Reddit reviews The Bible with Sources Revealed

hi /u/lenusme. this is probably not the right place for this. self promotion is generally frowned upon here, unless you have an exceptionally well researched blog post, or an actual academic paper you'd like to share. and this is a pretty surface level discussion at best, to be honest. but i'd like to discuss some problems anyways.

> Some believe that Moses wrote Genesis while was in the land of Midian. Others believe he wrote it in the desert after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Although there is no way to know.

in fact, modern scholarship nearly universally rejects mosaic authorship entirely. you may want to consult the popular books "who wrote the bible?" and "the bible with sources revealed" by richard elliott friedman for an introduction to the documentary hypothesis (or start with this wiki page, if you'd like).

there are a number of other notable problems with mosaic authorship too, from an archaeological/historical standpoint. for instance, the amarna letters contain a few hundred correspondences between the pharaohs at akhentaten (now el-amarna) and their vassal territories in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, and are among many other pieces of evidence that indicate that the egyptian empire looked rather like this for most of the time between 1550 BCE and 1100-ish BCE:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Egypt_NK_edit.svg

other relevant pieces of evidence for this are the egyptian hittite peace treaty that places the border between those two empires approximately 100 miles north of jerusalem around 1259 BCE, signed by the great ramesses ii, and the stele left by his son mernepteh in 1208 BCE reaffirming conquest of canaan -- including our oldest positive historical reference to a people called "israel". there are also egyptian outposts like jaffa which persisted until about the mid 1100's BCE, when egypt begins to lose control canaan in the bronze age collapse.

you can probably see why this causes some problems; the entire historical context of the narrative is wrong. there was no free land to lead the israelites to: moses's destination in the story was egypt in history. so, who was moses, then?

> Although the Jews call it Bereshit because it is the first and means "in the beginning."

it actually means "in the beginning of." you may wish to see rashi's commentary:

>> This verse calls aloud for explanation in the manner that our Rabbis explained it: God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) way”, and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) increase’’. If, however, you wish to explain it in its plain sense, explain it thus: At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light”. The text does not intend to point out the order of the acts of Creation — to state that these (heaven and earth) were created first; for if it intended to point this out, it should have written 'בראשונה ברא את השמים וגו “At first God created etc.” And for this reason: Because, wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. E. g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. A similar grammatical construction (of a noun in construct followed by a verb) is: (Hosea 1:2) תחלת דבר ה' בהושע, which is as much as to say, “At the beginning of God’s speaking through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea.” Should you, however, insist that it does actually intend to point out that these (heaven and earth) were created first, and that the meaning is, “At the beginning of everything He created these, admitting therefore that the word בראשית is in the construct state and explaining the omission of a word signifying “everything” by saying that you have texts which are elliptical, omitting a word, as for example (Job 3:10) “Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb” where it does not explicitly explain who it was that closed the womb; and (Isaiah 8:4) “He shall take away the spoil of Samaria” without explaining who shall take it away; and (Amos 6:12) “Doth he plough with oxen," and it does not explicitly state, “Doth a man plough with oxen”; (Isaiah 46:10) “Declaring from the beginning the end,” and it does not explicitly state, “Declaring from the beginning of a thing the end of a thing’ — if it is so (that you assert that this verse intends to point out that heaven and earth were created first), you should be astonished at yourself, because as a matter of fact the waters were created before heaven and earth, for, lo, it is written, (v. 2) “The Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters,” and Scripture had not yet disclosed when the creation of the waters took place — consequently you must learn from this that the creation of the waters preceded that of the earth. And a further proof that the heavens and earth were not the first thing created is that the heavens were created from fire (אש) and water (מים), from which it follows that fire and water were in existence before the heavens. Therefore you must needs admit that the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation.

the simplest explanation is that rashi's first reading is correct, and the masoretes have mispointed בָּרָ֣א as a perfect verb, when is should be pointed בְּרֹ֤א (gen 5:1) as an infinitive construct, which is the same kind of grammatical construction. this construction, a complex preposition in construct form, followed by an infinitive, sets up a subordinate clause. the following statement is an aside, with the initial action taking place in verse 3:

>> When God began to create heaven and earth—

>> the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—

>> God said, “Let there be light”;

this is actually a common structure for ancient near eastern creation myths, and you can see it again in genesis 2 -- a work by a different author:

>> When the Lord God made earth and heaven—

>> when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth—

>> the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth.

subordinate clause, aside, initial action. you can see it other cultures, even:

>> When the heavens above did not exist,
And earth beneath had not come into being —
There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
And demiurge Tia-mat, who gave birth to them all;
They had mingled their waters together
Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to he found —
When not one of the gods had been formed
Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
The gods were created within them:
Lahmu and Lahamu were formed and came into being.

