture of the Old Testament became ever more reverent and holy, readers
of the Bible ceased calling God by his name Yahweh. Instead, when YHWH was encountered in
the biblical text, it was read as “the Lord” (usually translated as Adonai,
from the Greek). Eventually, in a
mistranslation, the vowels from Adonai were merged with the consonants of Yahweh
leading to the pronunciation of Yahweh as Jehovah (Y in Hebrew is usually
equivalent to J in English). Thus,
Yahweh=Jehovah.
The
Jewish name for the Old Testament is the Tanakh. This is a Hebrew acronym for the Torah, the Prophets and the
Writings. We will use the more
familiar term Old Testament here.
We
will now pick up the basic history of the period. Refer to the chart for additional information.
Figure 4.1: Calendar of
dates:
Moses leaves Egypt |
1240 BCE +/- |
David unifies
Israel, starts Davidic dynasty |
1005 |
First Temple built
in Jerusalem by Solomon |
960 |
Israel and Judah
split |
920 |
Israel falls |
722 |
First Temple
destroyed, exile from Judah begins |
587 |
Torah assembled
into present form |
560 +/- |
Persia overthrows
Babylon, exile ends |
539 |
Temple rebuilt
(Second Temple) |
520 |
Greeks conquer
Judah |
330 |
Maccabean revolts |
167 |
Septuagint
(translation to Greek) completed |
150 |
Rome conquers Judah |
37 |
A
group of people left or was expelled from Egypt, led by a man called Moses (an
Egyptian name, by the way). They
made their way to the Sinai peninsula just east of Egypt, where they spent time
before ultimately settling in the area we now call Israel (the Promised Land). They considered the area as belonging to
them under a covenant made with the local God of the land, who called himself
Yahweh.
(Worshippers
of Yahweh are referred to as Yahwists until the destruction of the first temple
in 587 BCE. They are then called
Judahists until the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE. Thereafter, they are called Jews.)
The
area was controlled by a series of powerful local leaders over a period of about
two hundred years, until control was unified under a single king named David in
1005 BCE. He was succeeded by a
son, Solomon, who built a temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem in 960 BCE. Jerusalem was at the center of a
northern area called Israel, and a southern area called Judah (or Judea).
Solomon
and his successors ruled this united kingdom for a hundred years, until the two
area fell under separate control. For
the next hundred or so years, Israel and Judah were separate nations that
operated under the auspices of the god Yahweh.
In 722, Israel fell to the Babylonian Empire.
Judah
continued as an independent nation until it too fell to Babylon in 587 BCE. At that time, a significant number
(perhaps 10,000 or more) citizens of Judah were exiled to Babylon along with
their king. Over the next 50 years,
the Persian king Darius overthrew the Babylonians and freed the people of Judah
to return to their homeland. It is
during this time that the Torah was assembled.
Reunited,
the people were now free to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem and re-establish
the religious practices that had been suppressed during the years of captivity
and exile. During the next few
hundred years, the practice of Judahism – the worship of Yahweh, the God of
Judah – continued to flourish as religious customs grew.
During
this time, religious activity was centered on the temple in Jerusalem and a
priestly group whom administered sacred rites.
However, the practices and beliefs varied from city to city within the
region, slowly evolving. Additional
writings were originated, which eventually became sacred. Eventually, the area was conquered
again – this time by the Greeks (330 BCE).
Roman domination followed.
The
Old Testament was written during these periods, and describes the history before
and during these times. The key
reference period in this history is the period of the exile to Babylon, from 587
to 538 BCE. This period accounts
for important writings, and serves as a dividing line for the pre-exilic period
(before 587 BCE, especially before 722) and the post-exilic period (after 538
BCE, and especially after 520).
The
Torah was written during the exile (from 587 to 538 BCE) using writings that
originated from antiquity and described the period up to the conquest and
occupation of the Israel nation. Shortly
after, and still during the period of the exile, the books of the Major Prophets
(including Judges, Joshua, Kings, and Samuel) were written describing the
history up to the exile.
These
writings formed what became scripture, but were the work of one or more men
living an existence separated from the land of their God – probably in
Babylon. They hoped for a return to
the old ways, and wished to preserve their memory. Unlike other similar stories of old
world conquest and assimilation, these people survived and eventually returned
to their land. They were free to
once again pursue their religious vision, and their practices lived on and were
documented.
