The modern consensus is that the Pentateuch is a composite work written by multiple authors in different time periods. A final editor put the separate works together into a single text. The Pentateuch is therefore comparable to Tatian's 'Diatessaron', which combines the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) into a single text.
This is known as the 'Documentary Hypothesis'. It is not universally accepted. Some scholars seem exasperated by it, and would like someone to discover archaeological evidence which either confirms or disproves it so that they can move on. I will discuss alternative hypotheses in later posts.
In my first Bible post I mentioned the jarring transition to the second creation story. I did a little bit of research and found that they were written at different times. In my second Bible post, I noted that God seemed to change his mind about how many animals Noah should be taking with him, and that the Noah story was confusingly achronological. In the Abraham and Jacob stories, a lot of events are repeated with differing details.
The authors of the separate sources may have been influenced by some of the same material, such as the 'Book of the Wars of the Lord', referenced in Numbers and now lost to us, and the original 'Book of the Covenant' written by Moses, mentioned in Exodus, also lost to us.
The hypothesis divides the content of the Torah between 6 sources whose names are abbreviated to J, E, P, D, RJE and R.
J, E, P and D were independent documents; RJE and R were editors.
Between 922BC and 722BC the promised land of the Jews was split into two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel in the north, the kingdom of Judah is the south. The J and E texts are thought to have been written sometime during this period: J was written in the southern kingdom, E in the northern kingdom.
The J text features the stories of the Garden of Eden, Cain & Abel, Noah's Ark, the tower of Babel, Abraham, Sodom & Gomorrah, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. In the original Hebrew, the J text refers to God as YHWH throughout. J is an abbreviation of 'Jahwist', the name given by the German scholar who first developed the hypothesis.
The E text includes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses stories. God is referred to as 'Elohim' until God reveals the name 'YHWH' to Moses. E is an abbreviation of 'Elohist'.
In 722BC, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian empire. Sometime afterwards, the J and E texts were combined into a single work, with some text being added to make a more cohesive narrative. This source is known as the Redactor of JE, hence RJE.
P is thought to have been written shortly after J and E were combined into one text. The text focuses on priesthood, laws and rituals. P covers the 7-day creation, Noah's Ark, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. P also refers to God as 'Elohim' until the name 'YHWH' is revealed to Moses. P is an abbreviation of 'Priestly'.
The D source makes up most of Deuteronomy, and was written around 622BC. D is an abbreviation of 'Deuteronomist'.
The final editor is known as the Redactor, R.
There are seven main arguments for all this:
1) Linguistic. Languages change over time: the verses of the Torah can be separated based on what stage of the Hebrew language they display. Doing this separates the hypothesized sources and gives us the approximate dates above.
2) Terminology. Certain phrases and words occur disproportionately in certain sources. For example, 'in that very day' is used eleven times in total: ten times in P; once in R.
3) Consistent Content. When the sources are separated, inconsistencies concerning God's name, sacred objects, God's personality, the role of priests, prophets and judges, etc. In J and E, God is frequently anthropomorphic: he walks in the garden of Eden, makes clothes, smells the pleasing aromas of Noah's sacrifice, wrestles with Jacob, etc. In P, God is a mysterious higher power.
4) Narrative Flow. When the sources are separated, each can be read as a flowing, sensible text.
5) Connections with other parts of the Bible. Other books of the Bible cite passages only from certain sources, which suggests either linked authorship or that the authors of the other books only had access to some of the sources, not the complete work that we know today.
6) Relationships to History and Each Other.
The J text, written in the Kingdom of Judah, presents Judah as a significant figure, has Abraham live in Hebron, the kingdom's capital, and has Moses' scouts only describe locations from the southern kingdom. The description of the promised land's borders in J match the borders of the southern kingdom. J has Jacob favour Judah in his deathbed speech.
In the northern E text, the births and namings of the Jacob's sons only includes the brothers whose descendants became part of the northern kingdom. E has Jacob favour Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, whose tribes were the largest in the northern kingdom.
