Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [14]
Today, the idea is widely accepted and taught by leading religious schools, including the divinity schools at Harvard and Yale, the Union Theological Seminary, and both the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Hebrew Union College. The precise identity of who wrote these books is an unsolved—and most likely an unsolvable—mystery, barring an archaeological find of the most revolutionary sort. But the principal “authors” have been given “names” and are identified by five letters of the alphabet: J, E, D, P, and R.
•J The oldest—and perhaps most celebrated—of these presumed authors is known as “J” from the German word Jahwe, the source of the word “Jehovah,” another mistranslation now written in English as “Yahweh.” The biblical writer code-named J consistently calls the Israelite God “Yahweh.”
In a controversial but bestselling book of biblical scholarship, The Book of J, author Harold Bloom argued that the Bible’s J was actually a woman. Many other scholars dismiss Bloom’s theory, and it remains a question that may never be resolved. Male or female, J probably lived sometime between 950 and 750 BCE, in Judah (another reason “he” is called J), the southern half of a divided Hebrew kingdom. J is the Hebrew Bible’s best storyteller, more interesting, more humorous, and more human than the others. J’s Yahweh interacts with man easily and directly. J told the more famous and most folkloric version of the two Creation accounts, which begins in Genesis 2. It is J’s Yahweh, for instance, who is walking in the Garden of Eden in the “cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8), a lovely poetic image, and discovers Adam and Eve hiding themselves, ashamed of their nakedness. J is also responsible for the “Song of Deborah,” an epic poem in the book of Judges about a Jewish “woman warrior.”
•E Close on J’s heels is E, the Elohist, so called because this author preferred to use the word Elohim for God. Although some scholars have placed E before or even contemporary with J, most think E came later, perhaps between 850 and 800 BCE. Most also agree that E is a much less colorful writer than J, and that E’s contribution begins with the story of Abraham in Genesis 12. In the book of Judges, E tells a version of the Israelite heroine Deborah’s story in prose (J’s was a poetic version), and some of the details of the two accounts differ slightly.
•D The third Old Testament “author” is known as the “Deuteronomist,” who most likely worked between 700 and 600 BCE and was responsible for large portions of the book of Deuteronomy. D is also thought to have shaped the later books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings—the major “historical” works of Hebrew scripture that describe the Conquest of Canaan and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel. In Deuteronomy, D depicts Moses giving a series of speeches that urge Israel to follow the Torah, but the law Moses offers in this section represents a revision of the earlier law books. Richard Elliot Friedman makes a case that D is the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in Jerusalem around 627 BCE and died in Egypt sometime after 587 BCE.
•P The texts credited to P, known as the Priestly author, include some of the most familiar words in western civilization—“In the beginning,” the Creation account found in Genesis 1, and the first version of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).
P’s contribution was probably written sometime between 550 and 500 BCE. Highly concerned with the elaborate observances and duties of the ancient Jewish priesthood, P is responsible for nearly all of Leviticus. Dry and detail-obsessed, P was especially interested in codifying and justifying all of the ritual laws developed by the early Jewish priesthood, including the carefully worded descriptions of the Passover ritual, ordination ceremonies, the vestments of the high priest, and the sacred chest that held the Ten Commandments. P might as well have have been called “L,” because he is so concerned with the Law, but he is also often as long-winded and tedious as a lawyer.
•R In addition to these four