The first Shadow Slayer

Following Richard Friedman's book - "Who Wrote the Bible"

(Supplement "Haaretz"
23 / 6 / 95)

David Shalit

Who wrote the Bible? This question came up for discussion last week on the "Popolitica" television program, following the appearance of the Hebrew edition of a book of this name, written by the American biblical scholar Richard Friedman. But the debate that arose between the participants, including MK Hanan Porat and Minister Shulamit Aloni, quickly turned to other questions, closer to their hearts, such as the contemporary meaning of the plots of the occupation of the land in the book of Joshua.

Among those engaged in the study of the Bible and its teaching, the book arouses a different kind of controversy. Several of the Israeli biblical scholars who were asked this week for their opinion on Friedman's book, responded with definitions that ranged from innocent, through pretentious to arrogant. Tamar Shilo, chief supervisor of Bible studies in state schools, has a different position. "Friedman came out with a book with a provocative name," she says. "He is a fascinating man, his book is good at the popular level. I would also like our teachers to study the Bible in the cultural context of the world in which it was created."

So who wrote the Bible? For hundreds of years, the accepted tradition was that Moses received the Torah from Sinai - that is, he wrote the five Torah books under divine guidance. Any expression of doubt involved a confrontation with the religious establishment, the Jewish and later the Christian. Friedman mentions that when Baruch Spinoza wrote in the 17th century that "it is clear as the sun at noon that the five pentacles of the Torah were not written by Moses, but by a man who lived many years after him", he was ostracized from the Jewish community and his work was rejected by Catholics and Protestants alike. His book was added to the list of books confiscated by the Catholics and within six years 37 condemnation orders were issued against him.

The assumption that the author or authors of the Bible were helped by earlier sources, met with consistent religious opposition. Only in 1943 did Pope Pius XII allow commentators to use the innovative research to "determine the special nature and circumstances in which the holy author acted, the period in which he lived, the written sources or those handed down to him orally and the forms of expression he used". In recent years, Friedman writes, it is already difficult to find a biblical scholar who will claim that the books of the Torah were written by Moses, or by some single author.

The first doubts sound quite innocent today. In Spain in the 11th century, Yitzhak Ibn Yesush noticed that the list of kings of Edom that appears in the book of Genesis also includes kings who lived many years after the death of Moses, and assumed that it was written by someone who lived after Moses. "His book deserves to be put on the stake", Avraham Ibn-Ezra stated in the 12th century. Even Ibn-Ezra found passages in the Torah that tell about Moses in the third person, terms that Moses was not able to know, descriptions of places that Moses did not visit, but preferred to imply "and if you understand - you will know the truth", or the comment "and the one who understands will deafen".

Besides these doubts, Torah researchers have found double stories, in which details are contradictory: two stories of creation, two stories of the flood, and also stories that seemed to be woven from two different plots, such as the story of Korah and his committee. Friedman adopts in his book the research theory that locates in five different sources, which were compiled in a relatively late period, into one book. Two of the sources were compiled during the division between the kingdom of Israel and Judah, and each of them tells the history from the perspective of the public in which he sat. Thus, for example, in the story that originates in Judah there is almost no reference to the role of Yehoshua ben Nun, who stars in the version that originates in the Kingdom of Israel.
And the explanation: Joshua is a northern hero - he is identified as a member of the tribe of Ephraim, the tribe of Jeroboam who led the secession from Judah, and his grave is also in the territory of the Kingdom of Israel.

The characters of Moshe and Aaron are also characterized differently in each of the sources. The source from Israel, for example, brings the story of the golden calf, which presents Aaron as the leader of the heresy just as Moses receives the Torah at Sinai.
Friedman relies on this in his attempt to indicate the social group that grew both versions, and comes to the conclusion that the Yehuda version was written by a priest from the sons of Aaron, who led the temple worship in Jerusalem. Whereas the Israel version was written in his opinion by a priest from the descendants of Moses, who concentrated in the northern kingdom after being deprived of the worship of the temple in Jerusalem, and opposed the religious establishment in Judah as well as the established religion led by the kings of Israel.

