THE FIRST BIBLE

Louis W. Cable¹

                     Deuteronomy 31:9 ~ And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of  the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel.           

I begin with a quote from a little pamphlet titled, "The Baptist Faith and Message," a statement of beliefs adopted recently by the Southern Baptist Convention. Here’s what they have to say about the Bible:

What about this Bible - this awesome piece of ancient literature that has so profoundly influenced western civilization and served as a model for the holy books that came after it such as the Koran and the Book of Mormon? Just when and how did the Bible originate, and who wrote it? By bringing to bear on these perplexing questions the results of many years of dedicated research and analysis, mostly in the fields of history, literature, theology and archaeology, a unified picture is beginning to emerge. A picture, I might add, that is devastating to Southern Baptist Convention claims of biblical inerrancy, infallibility and divine inspiration. For if the Bible was indeed written by God, his literary competence, not to mention his sanity, would frequently be open to question.

The Bible was obviously not written by one person but by a large number of authors and editors dispersed over a millennium. The editors of the Bible combined these works in ways that the authors never dreamed of. According to traditions that orthodox and fundamentalist Christian readers follow, the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were written by Moses himself. Today, however, there is hardly a Bible scholar on earth who attributes these books to Moses or indeed to any one person. The prevailing view is that this work - called the Pentateuch - was originally four separate works, J. E. P. and D., which were brilliantly combined during the Babylonian exile so as to form one continuous narrative. Similarly, the history that extends from Deuteronomy through the books of Joshua, Judges, I and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings - called Deuteronomistic history - is understood by most scholars to have been constructed by a historian who used a group of works by many persons as sources. The same applies to the history that runs through the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah - called the Chronicler's history. Although our knowledge is incomplete, we are now at a point at which we can separate these various source works and in some cases identify who wrote them, when and why².

Concerning the validity of the Bible many scholars are today claiming that much of what is recorded in the Bible is at best distorted, and some characters and events are probably totally fictional. Most scholars suspect that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, Judaism's traditional founders, never really existed; many doubt the tales of slavery in Egypt, the Exodus and the revelations of Mt. Sinai.  Relatively few modem historians believe in Joshua's conquest of Jericho and the rest of the Promised Land. In their view, all of the above are complete fabrications, invented centuries after the supposed fact^2a.

The name Pentateuch (having five books) is, according to Harry E. Barnes (The Twilight of Christianity, page 159,) highly inaccurate. It is in fact a misconception and a misnomer. Instead of being made up of the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) as the name implies, the Pentateuch, as originally conceived, constitutes a block of eleven books, namely, the first twelve books of the Bible, leaving out the Book of Ruth, which is a late product of the Persian or Greek periods. Far from being the creation of a single author, Moses, who allegedly brought out his work within a period of a few years, the Pentateuch was actually compiled by a number of authors writing over a broad sweep of time which extended from the tenth century³, the establishment of Israel, to the middle of the fifth century, the close of the Babylonian exile. Literary and historical analysis have reveled that the Pentateuch, as it turns out, is not the single interconnected, uniform narrative it appears to be. It is in fact a composite of four different source documents cleverly combined in such a way as to appear to be one continuous narrative chronicling, along with God's laws, the origin and early history of the Hebrew people. The process through which the discovery was made came to be known as the "Documentary Hypothesis" or Higher Criticism and is credited largely to the work of the nineteenth century German historian and Bible scholar, Julius Wellhausen, although other investigators such as Karl Graf and Wilhelm Vatke made significant contributions. The four source documents are:

       J (Yahweh/Jehovah) - associated with the divine name.

       E (Elohim) - referred to the deity as God.

       P (Priestly) - legal sanctions and priestly duties.

       D (Deuteronomy) - the books of the early prophets.

The chronological order of the source documents was determined by way of comparative analysis. J and E date to around 1000, and are acknowledged as the earliest of biblical writings, although they were obviously preceded by an inordinately long period of orally  transmitted legendary accounts⁴. While the writers of J and E were aware of the division of the original kingdom, Israel, into two separate states, Israel to the north and Judah to the south, they were unaware of subsequent events such as the conquest of Israel in 722 by the Assyrians. The priestly source, P, was written after J and E but before D. The key to P's timing lies in the fact that its writers were aware of the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722, and they referred to J and to E. However, the writers of P were unaware of D. Therefore, D is judged to be the most recent. Not only do the writers of D extol the virtues of King Josiah (638?-607?,) they were aware of his untimely death in the battle of Megiddo, the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the exile which followed in 587. There it ends.

