eBible Questions byJames

eBible Questions   (the Whole Series byJames)



eBible Questions 1 - What is the Bible?

We think of the Bible as a single book, perhaps bound in quality leather, with gilded pages. Some treat this book with awed reverence, while others do not mind if the book gathers dust on a coffee table. But what is on the inside? and how did it get there?

The Bible was never a golden tablet, etched by some divine laser, parachuted down out of heaven as a finished product. The word biblia means something like "library," although the image of an oak shelf with books isn't right either. Very few of the items in the Bible were composed the way books are composed, and they certainly don't fit together neatly the way a nicely published series of books might. Open the Bible, and you find something far better than golden tablets from the sky, far more precious than nicely bound volumes on a shelf, and more valuable than some ouija board that gives easy answers to all our questions.

We find, spilling out of the pages of the Bible, a mind-boggling mixture of all kinds of materials, something like the Sunday morning newspaper: before Church, pick up your paper in the driveway and you'll find stuffed inside news, opinion, ads, features, comics, stories, advice, games, obituaries, lists, horoscope, coupons, reviews - and you're not sure you'll ever get to it all. What do we find in the Bible? Stories, historical narratives, genealogical tables, legends, erotic love poetry, songs, somebody else's mail, prayers, jokes, utterly biased biographies, inexplicable visions, excerpts of sermons, tales of dysfunctional families, legends, legal statutes, cooking directions, ballads, a child-rearing manual, and more. How loving, how tender, how wise was God not to give us antiseptic shining tablets with timeless truths, but something more real, more human, so we might comfortably slip inside the pages and discover that God is not found in some ethereal, invisible realm just above the clouds, but right down here in the reality of mundane life. The Bible's diverse, earthy contents tutor us in the way God pokes around relentlessly and finds us in the middle of our family squabbles, our falling in love, trying to get some sleep, humming a favorite song, making supper, our wobbly attempts to pray, our plodding efforts to be good.

And like the morning paper, the Bible really is news. It's not the same old same old. This news isn't the monotonous repetition of what we hear all the time in this world; this news isn't a mirror that reflects back to me my biases and preferences. Something decisive has happened; the world has shifted on its axis, and you miss it until you immerse yourself in the pages of this seemingly haphazard clump of writings that are the Bible. Nothing is ever the same, and when we get it, we won't even notice the screen door slamming behind us as we take off after the God who chose such a clever way to connect with us.

James
james@mpumc.org Back to top
eBibleQuestions 2 - How was the Bible formed?

The Bible is different from the Koran (Qur'an), the sacred scriptures of Islam, which claim to be the direct dictation of God's words spoken to Muhammad, written down verbatim by a scribe. In a . . . . . .
go to the whole series by clicking here

Ben Witherington Posts

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Suspicious Minds »

