Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible

The History of the Tradition: Old Testament and Apocrypha

John W. Rogerson

1. The History and Purpose of the Old Testament and Apocrypha

How, when, and why were the Old Testament (OT) and the Apocrypha written? The obvious place to look for answers to these questions is in the texts themselves. Exod 24:7 refers to the book of the covenant which Moses read to the people at Mt. Sinai, while Exod 34:28 reports that Moses wrote the words of the covenant, the ten commandments on stone tablets according to God’s instructions. Many of the regulations concerning priesthood and sacrifice in Leviticus and Numbers begin with the formulae the LORD said/spoke to Moses/Aaron, implying their divine origin as well as their mediation through Moses and Aaron. Deuteronomy is an address by Moses to the Israelites gathered in the plains of Moab. In 1 Sam 10:25 Samuel writes in a book the rights and duties of the kingship, while 1 Kgs 4:32 attributes 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs to Solomon. The prophet Isaiah is told to seal the testimony and the teaching (i.e., to write them down) among his disciples, while Jeremiah dictates two sets of prophecies to Baruch, the first of which is destroyed by King Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 36). In the Apocrypha the grandson of the author of the original Hebrew of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and its translator into Greek tells us something about himself and his grandfather (Sirach, Prologue), while Bar 1:1–2 claims as its author the Baruch who was Jeremiah’s scribe. The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6) is a copy of a letter that Jeremiah sent.… 2 Maccabees describes itself as a condensation of a five-volume work by Jason of Cyrene (2 Macc 2:23), while 2 Esdras claims to be the work of Ezra (2 Esdr 1:1–3).

In the history of interpretation far more attention has been paid to the claims made about authorship in the OT than in the Apocrypha; indeed, in Protestant circles that rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture some of the claims to authorship in the Apocrypha were subjected to critical scrutiny in order to show that they were false and that the Apocrypha were therefore discredited. Out of the hints found in the OT a view of its authorship emerged perhaps as early as the second century AD and was recorded in b. B. Bat. 14b–15a. Those who held this view attributed his book (presumably most of Genesis to Deuteronomy) and Job to Moses, the book of Joshua and eight verses of the Torah (presumably Deut 34:5–12, recording the death of Moses) to Joshua, the books of Judges, Ruth, and 1 and 2 Samuel to Samuel, and the Psalms to David assisted by ten elders, including the first Adam, Melchizedek, and Abraham. Jeremiah was credited with 1 and 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, and Hezekiah and his helpers (cf. Prov 25:1) with Isaiah, Proverbs, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes. The remainder were attributed to the Men of the Great Synagogue and Ezra.

Positions similar to, but not identical with, these were to establish themselves in Christian scholarship and to last into the nineteenth century. They can still be found in the young churches of the developing world which are innocent of biblical criticism. The traditional views of authorship had two strengths. First, they provided a clear account of the origin of the faith of Israel. It was divine revelation communicated directly to individuals such as Moses. Secondly, if the authors of OT books were known, it became possible to regard them as writers inspired by God. The seemingly neutral question, Who wrote this book? became closely tied up with theories about the authority and inspiration of the OT such that to question traditional views of the authorship of a book could be regarded as an attack on that book’s status as inspired Scripture. This difficulty is still felt by Christians who are not necessarily fundamentalists.

This is not the place to describe how and why the traditional positions on authorship were abandoned from the late eighteenth century onward. This abandonment did, however, have serious consequences for the study of the OT. The traditional views accounted for the origin of the faith of Israel. Where, however, did this faith come from if it was no longer possible to accept at face value statements such as the LORD spoke to Moses, saying …? If, as is often maintained, much of the priestly and sacrificial legislation in Leviticus and Numbers is a late development rather than something revealed to Israel at the outset, how is the history of Israel’s faith to be reconstructed?

This question must now be addressed because it is fundamental to any attempt to sketch the origin and formation of the traditions and books that make up the OT and Apocrypha; and it must be said at the outset that only some broad indications can be given. As a first step, we will consider several attempts to account for the origin of the faith of Israel and the traditions witnessing to it. Some or all of them may be familiar to readers, and their strengths and weaknesses are informative.

A consensus that emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century was that the prophets of Israel, especially those of the eighth century (Isaiah of Jerusalem, Hosea, Amos, and Micah), were the main force behind the formation of Israel’s faith. Reacting to Canaanite fertility cults and despotic rulers, the prophets proclaimed ethical monotheism and social justice and challenged Israel to look beyond national interests to God’s universal rule. Failure to respond to these challenges would bring divine punishment upon the people, who had been chosen by God for responsibility and not for complacency. The sixth-century prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero-Isaiah) enabled Judah to survive the Babylonian captivity and to learn new and deeper lessons about sin, punishment, and vicarious suffering. Some of these insights were consolidated into the developing sacrificial rituals of the postexilic Jerusalem temple with its emphasis on expiation. At the same time, personal piety found expression in the composition and use of the Psalms, while contact with Hellenism from the late fourth century resulted in the OT wisdom traditions (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes), including those in the Apocrypha (Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach).

This consensus was set in the context of various developmental and evolutionary schemes. One approach, influential in Britain, traced in the OT a progressive development of religious belief from animism, polytheism, and henotheism (belief that the God of Israel was supreme among the gods) to monotheism (belief that the God of Israel was the only God). It also held that Israel had experienced a progressive moral and ethical development. The OT thus became the record of a progressive revelation or education. Other approaches focused on Israel’s social development: from a nomadic people to one surrounded by fertility cults in a settled land; from a loose association of tribes to a dynastic state ruling other small states. A popular source for Israel’s faith was the supposed clarity and purity of the desert in which there were no shades of grey and where God’s moral being and ethical demands could be more readily apprehended than elsewhere.

