This review is from: Origin of the History of Israel, The (Hardcover)
The great work known as the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is probably the most successful literary creation of all time; and yet, we do not know its author. This was, it seems, by design, and as a result, for about two millennia, people have claimed that it was "written by God" and every word in it is truth, or Truth.
But in recent years, there has been a growing body of research that demonstrates that this is not exactly the case: that the OT is based on the other literature that was available at the time it was written.
Back in the day, John Van Seters wrote "In Search of History" and discussed the relationship of the Israelite history to the historical texts of the ancient Near East and Greece, noting that, while we have many texts from the Near East with historical content, only the Greek histories parallel the biblical histories in their distance from the past that is being described. He noted at the time that there were numerous agreements between the substance and style of some of the OT books and works of Greek historians, particularly Herodotus. However, he didn't go into this in detail and I recall reading it and nodding vigorously because I had noticed the same things.
Later on, I read Russel Gmirkin's work "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus" where he notes that certain texts that obviously influenced the writing of those two biblical books were not available until rather late and thus a terminus a quo could be established for when those parts of the OT were written.
Then, I read Bruce Louden's "Homer's Odyssey and the Ancient Near East". This was another revelation because, much earlier, I had read in Trevor Bryce's book about the Hittites, that there were extraordinary correspondences between the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and now Louden was demonstrating the many uses of Homer as models for stories in the OT both in terms of content and structure.
This particular book looks at the OT from two main angles: literary and structural. The structural angle is presented first and reveals that the collection of books known as the OT, which first emerges into the consciousness of ancient peoples around 250 BC, was probably written by a single author, using the Histories of Herodotus as the structural model. In particular, the focus is on the nine books from Genesis to 2 Kings which starts with the creation of the world, the stories of the patriarchs, how the Israelites came to be in Egypt, having started out from Babylon, and how they were delivered by divine intervention in the great epic of the Exodus. The end comes with the Israelites being scattered back to both Egypt and Babylon in 587 BC.
Wesselius argues that the author of the Primary History - Genesis through 2 Kings - made extensive use of the work of Herodotus, especially for the parts of the OT that deal with the period before 1000 BC, before the monarchy, and especially the story of the Exodus. He points out that the OT should actually be read in conjunction with Herodotus in order to be properly understood. He points out the striking parallels between the key figure of Joseph - who is the one who got the Israelites into Egypt in the first place - and King Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire. Some of these parallels are so precise that there is no wiggle room for evading the obvious borrowing. Further, there is amazing duplication of the genealogy of the patriarchs and the Persian-Median royal house, the most striking of which exist between the figures of Moses and King Xerxes. The main subjects of the stories about the two of them are that a leader is summoned by the divinity to bring an enormous army into another continent across a body of water as if on dry land in order to conquer somebody else's land. In both cases, the conquest ends badly, with a horrific siege, though in the case of Xerxes, it was within his lifetime, and in the case of the Israelites, it was when the Babylonians came much, much later.
Wesselius proceeds through the text showing in some detail, well argued, how the Herodotean structural model has been utilized though the stories themselves are often quite different.
One of the main discussions of the book is how the biblical author took himself out of the narrative, unlike Herodotus who is ever present, expressing opinions, belief, disbelief, and more. The Primary History of the OT was cleverly written as a "dossier", cleverly setting up a more or less linear account of events while, at the same time, producing the effect of being a compilation of documents, stories, administrative texts and lists, etc. But the unity of the work is revealed in the intertextuality that binds the whole together as a single, massive, masterful, literary production.
Wesselius further discusses a three level division of the narrative which reveals that the author placed clues within the text for the attentive reader to figure out what he was doing and to draw the obvious comparisons. Even though there are conflicting or contradictory stories in the text, it is clear that the author intended the reader to draw from that the same ideas that were presented by Herodotus in his authorial voice of running commentary. The over-arching purpose of the text is to show the author's belief about Israel's special relationship with its God and his plans for his people.
Wesselius concludes that we can basically toss out the Wellhausen model of gradual accretion of texts and recognize that the production of the Hebrew bible was not a process of addition, selection, and redaction that is usually supposed, but the conscious production of separate works that were designed to look like collected dossiers, but were, in fact, composed as parts of a unitary work.
If one considers what Wesselius has demonstrated in this book, with Gmirkin's and Louden's work, and the follow-up to Wesselius, Philippe Wajdenbaum's "Argonauts of the Desert", it becomes obvious that the OT was a very late production indeed and almost no part of it is an original history of Israel though the author took care to utilize real historical elements at appropriate points, and certainly may have had some local tales and legends to add to the mix by building them up into important stories by utilizing the histories and myths of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and - shockingly - even the Romans.
The end result of all this is commented on by Wesselius in his conclusion:
"A significant part of what is regarded as common memory in large parts of the world - the biblical stories about Joseph, Moses, David and other generally known personages, and the all-important episodes of oppression in Egypt, Exodus, journey through the wilderness and conquest of the Promised Land - probably originated in their present form in the mind of one person only, a highly talented author... His masterful work with its threefold level of understanding, together with his choice for anonymous authorship, assured that the work rapidly became a tremendous success, and would be read, used and studied more intensely than any other work before or since. It formed the conceptual and historical framework for the rest of the books of the Hebrew Bible, and from there for the host of literature flourishing around the beginning of our era. From his work, in the final analysis, the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam took their point of departure. Our anonymous writer truly was the most successful author of all time."
