Friedman - The Bible with Sources Revealed

T H E

B I B L E

with Sources Revealed

A NEW VIEW INTO
THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES

Richard Elliott Friedman

This book is dedicated to
Michael Robinowitz
for the fiftieth anniversary of our friendship

F or centuries, scholars from many backgrounds have worked on discovering how the Bible came to be. They were religious and nonreligious, Christians and Jews. Their task was not to prove whether the Bibles words were divinely revealed to the authors. That is a question of faith, not scholarship. Rather, they were trying to learn the history of those authors: what they wrote, when they wrote, and why they wrote. The solution that has been the most persuasive for over a century is known as the Documentary Hypothesis. The idea of this hypothesis is that the Bibles first books were formed through a long process. Ancient writers produced documents of poetry, prose, and law over many hundreds of years. And then editors used these documents as sources. Those editors fashioned from these sources the Bible that people have read for some two thousand years.

Those who disagreed with this hypothesis came from two opposite ends of the spectrum: the most traditional and the most radical. The most traditional scholarsmainly fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jewsadhered to the ancient answers to these questions: the first five books of the Bible were written down by Moses personally, the book of Joshua was written down by Joshua himself, and so on. The most radical scholars argued that the Bibles books were written later and laterand that they were less and less true.

One problem was that these groups of scholars only rarely engaged each other. Both traditional and radical scholars (and laypersons who followed them) have claimed that the hypothesis has been overthrown, that hardly anybody believes that anymore, but, it must be said, neither group has ever responded to the classic and current arguments that made the Documentary Hypothesis the central model of the field. The hypothesis that, supposedly, no one believes anymore continues to be the model in which most scholars work. It continues to be taught in courses in major universities and seminaries. And it continues to be outlined in introductory textbooks on biblical studies. The primary arguments for it continue to go undebatedand frequently unmentioned.

This lack of engagement was unfortunate. I can testify to this from my personal experience. On one side, I have engaged in discussion and debates with my more radical colleagues at professional meetings and in print. And, on the other side, I have sat at the same table with Orthodox rabbis and with fundamentalist Christian scholars. And when I have presented this subject in university classes, I have tried to be as sensitive to the feelings of my fundamentalist and orthodox students as possible. The goal was not to shake them up or produce faith crises. Rather, I urged them to discuss these matters with their clergy, friends, family, or whomever they trusted to be helpful to them. I hope that we have all learned that we can sit down with people with whom we disagree and learn together. And so it is a shame that traditional and radical scholars so rarely engage the scholarship with which they disagree.

This should not come down to humorous disdain for the positions of others. It must come down to evidence. The collection of evidence in this book is meant to be the largest tabulation of evidence in one place to date. And it is hard data. Style is not included here, for example, since style is not usually a satisfactory criterion for distinguishing sources because it often involves subjective judgments. The exception is when we can observe an element of style that is definable and quantifiable. As an example of such an element, punning (paronomasia) occurs frequently in some of the sources but is rare in others.

The straightforward tabulation of evidence appears in the pages that follow this introduction. The heart and soul of this book, though, are to be found in the text of the Bible itself, which follows that tabulation. In this book you will find the text of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are known collectively by several names: as the Torah (from the Hebrew word meaning instruction), as the Humash (from the Hebrew word meaning five), as the Pentateuch (from the Greek, meaning five scrolls), and as the Five Books of Moses (reflecting the tradition that Moses first wrote them down). The sources of these five books are distinguished from one another by means of differing type font styles and colors. The most persuasive thing is to read the text itself with the sources distinguished. One can choose any of several ways to do this. One can read the component texts individually all the way through, one at a time. Or the reader can take several biblical stories and read each of them with an eye on the component stories coming I thus experienced, in a way, the formation of the Torah from its sources into what became the first five books of the Bible. It was an inspiring and instructive experience indeed, and now everyone who wishes is able to experience the formation of these books as well.

The purposes of this book, therefore, are:

1. To present the largest collection of evidence ever assembled in one place concerning this hypothesis.

2. To make it possible to read each of the source texts individually, to see their artistry, their views of God, Israel, and humankind, and their connection to their moment in history.

3. To make it possible to see the steps in the Bibles formation out of these sources.

4. To help readers appreciate that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The Bible is a rich, complex, beautiful work as a result of the extraordinary way in which it was created.

The basic hypothesis is: These biblical books were assembled from sources. The historical context in which these sources were written and then edited together was as follows:

For two centuries (from 922 to 722 BCE) the biblical promised land was divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south. A text known as J was composed during this period. It is called J because, from its very first sentence, it refers to God by the proper name of YHWH (Jahwe in German, which was the language of many of the founding works in this field). It includes the famous biblical stories of the garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the flood, the tower of Babylon (Babel), plus stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as stories of Joseph and then of Moses, the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Mount Sinai, and Israels travels through the wilderness to the promised land. J was composed by an author living in the southern kingdom of Judah.

A second text, known as E, was composed during this same period. E was composed by a priest living in the northern kingdom of Israel. It is called E because it refers to the deity simply as God, which in the original Hebrew is Elohim, or by the divine name El in its stories until the time of Moses. That is, unlike J, the E text developed the idea that the proper name of God, YHWH, was not known on earth until God chose to reveal it to Moses. E does not include any stories of the earths early history, such as creation or the flood. Its first part appears to be missing. It begins in the middle of the story of Abraham. It then includes stories of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the plagues and exodus, the revelation at the mountain, and the wilderness travels. Some of these stories have parallels in the J stories, and some of them are different. For example, E includes the stories of the near sacrifice of Isaac and of the golden calf, which do not appear in J. J includes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which does not appear in E. And both J and E have the story of Josephs being sold into slavery, but the details of how it happened differ. E also includes a law code (Exodus 2123), which has no parallel in J.