A major factor highlighted by this consensus was that if appeal was no longer made to divine revelation communicated to known individuals as the origin of the faith of Israel, alternative explanations had to be found; and these were likely to be taken from secular theories that were popular at the time, such as those influenced by social Darwinism.

In the twentieth century two notable attempts were made to correct or modify the nineteenth-century consensus and to offer alternative explanations of the origins of Israel’s faith. The first, associated with W. F. Albright and his students John Bright and G. E. Wright, believed that archeology supported a mildly critical, traditional reading of the OT. The ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were located in second-millennium Mesopotamia and Syria/Palestine, and the exodus was dated in the thirteenth century. The faith of Israel derived from acts of God in history such as the exodus, events which could be dated and reconstructed with the aid of historical and archeological research but which inspired witnesses who experienced them had perceived to be acts of God. Wright’s books Biblical Archaeology and God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital were classic statements of this position.

The second approach, that of G. von Rad, was more skeptical about what could be known about figures such as Moses and the ancestors and events associated with them in the biblical record. It did not so much search for the origins of Israel’s faith as concern itself with proclamations of that faith which were held to be connected with two great festivals, one which celebrated the occupation of the land and one which celebrated the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. The datum, in other words, was the faith that was confessed rather than the revelations or events that gave rise to the faith. Those parts of the confession that referred to revelatory events such as the exodus referred to happenings beyond the scope of historical research, either because the necessary evidence was not available or because theological reflection on the events and the celebratory retelling of them had altered them beyond recognition in the tradition. According to von Rad, the core of the Pentateuch was to be found in the creed recited at the festival of first fruits, according to Deut 26:5–9:

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place.…

Two other features of von Rad’s position were important: belief in the Solomonic Enlightenment, a period in the tenth century during the reign of Solomon in which the traditions relating to Israel’s faith began to be written down; and acceptance of A. Alt’s attempt to identify the God of the fathers (i.e., the ancestors) by means of comparative studies. According to Alt, the God of the fathers (a common phrase in the tradition) identified a manifestation of the divine to a particular person, whose descendants then worshiped that manifestation as, for example, the God of Abraham or the God of Nahor (Gen 31:53), Abraham and Nahor being the names of ancestors to whom, it was believed, the deity had been manifested. This accounted for the traditions about Abraham and the other ancestors.

Since the work of Wright and von Rad (both of whom died in the early 1970s) OT studies have undergone a transformation in radical directions which has completely changed the landscape of the discipline. New literary-critical study of the Pentateuch and the historical books (Joshua to 2 Kings) has suggested later dates for their composition. The nineteenth-century consensus dated the sources for these books from the tenth/ninth to the seventh/sixth centuries. There is now a tendency to regard all of them as postexilic. Von Rad’s Solomonic Enlightenment has been abandoned. At the same time, archeological research has produced an account of the history of Syria/Palestine that suggests that Israel, Judah, Moab, Ammon, and Edom did not begin to emerge as states until the ninth-eighth centuries BC. The biblical accounts of the empires of David and Solomon hardly fit in with this picture, although it is going too far to deny the existence of David and Solomon. Events such as the exodus or the time of the ancestors are now so remote compared with the proposed dates for the traditions about them that they have become invisible as far as any historical attempt to recover them is concerned. At the same time, much more has become known about the popular religion of Israel thanks to the researches of Othmar Keel and his associates on cylinder seals, amulets, and the like.

The task not only of writing a history of Israel but also of accounting for the faith of Israel and the origin and growth of the OT traditions has become more formidable than ever. OT specialists are faced with accounting for a faith that developed within a nation, in circles that often came into conflict with the rulers and ordinary people of that nation. Furthermore, the history of the nation that these circles produced was not a history in the modern sense. Although the writers used historical sources such as royal chronicles, their aim was not to present a chronological account of the nation’s fortunes but to write what has been called a decision history—a story containing incidents with outcomes that would challenge readers/hearers to faith in God. Also, the religious beliefs and practices of the postexilic community were explained in terms of an overall story that was projected back to the creation of the world. In what follows, we will attempt to sketch the origins of Israel’s faith and the growth of its Scripture in the light of present OT studies, while taking into account the dynamics indicated in the preceding sentences.

Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more. These words from the twenty-seventh line of an inscription from the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (variously dated 1224 to 1214 or 1212 to 1202) are the earliest known reference to Israel or an Israel. Through its determinative (a sign that precedes a name and indicates whether the name is that of a god, a person, or a country) the name indicates a group organized along tribal lines. Thus, toward the end of the thirteenth century BC there existed, probably in ancient Palestine (see Görg 1997: 60), a people that was sufficiently distinct for it to be recognized and named by a foreign invader. To what extent this Israel corresponded to a later group or groups bearing the same name has become a battleground of recent OT scholarship.

It is interesting that, however the first part of the name Israel is to be understood (it has been connected with saraʿ, to fight, to rule, or to heal or with yashar, upright), the second part is El, the common Semitic word for God. The group is thus named according to the general Semitic term for God rather than the distinctive name for the God of Israel, YHWH, thought to have been pronounced Yahweh. The earliest nonbiblical reference to Yahweh in connection with Israel is in the Inscription of Mesha, king of Moab in the first half of the ninth century BC. Lines 17 and 18 read, I took from there [i.e., Nebo] the [vessels of] Yhwh. This indicates that the kingdom of Israel ruled by Omri (who is named in the inscription in lines 4–5) had outposts in Transjordan, with holy places at which Yahweh was worshiped.