An example of two conflicting versions: the story of the early takeover by the Israelites of the city of Nablus, which, according to the later scriptures, was built by Jeroboam and became the capital of Israel. According to Yehuda's version, a man named Nablus, the son of the "president of the land", fell in love with Dina daughter of Jacob, slept with her and offered to marry her.
Her brothers, the Bnei Jacob, opposed the marriage unless the Nablus family agreed to undergo circumcision and unite with the Bnei Jacob into one nation. Nablus and his father Hamor convinced their townspeople to agree to the deal, and three days after the word, when all the men of the town were still paralyzed from the pain of the operation, the brothers Shimon and Levi attacked them, killed all the males and took their wives.

The version of the Kingdom of Judah puts a stain on the history of the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, and in other places emphasizes the connection of the ancestors with the city of Hebron, which was the first capital of David, the father of the dynasty. In the version originating in Israel, on the other hand, it is said that Jacob bought the plot of the field from the sons of Hamor, the father of Nablus, and pitched his tent there.

In identifying the two different sources, Friedman writes, the researchers were helped by the linguistic layers and the literary means special to each of them. For example, the name of the deity: the source from Judah calls God "Jehovah" and never uses the word "God"; The source from Israel calls God by the name "Elohim" or "God", and switches to using the name "Jehovah" only from the moment when God reveals himself to Moses. Friedman tried to find a connection between the various names of God to some polemic between the priests in the two kingdoms, but admits his failure.

The explanation for the different names, he writes, is probably rooted in historical development: only a minority of the ancient people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, and it is possible that these were only the Levites. This group worshiped Jehovah, in Egypt and Sinai, while the tribes of Israel who lived in the land worshiped El, who was the main god of the Canaanites. When the two groups met in Israel, instead of fighting over the question of divinity they took it upon themselves to merge Jehovah and God into one deity. The Levites were the official priests of the united religion, which also explains the fact that the Levites did not have property like the other tribes.

These two sources, claims Friedman, were combined into one version after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. Refugees from Israel arrived in the territory of the Kingdom of Judah, with their own version of national history. In his estimation, leaving the two versions side by side would have caused constant friction, and instead of completely alienating the northern version, a first act of editing was done, which united the two versions into one text.

These theories have already caused controversy among biblical scholars, and the editors of the Hebrew book addressed them in an opening note. "Even though we are aware of differences of opinion among the researchers on the matters discussed in this book, we preferred to stick to the source and not comment on the author's version," they write. This upsets Prof. Yair Zakovitz. "Almost ten years have passed since Friedman wrote his book," he says. "In physics it would be unthinkable to publish such a book without updating, but in the Bible everything is possible."

Regarding the contents of the book, Zakovich, head of the Institute for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University, has even more harsh words: "It was not important then, and it certainly is not important today." According to him, there is no certainty in the identification of the two sources that Friedman writes about, and many researchers think that at least one of them is not one version, but two. "Friedman and other researchers make a ridiculous effort to imprison the biblical story in a bottle, even though the story is not ready to be imprisoned."

How, for example, would you interpret the various sources for the rape of Dina story?
"The rape story is not divided into sources. The duplication is due to the fact that they added to it and adapted it to a later story. Originally there was a story about Dina and Miriam, all sons of Jacob. To this was added a layer that asked to focus only on the guilt of Shimon and Levi, in order to fit the story with what was said about them in the blessing of Jacob, which has nothing to do with Nablus. The rape was not in the original story either. The story of the rape was added to the story in Nablus under the influence of the story of Tamar's rape by Amnon."

Prof. Zakovitz refutes Friedman's attempt to attribute the writing of each of the biblical sources to one author, or to one time period. According to him, the "source" we read is the result of the development of generations: "There are literary schools that have existed for hundreds of years, and in each school there has been development. There is a dialogue between the sources: like newspapers eavesdropping on each other, so essay reacted to essay. There are no autistic sources here, written at a certain time and by a certain person. The biblical writer is a commentator and censor. The story of Abraham presenting Sarah as his sister before the king of Egypt is repeated several times. One can find echoes of it in the story of David and Bathsheba, when this time the king is the bad man who knowingly takes a man's wife, and again in the story of Esther in the palace of Ahasuerus. Biblical literature is intended for people who know previous layers of literature and can decipher affinities to previous works.
This is the facet of the study of the Bible as literature, and it is much hotter today than the study of the sources."