The overriding question is, who wrote the original documents. J, E, P and D, and why were they later combined in such a complex way? To answer these and other questions concerning the origin and development of the Bible we must travel back in time some three thousand to thirty five hundred years and briefly review the origin of the Hebrews, the people who gave us the Bible.  

Paleoclimatic records show that an unusually sever drought persisted in what is now called the middle east for the better part of the 13th century with devastating effect. As the drought persisted, people were reduced to marauding bands of stateless brigands or fleeing refugees desperately in search of food and water. Cities were abandoned and destroyed. Whole empires crumbled and vanished never to rise again. One of the empires that fell victim to this natural disaster was Canaan, referred to in the Bible as the promised land.

The drought abated during the close of the 13th and beginning of the 12th centuries ushering in a cooler and more humid climatic cycle. The nomadic groups began to settle down and repopulate the area as subsistence farming and sheep and cattle raising again became possible. New associations were formed developing their own ethnic and religious identity but in most cases retaining vestiges of the all but forgotten pre-drought civilizations. Among anthropologists this process is known as "retribalization." One of these groups came to be known as the Hebrews. They were essentially retribalized descendants of the old Canaanite empire retaining much of its culture and religious features. They were not descendants of ex-Egyptian slaves as the Old Testament Book of Genesis asserts. In fact, there was no Moses, no exodus, no parting of the Red Sea and no revelation on Mount Sinai⁵.

Although they shared a common religion and language, the Hebrews did not as yet have a formal national identity, they formed a confederation of small tribes, each with its own rather loosely defined territorial area. As they continued to grow and prosper, the Hebrews felt the need to band together to protect themselves from their aggressive neighbors.

What they needed was a strong leader, and as so often happens in such cases, one did arise. His name was Samuel. Samuel was the leader or Judge, as they were called, of one of the largest and most influential of the northern tribes, the tribe of Ephraim, also known as Israel. Around 1050 Samuel persuaded the other tribal judges to join together to form a unified nation. The nation was called Israel after his tribe. The Hebrews were henceforth known collectively as Israelites. A man named Saul was chosen by Samuel to be the first king of the new nation of Israel. However, Saul's tenure on the throne was short lived. He was killed in a battle with the Philistines but not before he had set in motion a conflict that was later to play a crucial role in the evolution of the Bible.

The two largest and most influential of the Hebrew tribes were the tribes of Israel, in the north, and Judah, in the south. Following unification these were the only two tribes that really mattered. The remaining smaller tribes usually lined up behind one or the other depending on their geographic proximity. Both Israel and Judah had a powerful priesthood with a long established tradition. Priests were in those days a force to be reckoned with. No king could rule. No army could march. No law could be enforced nor taxes collected without their consent and cooperation.

Each tribe had its religious center. For Israel it was Shiloh; for Judah it was Hebron. Although their religions were similar in many respects, there was a basic disagreement between these two groups. The priests of Judah claimed to be directly descended from Aaron, traditionally recognized as the founder of their religion. They are referred to as "Aaronoids." Up north in Israel the priests of Shiloh claimed Moses as the founder of their faith, thus the designation "Mushite." Each claimed to be the one true priesthood of God. Following unification there was an uneasy truce between these two powerful priestly lines but they were definitely on a collision course, and trouble wasn't long in coming.

As a result of a policy dispute, Saul dispatched his army to Shiloh one night with orders to slaughter all of those trouble-making Mushite priests. The army attempted to carry out the order, but some of the Mushites managed to escape. They went into hiding and vowed somehow to regain their lost power and prestige and to exact their revenge.

Saul was succeeded by an ambitious and aggressive young army captain from the tribe of Judah named David. He was destined to become the most powerful, influential and revered king the Israelites ever produced. He managed to spread the Israelite empire from the Euphrates river in the north to the wadi El Arish in Egypt, from the shores of the Mediterranean sea eastward beyond the Jordan river. In addition to being a very good military strategist, he was also an able politician. In an attempt to defuse the priestly antagonism and further unite the kingdom David moved the capitol from Hebron, in his native Judah, to Jerusalem, a neutral city. In a further effort to appease the powerful priesthoods, he appointed two chief priests, one a Mushite the other an Aaronoid.