To the question How and when did Yahweh become the God of Israel? no definite answer can be given if appeal is made to nonbiblical sources only. However, attention has been drawn to the occurrence of what is probably a shortened form of the name, Yhw, in Egyptian sources from the time of Amenophis III (1391–1353) (Knauf 1988: 46), one reference being to "Yhw in Shasu-land." This may be a reference to a sacred mountain or mountain god, which has been tentatively located in Seir or ancient Edom. The mention of shasu draws attention to a nomadic people living in this and other regions. This information can be compared with the OT claims that the name Yahweh was revealed to Moses at the mountain of God in the Sinai wilderness (Exod 3:1–12) as well as with references in poetic parts of the OT to a coming of Yahweh from Seir. Thus the Song of Deborah states, LORD [i.e., Yahweh], when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the region of Edom, the earth trembled.… (Judg 5:4; cf. Ps 68:7–8).

Comparisons of biblical texts with extrabiblical evidence must be handled carefully. They do not prove that the biblical texts are true in a strictly historical sense. Exod 3:1–12 is no doubt a postexilic and sophisticated theoretical reflection in its present form. The comparisons do, however, provide a plausible, and necessarily provisional, larger context into which biblical texts can be placed. On the basis of the above and similar comparisons as well as recent archeological research we can sketch a tentative picture of Israel’s origins and faith as follows.

In the second half of the thirteenth century BC there was a migration of peoples from northern Transjordan to the central hill country of Palestine, the area of the later Northern Kingdom, Israel. The reasons for the migration are unknown; they may have had political or environmental causes, or both. The migratory groups could well have included the entity, or part of it, that is mentioned as Israel in the Merneptah Stele of 1219 or 1207. This group may then have been joined by a group of shasu (see Görg: 61, where objections to this view are considered but not regarded as decisive) who brought with them faith in a God, Yahweh, who had helped them to escape from Egyptian slavery. Faith in Yahweh as the God of Israel then became one of the distinguishing features of Israel as it struggled for survival with the Canaanites and the Philistines in Palestine and with neighboring peoples in Transjordan.

An important moment of crisis in the formation of the people came with the arrival of the Philistines, who established themselves in the coastal plain in southern Palestine, probably in the last third of the twelth century BC. They were part of the larger movement of sea peoples who migrated by sea and land from somewhere in the northeastern Mediterranean region and who are mentioned in Egyptian sources from Ramesses III. Toward the end of the eleventh century they began to expand into the central hill country of Palestine, at the expense of the tribes there who constituted Israel.

At this point another puzzle presents itself. No mention has been made so far of Judah, the kingdom whose first king was David and whose capital, Jerusalem, became the capital of the United Kingdom under David and Solomon—the kingdom which, in effect, became Israel after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of that name by the Assyrians in 722/721 BC. The origin, exact form, and meaning of the name Judah are unknown. Biblical and extrabiblical texts vary the form between Yehud and Yehudah, among others. Whether the name is a personal name or a place name is disputed; suggested meanings range from praise (Gen 29:35; 49:8) to may Yahweh be victorious. According to the present state of archeological research, it appears that Judah (i.e., the southern hill country) was settled later and less densely than the northern hill country and Galilee, where Israel was established. There are good environmental reasons for this. Rainfall increases in Palestine as one goes northward, and Judah lacks the fertile valleys that become increasingly evident the farther north one goes toward the Jezreel valley. It is true that the Shephelah, or lowlands, a transitional set of hills between the coastal plain and the Judean hills, is a much more fertile region; but the Philistines bordered, and no doubt controlled, this area. A major puzzle is how, if the biblical account is correct, this small, less favored region came, under David and Solomon, to dominate the much larger and potentially more powerful kingdom of Israel. It may be possible for us to give an answer if we handle the biblical material carefully.

In 1 Samuel the Philistine attempt to expand into the central hill country is given as the reason for the institution of kingship, with Saul as the first king. Although this connection is no doubt too simple (Saul may have been more of a paramount chief than a king and the Philistine threat only the sufficient cause), it will serve here. The Philistine expansion destabilized the area of Judah and Israel and united the Israelites against the invader. The emergence of a national leader from the territory most immediately threatened (Benjamin) was a natural consequence. However, an interesting feature of the narrative in 1 Samuel is its insistence that Saul had the backing of, or was even a member of, ecstatic prophetic groups that were zealous in their devotion to Yahweh. Twice comes the proverb Is Saul also among the prophets? (1 Sam 10:11–12; 19:24), and Samuel, the apparent leader of the prophets, is instrumental in promoting and deposing Saul as king. In the final form of the tradition, Samuel has become a composite figure combining the features of priest and judge with that of ecstatic prophet. It is arguable, however, that the latter role brings us closest to the historical figure of Samuel. If the association of ecstatic prophetic activity with the appointment of Saul is correct, the rise of the kingship must be seen as more than a political response to the threat of an invader. There was a strong religious element also; and the tradition in 1 and 2 Samuel, which is not exactly sympathetic to Saul in its final form, retains evidence that Saul had tried to carry out religious reforms during his reign (1 Sam 28:3b; 2 Sam 21:1–2).

David, who succeeded where Saul failed, is an enigmatic figure. If the genealogy of 2 Sam 17:24 and other pieces of information (2 Sam 10:1–2) are authentic, David’s mother would seem to have been at one time the wife of the Ammonite king Nahash. Certainly David seems to have taken advantage of the Philistine crisis to establish himself as a kind of freebooter heading a group of adventurers who were fiercely loyal to his charismatic leadership. Temporarily allied with Saul, David aroused the latter’s suspicions and was forced by his active hostility to desert to the Philistines. While confined to the area of southern Judah, David adopted the dual strategy of forging diplomatic links with the villagers of Judah while raiding the Amalekites in the Negev. After Saul had been defeated by the Philistines, David became king of Judah and then of Israel before defeating the Philistines and setting up his capital in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5).