Best Books– Part Five

March 18, 2015 by Ben Witherington 3 Comments

It would be difficult to fully assess in one blog post the work of J.D.G. (Jimmy) Dunn. For one thing, he is among the most prolific NT scholars of the modern era. Don’t believe me? Check this out….
James D. G. Dunn (1970). Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Studies in Biblical Theology Second Series 15). London: SCM Press.
James D. G. Dunn (1975). Jesus and the Spirit. London: SCM Press.
James D. G. Dunn (1985). The Evidence for Jesus. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. ISBN 978-0-664-24698-3.
James D. G. Dunn (1980). Christology in the making: a New Testament inquiry into the origins of the doctrine of the incarnation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. ISBN 0-664-24356-8.
James D. G. Dunn (1988). Romans 1-8, 9-16. Waco, Tex: Word Books. ISBN 0-8499-0252-5.
James D. G. Dunn (1990). Jesus, Paul, and the law: studies in Mark and Galatians. Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox Press. ISBN 0-664-25095-5.
James D. G. Dunn (1990). Unity and diversity in the New Testament: an inquiry into the character of earliest Christianity. London: SCM Press. ISBN 0-334-02436-6.
James D. G. Dunn (1991). The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity. London: SCM Press. ISBN 0-334-02508-7.
James D. G. Dunn (1993). The Epistle to Galatians. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers. ISBN 1-56563-036-X.
James D. G. Dunn and Alan M. Suggate (1994). The justice of God: a fresh look at the old doctrine of justification by faith. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-0797-6.
James D. G. Dunn (1996). The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: a commentary on the Greek text. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-2441-2.
James D. G. Dunn (1998). The theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. ISBN 0-8028-3844-8.
James D. G. Dunn (editor) (2003). The Cambridge companion to St. Paul. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78694-0.
James D. G. Dunn, general editor, editor of the New Testament; John W. Rogerson, editor of the Old Testament and Apocrypha (2003). Eerdmans commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-3711-5.
James D. G. Dunn (2003). Christianity in the Making: Vol. 1, Jesus Remembered. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-3931-2.
James D. G. Dunn (2005). A New Perspective On Jesus: What The Quest For The Historical Jesus Missed (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology). Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic. ISBN 0-8010-2710-1.
James D. G. Dunn (2007). The New Perspective On Paul. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-4562-2.
James D. G. Dunn (2008). Christianity in the Making: Vol. 2, Beginning from Jerusalem. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-3932-0.
James D. G. Dunn (2009). The Living Word (second edition). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-6355-1.
James D. G. Dunn (2010). Did the first Christians worship Jesus?. London – Louisville, KY: Society for promoting Christian knowledge. ISBN 978-0-281-05928-7.
His output is only eclipsed in the U.K. by Tom Wright. Jimmy, like Marshall, like Barrett, is a British Methodist, and like Bruce he is a Scot. What is impressive about Dunn’s work is that so many of his books have been groundbreaking studies, and even many of those which aren’t are of the very highest caliber of scholarship. His doctoral dissertation done under C.F.D. Moule at Cambridge is one of the best dissertations ever— and it became the basis for his earlier work Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970). This was followed by an equally seminal study Jesus and the Spirit. Dunn had an early interest in pneumatology. I remember his coming to Durham in the late 70s and giving the Lightfoot lecture on glossolalia, which surprised many. Like Barrett and Marshall, Jimmy was equally interested in and adept at Jesus and Paul studies. Christology in the Making and Unity and Diversity in the NT both had wide impact. You can tell when you are dealing with a formidable scholar when even those who strong disagree with him feel that they have to deal with his work at length. Jimmy long had a profound interest in the relationship between early Judaism and the Jesus movement, and the ongoing debate about when ‘the parting of the ways’ happened between these two entities. In my view, it had for the most part already happened even before the fall of the Temple in A.D. 70, as Paul’s letters attest.
In my estimation, one of Jimmy’s very best books is his The Theology of Paul the Apostle. This shows deep and long reflection on Paul’s thought world. While I disagree with him about the New Perspective on Paul issues such as what the phrase ‘works of the Law’ means for Paul, there is so much excellent exposition of Paul’s thought in that volume. And the quality of Jimmy’s work has never dropped off. His recent series on the beginnings of Christianity, Christianity in the Making undoubtedly his own attempt to do for his generation what Cadbury did in their Beginnings study and others did with a multi-volume study with basically is of a very high quality.
Of his various commentaries, I would say that while they are all good, the really top draw ones are his Roman commentary and his one on Colossians and Philemon.
Like Barrett whose chair he occupied once Barrett retired, Jimmy was proud to be in the Lightfoot chair at Durham, being very much a fan of Lightfoot. It is one of the things that unites Barrett and Dunn and myself. Lightfoot would have been very proud of his Durham NT successors, including John Barclay, whom we will discuss in the next post.

