The Bible

An Introduction, Third Edition

Jerry L. Sumney

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781506466781
• eBook ISBN: 9781506466798
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

What is the Bible? How did it get to us? Why are translations so different? And what influence has the Bible had on culture? From its very first pages, The Bible: An Introduction, Third Edition, offers clear answers to the most basic questions that first-time students and curious inquirers bring to the Bible.

Without presuming either prior knowledge of the Bible or a particular attitude toward it, Jerry L. Sumney uses straightforward language to lead the reader on an exploration of the Bible's contents and the history of its writings, showing how critical methods help readers understand what they find in the Bible. Filled with maps, charts, illustrations, and color photographs to enhance the student's experience with the text.

This third edition offers a number of revisions and a new section on the deuterocanonical books. Neither polemical nor apologetic, The Bible presents the biblical writings as the efforts of men and women in the past to understand their lives and their world in light of the ways they understood the divine.

II

What Is the Story of the Hebrew Bible?

4

The Pentateuch, Part 1: Genesis

This chapter discusses the composition, history, and first book of the Pentateuch:
* Incorporation of four earlier sources
* Genre of the first eleven chapters of Genesis
-Comparison with other writings of the time
-Purpose of such writings
* Genre of the rest of Genesis
* Purpose of similar writings

The first five books of the Bible are often called the Pentateuch (Greek for “five books”), while the Jewish community commonly calls them the Torah, which means instruction (from God). These books begin with the creation of the world and tell the story of God’s dealings with the world through Israel’s ancestors up to the moment of Moses’s death just before the Israelites begin their movement into Canaan.

Authorship

Moses?

Following Jewish (and later Christian) tradition, the headings of these books in many translations of the Bible identify Moses as their author. However, nothing in the text of these books indicates who wrote them. The tradition that assigns them to Moses, the main figure in Exodus–Deuteronomy, arose as the Jewish community came to see them as authoritative. People who now think Moses wrote these books modify that claim to account for the end of Deuteronomy, the last of the five books. The final chapters of Deuteronomy tell of Moses’s farewell address to the people of Israel and of his death and burial. Obviously, it is a bit difficult for Moses to tell the story of his own death and burial. The last three verses of Deuteronomy (34:10–12) also have the perspective of a later writer who claims that there has not been a prophet like Moses since the time of Moses. So it seems that many years passed between the death of Moses and the time when Deuteronomy was completed.

In addition, there are times that the text mentions places that did not exist in the time of Moses. Genesis 14:14 speaks of the city of Dan, but according to Judges 18:28–29 the city named Dan was not called that until the Israelites had taken over the land following the death of Moses. Then Genesis 36:31 speaks of the time before the Israelites had a king. This seems to assume knowledge of an Israelite king, a development that did not take place until long after Moses’s death. Texts such as Genesis 13:7b use terms used only in later times to describe inhabitants of Canaan in the time of Abraham. An outstanding example of the problems that arise if you assume that Moses wrote these texts is the account of the revelation of God’s name to Moses. The story of the burning bush suggests that the name of God had not been known to the Israelite ancestors (Exod 3:13–15) and a few pages later the text says explicitly that God was not known by name to them (6:2–3). But the account of the covenant ceremony in Genesis 15 has both God and Abraham call God by that name (vv. 7–8). This is best explained if these two stories come from different sources that tell the story differently rather than from the pen of a single author. These and other examples of things that reflect a time after the death of Moses indicate that these books were written later than the time of Moses. So we need to think about how they were composed.

A prophet like Moses
Read Deuteronomy 34:10–12 and Acts 3:17–26. This segment of Acts has Peter and John identify Jesus as the “prophet like Moses.” When the author of Acts identifies Jesus in this way, what does he want readers to understand about Jesus and the connection of the church to the historic faith of Judaism?

Four Sources: J, E, D, P

Most scholars of the Pentateuch think that these five books contain material written by a number of people over a long period of time. In the 1870s the German scholar Julius Wellhausen proposed that these books are a compilation of four distinct earlier writings that were artfully woven together.^[1] While scholars have modified and clarified his proposal, most accept the broad contours of Wellhausen’s theory, the Documentary Hypothesis. Scholars identify these four different sources by how they speak of God and by the kinds of things they are interested in and concerned about.

A critical introduction
We need to know certain things about a biblical book to be able to understand it more clearly. The basic collection of this knowledge often appears in a critical introduction. This sort of introduction includes discussions of:
Authorship—who wrote it
Date—when it was written
Literary integrity—whether the book was originally written as it appears or whether some parts were added later
Occasion—what prompted the author to write
Purpose—what the author intends to accomplish with the writing
Theological themes—the main religious ideas on which the work focuses

J, the Yahwist. The earliest of these sources was composed sometime around the tenth century BCE, about the time of King David. This writing often uses Yahweh, God’s name as revealed to Moses, to refer to God. That name appears in the King James Version as “Jehovah” (sixteenth-century English, like German, rendered the first Hebrew letter of God’s name with a J), though most scholars today render it “Yahweh.” Because of its use of the personal name of God, this source is called “J.” Other parts of the Pentateuch use God’s name, but they have other characteristics that set them apart from the J source (as we will see).