These processes can best be understood if we set them in the context of a world where borders between states were not lines drawn on maps, and where rulers had little centralized control over the areas that they claimed to rule. Philistine control of Israel would have amounted to the occupation of frontier and strategic cities from which demands for food and labor could be imposed upon the surrounding villages (cf. 1 Sam 13:17). Nonetheless, this was an affront to the Israelites and especially to the ecstatic prophetic groups. Since warfare was essentially battle for control of border or strategic towns, a charismatic leader with a brave and accomplished army could dislodge an enemy from these sites within his own country and even seek to expand beyond it by capturing the key cities of neighboring peoples. If David did indeed create a small empire, it was in the sense of capturing border and strategic towns that enabled him to claim authority over a whole territory. The actual control of such territory would be strictly limited.

This historical sketch has been a necessary diversion from the religious questions that this introduction is seeking to address. It has drawn attention to the ecstatic prophetic groups; now we must ask what can be guessed about the religion of David. The tradition in 2 Samuel 6 credits David with bringing to Jerusalem the ark of the covenant, a cult object that had apparently at one point been captured by the Philistines. In 1 Sam 4:4 the ark is called the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, and in Num 10:35–36 it is associated with the earthly and heavenly armies of Yahweh by way of words that also occur in Psalm 68, which, as mentioned earlier, speak of Yahweh coming in a warlike manner from the south. The words are:

"Arise, O LORD, let your enemies be scattered,

and your foes flee before you."

(Num 10:35–36; cf. Ps 68:1)

The ark was therefore possibly a visible symbol of the warlike presence of Yahweh among his people, which had been brought to Palestine by shasu groups who settled in Israel. Indeed, the adoption of Yahweh by Israel may have resulted from the belief that the ark had assisted them in their struggles with their neighbors to establish their independence. That David should have reinstated this cult object that had temporarily failed the people is perhaps an indication that his own faith was a soldier’s belief in a God who was his helper in war. At any rate, the stories of Saul and the ecstatic prophets, and of David and the ark, established two features that were to be formative in the development of Israel’s faith and thus in the production of the OT: a northern prophetic element, and the establishment of the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem.

We have suggested that when David captured Jerusalem he found there an established priesthood in the person of Zadok and a cult that contained Canaanite elements. Hints of this preexisting religion have been found in psalms such as 110, where the king is made a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and 91, where God is named the Most High and the Almighty as well as Yahweh. Psalm 46, which speaks of the river that flows beneath the city of God, is another possible allusion to Canaanite beliefs. It should, however, be noted that current scholarship is divided about how much of the city of Jerusalem existed at the time of David, while Niehr has argued that the Canaanite features of the Jerusalem cult are late developments rather than beliefs and practices that Israelite faith incorporated from a pre-Davidic Jerusalem cult. Only time will tell which of these views is more likely to be correct.

The delineation of the ecstatic prophets in the north and the Jerusalem cult in the south is only a preliminary step in tracing the faith of Israel. The prophetic groups lived on the margins of society, while the Jerusalem cult was that of a royal rather than a national temple. To discover the religious situation of the people in general, we must consider the evidence from personal names, extrabiblical inscriptions, and artistic representations on seals and amulets. The evidence from personal names is not easy to handle because of textual variations between parallel passages (King Abijam in 1 Kgs 14:31; 15:1, etc. is Abijah in the parallel account in 2 Chr 12:16; 13:1, etc.) and differences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint (LXX). The list of names of the thirty heroes of David in 2 Sam 23:24–39 bristles with such difficulties. Bearing all these problems in mind, we nevertheless find it striking that the recorded names of the kings of Israel and Judah begin by having no element of the name Yahweh, and that this element develops only gradually. The first northern king whose name has an element of Yahweh is Ahaziah (853–852 BC), and the first southern king (assuming that Abijam rather than Abijah is correct) is Jehoshaphat (871–848). Of the nineteen kings of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, only seven contain an element of Yahweh, while of the twenty kings of Judah (not counting David and Solomon) fourteen contain this element. The greater presence of Yahweh elements in Judah is probably due to the close connection between the king and the cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem, while of the seven names with Yahweh elements in the Northern Kingdom, five follow one after the other from 853 to 782, the period of major political activity of the prophetic groups led by Elijah and Elisha which resulted in a coup d’état by the Yahweh loyalist Jehu.

Hebrew inscriptions, bearing in mind that their survival and discovery is haphazard, indicate the presence of personal names combined with Yahweh from the eighth century onward (practically no Hebrew inscriptions are known from before this time). From the information in Davies 1991, there are roughly thirteen such names from sites in Judah in the eighth century, eight from the seventh century, and twenty from the late seventh to early sixth centuries. (These figures do not include names ending in -yah or -iyah.) On the other hand, the Samaria Ostraca, dating from the second half of the eighth century (see Renz and Röllig 1995: 79–109), contain seven personal names with the element baʿal, the name of the Canaanite god of the storm. This supports the view presented in the books of Kings that the Northern Kingdom, Israel, or at any rate its capital Samaria (the Samaria Ostraca derive from places close to, and linked to, Samaria), was open to Canaanite influences.