There
is no reason to believe the worship of Yahweh was much different than the
worship of other deities in nearby areas. What
was different was that the history of Yahweh’s people survived from generation
to generation through written scrolls documenting the interaction of Yahweh and
his people. This is what separates
the God of Judah from all others.
We
have come to believe that the religion of the Old Testament was advanced for the
time because these worshippers of Yahweh (now called Judahists) believed in a
single all-powerful god. Unfortunately,
this is far from true. First, the
Judahists did not necessarily believe in a single god; they worshipped a single
god, one with whom they had a covenant. Their
agreement was to worship Yahweh and no other gods. This does not mean that they did not
believe that other gods existed. Second,
they did not believe that their god was omnipotent. They did believe their god was
fundamentally more important than other gods; something like “my god can beat
up your god”. Of course, as
various kingdoms rose and fell, the god of that kingdom presumably gained and
lost stature as well. Third, the
Judahists were not the only people who held these beliefs. There were many areas that worshipped a
single deity. So again, the
difference in the Judahist religion was that it was recorded in writing, and
those writings were passed down so that they exist today.
One
of the interesting questions of Biblical history: how does one properly
determine when to emulate the heroes of the Bible, versus acting opposite to
their behavior? Many of the most
important figures of the Bible are flawed.
For example, consider David, first king of the unified Israel. He was famous for many deeds, including
slaying Goliath, defeating the Philistines and establishing Jerusalem as the
capital of the new nation. Yet he
was also guilty of committing horrendous acts.
He was responsible for sending Bathsheba’s first husband (Uriah) to his
death so that he would be able to sleep with her (2 Samuel 11:1-17). She later bore him a son, Solomon, who
carried on the dynasty and built the First Temple.
Clearly,
David lived a charmed life. He had
God’s blessings, and this is why he was able to achieve so much (according to
the story). So why are the flaws
included in the story? It is
speculated that the imperfections in the story lines help make it more
believable. This is perhaps one of
the evolutionary leaps contained in the Bible – that the people described have
typically human qualities, emotions and actions.
In fact, it has been said that the stories themselves must be true; for
who would make up a story that shows such imperfections?
Most
people have heard of the 10 commandments. Not
as many people are familiar with the additional commandments in the Bible. In all, there are 613 commandments in
the Old Testament. In the New
Testament, there is an eleventh commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. There is even the great commandment:
love God with all your heart (??).
-The Great Commandment:
Love God
2. The
Torah
In
the Jewish Bible, the first five books are referred to as the Torah. Torah is the Hebrew word for the
“law” or “instruction”. These
books are (using their more familiar Greek names): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy. Collectively,
they are also known as the Books of Moses or to many Christians, the Pentateuch. For our purposes, we will consistently
use the term “Torah” to refer them.
The Puzzle
Both
Jewish and Christian tradition long held that Moses himself wrote these books. However, elements of the writing of the
Torah had been puzzling. Many
scholars – Jewish and Christian – noticed minor inconsistencies in the
information presented. Some even
questioned that Moses was the author of every word of the Torah, supposing that
a subsequent editor or copyist might have added a few sentences.
For
those early scholars who took the time to analyze these inconsistencies and
write about them, the result was usually ridicule (Isaac ibn Yashush, or
“Isaac the blunderer”), banned books (Richard Simon had 1294 of 1300 copies
of his book burned), excommunication and/or imprisonment (John Hampden, 1688,
who recanted as a condition of his release).
So the atmosphere for independent scholarly criticism was not good. In the last few hundred years, attitudes
finally changed and scholarly analysis began in earnest. Even noted philosophers such as Hobbes and Spinoza recognized
and tackled the problem.
The
puzzle originally began as follows: if Moses wrote the Torah, as was commonly
believed, why did he include multiple versions of some of the stories? And why weren’t the versions
consistent as to the facts? For
example, there are multiple versions of the flood story. One says the flood lasted 40 days
(Genesis 7:17), the other says it lasted 150 days (Genesis 7:24). How could both be true?
As
analysis progressed, significant insight was gained. It was learned that some of the stories were not only
presented twice (called “doublets”), but sometimes a third time as well
(“triplets”). Surprisingly, the
writing style and language differed significantly from section to section,
usually in ways that could only be seen when reading the Hebrew version.
