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Cohen
17 December 2008
“Who wrote the Bible?”
Introduction
Having read these two books, “Who wrote Shakespeare?” by John Michell and “Who wrote the
Bible?” by Richard Elliott Friedman, I was struck by one similarity between them, namely that we don’t
really know who wrote (or transcribed) either of these two great works.
Last month I reviewed “Who wrote Shakespeare?” and showed that there is considerable doubt that it
was Shakespeare who wrote the 38 plays attributed to him. Today I am going to review the second of
these two books, on the Bible. To show that I had an earlier interest in this subject I brought along
two books that remained in my library all these years. Friedman’s book is a popular review of the
field, and in reading it I was struck by the fact that hundreds of people have worked on this subject for
hundreds of years. It has been the conventional belief that the first five books of the Bible, called the
“Five Books of Moses” (or the Pentateuch in Latin), were actually written by Moses, but nowhere in
the Bible is this claim made! It can equally be interpreted that they were written about Moses not by
him. In one way, this subject is simple, to consider whether one man alone could have written this
text. On the other hand, the topic is very complex to find how many hands were involved and who
they were.
The Documentary Hypothesis
The name given to this approach based on textual analysis or exegesis is “The Documentary
Hypothesis.” Note that it is still in the nature of an hypothesis, it is not proven. Further no-one intends
to attack or breakdown the Bible (quote from Preface). This approach is taught in Israeli schools and is
worked on by many Jewish theologians around the world and is widely described in encyclopedias.
These studies showed that there are certain problems associated with the theory that there was one
single author of the Five Books (Table 1).
The analysis of the Bible proceeded in stages:
1. 12th -16th centuries: suggesting that some additions may have been made to Moses’ work, e.g.
Abraham ibn Ezra, who wrote that “he who understands will keep silent.” In Maimonides
Thirteen Principles of faith written in the 12th century, the 8th Principle states “That the Torah
was divinely revealed and that the Torah now is exactly the same as the Torah that Moses
presented to the Children of Israel.” But, in other places Maimonides and other Rabbis noted
discrepancies in the Torah, but said that it was better that these should not be discussed. In
the 16th century books and people were burnt for even raising these issues (I hope that won’t
happen to me today).
2. 16th-19th centuries: concluding that Moses did not alone write the 5 Books, e.g. Thomas
Hobbes and in the 17thcentury Baruch Spinoza in Holland was excommunicated by the Rabbis
of Amsterdam for his rational philosophy, which concluded that Moses could not have been
the sole author of the Five Books attributed to him.
3. 19th- now: This kind of analysis was continued by Christian and Jewish theologians, e.g. Julius
Wellhausen (1844-1918) who recognized several specific authors for the 5 Books. This was
called the “Documentary Hypothesis.” The consensus of this work until today is reviewed in
Friedman’s book.
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A word about textual analysis; I have been in writer’s classes where a topic is given and people are
asked to write an essay on it. The variation of the results is amazing. They vary in length of sentences
and use of vocabulary as well as form of expression (person, tense, etc.) (Table 2) Using modern
computer methods portions of a text attributable to different authors can now be readily
distinguished.
We believe now that the Exodus from Egypt, described in the Second Book of Moses, that bears its
name, assuming it was a historical event, occurred somewhere around 1,200 bce (Table 3). We also
know that there was oral tradition that was practiced in these times, before the advent of writing.
Writing around 2,000 bce was on baked clay such as Sumerian cuneiform. The earliest Hebrew writing
was discovered recently on a pottery shard dated to around 900 bce. We know that alphabetical
writing with vowels on both animal skin and papyrus using a form of ink started around 800 bce. So
the Bible could not have been written much before ca. 800 bce, but must have been based on earlier
oral traditions. It is most likely that the basis of the Five Books were composed and written down
between 800-700 bce.
We know that after King Solomon died around 922 bce the Kingdom broke into two parts, the
southern Kingdom of Judah (with Benjamin) under King Rehoboam and the rest of the ten tribes in the
northern Kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam. There was mutual animosity between these two
Kingdoms, and each had its own priesthood, Judah in Jerusalem, and Israel in Shiloh. It is noteworthy
that the priesthood in Judah claimed descent from Aaron (supposed to be the brother of Moses?)
while that in Shiloh went one better and claimed direct descent from Moses himself! There are
indications in the Bible that these two priesthoods developed their own versions of the sacred
writings, leading to two versions of the stories differing in some respects. Since they were separate
for 200 years, before the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 bce, this was plenty
of time for two distinct versions of basically the same oral traditions to be written down.