Much interest has been aroused by the discovery in 1975/76 of two inscribed jars at Kuntillet-Ajrud, a kind of caravansary fifty kilometers south of Kadesh-barnea, in the Negev. Dated around 800 BC, they were evidently written and painted on by travelers (see Renz and Röllig 1995: 48–50), and among the inscriptions are references to Yahweh of Samaria, Yahweh of Teman, and Yahweh and his Asherah. The references seem to indicate that, for the travelers at any rate, Yahweh was worshiped as a localized deity in Samaria and in the south of Edom (see above for the connection between Yahweh and this region). The reference to Yahweh’s Asherah is probably to the sacred pole or tree that represented Asherah because it is not possible (as far as it is known) to add a suffix with the meaning his to a proper name in Hebrew in the way that his is added to Asherah in the inscription. What this indicates is that popular religion associated a fertility symbol, the Asherah pole or tree, with the worship of Yahweh, a practice strongly condemned in the OT (1 Kgs 15:13). The iconography of Israel and Judah shows the influence of Egyptian and Assyrian religious symbols on Israelite popular religion; but it also shows that, at the end of the seventh century, officials in Judah put forth a strenuous effort to avoid pagan symbols. The seals from around this time are without idols and contain simply the names of officials concerned (see Keel: 410–14). Their presence confirms the account of the cultic reform carried out by Josiah from 622 BC onward (2 Kings 22–23).

The consideration of such things as personal names, inscriptions, and iconography (for the latter see above all Keel) generally confirms the picture given in the books of Kings, according to which the religion of Israel in the period 950–587 BC was syncretistic. The worship of Yahweh was carried on at many sites called, derogatively, high places in the OT; but other deities were worshiped, including Baal, and fertility practices were associated with Yahweh in the form of the Asherah pole or tree. The situation in Israel and Judah can be described in terms of three interacting levels of religion: those of official Yahwism (the religion of the court), popular Yahwism (the religion of the ordinary people), and prophetic Yahwism (the religion of prophetic groups probably on the margins of society). However, there were no doubt important differences between Israel and Judah.

Israel was more open to syncretism at the level of official religion, with the result that the prophetic groups frequently clashed with the kings of Israel and encouraged soldiers and administrators with prophetic sympathies either to subvert official policies or to attempt coups d’état. An instance of the former is the high official Obadiah’s concealment of prophets during the reign of Ahab (873–853) when the king’s foreign-born wife promoted her own religion and tried to eliminate the Yahweh prophets (1 Kgs 18:3–4). An instance of the latter is the coup d’état of Jehu (841–813) instigated by Elisha (2 Kings 9).

In Judah, which was much smaller territorially and where Jerusalem’s influence became increasingly dominant, prophets such as Hosea and Amos directed their attention to Israel. However, Micah was bitterly critical of Jerusalem toward the end of the eighth century, as were Jeremiah and Ezekiel just over a century later. The two slightly different manifestations of Yahwism, in Israel and Judah at the royal and prophetic levels, were brought together following the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, by the Assyrians in 722/721 BC. Royal chronicles and other written or oral traditions were brought from the north to Judah by groups, including prophetic groups, seeking refuge in the one remaining country where Yahweh was officially worshiped.

It was most likely at this time, during the reign of Hezekiah (727–698 BC), that the first steps were taken toward the production of the OT as we know it. Hezekiah had the necessary scribal resources (Jamieson-Drake 1991; cf. Prov 25:1) and motivation (the presence of the northern prophetic groups plus a desire to resist Assyria and extend his jurisdiction over as much of the former Northern Kingdom as possible) to put in train the production of the initial account of the history of the people from the time of Abraham onward. His scribes made use of royal chronicles, stories emanating from prophetic groups, and stories of local and popular heroes and heroines. Abraham and Isaac were most likely Judahite heroes, their stories being set in southern Judah (Hebron) and the Negev, while Jacob was a northern hero, his story centering in Bethel, Shechem, Transjordan, and Haran. The fact that the Judahite Abraham precedes the Israelite Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel and who becomes the ancestor of the twelve tribes (Gen 29; 32:22–32), is best explained by the supposition that the stories were put together when Judah was the predominant political force.

How the overall story was continued down to Hezekiah’s time can only be guessed at. We are on firmest ground with the royal chronicles, described in the books of Kings as the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah/Israel (see 1 Kgs 14:19, 29). Their general accuracy can be checked against Egyptian and Assyrian records from time to time, from the invasion by Sheshonq I of Egypt in 925 BC (cf. 1 Kgs 14:25–28; Görg: 90–91) through the mention of Omri (in the Inscription of Mesha; see above), Ahab (ANET, 279), Jehu (ANET, 280–81), and Azariah (Uzziah; ANET, 282–83) to Hezekiah himself (ANET, 287–88). This does not mean, of course, that every detail is correct from a modern historical point of view. The stories of Elijah and Elisha, which dominate the books of Kings from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 10, contain legendary elements and narratives that sometimes cannot be fitted into the historical scheme; but the general framework can be trusted. What cannot be known is how much of the story from Jacob to the time of David existed in this initial draft. Because tradition abhors a vacuum, it is likely that the story included the exodus (cf. Hos 11:1), Moses, Joshua, and some or most of the judges, ending with Samuel and Saul. The difficulty is that it is almost impossible to work back from the final forms of these accounts to the form that they might have had in the initial version.

This initial version was the product of official Yahwism as represented in Jerusalem under the patronage of a king (Hezekiah) who allowed himself to be advised by a prophet, Isaiah. Its aim was to legitimize Jerusalem and its Davidic dynasty as chosen by Yahweh, as well as to assert that the whole land of Israel, north and south, had been promised to the descendants of the Judahite ancestor, Abraham. However, the account also no doubt stressed the importance of loyalty to Yahweh over against other deities and used stories as object lessons to point out the consequences of disloyalty. It is also likely that the reign of Hezekiah was the time in which the laws found in Exodus 21–23 were officially promulgated. These restricted the period of slavery to six years and were generally supportive of the poor and disadvantaged (e.g., Exod 22:21–27).

