Newton's Cat

'Who Wrote The Bible' by Richard E Friedman?

Friedman's proposition is that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch - having been given the authority to do so by Artaxerxes II, the Emperor of the Persians. Ezra presented it to the people of Israel as having been written by Moses - but in actual fact Ezra compiled it himself (probably with help from others).

MiddleMan

Read it cover to cover a couple of times. Great book!

Gavriel

Before I start debating this, what your saying is pre-Ezra no Torah existed and during his lifetime he just whipped it together and presented it to the people?

If so this ought to be fun.

Newton's Cat

The opinion that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch goes back a long way.

Spinoza, a Jewish philosopher expressed this view in 1671.

andrewcriddle

IIUC Friedman's position is that the great majority of the Torah already existed but as separate documents roughly equivalent to the traditional critical sources J E P and D, which Friedman would date between 850 and 600 BCE.

The editing and compilation together of this material is due to Ezra but most of it existed long before his time.

(NOTE this is what Friedman used to hold I'm not sure how far he still does.)

Andrew Criddle

Gavriel

Thanks for the clarification. I kinda figured no serious scholar would have claimed he made it up entirely during his lifetime.

I still am curious how Ezra mananged to "dupe" all the pious jews at the time and try to insert new text and merge old text according to this claim. Judaism wasn't at some fledgling state, where this would have been easier, it allready saw the rise and fall of serveral kings, and not to mention the construction and destruction of it's Holy Temple.

Anat

Judaism underwent a serious crisis with the fall of the temple. Normally in the cultural environment of the middle east that would have been taken as the surrender of YHWH to Marduch et al. and the religion would have died. But someone (the Deuteronomist?) came up with the idea that YHWH deliberately got his temple burned down because he was punishing the sinning nation. And there was a hope that once the Jews did their time their fate would be reversed. Cyrus and his policies strengthened this hope. There was an audience waiting for a revised version of its national epic that would retell the old stories through the new ideology. There was also a need for a more detailed version of the temple rituals so as to prepare for a new improved model (lots of purification, and no Ashera this time, please). Thus the Redactor was supplying people with what they wanted.

Gavriel

I have no dispute Judaism took a major hit with the destruction of their Holy temple, however to then claim Jews decided to write new scripture to justify this I find very weak reasoning. Throughout the scripture, not just in one place, but MANY, the Jews as a nation and as individual's have received severe punishment and hardships due to their actions.