Who Wrote the Bible?

Richard Friedman

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781982129002
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

A much anticipated reissue of Who Wrote the Bible? —the contemporary classic the New York Times Book Review called "a thought-provoking [and] perceptive guide" that identifies the individual writers of the Pentateuch and explains what they can teach us about the origins of the Bible. For thousands of years, the prophet Moses was regarded as the sole author of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. According to tradition, Moses was divinely directed to write down foundational events in the history of the world: the creation of humans, the worldwide flood, the laws as they were handed down at Mt. Sinai, and the cycle of Israel's enslavement and liberation from Egypt.However, these stories—and their frequent discrepancies—provoke questions: why does the first chapter in Genesis say that man and woman were made in God's image, while the second says that woman was made from man's rib? Why does one account of the flood say it lasted forty days, while another records no less than one hundred? And why do some stories reflect the history of southern Judah, while others seem sourced from northern Israel?Originally published in 1987, Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? joins a host of modern scholars who show that the Pentateuch was written by at least four distinct voices—separated by borders, political alliances, and particular moments in history—then connected by brilliant editors. Rather than cast doubt onto the legitimacy of the Bible, Friedman uses these divergent accounts to illuminate a text that was written by real people. Friedman's seminal and bestselling text is a comprehensive and authoritative answer to the question: just who exactly wrote the Bible?

CHAPTER 1

The World That Produced the Bible: 1200–722 B.C.

The Setting

THE land in which the Bible was born was about the size of a large North American county. It was located along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, a natural meeting point of Africa, Asia, and Europe. It had a fabulous variety of climate, flora and fauna, and topographic characteristics. In the northeast was a beautiful freshwater lake, the Sea of Galilee. It flowed into the Jordan River to the south. The river flowed in a straight line south and emptied into the Dead Sea, which was as unlike the Galilee as two bodies of water can possibly be. It was thick with salt. It was surrounded by hot wilderness. According to the traditions of that region the Dead Sea area had once been a pleasant, fertile place, but the people who lived there were so corrupt that God rained brimstone and fire on the place until it was left hardly fit for occupation.

The northern part of the country was fertile, with plains, small hills and valleys. The center of the country had beaches and lowlands along the Mediterranean coast on the west, and hills and mountains on the east. The southern part of the country was largely desert. It was hot and humid along the coast, especially in summer. It was drier in the hills, still drier in the desert. It was cold enough to snow occasionally on the hills in winter. It was beautiful. The people could see the beauty of the sea, the beauty of lake, flowers, and fields, and the beauty of desert all within a few miles of each other.

As striking as the variety of the land itself was the variety of its people. The Bible refers to peoples from numerous backgrounds who mixed there: Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Girgashites, Jebusites. There were also the Philistines, who stood out as different from the others, apparently having come across the Mediterranean from the Greek islands. There was also a circle of people around the borders of the land. To the north were the Phoenicians, who are usually credited with having introduced writing in that region. Along the eastern borders were Syria in the north, then Ammon, then Moab, then Edom to the south. Then of course there were the Israelites, the most numerous people within the boundaries of the land from the twelfth century B.C. on, the people about whom most of the biblical stories are told. The land lay along the route of travel between Africa and Asia, and so there were the influences—and interests—of Egypt and Mesopotamia in the region as well.

The population was both urban and rural; it is difficult to say in what proportion. Certainly the percentage of city residents was large. There were times of considerable economic prosperity and times of hardship. There were times of great political strength and influence, and there were periods of domination by foreign powers. And, of course, there were times of peace and times of war.

• • •

The dominant religion across the ancient Near East was pagan religion. Pagan religion was not idol worship, as formerly it was thought to be. The archeological revolution of the past hundred years has opened up that world to us and given us, among other revelations, a new understanding and appreciation of the pagan religious worldview. At Nineveh alone—the greatest archeological discovery of all time—were found fifty thousand tablets, the library of the emperor of Assyria. At the Canaanite city of Ugarit, three thousand more tablets were found. We can read the pagan hymns, prayers, and myths; we can see the places where they worshiped; and we can see how they depicted their gods in art.