The promise of Hezekiah’s reign was cruelly disappointed. Invaded by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701, Judah was devastated and Hezekiah was forced to pay tribute (2 Kgs 18:13–16). For the next sixty years Judah was a vassal state of Assyria and pagan religion flourished at the official and popular levels (Keel 1992: 322–406). In 640, by which time Assyrian power had declined to the point of no return (the Assyrian Empire would last for no more than a further thirty years), parties favorable to prophetic Yahwism were able to intervene in the politics of Judah and place on the throne the eight-year-old Josiah (2 Kgs 21:19–22:2). His reign (640–609 BC) produced a religious reorganization in Judah that turned Jerusalem from a royal to a national sanctuary. All other sanctuaries were closed down, and all traces of paganism were purged from the Jerusalem cult. The Passover was declared to be a national festival, to be observed only at the national sanctuary, Jerusalem. In terms of the threefold distinction between official, popular, and prophetic religion, we can say that official religion, inspired by the prophetic, sought to control popular religion as never before in Judah or Israel, a move made possible by the increasing administrative control of Jerusalem over Judah. This controlling of popular religion is instanced in making the Passover a national festival to be observed only in Jerusalem. The origins of the Passover are obscure and its exact form of observance prior to Josiah unknown; but it was probably a local or family observance of some kind, originating in the Northern Kingdom.

Josiah’s reform had a major impact on the formation of the OT. It was inspired by or gave rise to the Deuteronomistic movement, a combination of high official and prophetic circles. These produced a first draft of Deuteronomy and edited the existing story of Israel from the time of Abraham, bringing it down to the time of Josiah (2 Kgs 23:24–25) and adding Deuteronomistic frameworks to books such as Judges. Deuteronomy was probably modeled on the types of vassal treaty that were current in the Near East at the time. These contained a historical prologue setting the context for the treaty (cf. Deut 4:44–11:31), stipulations required to be observed by the vassal (cf. Deuteronomy 12–26), and details of penalties that would be exacted if the vassal was disloyal (cf. Deuteronomy 28, with interesting parallels with the vassal treaties of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon from 681 to 669 BC; see especially Steymans). One of the features of Deuteronomistic theology deriving from the vassal treaty scheme was a recasting of past history to show that disasters that had befallen Israel were divine punishments resulting from disloyalty to Yahweh. In particular, disloyalty to Yahweh was understood in terms of worshiping other gods.

Another feature of the Deuteronomic reform was the introduction of new social measures to counteract poverty and to support the officials whose shrines had been closed down. For example, a three-year tithe was enjoined whose produce was to be distributed locally to Levites (dispossessed local cultic officials) and to the disadvantaged (Deut 14:28–29). Further, a seven-year system of release was commanded in which loans (or the interest on loans) to fellow Israelites were written off (Deut 15:1–6). Women slaves were given the same right of release as men slaves (Deut 15:12–18; cf. Exod 21:7–11, where women slaves do not have this right).

The Deuteronomic reform was brought to an end by Josiah’s death in 609 BC at the hands of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, and for the remainder of the existence of Judah (to 587) the kingdom was in effect a vassal state, first to Egypt and then to Babylonia. These reverses allowed popular religion to be freed from official control. The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel contain abundant evidence that ordinary people turned to pagan deities and away from the austere official and prophetic Yahwism that had apparently failed, given Judah’s loss of independence.

From the destruction of the temple in 587 BC to the end of the Persian period (333 BC) Israelite history enters a phase about which little information has survived and yet in which the OT and its faith came near to reaching the forms in which we know them. It can be surmised that in this period, priestly, scribal, and prophetic interests combined in the context of a small, temple-based community in Jerusalem to consolidate trends that had been apparent for a considerable amount of time. However, the loss of the Jerusalem temple and the Babylonian exile made a lasting impression on this closing stage of the formulation of the faith and its writings.

In the first place, in the absence of political rule (the last Davidic king was Jehoiachin, who died sometime after 560 BC), religious rule by priests took on new importance, while prophetic activity became primarily concerned with the editing and expanding of teaching deriving from the prophets of earlier generations. Secondly, there was much less scope for popular religion in a temple-based community centered in a Judah that was now smaller than it had been up to 587. The southern part of Judah, for example, had been occupied by Edomites. Thirdly, official religion in the sense of the religion of the court no longer existed, nor did prophetic religion in the sense of the religion of marginal groups fiercely loyal to Yahweh who intervened in politics from time to time. In fact, religion in Judah was now well on the way to becoming a faith based on writings that were regarded as Scripture.

To the Persian period (539–333 BC) can be assigned the editing of the Pentateuch into its final form and the substantial completion of the prophets, which included the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as well as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets. The story beginning with Abraham was prefaced by the primeval history (Genesis 1–11) and supplemented by the ritual and priestly material now found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. In the former prophets (Joshua to Kings) the story was brought down to the destruction of the temple and the release from prison of the last king, Jehoiachin, in 560 (2 Kgs 25:27–30). In addition, sections were edited or expanded to meet situations arising from the destruction of the temple in 587 and the Babylonian exile. For example, Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the temple in 1 Kings contains sections which imply that there are Jews in the diaspora (i.e., not living in Palestine) for whom the temple will be a place toward which they pray (1 Kgs 8:46–53). It says nothing about the temple as a place of sacrifice. A good example of the work on the latter prophets is Isaiah, where sayings deriving from at least three prophets, Isaiah of Jerusalem (8th cent.), Deutero-Isaiah (mid-6th cent.), and Trito Isaiah (late 6th cent.) were brought together, along with attempts to give the work some unity by thematically linking the closing chapters with the opening ones.

The third section of the Hebrew Bible, the Writings, was less complete by the end of the Persian period. The Psalms, some of which dated from the First Temple period, were probably in their present form as far as Psalm 106. The Proverbs, many of which dated from the time of Hezekiah or earlier, were prefaced by chs. 1–9, which set them in an explicitly Yahwistic theological framework, albeit one which was closer to official Yahwism than to prophetic Yahwism. Also complete by the middle of the fourth century BC were the so-called Chronicler’s history (Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah—not necessarily by the same author) and books such as Lamentations (most likely occasioned by the destruction of Jerusalem) and Ruth. It is difficult to determine whether works such as Job, Ecclesiastes, Canticles (the Song of Songs), and Esther were complete by 333 BC.