In J and E, people sacrifice things to God all over the place. P insists that sacrifice can only be performed at the Tabernacle. The practice of centralised worship in Judaism began in the southern kingdom sometime during the reign of Hezekiah, around 700BC. P follows the J and E narratives, but differs when it comes to sacrifice and priesthood: there are no sacrifices until the Tabernacle is built, no way to commune with God unless you are a priest.
7) Convergence. If you separate the passages by linguistic analysis, you also happen to separate by terminology, historical allusion, etc. If you separate passages by historical allusion, you also happen to separate by terminology, linguistics, etc. The lines of enquiry all converge on the same separation pattern.
That is a very short introduction to the evidence for the 'Documentary Hypothesis'. The Bible With Sources Revealed (TBWSR) by Richard Friedman is a special edition of the Torah with the sources identified using different font styles and colours. It also covers the evidence for the hypothesis in more detail. In the introduction, Friedman explains that one of the purposes of the book is '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.'
Certainly, the way the sources have been put together is amazing.
Noah and the Amazing Achronological Flood
Let's have a look at the Noah narrative which, as I mentioned earlier, is confusingly achronological and has God change his mind about how many animals should be taken onto the ark. The Noah narrative is seen as the show-piece of the Documentary Hypothesis. In TBWSR, the Noah narrative looks like this:
Why would the redactor choose to keep God changing his mind about whether Noah should take a pair or seven pairs of each clean animal? Why would the redactor choose to put the sources together in such a way that tells the story in a confusingly achronological manner?
The answer: to give the Noah story an amazing literary structure that mirrors the rise and fall of the waters of the flood.
The narrative centres on God remembering Noah. Before the remembrance, the narrative tells parts of the story in a certain, achronological, order as the flood waters rise. After the remembrance, the order, again telling the story achronologically, is reversed as the flood waters recede. HOW COOL IS THAT?
In the paper pointing this structure out, the author uses this to argue against the documentary hypothesis. He thinks that the original author of the Noah narrative chose to tell the story in such a confusing way in order to give it this amazing structure. I am more convinced that this structure is the result of a redactor trying to figure out the best way to splice the two narratives together.
The Ontological Hierarchy of the Universe
In the J narrative, God is anthropomorphic: he walks in the garden, smells the pleasing aromas of cooked meat, etc. In the P narrative, God is a almighty metaphysical entity who is too grand for humans to understand. The combination of the two sources means that God is presented as both transcendent and personal.
The merging of the J and P prehistory narratives gives interesting results.
In P's creation, God makes man and woman in his image, gives them dominion over the animals and tells them to eat seeds and fruits.
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And qlet them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth... Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food."
Chapter 1 establishes a hierarchy: God, Humans, Animals.
In J's creation story, the serpent tells Eve to eat of the apple because 'when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' Eating the forbidden fruit is a disruption of the ontological hierarchy; the humans are reaching too high. When God learns about this, he kicks them out of the garden, in case they ate of the Tree of Life and became immortal, which would further disrupt the established order.
“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
The Noah narrative begins with: 'When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.'
The 'sons of God' breeding with the humans messes up the hierarchy. The humans become more divine. 'These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.' But the hierarchy must be maintained: after the interbreeding 'The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' He wipes out life with the great flood to set things right.
Then we have the Tower of Babel which the humans intend to build 'with its top in the heavens'. This gets God worried. The hierarchy is being impinged.
'And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”'
God re-establishes the hierarchy; he stops the collective might of humanity from becoming too powerful.
The overall theme of the composite Genesis prehistory is the ontological hierarchy of the universe: God, Humans, Animals. When this order is maintained, everything is fine. A common criticism of humanity's ever increasing technological power is 'playing God'.
That humanity will go too far, become too powerful, and end up being destroyed or destroying itself is a common anxiety when pondering about our future. This anxiety is not the result of modern technology. It goes way back, at least as far back as Genesis.
Sources
The Bible With Sources Revealed
Tatian's Diatessaron and the Analysis of the Pentateuch
The Enigmatic Plurals like "One of Us" in Hyperchronic Perspective
The Coherence of the Flood Narrative
An Empirical Basis for the Documentary Hypothesis
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