Friedman did promise to identify the writers of the Bible, and he fulfills his promise only with the writer of "Source XNUMX", which includes Deuteronomy and the six books that follow, from Joshua to XNUMX Kings. Friedman claims that the unknown author is none other than the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote the books himself or dictated them to Baruch ben Naria the writer.

According to what is told in the Book of Kings, in 622 BC King Josiah ordered renovations to be made in the Temple, and during the works a Torah book was found there. Shaphan the scribe read the scripture in King Josiah's ears, and upon hearing the words the king tore his clothes and decided on a religious revolution: he destroyed all the places of worship to the idols, including the places of worship to the God of Israel that existed outside the temple in Jerusalem, such as the altar in Bethel.

Most biblical scholars agree that the Torah book found is Deuteronomy, which contains explicit instructions on the unity of worship and offering sacrifices in one place. Its contents are presented as parting words of Moses before his death, in which he summarizes the past and gives his people a set of laws that will serve them in the promised land.

In the Book of Kings, a large space is devoted to the work of Josiah, along with an unusual verse, especially compared to the other kings who "did what was evil in the eyes of Jehovah". It was said about Josiah: "And like him there was no king before him, who returned to Jehovah with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, according to the law of Moses, and after him there did not arise one like him." The end of the Book of Kings as well as the books of the prophets teach that Josiah's reforms and innovations disappeared immediately after his death. Why then was he widely mentioned and praised? Because he was king at the time when history was written, Friedman claims.

To prove his claim, Friedman gives an example of the rewriting of history by "source 300": in the book of XNUMX Kings, XNUMX years before the time of Josiah, appears the verse "Thus said Jehovah, behold, a son is born to the house of David, his name is Josiah, and he sacrificed the priests of the altars on you and human bones will burn on you." This is an unusual prediction in the Bible, which proves that the words were written by a person who knew about Josiah's actions.

Josiah's revolution raised great expectations among his supporters, including the belief that rule was guaranteed forever to the House of David dynasty. After the destruction of the kingdom of Israel it seemed that adherence to one God was the formula for the salvation of the kingdom of Judah. But with the death of Josiah, the deterioration began that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Friedman's teacher, Prof. Frank Moore Cross from Harvard University, claimed in 1973 that "Source IV" actually consists of two versions, only one of which was written before the destruction, in the days of Josiah.
The second, was written after the destruction, to adapt its content to the new reality and to explain why the divine promise to the house of David was broken.

According to Friedman, an editing operation was actually done here, in which the stipulation was planted in the book of Deuteronomy: if you do not do as God commanded you - destruction and exile will come upon you. Friedman states that the prophet Jeremiah, who experienced the time of Josiah, the destruction and the exile, was the man who wrote these two versions.

Prof. Zakovitz: "This is apparently Friedman's innovation, he made Jeremiah a great writer. It's like looking under a flashlight. So there are those who have fallen into this trap and rely on it in their research. I will not give this book to my students as a bibliography."

But there is another source, which contributed more to the five pentacles of the Torah than its three predecessors combined. It includes the story of creation in Genesis chapter XNUMX, one of the versions of the story of the flood, the stories of Abraham and Jacob, the Exodus, and the entire book of Leviticus, large parts of which deal with the various functions of the priests. This source has been identified by many scholars as a "priestly source", written in their estimation during the Second Temple period.

Prof. Shalom Paul, from the biblical department at the Hebrew University, thinks that it is impossible to determine precisely when the priestly source was written. In his opinion, it is very possible that the words were written down and preserved for a long time by the priests, perhaps even without the knowledge of the entire public, and at some point were incorporated into the other Holy Scriptures. Paul: "Things related to worship, matters of priesthood and sacrifices that a citizen has nothing to do with, were certainly not known to the people. The material is kept by the priests. It's like the ethics laws of the press, your people don't need to know about it. The book of Genesis and Exodus were known and common, even if people did not have a Torah book at home at the time."

Prof. Paul also does not understand the bewilderment about the changes in the versions. "It is natural that there are rewrites", he says. When a researcher examines records written close to the events, and compares them to chronicles written ten to twenty years later, he immediately notices a difference. But this is not necessarily done to distort history or to falsify it. "Everyone wrote, but no one came and said it was a lie. Maybe they wrote to glorify the king, his diligence."

