Who Wrote the Bible?

For many believers, there is an intimate connection between their beliefs and their scriptures. This is neither surprising nor inappropriate, but it also glosses over some very interesting questions about the sources of scripture. In these notes, we will restrict our attention to the Hebrew and Christian portions of the Bible and our initial question will be:how did these books come into being?

Any answer, of course, will be at best woefully incomplete. There is much that we will never know about the origins of scripture, and the theories that we do have about these matters are not based on eyewitness reports or indirect documentation. They are mostly a result of looking carefully at the text of the Bible itself and trying to come up with the best hypotheses we can to explain some things that are otherwise puzzling.

We will come to those puzzles in short order, but we might start with the traditional view. From antiquity, it was widely believed that the Pentateuch (literally "five scrolls" in Greek)-- the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) were dictated directly to Moses by God. In fact, this view is still common among Orthodox Jews. The 45th verse of the New Testament gospel of John presupposes that Moses wrote the Law( another, older name for the Pentateuch.) I first heard the view from an Orthodox Rabbi, who told me that "God told Moses to write an Aleph. And Moses wrote an Aleph. And God told Moses to write a Beth. And Moses wrote a Beth." In other words, God dictated the Pentateuch to Moses not just word by word, but letter by letter.

This view has one obvious difficulty, and it is one that did not escape the notice of the ancient Rabbis: the last chapter of Deuteronomy describes the death of Moses. Of course, this difficulty is not insurmountable. Moses might have been commanded by God to write down the details of his own death, as God knew they would occur. This solution occurred to some of the ancient Rabbis. As they tell the story, Moses wept as he wrote. A more prosaic solution had it that Moses's successor Joshua wrote the final portion of the Pentateuch.

However, this is the least of the reasons for wondering whether the Pentateuch could have had a single author. Reading the Bible can be quite confusing, as many people discover to their dismay or their delight. Two things in particular are likely to strike you. One is a puzzling quality of repetition. Sometimes the repetition amounts to re-stating a detail more than once within in the same story. This is not by itself unusual, of course. But the repetitions don't have the "feel" of ordinary authorly repetition. And in fact, in some cases, the "repetitions" present seemingly conflicting information.

The most notable example of a conflict of this sort is at the very beginning of the Hebrew Bible. There are two creation stories, and there is no straightforward way to reconcile them. The Bible begins with the familiar seven-day creation story (six days of labor and one day of rest.) The story is told in lofty and majestic language, in style that seems suitable for inclusion in a liturgy. Each day's labor is described as the sole work of God: first the light is made, and separated from the darkness; this is day one. Then God creates the dome of the heavens to separate the waters above from the water below; this is the labor of the second day. Then the waters below the heavens are gathered together in the form of the seas, to let the land jut through. And once there is land, there is soil for things to grow, so God makes the seed-bearing plants; thus the third day. But so far, there are no luminaries in the heavens. So god creates the greater and the greater and the lesser light -- the Sun and the Moon -- to mark the passing of days and season and the times of festivals> he also fills the sky with stars,a dn thus the fourth day. But so far there are n creatures, and so God fills the seas with fish and fills the air with birds. And thus the fifth day. And at last the beasts are made to roam the earth and then God says "Let u make man in our image. And so God made man in his own image' in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And this was the work of the sixth day. The seventh day - the Sabbath -- is passed in rest from these labors and is set aside as holy. Throughout the story, we are told that God declares the goodness of the parts of his creation, and all is set forth in measured and cadenced language.

But after this majestic section, we are once again told a tale of creation, and this second tale is the familiar story of Eden. The language here is much more the language of the teller of tales than the priest or the cantor. The portrait of God is human, the details of the description intimate: after God has made the earth, but before he fills it up with life, he forms the first human from the dust of the earth, breathing the breath of life into his nostrils. It as as though God is playing in the clay, making a mud-doll whom he brings to life with a puff of air. This version is clear, and in clear contrast with the one we have just reviewed: only after this first human creature is created does God bring the plants and then the animals into being.