Pagan religion was close to nature. People worshiped the most powerful forces in the universe: the sky, the storm wind, the sun, the sea, fertility, death. The statues that they erected were like the icons in a church. The statues depicted the god or goddess, reminded the worshiper of the deity’s presence, showed the humans’ respect for their gods, and perhaps made the humans feel closer to their gods. But, as a Babylonian text points out, the statue was not the god.

The chief pagan god in the region that was to become Israel was El. El was male, patriarchal, a ruler. Unlike the other major god of the region, Haddu (the storm wind¹), El was not identified with any particular force in nature. He sat at the head of the council of the gods and pronounced the council’s decisions.

The God of Israel was Yahweh.² He, too, was male, patriarchal, a ruler, and not identified with any one force in nature. Rather than describing him in terms of nature or myths, the people of Israel spoke of Yahweh in terms of his acts in history—as we shall see.

The people of Israel spoke Hebrew. Other languages of the area were similar to Hebrew: Phoenician, Canaanite (Ugaritic), Aramaic, and Moabite are all in the Semitic family of languages. Hebrew and these other languages each had an alphabet. People wrote documents on papyrus and sealed them with stamps pressed in wet clay. They also wrote texts on leather and on clay tablets and occasionally carved them in stone or wrote them on plaster. They wrote shorter notes on pieces of broken pottery.

People lived in one- and two-story homes, mostly of stone. In cities the houses were built close together. Some of the cities had impressive water systems, including long underground tunnels and huge cisterns. Some houses had indoor plumbing. Cities were surrounded by walls. People ate beef, lamb, fowl, bread, vegetables, fruits, and dairy products. They made wine and beer. They made pots and jars of all sizes out of clay. Their metals were bronze, iron, silver, and gold. They had wind, string, and percussion musical instruments. Contrary to every Bible movie ever made, they did not wear kaffiyehs (Arab headdress).

There are traditions about the prehistory of the Israelites: their patriarchs, their experiences as slaves in Egypt, and their wandering in the Sinai wilderness. Unfortunately, we have little historical information about this from archeology or other ancient sources. The first point at which we actually have sufficient evidence to begin to picture the life of the biblical community is the twelfth century B.C., the period when the Israelites became established in this region.

The Israelites’ political life in their early years was organized around tribes. According to biblical tradition there were thirteen tribes, with considerable differences in size and population from the smallest to the largest. Twelve of the tribes each had a distinct geographical territory. The thirteenth, the tribe of Levi, was identified as a priestly group. Its members lived in cities in the other tribes’ territories. Each tribe had its own chosen leaders. (See map, page 283.)

There were also individuals who acquired authority in individual tribes or over groups of tribes by virtue of their position in society or their personal qualities. These persons were either judges or priests. The office of judge did not involve only hearing legal cases. It included military leadership. In times of military threat to a tribe or group of tribes, therefore, a judge could acquire considerable power and authority. A judge could be male or female. Priests had to be male. Usually priests had to be from Levi. Their office was hereditary. They served at religious sites, presiding over religious ceremonies, which meant, above all, performing sacrifices. In return for their services, they received a portion of the sacrificed animal or produce.

One other type of person figured in a special way in the leadership of the community: the prophet. Being a prophet was not an office or profession like judge or priest. A person from any occupation could come to be a prophet. The prophet Ezekiel was a priest; the prophet Amos was a cowboy. The word in Hebrew for prophet is nábî’, which is understood to mean “called.” The Israelite prophets were men or women who were regarded as having been called by the deity to perform a special task with regard to the people. The task might be to encourage or to criticize. It might be in the realm of politics, ethics, or ritual. The prophet generally would deliver his or her message in poetry or in a combination of poetry and prose.