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Part Four

I’m often asked why I turned down Oxford, where I had been accepted to do my doctoral work, to go to Durham. The answer is simple— Durham had a better NT department with Barrett and Cranfield and others, and C.K. Barrett was at the time the best Methodist NT scholar in the world, by general acknowledgment. In fact, as time went on, it was surprising to hear various of the German scholars like Martin Hengel say that Barrett was the best NT scholars in the English-speaking world. When I got to Durham I discovered they also had T.H.L. Parker the greatest Calvin scholar anywhere (he translated many of Calvin’s works), and John Rogerson, a fine OT scholar as well. It was an embarrassment of riches. In fact, it became even more so when I discovered that the line of world-class NT exegetes stretched back over one hundred years beginning with Lightfoot, Westcott, Sanday, Plummer, Turner, and then of course the department I worked with. It was quite the heritage of NT scholarship.
By the time I got to Durham in 1977, Barrett was in his late innings, as the Brits would say, in terms of taking doctoral students. He had 13 when I arrived, and most of them Evangelicals from America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. It was impressive. Barrett himself was working on his important ICC Acts commentary, and Cranfield was finishing up his ICC Romans commentary. Barrett had already made major contributions to the world of NT studies in various seminal studies. The following is only a short description of some of the best ones.
As a commentator, CKB had already won an honorary doctorate for his impressive Gospel of John commentary, so rich in exegetical detail, and dealing with issues both theological and historical. It was soon enough translated into German, so strong and enduring was the impact of the book, and it went through two editions, the second one coming out not long after I arrived in Durham (it appeared in 1978). Before that there had been good commentaries on Romans, and especially the ones on 1 and 2 Corinthians were much praised. These too went through multiple editions (in America published by Harper, then Hendrickson). He had also published a slender but rich little commentary on the Pastoral Epistles for Oxford. In general it is right to say that like quite a good number of British scholars, Barrett was more conservative on Paul than he was on the Gospels, and more certain of what could be said about Paul, than about the historical Jesus. There were a variety of rich little monographs that Barrett wrote along the way that were invaluable to students of the NT. Two of my favorites were: 1) The Signs of an Apostle (his 1969 Cato lectures); 2) Freedom and Obligation (A Study on the Epistle to the Galatians). He produced textbooks as well, and the one that kept being used and reprinted was New Testament Background first printed in 1957, and updated and reprinted various times, including in 1995 by Harper One.
One of the most important and impressive things about CKB was what a churchman he was. He was preaching somewhere almost every single Sunday in some Methodist chapel, however small. In this regard he was following the precedent of his father, who was quite the Methodist preacher and evangelist. After he retired, there were several valuable collections of his articles, including the volume entitled Essays on Paul, and Jesus and the Word, then there was a further little study as an Introduction to Paul entitled Paul: an Introduction to his Thought (Westminster 1994). There was even a publication of a more popular study Reading through Romans in 2009. Furthermore, there were popular versions of various of his commentaries done as well, particularly the two volumes on Acts.
There are not many NT scholars about whom one could say ‘anything he wrote was worth reading’ but Barrett was one of them. He always wrote clearly, and vigorously, and you did not have to guess where his commitments tended. He would tell you if he was unsure of something. Behind the pulpit and the lecturn Barrett was formidable. In person he tended to be a bit shy and quiet, and an incredibly kind Christian man. It is fair to say I would not have a doctoral degree without his considerable help along th

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Part Three

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/03/15/best-books-part-two/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bibleandculture_031515UTC020307_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=48229556&spUserID=MTMyMDYyOTMwNjc2S0&spJobID=641854946&spReportId=NjQxODU0OTQ2S0
Towards the end of my college years, I read a book that I really loved, recommended by Dr. Boyd— Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets (two volumes). I still love it. For the first time I began to see the prophets as real flesh and blood people, real passionate believers, and I learned about their pathos, what really moved and exercised them. The books focused on their sense of divine love, on ‘hesed’ and what it meant. Suddenly the prophets were not just predictors, but people in love with God and his people. Suddenly the prophets were not just an interesting subject matter, but were rather subjects of interest in themselves. I still recommend this classic study. It still reads well as a point of entry into the prophets and their lives and urgencies.
In about 1974 I also learned about a British scholar who was clearly an Evangelical Christian and was making a big impact in Biblical studies. I suspect the first book I read by him was New Testament History, which went through many editions. But Bruce was no one trick pony. He could write on history, do exegesis, expound theology, focus on philology, and discourse on inerrancy. It was one stop shopping with Fred Bruce, the Scot with the entertaining accent. I actually got to meet him and hear him in person in Cambridge at Tyndale House Conferences in the late 70s. I remember a lecture on John 18 and the soldiers falling down. The man was approaching 70 and was still as sharp as a tack. I remember he liked his chip buddies as well (a french fries sandwich for those scratching their heads). I next read his commentary on The Acts of the Apostles, and began to figure out what it took to write such a thing— namely a knowledge of many languages, history, archaeology, theology, ethics, text criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, current scholarship, ancient scholarship, and more! Reading his Acts commentary, or should I say commentaries, produced a wow, very much like reading J.B. Lightfoot’s recently uncovered Acts commentary which I was honored to have been able to put into print.

