Who Wrote the Bible? Episode 1: The Torah / Pentateuch

hi this is matt baker for those who don't know me i design history charts for a living and i hold a phd in education and religion today i'm starting a new series on this channel called who wrote the bible and in this episode i'll be covering the first five books of the bible which in english are called genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy i'll be discussing several different theories on how these five books came to be including a new and relatively unknown theory which i find particularly intriguing [Music] [Music] let's start with some basic terminology a lot of people think of the bible as being exclusively a christian book they think that christians have the bible muslims have the quran and jews have the torah but this is not quite correct you see jews also have a bible we call it the tanakh but it is also simply known as the jewish bible as you probably know christians divide their bible into the old testament and new testament well what christians call the old testament is actually the exact same book as what we jews simply know as the jewish bible or the tanakh what about the torah then well christians call the first five books of the old testament the pentateuch meaning the five scrolls these are genesis through deuteronomy for jews these same five books are called the torah so the torah is simply the name for the first five books of the tanakh which happen to be the exact same five books as the first five books of the christian old testament so it doesn't matter if you pick up a jewish bible or a christian bible other than some minor translation differences the first five books are going to be exactly the same now there's a third jewish book you might have heard of that also starts with a t that's the talmud but the talmud is not actually considered part of the jewish bible it's an entirely different book comprised of oral traditions and commentary on those traditions written by rabbis what we're going to be concerned with in this episode is just the torah or pentateuch aka genesis through deuteronomy so let's dive in from a traditional point of view the answer to the question who wrote this part of the bible is easy it was moses and for some orthodox jews and evangelical christians there is simply no questioning that but for the majority of jews today like myself as well as most christians the answer is not so simple as i mentioned in my video on did moses exist from a historian's point of view moses is more of a legendary character and the stories about him quite clearly include many literary elements it's also very obvious to language experts who study the torah that it is definitely not the work of a single author rather it clearly consists of many layers that were pieced together over time now this actually makes a lot of sense considering that the torah deals with events that were initially passed down orally whenever this happens you usually wind up with multiple versions of the same story and this is exactly what you find in the torah for example there are two separate creation accounts two separate stories of abraham lying about his wife sarah two accounts of god changing jacob's name to israel and so on according to some tallies there are about 30 examples of these kind of doublets in the torah so what almost every scholar agrees on within the field of pentateuch studies is that there were definitely several distinct authors involved but what they do not agree on is exactly who those authors were and in which order they contributed their material because of this i cannot present you with one definitive answer to who wrote the torah and when therefore i'm going to present you with three different theories and let you make the final decision the first theory is the one that you're most likely to have heard of if you're at all familiar with any of this it's called the documentary hypothesis and it's been around since the 1800s nowadays there are many variations of it but the basic idea is that the torah was pieced together from four different original sources these have been labeled the yahwest aloist deuteronomist and priestly sources or more commonly j e d and p note that i'll be using these four letters extensively throughout the rest of the video so according to the documentary hypothesis genesis exodus and numbers are all a mix of j e and p leviticus is entirely p and as you might have guessed deuteronomy is entirely d note that the black areas of the chart represent other texts that do not fall into the main four the original theory was that jay was written during the reign of solomon when the israelites were supposedly united and at the height of their power e was written by someone in the breakaway northern kingdom of israel d was written during the reign of josiah after the fall of the northern kingdom and p was written after the jews returned from babylon now like i said there are many different variations of this theory for example nowadays j and e are often combined into a single source p is sometimes placed before the exile and d is usually divided into two or more stages but the basic theory remains the same multiple sources combined together to create the torah sometime during the second temple period however the main problem with this theory is the overall timing the latest research from archaeology indicates that the bible greatly exaggerates its description of solomon's reign in fact many scholars today believe that there likely never was a unified kingdom and that the israelites were probably not strict monotheists until the reign of king josiah which brings me to the second theory the supplementary hypothesis the supplementary hypothesis is kind of an updated or modified version of the documentary hypothesis it's probably the most popular view nowadays although keep in mind that there are also several different versions of it according to this theory deuteronomy or d was the original version of the torah and it was indeed written around the time of king josiah some scholars believe that this is when monotheism really started to be promoted in a big way for the first time the reason being that it was a way to unify the newcomers from the north with the original inhabitants from the south but in a major change from the original theory j and e are no longer seen as separate sources but rather as supplementary material that was added alongside d during the babylonian exile and p is seen as an additional set of supplementary material added by priests during the second temple period finally scholars now talk about a final author called r for redactor who added just a few more things here and there before the torah was finally complete so rather than four separate sources instead we get a single source with additional material being added to it over time so that's basically where 21st century biblical scholarship currently stands on the matter however there is a new theory being explored nowadays mostly