This uncertainty stems mostly from lack of knowledge about social conditions in Judah in the first half of the fourth century BC and whether changes were beginning to occur before Alexander the Great defeated the Persians and incorporated Syria/Palestine into the Hellenistic environment that would profoundly affect it up to and well beyond the coming of Roman rule in 63 BC. Certainly, the advent of the Greek language, the founding of free Greek cities, especially in Transjordan, and the general spread of Greek culture had a noticeable effect upon the last stages of the genesis of the OT, and of the writing of the Apocrypha. Returning for a moment to Job, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, while these could all have been written in the fourth or even fifth centuries, a case can be made for saying that Job and Ecclesiastes, at any rate, were produced in response to a skepticism that developed in Judah from the end of the fourth century onward. This skepticism was produced not only by the need to respond to Greek philosophy but by a growing individualism among members of an aristocracy that lacked power and a questioning of aspects of official Yahwism. It has also been argued that Canticles draws upon elements of pagan mythology, which became increasingly popular with Hellenization (Müller 1976).

Whatever the truth of these arguments, Hellenization was responsible for the need to translate the OT into Greek from the mid-third century BC, for the benefit of Jews living in Egypt. There was also the clash with Hellenism which resulted in the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid ruler of Judah, Antiochus IV, from 168/167 to 164. This resulted in the writing of the book of Daniel (in Hebrew and Aramaic) and the production of the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, the former in Hebrew and the latter in Greek.

If the content of the Apocrypha is compared with that of the OT, the trend toward individualism and toward Greek is clearly discernible. The Apocrypha has no prophetic books, only one psalm, and proportionately more novelistic writings than the OT, in the form of Tobit, Judith, and Additions to Daniel (Susanna and Bel and the Dragon). Works originally composed in Greek include 2-4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, and Additions to Esther and Daniel.

The Apocrypha also demonstrates that what was said above about the OT books being completed in the Persian period needs to be qualified, while the Additions to Daniel and Esther show how the tradition could be supplemented. The Apocrypha contains 1 Esdras, a work based on part of 2 Chronicles 35–36, Ezra 1:1–10:44, and Neh 7:72–8:13a, but evidently using a Hebrew text differing from that which has become traditional for those books. 1 Esdras also contains two sections (1:23–24 and 3:1–5:6) which have no parallel in the OT. Overall, it provides a more integrated and interesting version of material, most of which is in the OT. The Additions to Esther have the effect of making it a much more religious book, with prayers added at crucial points in the story in a book which, notoriously in its Hebrew version, does not mention God. The Additions to Daniel add both hymns and prayers (Greek Daniel 3:24–91) and stories to supplement those about Daniel in the opening chapters of the Hebrew.

It is now time to compare the point which we have reached with what we said in the opening pages. There we pointed out that the OT’s view of how Israel’s faith originated is that it was revealed by God supremely to Moses but also to other people such as Abraham and the prophets. The outline we have given above has indicated something much more complicated—a series of interactions between official, popular, and prophetic Yahwism in the context of the historical ups and downs of a small people surrounded by, and often victim to, the ambitions of powerful empires. Also, our brief consideration of the Apocrypha has indicated that the processes of formation and development of Israel’s faith and the production of its Scriptures was ongoing. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, has shown how, in the first century BC, there were diverse and competing strands within the broad stream of the Judaism of the time. In a way, the Qumran group might be compared with the prophetic religion of earlier times, seeing that it lived on the margins of society and was fiercely critical of the official Judaism of the time.

The Qumran group is also instructive with regard to its attitudes to Scripture. On the assumption that the Temple Scroll and the biblical commentaries were the work of the same group, the Qumran sectarians regarded certain works as sacred and therefore susceptible of interpretation. This is seen in the commentaries on books such as Habakkuk and Nahum, the prophecies of which are interpreted in terms of the group’s history and leaders. On the other hand, the Temple Scroll is an attempt to fill a gap in the Bible. There is no record in the OT of explicit instructions from God about the form and dimensions of the Jerusalem temple. Exodus 35–40 contain an account of God’s instructions for the construction of the portable tabernacle which served the Israelites in the wilderness. 1 Kings 6–7 describe how Hiram built the Jerusalem temple for Solomon. No doubt the description of the tabernacle in Exodus is dependent on the later Second Temple. The point is that the OT contains no specific instructions from God about the construction of the Jerusalem temple; and it is this lack which the Temple Scroll remedies, in the form of a direct address of God to Moses about the building of a temple. Thus, as late as the first century BC there was a group within Judaism that claimed and attributed revelations of God to Moses regarding vital matters of religion.

If modern scholarship proposes a gradual development of the faith of Israel as opposed to an initial revelation to a founder such as Moses, this does not mean that we are left with vagaries. However the faith of Israel may have developed (and subsequent research and discoveries may modify or alter the sketch we have proposed in this introduction), the end result was that the texts that were produced and the faith that they implied had what has been called a family likeness. The main features of this family likeness were:

•belief in Yahweh as the God of Israel and as the only God, the creator of the universe

•belief in Israel as the people chosen and called by Yahweh to service and obedience, which would lead to Yahweh being acknowledged by the other nations

•belief in Jerusalem as the place chosen by Yahweh for a temple to honor his name, and belief in Yahweh’s choice of the house of David to rule over Israel

•belief in Yahweh’s laws as revealed to Moses

•belief in a re-creation of the heavens and the earth when Yahweh would establish a peace and justice longed for by the nations.