An original approach was developed by Prof. Avi Horvitz from the Hebrew University, in a study he published in 1982. Horvitz, who did a linguistic analysis of the biblical text and examined the layers of the language up to the Mishnah period, concluded that the priestly original was written during the First Temple period. Friedman based himself on Hurwitz's findings, and established a more precise time frame: according to him, the priestly source was compiled during the time of King Hezekiah. "Fortunately, Friedman joined our school," Hurwitz said this week. "But the last word has not been said yet.
Recently, an American researcher has appeared who claims that the priestly source was written in the Persian period.

The stories of the priestly source, stated Friedman, were written to be a substitute for the unified version of the sources from the Kingdom of Israel and Judah. In his opinion, the priestly source was created during the time of King Hezekiah and only its final renovation was done during the Second Temple period, after the Persians allowed the Judean exiles to return to their country. Finally, instead of replacing the early versions, it was decided to consolidate all four sources into one book. In Friedman's opinion, this was done as a compromise, so as not to upset layers of society who saw the different versions as sacred stories.

The man who compiled the four sources into one book, Friedman writes, was Ezra the writer. Ezra was a member of a family of priests from the sons of Aaron, the representative of King Cyrus in Judah, and had the authority to enforce his opinion on the public. The seams of the edited version are already visible in the story of creation: the book of Genesis opens with the priestly source, according to which man was created last, only on the sixth day. Immediately after it appears a different version, in which man was created before plants and animals.

The traces of editing are also evident in the story of the flood, which according to one version lasted 40 days and according to the other a year. According to one of the sources, Noah put a pair of animals of every kind and species into the ark, and according to the second version, he put "seven, seven, a man and his wife" from the pure animals, and only from the impure animals did he put pairs. According to one of the sources, Noah sent a raven to make sure that the land was dry, and right after that there is the version according to which Jonah was sent for the same purpose. The apparent editing creates a sense of continuity, as if the raven did not fulfill its role and therefore the dove was sent after it, but a careful reading reveals that this is not exactly the case.

In other places, the editor separated the versions, and distanced it from here. Thus two stories appear in which Moses took water from the rock, one in the book of Exodus and the other in the book in the desert - separate in time, but both take place in the same place.

Another example of combining sources is the story of the binding of Isaac. According to one source, that of the Kingdom of Israel, the story ended with Isaac's death on the altar. The researchers conclude this from the fact that in the verse that ends the story, Abraham returns alone from the ceremony, without any mention of Isaac ("And Abraham sat down with his boys and they arose and they walked together"). In the continuation of the story according to the same source, which appears five chapters later, Isaac is no longer mentioned, and there is a direct transition to the stories of Jacob.

If Abraham sacrifices Isaac according to one source, who is the Jacob who appears later in the story of that source? Prof. Zakovitz says that the three fathers were probably three people who grew up in different places, with no family connection between them: "Abraham is connected with Hebron, Jacob is the hero of the northern kingdom.
At a later stage they tried to establish a family relationship between them, in order to unify traditions. Biblical research recognizes that these are three different heroes.
The public is simply not aware of what is happening in the field of research."

Prof. Atalia Brenner, a biblical scholar from the Department of General Studies at the Technion, says that the school of sources is unable to prove anything with certainty. "Let's say I'm writing a historical novel in the style of 'Desira'. In a thousand years it will be found without the cover, and someone like Friedman will seriously discuss it: 'Who wrote it? Is he from the period he describes?' Friedman claims in his book that the original writers of the Bible were men, so he would automatically conclude that in my case the writer was a man."

And if the cover is revealed?
"There is no cover. The version will be found online. He won't have a clue about the writer. Everyone will go online and add comments." The Torah was not written on the Internet.

"True, but open an ancient manuscript of the Bible - you will find many notes and appendices there. There is no security in anything. For 150 years they say that Ezra was probably one of the editors of the Bible, but Friedman states with certainty that it was him. Today we have to quietly ask if Ezra existed at all. You show me a biblical study whose title is 'Who', and I want to smile thinly." Tamar Shilo from the Ministry of Education: "The question of whether Ezra exists is not important.
A literary character also has a tremendous influence on a worldview, but I understand the skeptical smile."