Upon his death David was replaced by his son Solomon, known as Solomon the Wise. But for a wise man Solomon committed what turned out to be a very imprudent act. In a fit of pique he summarily dismissed the Mushite priest, Abiather, who had been appointed as co-chief priest by his father, and gave the priestly authority entirely to Zadok, the Aaroniod. By this arbitrary and ill advised action King Solomon incurred the wrath of the northern tribes. Also, his ambitious building projects led to increased taxation thereby adding fuel to the already smoldering flames of resentment. Things went from bad to worse, but Solomon did managed to hold the nation together.

Rehoboam, Solomon's son, became king when Solomon died. Although Rehoboam made a feeble attempt at reconciliation, his refusal to renounce his father's policy of high taxation was more than the northern tribes could stand. They seceded and formed a separate kingdom retaining the name Israel. The southern tribes regrouped and formed a new kingdom, Judah. The kingdoms, though separate, shared a common religion with its center at Jerusalem in Judah. After a while this arrangement became disadvantageous for Jeroboam, the king of Israel. So he created his own version of the religion and required the people to do their worshiping at home in Israel. Thus the stage was set for the writing of two separate but related versions of holy scripture which is exactly what happened.

The Israeli version is known as the E source; the Judean version is known as the J source. J and E refer not to the names of the kingdoms but to the names they used for God. In Judah it was Jehovah (Yahweh), thus J. In Israel it was Elohim, thus E. Although these documents were similar in many respects, there was one very important difference. According to the E source the hero and founder of the faith was Moses while in J it was Aaron.

Israel and Judah existed as independent kingdoms for 200 years. During that time their religions continued to evolve along separate paths. As a result, what had once been a single religion became two different religions with a common heritage. However, Israel, the northern kingdom, was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 and became a part of that empire. To escape the wrath of the Assyrian invaders, many Israelite refugees fled south into Judah. Naturally, they brought their holy scripture, E, with them. Sometime during the following 130 year period of Judean independence J and E were combined into a single document, JE. Why?

The combining of J and E was no doubt done shortly after the defeat of Israel out of sheer necessity. With the aggressive Assyrian army sitting just across their northern border, the Judians were apparently eager to make what ever concessions were necessary to avoid internal strife and to present a united front to the potential aggressor. By combining the two scriptural documents the main source of friction between the two powerful priestly groups was greatly reduced, though not entirely eliminated. At any rate, the combining of J and E reflects the reuniting of the two Hebrew communities after 200 years of division.

Literary analysis turned up yet another story cleverly intertwined with JE. This turned out to be the priestly source known as " P". P is mostly found sandwiched in the E source, the one brought down from Israel by the refugee Mushite priests. Although P is very similar to JE there is one very important difference. P upgrades the role of Aaron, the traditional founder of the priestly line of Judah. Conversely, it subtly downgrades the role of Moses, the hero of the Mushites of Israel. A very interesting question now arises: "Why and by whom was P written?"

Apparently, after reading the combined JE version a couple of times the Aaroniod priests of Judah began to have some second thoughts. It dawned on them that they had been bamboozled. In the process of combining J and E their founder and hero, Aaron, had received short shrift. So they retaliated by writing P, another version of the holy scripture. According to Friedman (p.188) there is good evidence that P was written by an Aaronoid priest sometime during the reign of the pro-Aaroniod King Hezekiah (c715-687). P was written in such a way that Aaron's prestige was restored and the threat to Aaroniod dominance in Judian civil and religious affairs thereby removed. In the Mushite inspired E source, for example, it regularly says, "And God said unto Moses . . ." But, in the P source similar passages read, "And God said unto Moses and unto Aaron . . ."Also, in E magic tricks are performed in Egypt by Moses using his staff. In P, however, while Moses still performs the tricks, he does so using Aaron's staff. In fact, P maintains that Aaron and Moses were brothers and that Aaron was the firstborn ⁶. Another important aspect of P is that for the first time priests are portrayed as the designated intermediaries between God and the people.