And that's the horror and tragedy of it all.
The great work known as the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is probably the most successful literary creation of all time; and yet, we do not know its author. This was, it seems, by design, and as a result, for about two millennia, people have claimed that it was "written by God" and every word in it is truth, or Truth.
But in recent years, there has been a growing body of research that demonstrates that this is not exactly the case: that the OT is based on the other literature that was available at the time it was written.
Back in the day, John Van Seters wrote "In Search of History" and discussed the relationship of the Israelite history to the historical texts of the ancient Near East and Greece, noting that, while we have many texts from the Near East with historical content, only the Greek histories parallel the biblical histories in their distance from the past that is being described. He noted at the time that there were numerous agreements between the substance and style of some of the OT books and works of Greek historians, particularly Herodotus. However, he didn't go into this in detail and I recall reading it and nodding vigorously because I had noticed the same things.
Later on, I read Russel Gmirkin's work "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus" where he notes that certain texts that obviously influenced the writing of those two biblical books were not available until rather late and thus a terminus a quo could be established for when those parts of the OT were written.
Then, I read Bruce Louden's "Homer's Odyssey and the Ancient Near East". This was another revelation because, much earlier, I had read in Trevor Bryce's book about the Hittites, that there were extraordinary correspondences between the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and now Louden was demonstrating the many uses of Homer as models for stories in the OT both in terms of content and structure.
This particular book looks at the OT from two main angles: literary and structural. The structural angle is presented first and reveals that the collection of books known as the OT, which first emerges into the consciousness of ancient peoples around 250 BC, was probably written by a single author, using the Histories of Herodotus as the structural model. In particular, the focus is on the nine books from Genesis to 2 Kings which starts with the creation of the world, the stories of the patriarchs, how the Israelites came to be in Egypt, having started out from Babylon, and how they were delivered by divine intervention in the great epic of the Exodus. The end comes with the Israelites being scattered back to both Egypt and Babylon in 587 BC.
Wesselius argues that the author of the Primary History - Genesis through 2 Kings - made extensive use of the work of Herodotus, especially for the parts of the OT that deal with the period before 1000 BC, before the monarchy, and especially the story of the Exodus. He points out that the OT should actually be read in conjunction with Herodotus in order to be properly understood. He points out the striking parallels between the key figure of Joseph - who is the one who got the Israelites into Egypt in the first place - and King Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire. Some of these parallels are so precise that there is no wiggle room for evading the obvious borrowing. Further, there is amazing duplication of the genealogy of the patriarchs and the Persian-Median royal house, the most striking of which exist between the figures of Moses and King Xerxes. The main subjects of the stories about the two of them are that a leader is summoned by the divinity to bring an enormous army into another continent across a body of water as if on dry land in order to conquer somebody else's land. In both cases, the conquest ends badly, with a horrific siege, though in the case of Xerxes, it was within his lifetime, and in the case of the Israelites, it was when the Babylonians came much, much later.
Wesselius proceeds through the text showing in some detail, well argued, how the Herodotean structural model has been utilized though the stories themselves are often quite different.
One of the main discussions of the book is how the biblical author took himself out of the narrative, unlike Herodotus who is ever present, expressing opinions, belief, disbelief, and more. The Primary History of the OT was cleverly written as a "dossier", cleverly setting up a more or less linear account of events while, at the same time, producing the effect of being a compilation of documents, stories, administrative texts and lists, etc. But the unity of the work is revealed in the intertextuality that binds the whole together as a single, massive, masterful, literary production.
Wesselius further discusses a three level division of the narrative which reveals that the author placed clues within the text for the attentive reader to figure out what he was doing and to draw the obvious comparisons. Even though there are conflicting or contradictory stories in the text, it is clear that the author intended the reader to draw from that the same ideas that were presented by Herodotus in his authorial voice of running commentary. The over-arching purpose of the text is to show the author's belief about Israel's special relationship with its God and his plans for his people.
Wesselius concludes that we can basically toss out the Wellhausen model of gradual accretion of texts and recognize that the production of the Hebrew bible was not a process of addition, selection, and redaction that is usually supposed, but the conscious production of separate works that were designed to look like collected dossiers, but were, in fact, composed as parts of a unitary work.
If one considers what Wesselius has demonstrated in this book, with Gmirkin's and Louden's work, and the follow-up to Wesselius, Philippe Wajdenbaum's "Argonauts of the Desert", it becomes obvious that the OT was a very late production indeed and almost no part of it is an original history of Israel though the author took care to utilize real historical elements at appropriate points, and certainly may have had some local tales and legends to add to the mix by building them up into important stories by utilizing the histories and myths of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and - shockingly - even the Romans.
The end result of all this is commented on by Wesselius in his conclusion:
"A significant part of what is regarded as common memory in large parts of the world - the biblical stories about Joseph, Moses, David and other generally known personages, and the all-important episodes of oppression in Egypt, Exodus, journey through the wilderness and conquest of the Promised Land - probably originated in their present form in the mind of one person only, a highly talented author... His masterful work with its threefold level of understanding, together with his choice for anonymous authorship, assured that the work rapidly became a tremendous success, and would be read, used and studied more intensely than any other work before or since. It formed the conceptual and historical framework for the rest of the books of the Hebrew Bible, and from there for the host of literature flourishing around the beginning of our era. From his work, in the final analysis, the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam took their point of departure. Our anonymous writer truly was the most successful author of all time."
And that's the horror and tragedy of it all.
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