Maybe my very favorite F.F. Bruce book was his seminal study on Paul which came out in 1977 with some fanfare and in America was called Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Much later, in the 80s I loved his The Canon of Scripture. In the 60s and 70s and into the 80s there were very few Evangelical scholars who commanded wide respect right across the discipline of NT studies. Bruce was certainly one of them. It is interesting that those that did were one’s who had really expertise in history and exegesis and text criticism. Another of this ilk that had a big impact on me was I Howard Marshall, another Scot who for many years was the mainstay at Aberdeen. We’ll talk about his work in the next post.

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Best Books– Part Three

March 16, 2015 by Ben Witherington 1 Comment

Ian Howard Marshall was someone I could identify with quite readily. He was an Evangelical and he was a Methodist and he was a NT scholar as well. One of his earliest books (1969), based on a thesis was Kept by the Power of God, which made sense of all the apostasy and perseverance texts in the NT. This is still one of the best studies on this particular subject. Howard was a real churchman as well, frequently preaching here and there in Methodist Churches, and he became President of the … [Read more...]

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Part Two

Finding Jesus— Episode Three »

Best Books– Part Two

March 15, 2015 by Ben Witherington 2 Comments

Towards the end of my college years, I read a book that I really loved, recommended by Dr. Boyd— Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets (two volumes). I still love it. For the first time I began to see the prophets as real flesh and blood people, real passionate believers, and I learned about their pathos, what really moved and exercised them. The books focused on their sense of divine love, on ‘hesed’ and what it meant. Suddenly the prophets were not just predictors, but people in love with God and his people. Suddenly the prophets were not just an interesting subject matter, but were rather subjects of interest in themselves. I still recommend this classic study. It still reads well as a point of entry into the prophets and their lives and urgencies.
In about 1974 I also learned about a British scholar who was clearly an Evangelical Christian and was making a big impact in Biblical studies. I suspect the first book I read by him was New Testament History, which went through many editions. But Bruce was no one trick pony. He could write on history, do exegesis, expound theology, focus on philology, and discourse on inerrancy. It was one stop shopping with Fred Bruce, the Scot with the entertaining accent. I actually got to meet him and hear him in person in Cambridge at Tyndale House Conferences in the late 70s. I remember a lecture on John 18 and the soldiers falling down. The man was approaching 70 and was still as sharp as a tack. I remember he liked his chip buddies as well (a french fries sandwich for those scratching their heads). I next read his commentary on The Acts of the Apostles, and began to figure out what it took to write such a thing— namely a knowledge of many languages, history, archaeology, theology, ethics, text criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, current scholarship, ancient scholarship, and more! Reading his Acts commentary, or should I say commentaries, produced a wow, very much like reading J.B. Lightfoot’s recently uncovered Acts commentary which I was honored to have been able to put into print.

Maybe my very favorite F.F. Bruce book was his seminal study on Paul which came out in 1977 with some fanfare and in America was called Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Much later, in the 80s I loved his The Canon of Scripture. In the 60s and 70s and into the 80s there were very few Evangelical scholars who commanded wide respect right across the discipline of NT studies. Bruce was certainly one of them. It is interesting that those that did were one’s who had really expertise in history and exegesis and text criticism. Another of this ilk that had a big impact on me was I Howard Marshall, another Scot who for many years was the mainstay at Aberdeen. We’ll talk about his work in the next post.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/03/15/best-books-part-two/#ixzz3UytHTNCg