>> Enuma Elish, Babylon

i point this out because i see hints you're going down the wrong path here -- this first verse is not a definitive statement about anything. it merely locates the story temporally.

> The new testament begins with the words biblos geneseos

by accident. early church tradition assumed that the gospel of matthew was earliest, but based on the two source hypothesis regarding the synoptic problem, and editorial fatigue in matthew and luke, scholars mostly think that matthew and luke were copying the gospel of mark. mark, of course, begins "Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ", arxe tou euaggeliou iesou xristou uiou tou thou, the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ son of god." but there's a better candidate here. consider:

>> Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (John 1:1)

>> ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν (Gen 1:1 LXX)

it's likely that john was specifically invoking genesis here. i am not sure, at the moment, when the title "genesis" was applied to the text. i suppose i could keep going, but these are some problems i see right off the bat.

if you'd like, i could talk about the function of genesis, literary style, dates of authorship, relationship to the babylonian calendar rather than the original hebrew one, the demythologization of other deities, the polytheistic background it's explicitly rejecting, etc. this is really just scratching the surface.

Here is an online resource.

Or if you prefer a book: Friedman's Bible with Sources Revealed.

The Bible with Sources Revealed by Richard Elliott Friedman
https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/006073065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492561123&sr=8-1&keywords=richard+elliott+friedman

Cool video! I would also recommend the book The Bible with Sources Revealed as an excellent resource on the origins of the Pentateuch. The different font colorings really highlight the mixing and matching of the multiple sources, and make it quite digestible even for casual readers with a passing interest in the historical origins of Christian/Jewish theology.

Friedman The Bible with Sources Revealed has the sections in different colors depending on the source

edited to fix link

If you're going to read it, read "The Bible With Sources Revealed". It color codes the writings according to the separate known writers/epochs. Reading it in this way brings quite a bit of context and clarity to the texts.

Not a book, but a GREAT podcast to help understand the OT (including formation, content, and its place in scripture:) -- Discovering the OT


For books, I also really like the Bible with sources revealed -- it only covers the first 5 books in depth, but gives you a good flavor of how it came to be. (The 2 creation story in Genesis always bugged me. This really helped clarify!)

There are several books on the topic:

• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Karen Armstrong
  
  
• Who Wrote the Bible, by Richard Elliott Friedman
  
  
• The Bible with Sources Revealed, by Richard Elliott Friedman
  
  
• Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, by Bart D. Ehrman
  
  etc.
  
  >Did they know that parts of what they were writing were false, or were they writing about what they had been told and believed?
  
  The bible consists of oral traditions being written down, people adding and rewriting stuff, as well as complete forgeries to serve political agendas.

> My favorite interpretation is that child sacrifice was common among Semitic tribes at the time in the area, and that Abraham was woefully paying his dues after finally having a son. And angel stopping Abraham would have been symbolic of God telling the Jews that child sacrifice was wrong, and they should put an end to it.

Some people take it even farther. According to many source critics (e.g. Harvard's R. Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed), the story we have now in Gen 22 is actually an edited version of an original story, in which Abraham really did sacrifice Isaac. A lot of today's critical biblical scholars agree on this point -- Gen 22 was originally a story encouraging child sacrifice, a story which was altered in order to justify substitutionary animal sacrifice when the Hebrews ceased this regional practice. Specifically, verses 11-15 look like a later addition.

Evidence of an earlier original with child sacrifice?

• verse 5 ("we'll come back to you") vs. verse 19 ("Abraham went back to his boys")
  
  
• The text refers to God as "Elohim" (thus, the "Elohist" author) up until the angelic intervention (verses 11-15), at which point "Elohim" is no longer the one who speaks, but instead it's suddenly the "angel of YHWH"
  
  
• verse 16: "because you did this thing and didn't withhold you son"
  
  
• Isaac never again appears in sections of the Torah which source critics attribute to the "Elohist" author
  
  Text of the story, for reference.

as far as the book being "found," it says so right in the bible, i think somewhere in kings, where it is also claimed to have been written by moses. as for it actually being written much later than moses, and likely at least partially by king josiah in order to support his religious reforms, it seems to be a rather pervasive consensus in the scholarly community, but i am having trouble finding good sources. these two wikipedia pages might be a good place to start, as well as this book.