in continental europe it came to my attention through a book called genesis and the moses story originally written in german by conrad schmidt i'm going to label this theory the dual origins theory the main idea is that the ancient israelites originally had two separate origin myths one involving the three patriarchs abraham isaac and jacob and the other involving moses and the exodus story according to this new theory these two literary traditions developed independently from each other and remained separate until they were combined for the first time by the priestly writer so d which is obviously based on the moses tradition was written down first during the time of king josiah but at the same time as d as well as both before and after d there were other fragments of text floating around some of which were based on the moses tradition but others of which were based on the abraham isaac and jacob tradition then sometime during the second temple period a group of priests living in jerusalem decided for the first time ever to combine the two literary traditions into a single coherent narrative they took bits from both the patriarchs story and bits from the moses story these are the sections that were previously labeled j and e and then they interwove them with their own text the parts labeled p finally someone at an even later stage the redactor or r added a few final things tacked deuteronomy on to the end and voila the final version of the torah was born this third theory makes a lot of sense to me it explains why the transition between genesis and exodus seems so abrupt and why there are several chronological problems when it comes to dating how long the israelites were in egypt in my view everything prior to the divided monarchy falls into the category of myth and legend anyway and therefore i see no problem with the idea of two separate sets of legends developing instead of just one in fact considering that the ancient israelites were originally two separate kingdoms it actually makes more sense that there would be two separate origin stories not just one so what biblical scholars are slowly starting to realize is that when it comes to the history of ancient israel we've basically had it backwards up until recently the idea was that israel was a united nation first and then a divided nation second because that's what a literal reading of the bible tells us but as we continue to learn more from archaeology and literary analysis we're discovering that the exact opposite was actually true the israelites were originally two separate nations and then only later after assyria destroyed the north did they become a truly unified people remember after the north fell many refugees from the kingdom of israel headed south and joined the kingdom of judah so the unification happened not during the days of david and solomon but during the days of hezekiah and josiah and then again after the babylonian exile now here's the part that i haven't heard anyone say yet so keep in mind that this is pure conjecture at this point in my opinion i think it's more likely that the moses tradition was the origin story developed in the northern kingdom and the abraham isaac jacob tradition was the origin story developed in the southern kingdom for a long time now scholars have associated d with levite priests from the northern city of shiloh even though it was eventually compiled in the south in jerusalem as i mentioned in my video about moses the tribe of levi has several interesting connections to egypt and may have been the only tribe involved in some sort of historical exodus overall it would appear that moses was more of a northern hero and aaron was adopted as more of a southern hero the southern priests were actually a bit negative toward levites in general and were known for believing that only their particular lineage which they traced to aaron was truly legitimate joseph the other main character associated with egypt was also more of a northern hero he was supposedly the progenitor of the two largest northern tribes ephraim and manasseh in contrast in the south judah was portrayed as being the most important son of jacob in fact it's possible that joseph was originally not thought of as a son of jacob at all note that jacob has two names jacob and israel maybe these were originally two separate people maybe jacob was the father of judah and israel was the father of joseph maybe it was only later that jacob and israel were merged into a single character so interestingly the north has more associations with egypt and the south has more associations with mesopotamia remember mesopotamia is where abraham was said to originate from and it is the book of genesis that incorporates mythology that is very reminiscent of mesopotamian mythology the flood story being a good example perhaps this material was picked up during the babylonian exile so as is often the case history is strongly influenced by geography because the israelites were for so many centuries nestled between two major powers egypt on one side and assyria babylon on the other it's not surprising that they developed a culture that fused elements from both these powers and their various interactions with them anyway like i said this third theory is yet to be fully fleshed out the second theory is the one that's currently the more mainstream explanation but i think the dual origins theory is very promising and therefore i'm going to go out on a limb and say that i think it is likely to be the dominant theory in the future okay so that was a look at who wrote the torah let me know in the comments what your opinion is on the topic and stay tuned for the next episode in the series episode 2 will focus on the prophets the next major section of the jewish bible aka the old testament thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 279,290

Rating: 4.9061785 out of 5

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Id: NY-l0X7yGY0

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BlindfoldThreshold79]

I love Matt and his other associates. I have like 4 of his charts on my bedroom walls.

[u/Supervinyl]

I was skeptical before starting this video, but I’m really glad I watched it. I now have “Genesis and the Moses Story” at the top of my reading list.

[u/abhishekJRP]

I absolutely love this channel. He did a video on whether Moses existed which was very interesting https://youtu.be/ptYz-Vu0dxY

[u/Pecuthegreat]

Okay, I'll just have to come clean and confess that I wrote it.

[u/Papa_Methusaleh]

That's really good! Any sources on the portions represented in Black on the graph? I've had trouble finding a comprehensive list or overview on the portions of the Pentateuch not included in the larger strains.

[u/PariahPoet]

This is a really great video, but. I disagree with the United Monarchy theory. The United Monarchy within the Bible is an allegorical tale. It is hyper exaggerated to promote the idea of Unity. So it is necessary.

[u/TNTyoshi]

🇨🇳saved. 🙏🏼 tthanks