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/03/14/best-books-part-one/

Part One

The journey has been a long one for me. It’s taken reading several thousand books over the years. It really began back in high school when I read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. That really stuck with me. So did Leslie Weatherhead’s little book on The Will of God. I remember a book on the Shroud of Turin which was fascinating too. Of course I also read all the Tolkien, and Lewis, and Williams, and Sayers volumes I could manage starting in high school and continuing through college. Somebody handed me Evidence that Demands a Verdict, probably at an Inter-Varsity meeting, and I went to hear Josh, it’s author. Reading is rather like the snow that keeps falling in my yard. It accumulates, it adds to what has come before, it piles up and becomes weighty. Eventually it changes things. Old paradigms collapse. New mental structures have to be erected, and it never stops. And by what criteria do you decide something is a ‘best book’? I don’t pay any attention to the category ‘bestseller’ because a lot of that stuff is popular for all the wrong reasons. Is it a best book because it made the biggest impression on you? But what if it didn’t make that kind of impression on many others? Is it a best book because its the best summary of some topic of importance whether well written or poorly written? You see my dilemma. This series of posts will simply be about the books that most shaped my thinking along the way, though of course some of them I later saw were less accurate or zingy than I first thought. This is what happens when you continue to learn.
My real education to be a teacher of the Bible began at Carolina, under the tutelage of Dr. Bernard Boyd of blessed memory. I took his OT and NT courses and his seminars. Heck, I took everything I could possibly take with him. He was the best lecturer, best Christian, best mentor ever. He was in the James A. Gray chair long before Bart Ehrman. Unfortunately, he died suddenly and prematurely in Charlotte while I was in Boston in seminary. The line at the funeral home was longer than for Dean Smith. That tells you something about that man’s impact. One estimate is that over 5,000 went into Christian ministry of some sort due to the impact of Dr. Boyd. I was one of them.
Some of the books I read early on in college which impacted me were as follows: 1) John Bright’s classic, that went through many editions starting in 1959 A History of Israel. In fact there were a variety of books by Bright, and G.E. Wright of Harvard and S.F. Albright. They made up the so-called Wright, Bright, and Albright school. Dr. Boyd was an archaeologist and so these folks were seminal to his work at Beersheba and elsewhere. 2) I began to read things recommended by Inter-Varsity as well, like for instance J.I. Packer’s classic Knowing God which first emerged in 1973 while I was at Carolina; 3) C.S.Lewis’ Mere Christianity closely followed by John Stott’s Basic Christianity. These were books talked about endlessly at Carolina by a variety of people. Thank goodness I had a good Bible pastor, Jim, who week after week was teaching the Word and giving guidance at the Chapel Hill Bible Church. He’s still at it! 4) I began to become interested in the works of G.Eldon Ladd, and the book that really got me thinking about the Kingdom of God was his classic The Presence of the Future. 5) I remember a huge concern about Biblical Authority in Campus Crusade for Christ, Navigators, and Inter-Varsity. We read Clark Pinnock’s A Defense of Biblical Infallibilty and it produced a host of discussion.
In the next post I will start talking about seminary books we read.

Writers of the Bible - Changing article to Outline form for my main outline (Whole Article, edited elsewhere)

Writers of the Bible  - Changing article to Outline form for my main outline (Whole Article, edited elsewhere)

Writers of the Bible  - Changing article to Outline form for my main outline (Whole Article, edited elsewhere)

1. Biblical scholars since the 17th century have pointed to evidence that human writers, and in fact a number of different writers, composed the Bible. Mainstream Jewish and Christian organizations, including seminaries and rabbinical schools, generally embrace such scholarship—seeing the voice of God in a text compiled by human hands. In the following interview, Michael Coogan, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College and Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum, offers insights into how scholars today understand how the first five books of the Bible were written.
2. Mainstream scholars like Coogan point to strong evidence that humans had a hand in the writing and editing of biblical texts. Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

3. An anthology of sacred texts

1. NOVA: Most people may see the Bible as a single text, but is it?

1. Michael Coogan: One way of thinking about the Bible is that it's like an anthology of literature made over the course of many centuries by different people. Think of an analogy: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which covers over a thousand years, from Beowulf into the 20th century. The Bible covers a similar span. The earliest texts in the Bible likely date to before 1000 B.C., and the latest texts go at least to the 2nd century B.C., and for Christians, into the 2nd century A.D. So it is an anthology of the literature of ancient Israel and early Judaism, and for Christians, of earliest Christianity, as well.
2. Like any anthology, it's selective. There were many other texts that the ancient Israelites and early Christians produced that we no longer have. We have reference in the Book of Numbers, for instance, to the Book of the Wars of Yahweh. Yahweh was the name of the God of Israel. And it must have been a wonderful book, but all we have is a kind of learned footnote.

2. If it's an anthology, what ties the Bible together?

1. More than anything else, the Bible is an account of the actions of God in the world from creation, and especially his dealings with humans, and especially with a certain subset of humans, the ancient Israelites. 
2. So it's really the story of God acting in history.

3. Do you think it has a central theme?

1. That's a difficult question to answer. I think the central message is that there is a God who is deeply and passionately involved in human history, from the scope of empires to the details of an individual's life. 
2. Within that larger framework, one of the major themes of the Bible is that of covenant. In Christian tradition, the two parts of the Bible are the Old and New Testaments, and "testament" is just an archaic word for covenant.