What difference does it make? (From Tanakh, JPS)
Genesis 7:12 |
The rain fell on
the earth forty days and forty nights. |
Genesis 7:17 |
The flood continued
forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and raised the ark so
that it rose above the earth. |
Genesis 7:24 |
And when the waters
had swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days, God remembered
Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark
and God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided. |
Genesis 7:11 |
In the six
hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth
day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst
apart, and the floodgates of the sky broke open. [See following quote.] |
Genesis 8:13 |
In the six hundred
and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the waters
began to dry from the earth; and when Noah removed the covering of the
ark, he saw that the surface of the ground was drying. And in the second month, on the
twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. [The flood lasted one
year and ten days.] |
Consideration
was eventually given to the idea that portions of the Torah were not written by
Moses at all, and must have been added at a later date. This was especially true of those
sections of the story describing events that occurred after Moses died! Examples included naming kings who lived
after Moses (Genesis 36:31). There
is even an account of Moses’ death, something which one could hardly be
expected to write about.
Valiant
attempts were made to reconcile these discrepancies. For example: Moses was a prophet, so he could see the future;
the stories were allegorical, and do not have to add up exactly to make their
point; etc. Eventually: a)
increased study led to finding more and more inconsistencies; b) patterns
emerged in the inconsistencies that ultimately led to breakthroughs; and
finally, c) an unexpected solution to the puzzle was postulated.
After
careful analysis of the doublets, it was determined that two nearly identical
story lines were present. The
doublets amounted to parallel descriptions of events, and the parallel versions
had been intermixed. The versions
could be identified by specific linguistic characteristics that amounted to a
signature.
And Moses wrote neither of the versions.
The
full explanation of the logic of the problem and its solution is outside the
scope of this article. See
reference 3, Who Wrote the Bible for a comprehensive understanding of the
subject, and related issues. Its
author, Richard Elliott Friedman, credits such noted scholars as W. M. L. De
Witte, Karl Graf, and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) for their contributions to
the solution. We’ll skip to the
chase...
The Documentary
Hypothesis
The
standard scholarly explanation of the development of the Torah is called the
Documentary Hypothesis. It goes as
follows: the Torah was written by four different authors, known by their
initials Y (Yahweh), E (Elohim), P (Priest) and D (Deuteronomy). The initials are not for the names of
the authors themselves, but rather for specific attributes of the authors. The actual authors are unknown. These authors did not know each other,
and did not even live contemporaneously. Their
writings were integrated – by a process called redaction – circa 560 BCE. (However, the Y and the E texts are much
older than the process implies. The
Y and E texts themselves may be 300 years older, and may themselves have been
passed down orally for centuries prior to that!)
The
Y and the E texts can most easily be understood as follows: The writer of the Y
section always refers to God as Yahweh.
However, the writer of the E section always refers to God as Elohim
(literally “Gods”). In English
Bibles, this distinction can be seen if you look carefully. Elohim is translated as “God”. Yahweh is translated as “Lord” or
“Lord God”. However, the distinction is maintained fully in Hebrew texts.
The
P source refers to God as Elohim too, so there are other factors that
distinguish E from P. Genesis
primarily consists of text from P, J and E, and possibly some from an additional
author.
The
text tells the same basic story in Genesis, with repetition. So accordingly, there are two creation
stories (Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:4), two flood stories (see above), two
stories of Abraham’s covenant, etc.
So
the easiest way to picture how these stories came to be intertwined is as
follows: someone cut and pasted portions of one scroll – the Y scroll – with
portions cut and pasted from the other scroll – the E scroll. Then a new scroll was copied from the
hybrid, containing both the Y and E versions of the same stories. Then the P scroll was added by someone
interested in documenting procedures important to the priests of that time. Finally the D scroll was added, which
may have been written by the editor (called the redactor) himself. The redactor may have been one person,
or several.
We
don’t know for a fact that there were four authors of the Torah. We do know that there were at least four authors of this section of
the Bible. There are many scholars
who speculate that there are more authors of this section of the Bible. However, the Documentary Hypothesis
itself sticks to four.
Why
did the redactor mingle the E, J, P and D versions? We will never know the true answer to this question. It is a subject of substantial
speculation. The way the stories
are split seems to defy any simple explanation.
For example, why not simply include one entire story and then include an
entirely separate story, as is done in the Gospels? The logic is not apparent. Obvious consideration would be given to
the thought of a compromise – that two popular versions served as sources so
as not to offend anyone loyal to a specific version.
