The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Although scholars have differed about how many sources there are, where they are found, and when they should be dated, in its most widely accepted form the Documentary Hypothesis states that behind the present text of the first five books of the Bible lie four earlier sources, commonly identified by letter.

The word Bible originally meant “book,” but the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament is not one book but many, an anthology of ancient Israelite and early Jewish religious writings. Different religious communities have different versions of this anthology, as well as different names for it. Jews and Protestant Christians have the same conten

The Documentary Hypothesis is, first of all, a hypothesis, a theoretical explanation of data. The data that it explains are the inconsistencies, the repetitions, the anachronisms, and other details that suggest not one but several different authors. In its classic formulation, these are explained by the existence of hypothetical documents or source

Myth and history, then, were not necessarily unrelated genres. History had a mythical dimension, and myth had a historical dimension. We can observe this in the first dozen books of the Bible. From the creation of the cosmos in Genesis 1 to the destruction of Jerusalem at the end of 2 Kings, the narrative has a continuous and often carefully calibr

Perceived as an attack on the doctrine that Moses had written the Torah, and implicitly on the authority of the Bible itself, the Documentary Hypothesis was repeatedly challenged, and many of its early proponents were condemned or forced to leave their teaching positions. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, it was widely accepted among P

Until the seventeenth century, the prevailing view of the Old Testament among both Jews and Christians was relatively simple: it was the word of God. Its human authors were in effect scribes or secretaries, writing down what God dictated to them. In a circular argument, this view was supported by the Bible itself.

The evidence, then, is fragmentary, but when all of it is considered—texts from the ancient Near East, the Bible, and archaeological data—it does, generally, fit together. An analogy is a large jigsaw puzzle that is missing many of its pieces—but enough of them fit so that the reconstruction is probable, if not certain. This applies to chronology,

Despite naïve views to the contrary, the Bible was not handed down by God as a complete package but was the result of a series of decisions made over the course of centuries by the leaders of different religious groups, decisions concerning a variety of works written by many authors also over the course of centuries.

Jewish scriptures, which at least since the early second century BCE had three parts: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Under their Hebrew names, Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim, these parts, abbreviated by the first letter of the names of each, eventually came to be called Tanak (also spelled Tanakh), a term Jews frequently use for the Bible. Th