4. Was the Israelites' idea of a having a covenant with God unusual?

1. Well, the word "covenant" in Hebrew, berit, really means contract. It's used in the Bible to describe all sorts of secular agreements. It's used for treaties between one king and another. It's used for marriage. It's used in debt slavery, in which someone would pay off a debt by agreeing to work for someone. Contracts like that are known throughout the ancient world.
2. The biblical writers used this legal metaphor to describe the relationship between God and Israel, and God and various individuals within the ancient Israelite community. And that seems unique. No other ancient people used that metaphor to describe their relationship with their god or gods.
3. For nearly 2,000 years, Jewish and Christian tradition held that Moses, directed by God, composed the first five books of the Bible.

4. The Five Books of Moses -The first five books of the Bible, which Jews know as the Torah, are also called The Five Books of Moses. Where did the idea that Moses wrote these books come from?

1. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses is the single most important human character, and more space is devoted to the account of Moses' life and speeches by Moses than to anyone else in the Bible. Moses is also considered closer to God than anyone else in the Bible. 
2. And certainly by the 5th century B.C., the idea developed that Moses had written down words that God himself had spoken on Mt. Sinai. Eventually—and this didn't happen until several centuries later—it came to be understood that Moses wrote all of the first five books of the Bible.

3. What were some clues that led biblical scholars to question this belief?

1. The view that Moses had personally written down the first five books of the Bible was virtually unchallenged until the 17th century. There were a few questions raised before that. For example, the very end of the last book of the Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, describes the death and burial of Moses. 
2. So some rabbis said Moses couldn't have written those words himself because he was dead—perhaps Joshua, his divinely designated successor, wrote those words. 
3. But other rabbis said, no, Moses was a prophet, and God revealed to him exactly what would happen at the end of his life.
4. "Underlying the Bible are several different ancient documents or sources, which biblical writers and editors combined at various stages into the Torah."
5. So scholars began to think not just that Moses was not the author, but that ordinary men and women (mostly men) had written these pages.

4. What are some obvious inconsistencies, for instance in the Noah story?

1. In the story of the flood, in Genesis chapters 6 to 9, there seem to be two accounts that have been combined, and they have a number of inconsistencies. For example, how many of each species of animals is Noah supposed to bring into the ark? One text says two, a pair of every kind of animal. Another text says seven pairs of the clean animals and only two of the unclean animals.
1. [For more analysis of the flood story, see Who Wrote the Flood Story?.]
2. The Book of Genesis offers what appear to be two disparate accounts of Noah and the flood interwoven together. 

5. Why would the biblical writers compiling the various accounts include such clear discrepancies?

1. Even before the Bible became the Bible, even before these texts became official canonical scriptures, there was an idea of preserving ancient traditions. Preserving ancient traditions was more important than a kind of superficial consistency of plot or detail.

5. The Documentary Hypothesis

1. What is the Documentary Hypothesis?

1. The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory to explain the many repetitions, inconsistencies, and anachronisms in the first five books of the Bible. 
2. In its classic form, it says that underlying the Bible are several different ancient documents or sources, which biblical writers and editors combined at various stages into the Torah as we have it today.

2. What's the earliest source? It might be "J"

1. The earliest of these sources is the one known as J, which many scholars initially dated to the 10th century B.C., the time of David and Solomon, or perhaps a bit later, to the 9th century, after the split of the United Kingdom into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. 
2. Some scholars today, however, question that dating, placing J as late as the 4th century B.C.

3. How did it get the name "J"?

1. The J source gets its name because it uses the divine name "Yahweh." In the stories about Abraham, for instance, God is called Yahweh. 
2. The German word for Yahweh is spelled with a J instead of a Y. And the German scholars who initially worked on the Documentary Hypothesis called the source "J."
3. Separate biblical writers in Genesis seem to have used different names for God. One of these names is YHWH, generally pronounced "Yahweh." Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

1. People reading the Bible today in English don't come across the name Yahweh. Why is that? Tell us more about the name.

