Doubting Didymus

Sorry if this has been done, but my father-in-law wanted to know who wrote the early books of the old testament, and in what period of history the exodus was supposed to have occured.

He was a catholic, so of course he has no knowledge of the bible at all.

Sojourner553

I would recommend:

Richard Elliott Friedman, WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1987.

You can find some small references to this here:

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JP.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JP.TXT</a>

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>


Sojourner

[ December 04, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Celsus

If he wants the fundamentalist answer, Moses wrote the first 5 books, Samuel wrote the next lot till Samuel, and Ezra wrote Kings and Chronicles.

The short (and consensus) answer is Josiah's scribes/priests c.620BCE wrote the Deuteronomic source of the Pentateuch, and later members of the same tradition wrote the Deuteronomic History (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) adapted from earlier sources during the exile in Babylon. Earlier strands (the Yahwist and Eloist sources - aka J and E) were probably compiled with D during or just prior to the Jewish exile (c.586/7BCE). The priestly source (P) may or may not have originated before the exile. J, E, D, & P constitute the Pentateuch.

Joel

Doubting Didymus

What? No easy answers? Who'da thunk it.

Doubting Didymus

BCE... what does that work on, again?

offa

Offa; I thought it was Moses?

Comparing it to other dates I read that it was written in c.280 b.c.e. as compared to Jubilees which has a date of the Maccabee Era more than a century later. This makes the Old Testament more reliable? The problem is that most of Jubilees was discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls
which authenicates them older than the original 800 CE date given for them by a spurious author. The point I am making is that the Old Testament was probably written after Constantine?

I believe the dating for the Old Testament being 280 BCE is due to Josephus' chicanery with a false Ptolemy Philadelphius. That is, the Alexandrian Library that was destroyed in a war against Julius Caesar in about 44 CE never had any Jewish history. Josephus wrote a bogus story about a high priest named Eleazar who wrote the Jewish history for Ptolemy Philadelphius. This Eleazar was born long after Philadelphius died.

Myself, I think Queen Alexandra wrote Jubilees and she died in about 76 bce (after 100 bce and before Pompey).

Your father-in-Law was a Catholic, did he die? I figure once a Catholic always a Catholic!

Now, for a little bit of fun Doubting Didymus! I have been informed that St. Peter and Doubting Thomas are one and the same! Now, this is an amazing tidbit, knowing that the last chapter of John was written years later (John was published in c.36 CE) in order to meld Peter and Jesus. They were always at odds. Peter was a freedman of Antonia. Guess what, the last King of the Jews, Herod Agrippa I was a freed man of Antonia's. This means that Herod Agrippa and St. Peter are close relatives. St. Peter was Herodias' first husband. The plot thickens and I went before 325 CE years ago!

One last tidbit, when it is discovered that Didymus Thomas and St. Peter are one and the same ... you first read it here through the good graces of Offa. Search all your data banks and you will not find, Herodias' first husband, Doubting Thomas, and St. Peter linked.

Celsus

Before Common/Christian Era

Same as BC, only it's better technical term, since Christ may or may not exist. And there is no simple answer.

Joel

Doubting Didymus

Good grief, so nothing even close to 1000BC?
Heck. Shows what I know. Ex-catholic father in law will be most interested.

Tercel

Er, not entirely: The dates Joejoejoe gave are towards the later end of the spectrum.
Like Sojourner, I would recommend Friedman's book for a good introduction and overview to the JEPD hypothesis. If I recall correctly, the dates Friedman suggests are:
J - 10th century BC
E - 9th
P - 8th
D - 7th

I don't think "nothing even close to 1000BC" is a fair summary. Anyway, we've just being talking about the Torah (first 5 books) plus the history books here. -Don't forget that things like the Psalms probably go back to David or further -at least in part.
I'm curious as to why 1000BC is an important date though. What does it matter to anyone when they were written?

Celsus

Tercel,

After reading The Bible Unearthed, I think that any dating pre-8th century is likely to be tenuous. The 1000BCE mark is important since that is the approximate start of the Davidic monarchy. and the so-called formation of the united Israel (which Finkelstein and Silberman seem to believe is a mythical fiction). In their view David and Solomon are about as historical as King Arthur, given archaeological findings, IMO. That said, I'm waiting for David Rohl's The Lost Testament to come out in paperback, and see if I revise my expected dates again.

Joel

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: joejoejoe ]

Amos and Hosea are possibly the earliest books of the Bible, dating to Jeroboam II's reign (783-741BCE), although they may have gone through later redaction.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: joejoejoe ]

Yet another clarification: I did not give a date for J and E except to say they are earlier than D, which may have the dates you postulated. However, I don't think they can be clearly dated except that J is before E and E is independent of J. Exilic redaction (or just pre-Exilic) is the consensus for JEDP, although some believe that P is post-exilic. In another thread, I argued that the Samaritan Bible is evidence for pre-Exilic JEDP redaction.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: joejoejoe ]</p>