The last of the four sources is Deuteronomic history, or the D source. Included in it are the Books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel and 1st and 2nd Kings. The D source stands apart from JE and P in syntax, grammar and literary style. Much of JE is repeated in D. However, P, the pro-Aaroniod source, is conspicuously absent. Here again the perplexing question arises: "Why and by whom was D written?"

In 622 during the eighteenth year of the reign of the pro-Mushite King Josiah, a "lost" holy book was mysteriously discovered in the temple. This discovery could not have been more convenient for King Josiah because it gave much needed scriptural support to his proposed religious and governmental reforms. It also heavily favored the Mushite priesthood. The German scholar W. M. L. De Wette argues in his doctoral dissertation that far from being a lost book of the Torah, D was actually written and planted in the temple not long before its alleged "discovery." The discovery story is an obvious charade. The whole purpose was to provide grounds for King Josiah's proposed religious reforms as well as to enhance the power and prestige of the Mushites. Deuteronomic history, De Wette maintains, is little more than a "pious fraud."

King Josiah was, according to the author of the D source, God's chosen leader -- a reincarnated Moses destined to drive out the invaders, reunite the divided kingdoms and restore Israel to its former greatness. He might well have accomplished these lofty goals, but fate entered the picture as it often does. In 609 during what amounted to a minor skirmish with Egyptian forces King Josiah was mortally wounded. A stray Egyptian arrow penetrated his chest thereby putting an abrupt and tragic end to Israelite dreams of conquest and glory. In 587 Judah was decisively defeated by the Babylonians and their allies, the Egyptians. Many of the Israelites were sent as captives to Babylon. Thus began the Babylonian exile which was to last for approximately fifty years.

Some reasonable explanation had to be forthcoming as to just why God would allow this to happen. Here again reliable evidence supports the conclusion that following Josiah's death and the defeat of Judea, the D source was "updated" to include a priestly interpretation of the tragic and unexpected turn of events. To this end, two chapters were added at the end of 2nd Kings giving it a new and understandably uninspired, pessimistic ending⁷. But first, in an act of out right forgery, the exiled writer went back to the original text and added verses prophesying the coming defeat and exile⁸. The defeat of Judah and the exile that followed were God's punishment of the Hebrew people for having disobeyed the first commandment, the one against apostasy. They had taken to worshiping other gods so Yahweh had no recourse but to seek retribution.

Literary and historical evidence strongly supports the theory that Deuteronomistic history, both before and after the death of Josiah and the destruction of Judah, was written by the prophet Jeremiah. He was a close friend and confident of King Josiah and a devoted Mushite priest.

In 538 the Persians under Cyrus the Great unexpectedly defeated the Babylonians. As a magnanimous gesture of conciliation, the Israelite captives were set free whereupon many of them returned to Judah. However, a large contingent elected to remain in Babylon where they had, in the best Jewish tradition, managed to establish themselves as successful business and professional people. By this time practically all of the Mushite priests had either died of old age or had been executed by the Persians because Cyrus perceived them to be pro-Babylonian. Although the Mushites were never to rise again, their influence continued into the next century.

In 458, Ezra, the chief priest and spiritual leader of the Babylonian Israelites, and a fervent Aaronoid, returned to Jerusalem bringing two important documents with him. One was a letter from the Persian emperor, Artaxerxes I, granting him supreme authority to govern and to teach. The other item was a book referred to as "The Torah of Moses." This book is believed to have been the basic Old Testament from Genesis through 2nd Kings presented essentially as we know it today. But wait a minute! What ever happened to those hallowed documents JE, P, and D? Well, it seems that they had been incorporated into Ezra's book. But why, how and by whom was it done?

There are good indications that the original documents were combined either by Ezra himself or by a group of priests and scribes working under his direction in Babylon. It was presumably done for the same reason that J and E had been combined about 250 years earlier. All three source texts were by this time too well known for any part of them to be deleted or changed in any substantive way. JE, for example, had been around since the destruction of Israel in 722 and was quoted in D. P had been around since Hezekiah's time and had the support of the Aaronoids, the priesthood then in power. D had been around for 150 years and was read publicly once every seven years as required by law⁹. Besides, who would have accepted it if it had not included such well known stories as that of Adam and Eve (J), the golden calf (E), Phinehas (P) and Moses' farewell speech (D)?