Discussion of the differences between these two stories dates back at least to 1685, when a French priest, Father Richard Simon, pointed them out. Perhaps, with great ingenuity, it is possible to reconcile these two accounts -- to harmonize the details into a single, coherent narrative. But that is not the approach adopted by mainstream Biblical scholars. But father Simon noticed some other systematic variations in the way in which the Pentateuch refers to God, and noticed some of the repetitions to which we have alluded. His view was that the Biblical text displayed scribal additions and alterations to a text that had originated with Moses. However, over the next three centuries, scholars who worked on this material evolved a view that has come to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis. This hypothesis identifies four different authorial strands within the Pentateuch: the Yawhist, the Elohist, the Priestly and the Deuteronomist. The Yahwist and the Elohist are held to be the oldest, and the names derive from the characteristic ways in which God is referred to in different portion of the text. "Yahweh" is the transliteration (i.e., phonetic rendering) of a Hebrew word that seems to derive from the verb "to be." It is the way that God refers to himself in the his first encounter with Moses at the burning bush. The word is usually translated as the Lord in English versions of the Bible. Since much of the scholarship that gave rise to the detailed documentary hypothesis was by Germans, and since the German word is spelled "Jahweh," this source is referred to as the J source. It is usually dated at around 950 BCE

The Elohist uses the word "Elohim" to refer to god. The Hebrew word means "the gods," though it is usually translated into English as "God." This source, the E source, is generally dated at around 850 BCE -- a century or so later than J. However, in the text as we have it, the two sources are woven together. This is thought to be the work of later redactors -- editors who assemble different texts into a whole.

Within the material that uses "Elohim" as the name of God, there appear to be two strands of material however. In addition to the older source referred to as E, there appears to be material from another source. It tends to be concerned with matters of ritual and temple worship and with the rules governing the priesthood. It also contains long genealogies. This material is thought to date from after the time of the exile. in 587 BCE, the kingdom of Judah is attacked by the Babylonians and its leaders are taken into captivity. This period, known as the Babylonian captivity, or the Exile, lasted for about 50 years until the Persian king Cyrus defeated the Babylonians and released the Jews to return to Jerusalem. This experience of captivity was a defining period for the Jews -- one in which their leaders had to find ways of preserving their identity in the midst of a foreign people who were not sympathetic to their religion. The P materials seem to reflect this experience.

The fourth source, D (for the Deuteronomist) is mainly concentrated in the book of Deuteronomy, but is also scattered elsewhere throughout the Pentateuch. The reference is to a book of law that was discovered in the temple in 621 BCE under the reign of King Josiah. The material here reflects a concern with re-stating the laws under which the Jews were to live, especially at a time when there were internal and external forces threatening the kingdom.The Deuteronomist is greatly concerned with establishing the centrality of the temple to Jewish worship and with keeping the people on their guard against pagan influences. The usual date for this material, taking into account the need to develop the material supposedly found in the Temple, is around 659 BCE. SO in order from oldest to most recent the sources are: J, E, D, P.

Very briefly, there are certain characteristics that tend to distinguish these various sources. J and E both present God in anthropomorphic terms -- in a way that makes God seem very human. However, there are difference here nonetheless. J often depicts humans and God in direct contact, with God speaking directly to a human person, and that person speaking directly to God. E tends to rely more on intermediaries (angels) and dreams. J and E tend to depict God as using the powers of nature to perform his feats. P is more likely to present God as using more direct means. D and P have more highly developed theologies, D being concerned with matters of Law and P with temple rituals and observances. That, in potted for, is the Documentary Hypothesis. Is it universally accepted? By no means. It would certainly be rejected by fundamentalist Christians and by Orthodox Jews. Furthermore, almost all contemporary scholars would agree that the hypothesis as it stands, is to simple. But what would generally be agreed in mainstream circles is that the Pentateuch is, indeed, a compilation of of material from various sources, woven together by editors and redactors over a long period of time, rather than the work of a single individual.

Although this idea is standard fare in mainstream seminaries, it comes as a surprise to the average person in the pew. Some people clearly find it religiously threatening.

Even though the idea that Moses was the author (or scribe) who wrote down the Bible has a long history, it is difficult to see how Biblically-based religion could be threatened if this idea were abandoned. More generally, the idea that the Bible is a compilation is hardly threatening on its own, though it does tend to make the inspiration for the document seem more indirect. But more disturbing to some is the underlying premise that the parts of the Bible cannot simply be reconciled and made into a single, consistent story. This is disturbing to many people because if correct, it means that the Bible can't be believed entirely and completely literally; to do so would involve the believer in outright contradictions. But if the Bible is not entirely literally true, the worry goes, what reason do we have to put credence in it at all?