The Rise of the Monarchy

The age of the judges’ leadership culminated in Samuel, a man who was all three: a judge, a priest, and a prophet. The last of the judges, he wielded much political and religious authority. He lived at Shiloh, a city in the northern part of the land, which was a major religious center at the time. A tabernacle was located there which, according to a biblical account, housed the ark containing the tablets of the Ten Commandments; and a distinguished priestly family functioned there, a family which some scholars identify as descendants of Moses.

When the Philistines’ domination in the area became too strong for any one or two tribes to oppose, the people sought a leader who could unite and lead all of the tribes. In other words, they wanted a king. It was Samuel who, somewhat reluctantly, anointed the first king of Israel, King Saul. That was the end of the period of the judges and the beginning of the period of the monarchy. Though there were to be no more judges, there still continued to be priests and prophets. And so Israel developed a political structure in which the king was by no means an absolute ruler. On the contrary, the king’s power was checked and balanced by the powers of the tribal leaders, the chief priests, and, above all, the prophets.

This had a profound effect on both the political and the religious life of Israel. In order to become king and to maintain a stable rule, a man had to have the tribal leaders’ acceptance, and he had to be designated by a prophet. He also needed a supportive priesthood. This was partly because the priests, prophets, and tribal leaders held well-established positions by the time of the creation of the monarchy, and it was partly because of ongoing political realities. The king needed the tribes because the tribal musters of troops provided the king with his army, without which he was virtually powerless. The king needed prophetic designation and priestly support because religion not only was not separated from state in that world, it was hardly separated from anything. As introductions to the Bible often point out, there was no word in the Hebrew language of that period for “religion.” Religion was not a separate, identifiable category of beliefs and activities. It was an inseparable, pervasive part of life. A king could not have political legitimacy without religious legitimacy. A king who lost the support of his prophets and priests was in for trouble. And that is what happened to Saul.

Saul had a falling-out with Samuel, the priest-prophet who had designated him as king. The book of 1 Samuel gives two different accounts of the events that precipitated the break (from two different authors?), but the common element of the two stories is that both portray Saul as stepping over the boundary of his powers into the prerogatives of the priesthood. Samuel’s response, apparently, was to designate another king: David.

The Rise of David

David was a well-known hero from the tribe of Judah. For a while he was a member of Saul’s retinue, and he married one of Saul’s daughters. Saul came to perceive David as a threat to his throne—quite correctly—and they became rivals. When David received the support of the priests of Shiloh,³ Saul had them all massacred—except one who escaped.

Saul reigned until his death in battle against the Philistines. After his death the kingdom was split between his son Ishbaal and David. Ishbaal ruled in the northern portion of the country; David ruled in his own tribe, Judah, which was the largest of the tribes, almost the size of all the other tribes together, encompassing the southern portion of the country. Ishbaal was assassinated, and then David became king over the entire country, north and south.

Already at this early stage of Israelite history, then, we can see conflicts between king and priest, and between king and king. These political dynamics would one day play a decisive role in the formation of the Bible.

David stands out as a major figure in the Hebrew Bible, really the only one who comes close to the level of Moses in impact. There are several reasons for this. First, we simply have a larger amount of source material on him in the Bible than on other figures. We have the lengthy text known as the Court History of David (in the book of 2 Samuel), a work which is both beautifully written and a remarkable example of history-writing, remarkable because it openly criticizes its heroes, a practice that is all but unknown among ancient Near Eastern kings.

Second, David stands out because if even half of what the Bible says about him is true he lived an extraordinary life—by which I mean both his personal life and his political life. (The two are hardly separable in any case.)

The third reason for the singular place that David holds among biblical figures is that David established an enduring line of kings descended from him. The Davidic dynasty was in fact one of the longest-lasting ruling families of any country in the history of the world. Hence the powerful endurance of the messiah tradition in Judaism and Christianity—the trust that there would always be a descendant of David at hand in an hour of distress.