It's called "The Bible with sources revealed" http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/006073065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321744593&sr=8-1
It only has the old testament though.

It is really important to read the Pentateuch in a book which shows the sources. The Moses with Pharaoh story is actually from J, P, and E! 6:1 happens to be from the E source, the rest of chapter 6 and the first half of chapter 7 is P. The part of E where they leave Egypt is 12:30-33 where you can see that Pharaoh is pushing them to leave ASAP because all their firstborn just up and died.

I recommend The Bible with Sources Revealed.

Perhaps you've heard of documentary hypothesis? In a nutshell, its that the pentateuch is heavily edited and not written by Moses. I got The Bible with sources revealed and was curious if the Abraham and Isaac story were edited, and it appears to be.

https://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353/

https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/006073065X/

https://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563/

In a general sense yes. The full documentation is more complicated but I loved reading it with color coded sources and it gave me so much more depth and sense of history to what I was reading. It was like a cultural time machine.

Of course oral tradition dominated in this time so it likely existed for some time before being written. And that is indeed attributed to Moses, which I think is dope because he himself claims poor speaking ability and yet is a sublime poet. Behind Jesus (duh) he's my favorite father of faith.

Historians aren't merely considering the Old Testament narrative, for example, the call of Abraham, when they conclude that Yahwism (ancient Judaism) was henothesitic. The Pentateuch/Torah, while comprised of several early textual sources, did not reach its final form until late into Israel's nationhood, and maybe not until after the return from Babylonian captivity (537 BCE). So, most of what you're reading in the Old Testament was written much later than the period it depicts and that, as such, the writers/editors often shape the narrative to fit their own theological persuasions. In this case, the writers/editors would have been part of a more thoroughly monotheistic Judaism and this perspective would have shaped the way they brought the stories together.

On the other hand, earlier texts incorporated into the whole still reflect the latent henotheism of ancient Judaism, as I listed above. There's no real difference between identifying ancient Judaism as henotheistic and saying that "a lot of Israelites had a hard time holding to this concept [monotheism]." Henotheism doesn't even require worship of other deities only an assumption that other deities exist. The text assumes this (“You shall have no other gods before me”) and the common people believed it (as suggested by their frequently idolatry). You write, “…by the time Moses was on the scene, God had weaned them enough to give them the solid decree that he was the one and only God.” The only way you can draw this conclusion - since the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law do not declare that Yahweh is the one and only God; only that no other god is to be worshipped – is that you assume the Bible to be homogenous and feel free to impose the perspective of later writers onto the early Israelites.

You assume that the disparate documents compiled in the Bible are coherent, theologically consistent, and somehow point to an overarching divine plan, placing the Bible in a unique position among literature. That’s a lot to assume and awfully hard to defend. Since I consider ancient Judaism to have been henotheistic, you conclude that I “have not taken the time to really dive in and attempt to understand how it all fits together, nor understand that there were processes involved in accomplishing God's plan for the people group in question.”

If you’re interested in this, I’d suggest one or more of the following:

The Bible with Sources Revealed, by Richard Friedman

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, by Michael Coogan

How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature--Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What It Means for Faith Today, by Steven McKenzie

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, by James Kugel

Removed comment posted by /u/bdw9000 at 01/04/15 22:27:15:

> The Bible With Sources Revealed
>
> In addition to a good explanation for why scholars have come to the conclusions they have, it includes the OT "books of moses" in their entirety, color coded to correspond to the JEDP authors. This helps you read the bible with a new perspective and gain a greater appreciation for what each author was trying to do.

... in response to submission Question: Looking for books on JEPD. Any good resources? posted by /u/RevMelissa at 01/04/15 19:32:08:

> I want to write a bible study this Summer on the four early voices in the Hebrew Bible: Jahwe, Elohim, Priestly and Deuteronomical. Any great resources?

If you want more information on how the Bible was written, look into the book "Who Wrote the New Testament: The Bible with Sources Revealed"
http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/006073065X

For the Pentateuch here's what you want I've found the translation a bit wonky (I can read Hebrew myself) but it'll give you exactly what you're looking for, sections colorized by author group as per the Documentary Hypothesis.

If you're not willing to shell out money, you can get a (IMO worse) verse assignment for Genesis here. You can also see Exodus as well.

Richard Elliot Friedman also has an excellent book on the Documentary hypothesis called "Who Wrote the Bible." For those interested in reading each of the authors contributions to the Pentateuch I highly recommend "The Bible with Sources Revealed."