Friedman's book is one of the few publications that deal with the study of the Bible and try to appeal to a wide readership. According to the latest reports, 200 copies have been sold worldwide since the book was published in the United States in 1987. In Israel, contrary to what one might expect, the bookshelf dealing with the study of the Bible is notable for its scarcity. Most of the great scholars of the Bible were not Jews and even today,95 the periodicals and books on the Bible are published abroad, in foreign languages. Even the Israeli researchers are forced to publish their works abroad, where there are those who are willing to print - and read - them, and sometimes they prefer to write the research in English from the start.

Zakovitz: "The Israeli public is not exposed to what is happening in the study of the Bible, because of the polarization between secular and religious. The seculars left the Bible in the hands of the religious. In the days of Ben-Gurion, the Bible was part of our daily routine, Zionism went everywhere with the Bible. Until ten years ago you would find the Bible and the sources of Israel popping out of the tongues of scribes. Today we have a literature whose Hebrew is Shinkin. The secular say 'their Bible and not ours'. Perhaps we need to strike a sin, that our Migdal Hasan people do not often write beautiful biblical research literature for the general public."

Paul: "There are prejudices in both camps. The religious establishment has reservations about critical study: for them it is the Torah of Moses from Sinai, and the opinion that the Torah was not dropped from above but is the result of development, came to them like thunder on a clear day. The seculars are tired of the Bible they learned in elementary and high school.
As soon as they come to the university and see the sophistication of studying - they are turned on, but it is usually too late. They have already chosen a field of specialization in economics."

Tamar Shilo agrees: "The teaching of the Bible is not in a good state." In elementary education, teachers without a background in the Bible teach, because the educators in the lower grades teach everything. This creates problematic knowledge infrastructures. In post-primary education, the goal is to teach a biblical text in the context in which it was connected. The teachers receive guidance
To teach that there were different traditions, which were included in the Bible, but it is impossible to dictate. A teacher will do it if he has a population of students with whom he can take off."

Do you talk to the students about researching the different sources?

"It is not in the teaching center and certainly not in this formulation. The teacher will not say that chapter XNUMX in Genesis belongs to a priestly source and chapter XNUMX belongs to another source, and who is the editor who put them together. But they will certainly deal with both creation stories and present them as two different approaches and traditions."

What about the two formulas of source XNUMX?

"Don't get into it. To say that Jeremiah wrote the Book of Deuteronomy - even Friedman will not swear to that in a court of law. There are so many documents that were collected and omitted, and if there are two versions of the priestly source, go prove that there is no third."

Are there things that are avoided from teaching, that are consciously ignored?

"Contradictory information is also taught between the Book of Kings and the Chronicles. are not ignored. But they do not teach the laws of sacrifices and the tabernacle, impurity and purity. For religious schools it is important, for us it is not relevant. They prefer to teach laws that deal with aspects of murder and theft, or chapters that deal with politics and morality of the ancient world."

Happily, Friedman joins our school, which seeks to advance the priestly source. But, it must be remembered that the last word has not yet been said on this matter. Thus, for example, in recent years a well-known biblical scholar from the USA, Prof. Baruch Levin, joined the group of scholars who claim that the priestly source was actually written in the Persian period.

According to the layers of language that we distinguish within the language of the Bible, I went to the writings dealing with matters of priesthood - both in the Bible and outside of it - and tried to find out if it was possible to discover traces of late linguistic developments there. In the book of Ezekiel and in the book of Chronicles there are descriptions of the Court of Justice, and also in the Mishnah there are entire tractates that deal with the offering of sacrifices and the like. I checked about 30 terms typical of this period (Ezekiel, Dabhi, the Mishnah) - for example the verb to remove - and I found that it was the verb that was used then to denote the washing of the sacrifices. In all the priestly sources this word is not known, and in its place is used as a permanent way in practice to bathe. If the priestly source had been composed during the exile or during the Second Temple period, it can be assumed that its authors would also have used the then prevailing term to depose. As mentioned, we have dozens of examples of this type, and therefore I concluded that the priestly source belongs to the biblical literature that we gathered during the days of the First Temple.

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