David’s Empire

One of the things that may have made Saul an attractive candidate to be the first king of Israel was that he came from the tribe of Benjamin, which was a geographically small tribe. There was therefore little threat that he and his tribe would be able to dominate the other tribes through his position. David, on the other hand, coming from Judah, the largest tribe, epitomized that danger. David was a sensible and able politician, though, and he took a series of actions that enhanced his kingdom’s unity.

First, he moved his capital from Hebron, which was the principal city of Judah, to Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been a Jebusite city, but David captured it, perhaps by a stratagem in which some of his men climbed the nearly vertical shaft of a water tunnel under the city. The tunnel, now known as Warren’s Shaft, was cleared in the City of David excavations of biblical Jerusalem and opened to the public in 1985. Since Jerusalem had been occupied by the Jebusites prior to David’s capture of it, it was not affiliated with any one of the tribes of Israel. David’s selection of Jerusalem as the capital therefore offended no tribe and minimized any impression that he intended to favor Judah—much in the same way that Washington, D.C., was attractive as the capital of the United States because it was carved out and no longer regarded as part of any one of the states. Jerusalem, further, was fairly centrally located between the north and south of the country.

David’s second action that facilitated the representation of both north and south in his new united kingdom was to appoint two chief priests in Jerusalem, one from the north and one from the south. Not unlike the presence of two chief rabbis in modern Israel, one from the Sephardic and one from the Ashkenazic community, David’s two chief priests were a means of satisfying two formerly separate, now united, constituencies. David’s northern priest was Abiathar, who was the one priest who had escaped Saul’s massacre of the priests of Shiloh. David’s southern priest was Zadok, who came from David’s former capital in Judah, the city of Hebron. Zadok and the priests of Hebron apparently were regarded as descendants of Aaron, the first high priest of Israel. David’s dual chief priesthood may therefore have been not only a compromise with respect to north and south. It may also have been a compromise with respect to two old, distinguished, and politically important priestly families: the family of Moses and the family of Aaron.

As strong as any other cement for holding the kingdom together was David’s record of marriages. He married women who came from several regions of political importance, which could only strengthen the social bond between each of those regions and the royal family.

Most practical of David’s policies was his establishment of a standing professional army. This military force included foreigners (Cheretites, Peletites, Hittites) and was responsible to David and his personally appointed general. David was therefore no longer dependent on the individual tribes to muster (i.e., draft) their men into service in times of crisis. David had solved the main part of the problem of dependence on the tribes.

By one military success after another, David brought Edom, Moab, Ammon, Syria, and perhaps Phoenicia under his dominion. He built an empire that extended from the river of Egypt (the wadi El Arish, not the Nile) to the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. He made Jerusalem both the religious and the political center of his empire, bringing the most sacred object, the ark, there and establishing both of his chief priests there. It was a politically significant empire in that world.

The Royal Family

In order to see how the life, events, and individual persons of that world produced the Bible, one must also look into the story of the royal family. Their relationships, conflicts, and political alignments affected the course of history and, with that, the character of the Bible.

David’s having many wives meant that he also had very many children who were half brothers and half sisters to each other. David’s oldest son and likely heir was Amnon. According to the Court History of David, in one of the classically male-sexist depictions of all time, Amnon first raped and then rejected his half sister Tamar. Tamar was the daughter of David and a Geshurite princess. Tamar’s full brother Absalom killed Amnon in revenge. The elimination of Amnon accomplished more for Absalom, though, than revenge for his wronged sister—it also placed him in contention for the throne. So it is in monarchic politics: family relations and political relations are inseparable. Absalom later rebelled against his father. The tribal musters of troops supported Absalom, the professional army was with David. The professionals won. Absalom was killed.

In David’s old age, two more of his sons contended for the succession to his throne: Adonijah, who was one of the oldest sons, and Solomon, who was the son of ...