As described by Friedman, it is well known that there are many cases of duplication in the Bible, for
example (Table 4). The name used for the deity and other textual details differ in different portions of
the text. Nor were these designations only based on the name of the deity used, but on use of
repeated words, sentence length, word lengths, and tense or person used. In other words, the full
range of textual analysis lead many scholars to conclude that there were two distinct writers of the
first books of the Bible. This lead to the conclusion that there were two earlier versions that had been
woven together, and the authors of these were named after the versions of the name of the deity
used, namely “J” for the “Jahvist “who used Jehovah, or in Hebrew “Yahweh” (the tetra-grammaton
that is unpronounced in Hebrew) and “E” for the “Elohist” using mainly the name “Elohim (Table 5).
Analysis of the text indicated that J is associated with Judah, i.e. an Aaronid priest and E with Israel, i.e.
a Shilohnid priest. Following the destruction of the State of Israel by the Assyrians and the movement
of priests from Shiloh to Jerusalem in 722 bce, someone combined the two versions J and E into a
single work JE, although with many duplications this was presumably accepted by both sets of priests
and people as authentic!
Further analysis reveals often a third or fourth version of various stories in the Bible that use the name
Elohim in long interpolations that appear to have a distinctly priestly connection, such as priestly
rituals and laws. As a consequence this additional writer was called “P.” This writer is the main author
of Leviticus and Numbers, Books three and four of the Bible. Notably this Priest appears to have been
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from the Aaronid dynasty of Judah, who was intent on establishing their supremacy and rewriting the
content to support certain aims such as “centralization” at the Temple in Jerusalem (as opposed to
other ”high places” where sacrifices were carried out) and P was a strong supporter of Kings Hezekiah
and Josiah, his great-grandson, who promulgated these reforms, and it appears that this version was
written during King Josiah’s reign (648-605 bce). This is the most controversial opinion of Friedman,
since the earlier authors of the Documentary Hypothesis concluded that P wrote much later.
In II Kings 22 it is described how Hilkiah, father of the prophet Jeremiah, found a scroll of the torah in
the Temple when King Josiah of Judah was 18 yrs old (ca. 630 bce). It was read to the King and he
commanded it to be read to the people and he accepted the book that is now believed to have been
Deuteronomy. And It has been suggested, because of the differences of content, subject and style
that this fifth book of the Bible was written by a distinct person, who was named “D.” This author
must have written before the destruction of Judah in 586 bce and probably before 630 bce. From
comparisons of style, for example he called God “Yahweh Eloheinu,” and from other evidence it seems
that the following five books of the Bible were also written by D, and it is suggested from internal
evidence and similarities with the book of Jeremiah that this author D may have been the Prophet
Jeremiah.
So we have four major writers of the 5 Books of Moses, namely J, E, P and D. The origin of two
versions of the first 2 Books can be explained in terms of the two separate Kingdoms of Israel and
Judah after 922 bce. It is likely that J and E were combined into one “JE” after 722 bce when Israel
was destroyed. Then P wrote his version and books 3 and 4 in the further 136 years that the Kingdom
of Judah survived probably around 630 bce. Soon after that D, possibly Jeremiah, wrote Deuteronomy
and the next six books. All of this occurred before the destruction of Judah in 586 bce. So the whole
process took place in stages over ca. 336 years (Table 6).
It is recorded in the Bible that when Ezra returned from exile in Babylon in ca. 538 bce, he found
original versions of the Bible as well as the versions he carried with him from exile. And it is described
that he read the Bible to the people for a whole day. It is widely believed that Ezra arranged the Bible
into its Canonical form that was used ever since. Ezra may have been the final editor, the so-called
great Redactor referred to as “R” who combined JE and P with D and gave us the version of the Torah
as we know it to the present day.
Two further issues are of interest, the Dead Sea scrolls, although they have variants to the Bible we
use today, are extremely close to it, for example the most intact Scroll, that of Eliezer, has only three
differences. Since this and other scrolls can be dated at ca. 2,000 years, we know that the final form of
this part of the Bible was already formed by then.
Also, it is amazing that in most cases, although the scribes combined different versions of the same
stories, they generally did not delete one or other of them, presumably because they considered them
holy (if they did delete any we would not know about it), but they combined them in a way so artful
that their work has survived the test of time.
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