How We Got the BibleORAL TRANSMISSION & EARLY FORMS

General Outline1. Introduction, Canon, & Inspiration2. Oral Transmission & Early Forms3. “Discovering” the Law (Josiah & Ezra)4. Apocryphal Writings

Hebrew LanguageHebrew Language• Hebrew originally had consonants and no

written vowels.• Vowels were added in the 7th Century AD.• Hebrew reads from right to left.• Hebrew is a lyrical, poetic language.• A small portion of the Old Testament is

written in Aramaic, as used in the Captivity.

Absence of Textual Evidence• The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew

Scriptures in existent are typically from the 9th to 14th centuries AD.

• The Dead Scrolls date back to 1st century BC.• Moses should have lived in the period 1400

years prior!• What did Scripture look like in ancient

times?

WellhausenDocumentary Hypothesis (Published 1878): The Torah had its origins in a compilation of four originally independent texts all written centuries after the time of Moses.• J – Yahweh Text (Jehovah)• E – Elohim Text• D – Deuteronomical Text• P – Priestly Text• Later scholars expanded this to many more

sources and variations.

What Wellhausen Didn’t Know

Kitchen: “The first thing to recall – which almost all modern observers totally overlook! – is how very, very little was known of ancient Israel’s surrounding context, the Near Eastern world, back in 1878.”• Early Assyria or Babylon• Amarna letters (1300s BC)• Hammurabi’s Code (1770s BC)• Siloam inscription (700s BC)• Archaeological strata• Sumerians

• Hittites• Ugarit• Hurrian• Ebla• Mari• Emar

What Wellhausen Didn’t Know

• Kitchen: “So Wellhausen worked in a near vacuum and could speculate freely. But that day has long, long since gone. We today do have the vast resources hinted at just above. And they do enable us to profile ancient history accurately in its broad sweep. And straight bottom-to-top evolution is out. It never happened like that: no, not ever.”

Genesis: Patriarchal Religion• Prior to Moses, we have many examples of

God “speaking,” but none of anything being written down.

• Exodus 3:15 (ESV) God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

Exodus: Was Moses Real?• Exodus 34:27 (ESV) And the LORD said to

Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

But who is Moses?• Myth or Legend?• “Superhero”?• Embroidered Story?• Historical Reality?

Exodus: Song of the SeaExodus 15:1-18• Possibly alluded to in Psalms 74, 77, 78, 118;

Isaiah 11-12; Joshua 2-5• Written in the same style as poetry in Ugarit

(Syria) from 1300s BC• Written in a Hebrew style that is noticeably

different from the text on either side of it.• For comparison …

Exodus: Song of the SeaExodus 15:1-18• Possibly alluded to in Psalms 74, 77, 78, 118;

Isaiah 11-12; Joshua 2-5• Written in the same style as poetry in Ugarit

(Syria) from 1300s BC

Exodus: Song of the Sea

Exodus: Treaty DocumentsHITTITE

(1400-1200)SINAI COVENANT

from EX-LEVASSYRIA

(900-650)ARAM

(900-650)1. Title 1. Title (Ex. 20:1) 1. Title 1. Title

2. History 2. History (20:2) 5. Witnesses 5. Witnesses

3. Stipulations 3. Stipulations (20:3-17; ch. 21-23 25-31)

6. Curses 3. Stipulations

4. Deposition & Reading

4. Dep. (25:16) & Reading (24:7)

3. Stipulations 6. Curses

5. Witnesses 5. Witnesses (24:4)

6. Curse / Bless 6. Bless / Curse (Lev 26:3-43)

Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt• Exodus 13:17-18 (ESV) When Pharaoh let

the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle.

Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt• Conforms to

Geography• No Northern

Route: Ten Egyptian Forts Leading Into West Canaan

Exodus: A Path Out of Egypt• Kitchen: “Thus a southern exodus cannot be

held to be proven, but it is both a viable and a realistic proposition; the narratives show a practical knowledge of Sinai conditions not readily to be gained by late romance writers in exilic Babylon or an impoverished Persian-Hellenistic Judea, hundreds of miles from the places and phenomena in question.”

Exodus: Is Moses Real?• Kitchen: “In short, to explain what exists in

our Hebrew documents we need a Hebrew leader who had had experience of life at the Egyptian court, mainly in the East Delta (hence at Pi-Ramesse), including knowledge of treaty-type documents and their formats, as well as of traditional Semitic legal/social usage more familiar to his own folk. …

Exodus: Is Moses Real?• Kitchen: “… In other words, somebody

distressingly like that old ‘hero’ of biblical tradition, Moses, is badly needed at this point, to make any sense of the situation as we have it. Or somebody in his position of the same or another name. On the basis of the series of features in Exodus to Deuteronomy that belong to the late second millennium and not later, there is, again, no other viable option.”

Deuteronomy: Is There an Editor?Deuteronomy 34:5-12• The death and burial of Moses is recorded.• v. 6, “to this day”• v. 10, “there has not arisen a prophet since in

Israel like Moses”• Statements of this sort lead us to believe

that the text(s) was edited at a later date.

God Uses Scribes• 1 Chronicles 2:55 (ESV) And the families of

scribes that dwelt at Jabez …• Psalm 45:1 (ESV) … my tongue is like the pen of a

ready scribe.• Jeremiah 36:32 (ESV) Then Jeremiah took

another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them.

God Uses Scribes• Ezra 7:6 (ESV) this Ezra went up from Babylonia.

He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the LORD, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the LORD his God was on him.

• Matthew 13:52 (ESV) And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

God Uses Scribes• Matthew 23:34 (ESV) Therefore I send you

prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town,

• We should think of scribes and their custodial work of preservation and even editing as part of God’s plan for the Scriptures.

Conclusions• We do know that early oral stories were passed

down from ancient times.• We do not know what form the earliest writings

took (beyond a certain stone tablet).• We do know that a “Moses” figure is needed to

make sense of what we have.• We do know that the content of the Pentateuch

is authentically dated to the era of the Exodus.• We do not know how much editing might have

been done by scribes after Moses.