The Jerusalem Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible do use “Yahweh.” In place of the name itself, many English translations substitute “the Lord” (with the last three letters written in small capital letters). These translations refrain from using the name of God out of respect. One of the Ten Commandments is: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Exod 20:7 NKJV). Many, particularly those in the ancient Jewish community, came to believe that people should nearly always avoid using the name of God, so they could be certain not to use it in a wrong way. One way to avoid using God’s name in a wrong way is to replace it with “the Lord” whenever it appears in the text. This practice follows the ancient tradition that began in the Jewish community, which reads Adonai (Lord) wherever the divine name YHWH occurs.

The J source appears initially in Genesis 2:4, where for the first time the text speaks of “the Lord God.” At this point, Genesis starts over in its telling of the creation story (more on this below).

E, the Elohist. The second source that became part of the books of the Pentateuch is called “E” because it uses the word Elohim to speak of God. When you see the term “God” in an English translation of the Hebrew Bible, it usually represents this Hebrew word for God. (This way of referring to God also appears in the other sources of the Pentateuch.) The E source appears for the first time in the stories about Abraham in Genesis 20. It shows considerable interest in the Israelites’ life as a confederation of tribes, and less interest in the monarchy that developed later in Israel’s history. It was written around the eighth century.

The name of God
The King James Version uses “Jehovah” to bring the name of God into English because its rendering was influenced by the way Germans had brought the name into their language. The Hebrew letter that begins the name of God comes into German as a J but into English as a Y. Similarly, the sound of the Hebrew letter in the middle of “Jehovah,” which came into German as V, sounds more like the English W. So “Jehovah” and “Yahweh” are two ways to bring the same Hebrew name into English; the latter is closer to the sound of the Hebrew.

D, the Deuteronomist. The name of the third source derives from its theological perspective. It is called “D” because it is found mostly in the book of Deuteronomy. This book proclaims that if the nation obeys God it will be blessed, but if it disobeys it will be punished. This perspective on Israelite national history dominates much of the Bible. This outlook assures the Israelites that God remains in the covenant with them even when they face national disasters, because such calamities are the result of God working within the parameters of the covenant. Much of this material was written in the sixth century BCE, when the nation of Judah had fallen to the Babylonians, though some of it was composed in the aftermath of the earlier fall of the nation of Israel. (The Israelites had split into two kingdoms by the end of the tenth century BCE.) Thus the D material helps explain why the nation fell and how the people can regain favor with God and so see the reestablishment of their nation.

P, the Priestly source. The final major source that went into the books we now have as the Pentateuch is called “P,” for its interest in priestly matters. This source shows concern for matters that involve ritual and other things related to proper worship. It includes regulations about temple worship and narratives that mention things such as clean and unclean animals. This source was finished sometime in the late sixth or fifth century.

The combination: JEDP. The two earliest sources (J and E) were probably combined by sometime in the seventh century. Later someone added the material of D to the growing collection of writings. Finally, in the sixth century the Priestly writers began to add their material to the narratives. The final versions of these books were probably completed in the late sixth to mid-fifth centuries. The books that are the culmination of the combination of these sources is probably what Ezra read to the people when he gave them the laws they were to live by when they returned from exile (Nehemiah 8; see above in chapter 1).

The Wellhausen version of the Documentary Hypothesis relies on an evolutionary model of a single line of development of ideas about God that many scholars now question. Many now see independent oral and written sources that represent different viewpoints and political interests. For example, the traditions that formed J represent the interests of the nation of Judah, while those that formed E represent the nation of Israel. Some doubt that there was a coherent written E source, but rather a collection of traditions, perhaps much of it oral, that provides narratives about some ancestors. Some independent blocks of material that have been proposed include the exodus story (Exodus 1–15), the description of the Tabernacle (Exodus 25–31), the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), and the Balaam story (Numbers 22–24). Some scholars also date the writing of all of the sources, including J, to the sixth or fifth centuries. These kinds of materials and sources were combined at various times by different groups. But they are finally brought together to create what we find in the Pentateuch.

Whatever dates we assign to the various parts, two things seem clear. First, the texts that we now have are composed of multiple sources that have been brought together to provide their readers with specific ways to understand their national history, religious obligations, and God. Second, a fairly extensive form of these texts took shape during the exile. They reflect the concerns of that period, and those who returned to Judah began to shape their laws and identity around them.

So no single author wrote the books of the Pentateuch. Rather, these books include people’s thoughts and experiences of God over hundreds of years. As their stories about God and the origins of their nation emerged, they saw various ways that God had been with them, and different ways that God had acted. Eventually, they brought these materials together and shaped them into the five books of the Pentateuch to provide an understanding of God, the world, and God’s people. The writers and editors of these texts relate their views about God’s care for the world and humanity, and about God’s covenantal relationship with the people of Israel. So these books contain accounts of their experiences of God and their reflections on those experiences through which the people came to recognize God’s word and will.

Varieties of Genres

Whenever we read, we have to take account of the type of material we are reading. This is true of things written today, as well as of biblical writings. We will never understand what we are reading if we do not recognize the t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Illustrations and Boxes
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the Third Edition
• What Is the Bible, and How Did It Come About?
• What Is the Story of the Hebrew Bible?
• What Is the Story of the New Testament?
• Epilogue: The Bible Today
• Appendix: Alternative Reading Strategies
• Glossary
• Index