1. It's a very mysterious name. In Jewish tradition it came to be considered so sacred that it was never to be pronounced. When you ran across this name in the Bible, written with its four consonants, which in English would be YHWH, you never read what that name was, you read some other word, usually a word that means "Lord." The Hebrew word is Adonai. This pious substitution became standard in Jewish tradition and also in Christian tradition. Almost all translations of the Bible say "The Lord."
2. It's also a mysterious name because we don't know exactly what it means. It seems to have been the personal name of the god of Israel. His title, in a sense, was God, and his name was these four letters, which we think were probably pronounced something like Yahweh.

4. How does the Bible, in the sections that are attributed to this oldest source, J, depict Yahweh when he first appears?

1. The earliest poems we have in the Bible depict the God of Israel, Yahweh, as a god who comes from the south, surrounded by an entourage of heavenly warriors who fight with him. He appears on mountains with all the accoutrements of a storm—the mountains quake, and the Earth shakes, and the clouds drop down water. He is, in effect, a storm god, like many other storm gods of the ancient Mediterranean world. J uses some of this language, and also, J describes Yahweh as a god personally involved with humans, like deities in myths of other cultures.
1. In Jewish tradition, when reading from the Torah, the Hebrew word Adonai ("The Lord") is substituted for the sacred name "Yahweh." Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

3. The E and D sources - So the J source used the name Yahweh, but other sources used a different name for God. Tell us about the so-called E source.

1. In Genesis, in many passages, God is called not Yahweh but Elohim. And some of these passages were identified in the Documentary Hypothesis as coming from a source called E, for Elohim. The E source is very difficult to characterize. The J source has a fairly coherent narrative, but the E source is extremely fragmentary. Some scholars even wonder if there is an E source.
2. In the classic understanding, the E source seems to have a northern origin, because the stories in the book of Genesis are frequently set in the northern part of Israel, in what became the northern Kingdom of Israel.

3. "In the Book of Deuteronomy there seems to be a new understanding of God's relationship with Israel and Israel's relationship with its God."

4. Does E depict God differently than J does?

1. Yes. In the J source, God appears directly to people. For example, he speaks directly to Abraham—he even comes to visit him and has dinner with him in his tent. In the E source, however, God is more remote. God doesn't appear in person to human beings, but God appears to them in dreams or sends messengers, later to be called angels, or sends prophets, but doesn't deal with human beings directly.
2. To portray the writers of the biblical texts, NOVA turned to actual scribes living in Jerusalem today. Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

4. What's the next source, according to the chronology of the Documentary Hypothesis?

1. The third source is called D, and it takes its name from the Book of Deuteronomy. It is found almost exclusively in the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy has a very distinctive style, which is very different from that found in the earlier books of the Torah. 
2. t also has important themes that, although found earlier in the Torah, are given special emphasis in Deuteronomy, especially the insistence on the exclusive worship of the God of Israel.

3. Is it known when this source was written?

1. Many scholars think that it was written in the late 8th century B.C. It was subsequently used by King Josiah, in the late 7th century B.C., in support of his effort to unify the kingdom and to enforce religious observance.

4. What does the Bible itself—the later books of the Bible—tell us about Josiah and his link to Deuteronomy?

1. We are told in the Book of Kings that King Josiah learned that a scroll had been discovered in the temple archives. 
2. The scroll was brought to him and read out loud before him. And the narrative goes on to say that, as the scroll was being read, 
1. Josiah began to weep, because he realized that it was a sacred text containing divine commands that the people had been breaking.
2. After he heard the scroll read, King Josiah ordered a sweeping religious reform throughout his kingdom. 
3. And the details of that reform, as described in the Book of Kings, correspond in many details to the divine requirements in the Book of Deuteronomy.

3. What were some of the requirements?

1. Josiah required, for example, that all of the shrines to other gods and goddesses throughout the land be destroyed. He also forbade the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel, at any place other than Jerusalem. 
2. The Book of Deuteronomy says, "You shall worship the Lord, your God, only at one place, at the place he will choose."
4. Scholars have wondered about Josiah's motivation. Was it simply his piety? Or was there a political motivation as well? By requiring that all Israelites worship Yahweh only in Jerusalem, Josiah brought under his direct control the enormous religious establishment of ancient Israel, which up until that time had been scattered in various centers of worship throughout the land.