In
1943, Pope Pius XII threw in the towel and issued an encyclical (“Divino
Afflante Spiritu”) allowing Catholics to openly study and debate the
Documentary Hypothesis (and other aspects of Biblical authorship). Within 25 years, the Catholic Church
itself came to accept the Documentary Hypothesis as valid. Catholic and Protestant Bibles now often describe it in their
preface.
What difference does it make?
Jewish Bibles
typically deny the Documentary Hypothesis because the Torah is much holier
to Jews than it is to Christians. In
fact, the Torah is much more important to Jews than are other portions of
the Jewish Bible. |
Christians, on the
other hand, tend to give the most weight to the books of the New
Testament, and typically overlook perceived criticisms of the Old
Testament. There is a loosely
similar hypothesis about the creation of the Gospels of the New Testament,
called Q. Most Christian
Bibles deny the Q hypothesis. |
So everyone gets
offended by some scholarly opinion before the subject is closed. |
The dating of events of the Torah is
difficult. There are really no stories from the Torah that tie to events
documented outside the Bible. For
instance, there is no recorded history of the flood; the exile of Moses from
Egypt; or when the Chosen people first occupied the land of Israel. The name of the Pharaoh is not given, so
this too is lacking in specificity. The
best we are able to do is count backward from the time of King David based on
the stories of the Major Prophets, and this is really just a “guesstimate”. So we guess that Moses lived around 1250
BCE.
If
so, Moses lived about 400 years before the Y or E texts were written. There
were no written documents during this period. Thus, the stories were passed down orally before they were
converted to written form. Written
scrolls did not surface in the area of Israel until about 900 BCE.
We
have to assume that there is a very good reason for the fact that the Torah
lacks the detail and clarity otherwise present in the books that follow it. The reason is that a) the events
described did not actually occur as described; b) during the long oral history
phase which preceded the written history phase, the details were lost; or c)
during the written history phase of the Torah, the low-level detail was omitted
or otherwise not preserved from copy to copy.
Most
scholars accept a combination of these reasons. For instance, the flood described in Genesis should have left
numerous remnants that would have been discovered by now if the story were true. Therefore
it is not true. The reason that the
Pharaoh’s name was not given in the Torah is that it had been lost over the
many years the story was passed down orally.
So
the above-described Documentary Hypothesis really only covers the creation of
the Torah from its predecessor manuscripts, Y, E, P and D. Since scholars want to accept that there
was a “historical” Moses (i.e. that Moses is not a fictional character), the
stories of the Torah must be very old indeed.
To
summarize:
1) Some
of the stories of the Torah are not believed to be literal history, including
the creation story and the story of the flood (since both are contradicted by
physical evidence). In fact, the creation story and the flood story both have
remarkable similarities to stories from even more ancient times in other
civilizations.
2) The
story of Moses began about 1250 BCE, but is not independently corroborated or
otherwise calibrated in time to known historical events (as are most other
portions of the Bible, in some form or fashion).
For example, the records of the Egyptians do not mention any events such
as pestilence, Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, etc.
3) The
stories of the Torah were transmitted orally for about 400 years, or about 20
generations. It is not known if any
stories changed, were embellished, or were shortened. It seems reasonable that after 20
generations, considerable detail would be lacking. It is also not known if the original
stories were told in Hebrew, as it is possible that they were originally in
another tongue. (Egyptian?)
4) Eventually
the stories were written in Hebrew, and two versions were passed down over the
next 200-300 years. These versions
evolved into the Y and E versions, which tell similar stories. There are, however, historical
inconsistencies between them, as well as variation in linguistic usage. The Y version is associated with Judah
(to the south), while the E version is associated with Israel (to the north).
5) The
Y and E texts are combined and edited into a single text, which becomes the
Torah as we know it. The P and D texts are added at the same time. The result is a relatively unified
document, which extended through the following books of the Old Testament (in
the order of the Jewish Bible).
Whew! Hopefully, puzzle solved. Keep in mind that the steps 4 and 5
above are the ones we understand best. The
first 3 steps must be deduced from steps 4 and 5, and are necessarily
“fuzzy”.
Understanding
the process by which the Torah came into being is critical to understanding the
Bible as a whole. For the writing
of the Torah set the “ground rules” for subsequent writers. It is also the base religious document
that affects what can later be said about Yahweh.
