How We Got the Bible
ORAL TRANSMISSION & EARLY FORMS
General Outline
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2.
3.
4.
Introduction, Canon, & Inspiration
Oral Transmission & Early Forms
“Discovering” the Law (Josiah & Ezra)
Apocryphal Writings
Hebrew Language
Hebrew Language
• Hebrew originally had consonants and no
written vowels.
• Vowels were added in the 7th Century AD.
• Hebrew reads from right to left.
• Hebrew is a lyrical, poetic language.
• A small portion of the Old Testament is
written in Aramaic, as used in the Captivity.
Absence of Textual Evidence
• The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew
Scriptures in existent are typically from the
9th to 14th centuries AD.
• The Dead Scrolls date back to 1st century BC.
• Moses should have lived in the period 1400
years prior!
• What did Scripture look like in ancient
times?
Wellhausen
Documentary Hypothesis (Published 1878):
The Torah had its origins in a compilation of
four originally independent texts all written
centuries after the time of Moses.
• J – Yahweh Text (Jehovah)
• E – Elohim Text
• D – Deuteronomical Text
• P – Priestly Text
• Later scholars expanded this to many more
sources and variations.
What Wellhausen Didn’t Know
Kitchen: “The first thing to recall – which almost
all modern observers totally overlook! – is how
very, very little was known of ancient Israel’s
surrounding context, the Near Eastern world, back
in 1878.”
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Early Assyria or Babylon
Amarna letters (1300s BC)
Hammurabi’s Code (1770s BC)
Siloam inscription (700s BC)
Archaeological strata
Sumerians
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Hittites
Ugarit
Hurrian
Ebla
Mari
Emar
What Wellhausen Didn’t Know
• Kitchen: “So Wellhausen worked in a near
vacuum and could speculate freely. But that
day has long, long since gone. We today do
have the vast resources hinted at just above.
And they do enable us to profile ancient
history accurately in its broad sweep. And
straight bottom-to-top evolution is out. It
never happened like that: no, not ever.”
Genesis: Patriarchal Religion
• Prior to Moses, we have many examples of
God “speaking,” but none of anything being
written down.
• Exodus 3:15 (ESV) God also said to Moses,
“Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD,
the God of your fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name
forever, and thus I am to be remembered
throughout all generations.”
Exodus: Was Moses Real?
• Exodus 34:27 (ESV) And the LORD said to
Moses, “Write these words, for in
accordance with these words I have made a
covenant with you and with Israel.”
But who is Moses?
• Myth or Legend?
• “Superhero”?
• Embroidered Story?
• Historical Reality?
Exodus: Song of the Sea
Exodus 15:1-18
• Possibly alluded to in Psalms 74, 77, 78, 118;
Isaiah 11-12; Joshua 2-5
• Written in the same style as poetry in Ugarit
(Syria) from 1300s BC
• Written in a Hebrew style that is noticeably
different from the text on either side of it.
• For comparison …
Exodus: Song of the Sea
Exodus 15:1-18
• Possibly alluded to in Psalms 74, 77, 78, 118;
Isaiah 11-12; Joshua 2-5
• Written in the same style as poetry in Ugarit
(Syria) from 1300s BC
Exodus: Song of the Sea
Exodus: Treaty Documents
HITTITE
(1400-1200)
SINAI COVENANT
from EX-LEV
ASSYRIA
(900-650)
ARAM
(900-650)
1. Title
1. Title (Ex. 20:1)
1. Title
1. Title
2. History
2. History (20:2)
5. Witnesses
5. Witnesses
3. Stipulations
3. Stipulations
(20:3-17; ch. 2123 25-31)
6. Curses
3. Stipulations
4. Deposition &
Reading
4. Dep. (25:16) &
Reading (24:7)
3. Stipulations
6. Curses
5. Witnesses
5. Witnesses
(24:4)
6. Curse / Bless
6. Bless / Curse
(Lev 26:3-43)
Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt
• Exodus 13:17-18 (ESV) When Pharaoh let
the people go, God did not lead them by way
of the land of the Philistines, although that
was near. For God said, “Lest the people
change their minds when they see war and
return to Egypt.” But God led the people
around by the way of the wilderness toward
the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went
up out of the land of Egypt equipped for
battle.
Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt
• Conforms to
Geography
• No Northern
Route: Ten
Egyptian Forts
Leading Into
West Canaan
Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt
• Kitchen: “Thus a southern exodus cannot be
held to be proven, but it is both a viable and
a realistic proposition; the narratives show a
practical knowledge of Sinai conditions not
readily to be gained by late romance writers
in exilic Babylon or an impoverished PersianHellenistic Judea, hundreds of miles from the
places and phenomena in question.”
Exodus: Is Moses Real?
• Kitchen: “In short, to explain what exists in
our Hebrew documents we need a Hebrew
leader who had had experience of life at the
Egyptian court, mainly in the East Delta
(hence at Pi-Ramesse), including knowledge
of treaty-type documents and their formats,
as well as of traditional Semitic legal/social
usage more familiar to his own folk. …
Exodus: Is Moses Real?
• Kitchen: “… In other words, somebody
distressingly like that old ‘hero’ of biblical
tradition, Moses, is badly needed at this
point, to make any sense of the situation as
we have it. Or somebody in his position of
the same or another name. On the basis of
the series of features in Exodus to
Deuteronomy that belong to the late second
millennium and not later, there is, again, no
other viable option.”
Deuteronomy: Is There an Editor?
Deuteronomy 34:5-12
• The death and burial of Moses is recorded.
• v. 6, “to this day”
• v. 10, “there has not arisen a prophet since in
Israel like Moses”
• Statements of this sort lead us to believe
that the text(s) was edited at a later date.
God Uses Scribes
• 1 Chronicles 2:55 (ESV) And the families of
scribes that dwelt at Jabez …
• Psalm 45:1 (ESV) … my tongue is like the pen of
a ready scribe.
• Jeremiah 36:32 (ESV) Then Jeremiah took
another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe,
the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the
dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll
that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the
fire. And many similar words were added to
them.
God Uses Scribes
• Ezra 7:6 (ESV) this Ezra went up from
Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the Law
of Moses that the LORD, the God of Israel,
had given, and the king granted him all that
he asked, for the hand of the LORD his God
was on him.
• Matthew 13:52 (ESV) And he said to them,
“Therefore every scribe who has been
trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a
master of a house, who brings out of his
treasure what is new and what is old.”
God Uses Scribes
• Matthew 23:34 (ESV) Therefore I send you
prophets and wise men and scribes, some of
whom you will kill and crucify, and some you
will flog in your synagogues and persecute
from town to town,
• We should think of scribes and their
custodial work of preservation and even
editing as part of God’s plan for the
Scriptures.
Conclusions
• We do know that early oral stories were passed
down from ancient times.
• We do not know what form the earliest writings
took (beyond a certain stone tablet).
• We do know that a “Moses” figure is needed to
make sense of what we have.
• We do know that the content of the Pentateuch
is authentically dated to the era of the Exodus.
• We do not know how much editing might have
been done by scribes after Moses.