The next question is, why combine them? Why didn't the editor just lay them out side by side as was later done with the four gospels in the New Testament? The difference is that by Ezra's time it was universally accepted that all scripture had been written by an inspired Moses. Additionally, to allow them to continue as separate documents was not advisable as it might well have led to a revival of the old priestly rivalries thus further dividing a community struggling to reestablish itself. Combining the three sources into a single document in the hope that it would promote unity and harmony was, therefore, the only viable alternative.

As to how they were combined into a single volume, the redactor did a very skillful cut and paste job in the case of JE and P. In his book, Friedman gives some good examples of how this was done. For example, he takes the story of Noah and the great flood (Genesis chapters 7 and 8) and separates it into the two original stories -- one from E and the other from P. Each story stands alone as complete in itself. The D source was simply stuck on at the end of the Book of Numbers without so much as a transition statement.

The Documentary Hypothesis of Wellhausen includes four sources, J, E, P and D, as noted above. However, in light of more recent discoveries it should be expanded to include a "C" source symbolizing 1st and 2nd Chronicles. These two books were added probably shortly after Ezra returned to Judah. They are thought to have been written by him or under his direction. They present yet another version of the history of the Hebrew people. The difference being that in Chronicles the virtues and accomplishments of Solomon and Hezekiah, the most powerful of the pro-Aaronid kings, are extolled at some length. Chronicles was obviously written as a propaganda tool to offset the pro-Mushite history recorded in D and in 1st and 2nd Kings whose hero is King Josiah.

It is easy to see how this method of combining the original sources into a single volume resulted in the many redundancies, repetitions, doublets, disconnected stories and contradictions plaguing the Old Testament.

The point of all of this is that through modern investigative techniques, we are now beginning to understand the real story of biblical origin, and in many cases, who wrote the various sections and why. It evolved through a coherent natural sequence of known historical events. Therefore, the Bible can no longer be perceived as having been dictated by God to Moses and/or other inspired individuals. In light of current knowledge the very idea becomes absurd, even silly. To sum it all up there is no credible evidence that the events described in the Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua and others ever really took place. To make bad matters worse for the Bible literalists no record of these events appear in Egyptian chronicles of the time. Also, Israeli archaeologists combing the Sinai during intense searches from 1967 to 1982 - years when Israel occupied the peninsula - didn't find a single piece of evidence backing the Israelite's supposed 40-year sojourn in that desert¹⁰.

Today more serious questions than ever before are being asked about the reliability of both the Old as well as the New Testament. Very little if any of the Old Testament gives reliable historical testimony especially for the period from around 1000 to the defeat of Judah and the deportation to Babylon in 586. Although it may to some extent be based on earlier materials, the Old Testament as a whole dates from the re-establishment of the Jewish state in the fifth century following the emancipation. Because the Old Testament is not considered factual to any extent, it cannot be taken seriously.

The Bible is in fact a very human book in all aspects. Its writers were reacting solely to the events of their day and in that setting. They were not writing for future generations as some Bible believers maintain. Now I can understand the importance of the Bible as an artifact or a curiosity. It may even have some historical significance, though limited. What I cannot understand is how any knowledgeable person can take it seriously.

For an evaluation of the New Testament and its teachings see New Testament Forgeries, The Pauline Epistles, The Sermon on the Mount and Are the Gospels True? on this web site.

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1 Compiled in part from Out of the Desert? by William H. Stiebing and Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman.

2 Friedman, Richard E., The Disappearance of God, Little, Brown and Company, 1995, pages 80 - 82. 

2a Are the Bible Stories True?, Time Magazine, December 18, 1995.

3 All dates here given are Before the Christian Era (BCE) unless otherwise indicated.

4 Berlinerblau, Jacques; The Secular Bible, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005, page34.

5 Are the Bible Stories True?, Time Magazine, December 18, 1995.

6 Exodus 4:14 ~ And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, "Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother?" Exodus 7:7 ~ And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake to Pharaoh. 

7 II Kings, chapters 24 and 25.

8 Friedman, Richard E., Who Wrote the Bible?,  Summit Books, 1987, page 147.

9 Deuteronomy 31:10-11 ~ And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years . . . thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing.

10 Are the Bible Stories True?, Time Magazine, December 18, 1995.