The Torah sets the stage for the Biblical scripture that follows. You can modify the essential premise,
but you cannot deny what came before and is older. Anything coming from Moses carries more
weight than something recently imagined. An
author can include material that is not completely self-consistent, because this
can always be viewed allegorically. Be
respectful of traditions, and build upon them.
Figure 5.1: Calendar of
dates:
Pharaoh of Moses |
1250 BCE |
Moses begins 40
year desert wanderings |
1240 +/- |
David unifies
Israel, starts Davidic dynasty |
1005 |
First Temple built
in Jerusalem by Solomon |
960 |
Israel and Judah
split |
920 |
Separate versions
of Genesis written (Y and E) |
850 +/- |
Israel falls |
722 |
Deuteronomy &
early prophets written |
620 |
First Temple
destroyed, exile from Judah begins |
587 |
Torah assembled
into present form |
560 +/- |
Exile ends |
539 |
What difference does it make? (From Tanakh, JPS)
Exodus 20:13 |
You shall not
murder. [6th commandment.] |
Exodus 34:10 |
Six days you shall
work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor; you shall cease
from labor even at plowing time and harvest time. [6th
commandment. “You shall not
murder” is not mentioned as a commandment in this series.] |
Deut. 5:17 |
You shall not
murder. [6th commandment.] |
Religious Ideas Introduced Around This Time Period
God created mankind |
|
God has covenant
with people of Judah |
|
God insists on
defined moral behavior, including the 10 commandments |
|
|
|
3. The
Prophets
After
the Torah was written, the story line picks up with events following the death
of Moses. This includes the
unification of the tribes of the Chosen People under David, and the creation of
the temple in Jerusalem under Solomon.
It
is likely that the next 4 books of the Old Testament (in the Jewish order) were
written more or less contemporaneous with the Torah. In other words, the editor of the Torah completed his phase
I, and then worked on phase II. Phase
II would be Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings.
Since Samuel and Kings are split into 2 books each, these account for 6
more books in the Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Ruth is placed in a different order in the Jewish Bible, and
this is significant because Ruth was written later.
In
this view, the 5 books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy) plus the 4 following books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) adds
up to yield 9 books presenting a unified story. This unified story is sometimes called the Enneateuch. The idea is that at one point in time, a
text existed that pulled together all the elements of the history and the
practice of the religion of the land of Judah.
This represented a significant leap forward.
Rightfully,
then, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings should also be included as part of the
previous chapter. These were
written and edited during the same time period as Deuteronomy. However, Jewish tradition assigns
significantly more weight to the five books of the Torah than it does to the
following four. Christian tradition
also assigns more weight to the Torah because of its relationship to Moses, but
not to the same degree as do Jews.
The
Prophets are referred to as Nevi’im in the Jewish Bible. This includes 21 (??) books.
One
of the most confusing things about reading and studying the Prophets is the
phenomenon called “time displacement”.
This is most pronounced with the Major Prophets. These books were written around 620 BCE
but not assembled and edited until 560 (3 generations later, during the exile). But the stories they describe occurred
as much as 600 years earlier. If
they represent any degree of historical accuracy, then they must have been
passed down orally for 10 (Kings), 20 (Samuel), even 30 (Joshua) generations. It is very difficult to assess the
historical accuracy of these books, although their content is mostly historical
(little new religious thought).
Figure 6.1: Calendar of
dates:
Deuteronomy &
early prophets written |
620 BCE |
First Temple
destroyed, exile from Judah begins |
587 |
Torah assembled
into present form |
560 +/- |
Exile ends |
539 |
Temple Rebuilt
(Second Temple) |
520 |
Buddha dies in
India |
487 |
Kung Fu-Tze
(Confucius) dies in China |
478 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Religious Ideas Introduced Around This Time Period
The golden rule |
|
God exacts
vengeance for violations of law |
|
Intermarriage
between Judahists and Gentiles frowned upon |
|
The Torah is canon |
|
4. The
Writings
The priestly traditions
Figure 7.1: Calendar of
dates:
|
|
Alexander the Great
conquers Persia and Egypt |
330 |
|
|
|
|
The rebuilding of the
Temple.
-Maccabees
-Daniel
-Kethuvim
-
The apocrypha (hidden)
Religious Ideas Introduced Around This Time Period
The coming of the
messiah |
|
Day of judgment |
|
Satan (the
adversary) |
|
|
|
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