The purpose of these notes is not to persuade anyone that they should or should not believe the Bible. Not all readers of these notes are even members of the traditions that give the Bible a special place. But we can still ask: what sorts of attitude toward a book of scripture are compatible with treating the book as scripture. If the Bible is a patchwork, assembled over the centuries, then what does it mean to call it scripture?

Part of the problem here can be addressed by asking what different literary forms or genres are found in the Bible. Is the whole of the Bible simply intended as factual narrative from start to finish?

I would suggest that almost no one really believes this. The clearest counter-examples come from the Christian portion of the Bible -- the New Testament. We do not ask whether the story of the Good Samaritan is literally true. The parables of Jesus are stories intended to make a point. To worry about whether there really was a Jew who was rescued by a Samaritan in just the way that Jesus describes would be to worry about the wrong thing. Parable is not that sort of genre. But surely we can ask: what were the literary intentions of the author of the first creation story? Or the second? Or the story of the flood? More generally, when people in various cultures tell mythic stories about the creation of the world, do they take themselves to be doing what we are doing when we do history or science? Is it of any religious importance to believe that the world was created in six literal days? Or to sort out whether people came before plants and animals or vice-versa? Stories like the creation stories and the flood story are of a piece with similar stories from other peoples and other cultures. But they are also clearly intended as ways of conveying theological ideas: that God is separate from and has dominion over creation; that creation itself is fundamentally good; that God has the power to wipe the earth clean. D Is it necessary that these theological ideas be grounded in factual narratives?

One answer to this is that such rhetorical questions ignore something: if the Bible is not divinely inspired, then it is one book among many, and is not a credible source of religious knowledge.

Let us grant this point: if the Bible is not somehow divinely inspired, it is not a reliable source of religious truth. What, exactly, does this have to do with the Documentary Hypothesis, or with the question of whether the creation stories, for example, are literally true?

Start with a different question: should the believer believe that genuine religious understanding can come from non-Biblical writings? Interestingly, I have never met a believer who would say no. Most believers would agree that religious thinkers such as prophets or religious philosophers can provide genuine religious insight. So can writers of religious fiction and poetry. They would presumably insist that these people, too, can be inspired by God, and that if they weren't their "knowledge" would be false. But if they areinspired, they can tell us something of the mind of God, so to speak. But what is the point? First, these same people would also agree that none of these non-Biblical sources are infallible. Even Maimonides or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Cotton Mather or Paul Barth or Billy Graham can be wrong from time to time. In other words, inspiration doesn't equal infallibility. The same could apply to the Bible; most mainstream theologians would say that it does.

But if the Bible is wrong about creation, for Heaven's sake, how could we possibly hold it to be inspired at all?

We are back to the problem of genre here. What form of inspiration does the first creation story represent? Inspiration about details of the history of the cosmos? Or inspiration about the nature, goodness and absoluteness of God? If we read an allegory, for example, as though it were a literal tale, we would miss its point. Now allegory is not the appropriate term to describe the first creation story; the term "allegory" refers to a story in which there is fictional elements stand for other things in detailed and specific ways. But though the term "allegory" is too specific, that doesn't take away the basic point. The seven-day story was written in a specific context: it aimed to substitute a much more exalted and elevated conception of God for the much more brutal and anthropomorphic conceptions found in Babylonian culture, for example. To me, and to many others, the Biblical story clearly embodies a much nobler theology. (Your mileage may vary; but that is not the point.) And this theology does not rest on the literal details of the story of the myth, to put the text into its appropriate literary genre. The point, to stress it and sum it up, is that whether the story is inspired and whether it is a literally true story are simply two different questions.

There are, of course, other issues that the documentary hypothesis raises. Not all differences between parts of the text can be resolved in this way. some represent conflicting viewpoints rather than complementary myths. That certainly means that if he documentary hypothesis is correct, then the idea that the Bible is fully, uniformly and absolutely inspired can't survive. And this may be a very disturbing idea for some -- so disturbing that the heroic alternative of trying to harmonize the whole of the Bible may seem preferable. But it is not at all clear that such heroics are necessary or even wise. In fact, some would say that they represent the threat of a certain sort of sin: the form of idolatry that goes by the name of bibliolatry.