5. How does Deuteronomy describe Israel's relationship with God?

1. In the Book of Deuteronomy there seems to be a new understanding of God's relationship with Israel and Israel's relationship with its God. One of the terms that Deuteronomy uses repeatedly is the term "love." "You should love the Lord, your God, because he has loved you. 
2. He has loved you more than any other nation." So the divine love for Israel requires a corresponding loyalty to God, an exclusive loyalty to God. And Deuteronomy, more than any other part of the Bible, is insistent that only the God of Israel is to be worshipped.

6. The final synthesis

1. What events led to the last major phase of the writing of the Torah?

1. In the 6th century B.C. the Babylonians invaded the Kingdom of Judah twice. In the second invasion, which began in 587 B.C. and ended in 586 B.C., they destroyed the city of Jerusalem. It was the end of a way of life. It was the end of control of the Promised Land by the descendants of Abraham for many, many centuries. It was the end of the dynasty founded by David. The Temple, which was supposed to be the only place where Yahweh was worshipped, was destroyed, and a significant part of the population was taken to exile in Babylon. It was a crisis of enormous proportion.
2. The great Israeli biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann said it is a watershed, it is when ancient Israel ends and Judaism begins. Amongst the exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon were priests from the temple. And they seem to have brought with them their sacred documents, their sacred traditions. According to the Documentary Hypothesis, they consolidated these traditions—they edited them, and they constructed what became the first version of the Torah.

3. "The priests collected the ancient traditions and shaped them into the Torah."

2. These last writers, the priestly writers, are known as P, right?

1. Yes. So it was P who took all these earlier traditions—the J source, the E source, the D source, and other sources as well—and combined them into what we know as the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The P source, in fact, frames the Torah with its own material: The first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is from the P source, and most of the last chapter of the last book of the Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, is also from the P source.
2. Coogan and other scholars think that a group they call the Priestly Writers compiled the work of previous authors during the Babylonian Exile. Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

3. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the Israelites retained their faith. That seems remarkable.

1. Yes. In the ancient world, if your country was destroyed by another country, it meant their gods were more powerful than yours. And the natural thing to do was to worship the more powerful god. But the survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. did not give up the worship of Yahweh. They continued to worship Yahweh and struggled to understand how this could have happened.
2. One explanation was that they were being punished deservedly for their failure to live up to the covenant obligations. Probably one of the reasons why the priests collected the ancient traditions and shaped them into the Torah was so that these covenant obligations would not be forgotten again.

4. So they kept the faith that, as long as they were loyal to God, God would protect them and return them one day to the Promised Land.

1. Yes. One of the pervasive themes in the Torah is the theme of exile and return. Over and over again, individuals and groups leave their land only to return. Abraham goes down to Egypt and comes out of Egypt. Jacob goes to a foreign land and returns. The Israelites go to Egypt and get out. And for the exiles in Babylon in the 6th century B.C., that theme must have resonated very powerfully. God, who had acted on their behalf in the past, will presumably do so again.
2. To assure that divine protection, the priestly writers stress aspects of religious observance that were not tied down to the land of Israel itself, that were not attached to any particular institution such as the temple, that did not require a monarchy—all of those had ceased to exist. So the P tradition emphasizes observances such as the Sabbath observance, such as dietary observance, such as circumcision. You don't need to be in the land of Israel to keep the Sabbath. You don't need a temple or a king or a priesthood to observe the dietary laws. Any Jew anywhere in the world can do that. So the priestly tradition, writing for these exiles, was teaching them how to be faithful to the covenant.
3. [For more on the The Rise of Judaism, read this interview with Shaye Cohen.]
4. This feature originally appeared on the site for the NOVA program "The Bible's Buried Secrets". See the original site for more related features.
5. Interview conducted in September 2007 by Gary Glassman, producer, writer, and director of "The Bible's Buried Secrets," and edited by Susan K. Lewis, senior editor of NOVA Online

7. It wasn't until the 17th century,

1.  with the rise of critical thinking in many disciplines—in science, in philosophy, and others—that people began to look at the Bible not just as a sacred text but as they would look at any other book. 
2. And they began to notice in the pages of the first five books of the Bible a lot of issues that didn't seem consistent with the idea that Moses was their author. For example, Moses never speaks in the first person; Moses doesn't say, "I went up on Mt. Sinai." 
3. There are also a lot of repetitions—the same stories told from different perspectives. And there are also many, many inconsistencies; as the same stories are retold, many of the details change.