Not all of these features are to be found in every book of the OT, but they are implied. Ecclesiastes, for example, always uses the general Hebrew word for God rather than the name Yahweh and makes no mention of Israel or of its being specially chosen and commissioned by Yahweh. But its view, that humans live in a world created by God, who is also the creator of individual humans and to whom their spirits return at death, would be impossible without the general background of belief outlined above. Indeed, the skepticism in Ecclesiastes and Job comes precisely from the problems arising from the need to relate Israelite monotheism to the sufferings of innocent people and the many injustices that go unpunished, at a time when Israelite monotheism had not yet developed a belief in the afterlife. Again, a book such as Esther, which in its Hebrew version notoriously fails to mention God, nonetheless depicts the Jews as a distinct entity singled out for hatred and destruction by Haman, thus implying a unique Jewish national self-consciousness and praxis which could arouse hostile feelings against the Jewish people.

Readers of the list of features making up the family likeness may be surprised by the omission of belief in the coming of the Messiah. Of course, by the beginning of the common era various types of messianic belief had developed, including the coming of a prophet like unto Moses (Deut 18:15), a return of Elijah (Mal 4:5), and a royal (Davidic) or priestly anointed one (which is what Messiah means). However, in the OT and Apocrypha only the elements of these later expectations are present, and they are subordinate to the view that God himself will redeem his people and renew the created order.

2. Methods in the Study of the Old Testament and Apocrypha

The attempted reconstruction of the origins of the faith of Israel and its Scriptures in this introduction has depended on the methods of historical criticism. In their modern form these methods go back to the second half of the eighteenth century; but they are based in turn upon observations about the OT in particular that go back much earlier than the eighteenth century. A good example is the apparent discrepancy in regulations about observing the Passover in Exod 12:1–49 as compared with Deut 16:1–8. In the former text the Passover is observed in Egypt in the houses of the Israelites, one of the main purposes of the ritual being that the blood of the Passover lamb sprinkled upon the lintel and doorposts of the Israelite houses will protect them from the divine destroyer when he comes to kill the firstborn males and animals. Exod 12:24–27 implies that the Passover will continue to be observed in this way in the following generations. However, in Deut 16:1–8 the Passover lamb can be killed only at the central sanctuary (i.e., Jerusalem, which is not, however, mentioned in Deuteronomy), to which families must travel if they wish to observe the festival; in that case it becomes impossible to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on the lintel and doorposts of houses far away from the central sanctuary, something that is in any case not enjoined by Deut 16:1–8. Jewish scholarship has long since been aware of these and other discrepancies, and explained them in various ways, including making a distinction between the Passover of Egypt and the Passover of the land. Modern biblical criticism developed out of the wrongly called precritical era of scholarship when scholars abandoned the various theological schemes that had protected the Bible from historical investigation like any other book.

Modern methods can be divided into two groups: (a) those that are concerned with the historical and social background in which the OT and Apocrypha originated, and the methods of composition used in the production of the texts; and (b) methods that are primarily concerned with interpreting the texts. This latter category can be subdivided into methods that investigate how the texts were interpreted in ancient times and how they can be interpreted today. However, any attempt to isolate and classify methods of study is artificial and arbitrary. In practice, methods overlap and slide in and out of each other.

Category (a) methods begin with those which are exterior to the text—archeological explorations, the study of extrabiblical inscriptions and iconography, the study of the history and religion of Israel’s neighbors, especially Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and the study of social and anthropological theory. They then pass to dealing with the texts themselves: establishing the best textual tradition where words or phrases make little sense and there are divergences between the Hebrew tradition and the ancient translations of the Hebrew into Greek, Latin, and Syriac. This also involves the study of ancient Semitic languages akin to Hebrew, such as Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and classical Arabic.

Source criticism inquires whether the biblical writers based their work on existing sources. In one case, it is widely, although not universally, accepted that the writer(s) of the books of Chronicles used Samuel and Kings as a source. In other cases, such as the Pentateuch, priestly sources can be separated from non-priestly sources by the identification of distinctive vocabulary and subject matter. Form criticism inquires about the types of literary form and genre used in the literature. The most easily identifiable are two-line proverbs in the book of Proverbs; but in the Psalms, recurring structural features can be found in psalms of lament, such as Psalms 3–7, where an opening address to God detailing the complaint or distress of the psalmist ends with an affirmation of confidence and trust. Prophetic oracles are sometimes highly schematized, beginning with the identification of the speaker (Yahweh), the ground of complaint or praise, and either a threat of judgment or a promise of deliverance. A good example is Jer 35:12–19, which combines praise and promise for the Rechabites with condemnation and judgment on the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Other forms found in prophetic literature include funeral dirges (Amos 5:1–3) and love songs (Isa 5:1–7). Redaction criticism is a method that tries to gain an idea of the overall intention or purpose of a work by examining key passages or concluding formulae. In the so-called Deuteronomistic History, for example (Joshua to 2 Kings), there are key speeches or passages in Joshua 24, 1 Samuel 12, and 2 Kings 17 and 21:10–15 which give an indication of the tenor of the work in its final form.

The first branch of category (b) methods, those dealing with ancient interpretation, concern themselves objectively with the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible (HB) into Greek and Aramaic in particular. They also deal with ancient works which interpreted or expanded the HB.

Although the Septuagint (LXX) is a translation of the HB into Greek, it is also sometimes an interpretation, making theological points and expanding the text to make it more understandable. Two examples can be given. The Hebrew of Exod 24:10 says that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders, having ascended the mountain, saw the God of Israel. The translators into Greek softened this bold statement into they saw the place where the God of Israel stood, no doubt bearing in mind the statement that no one can see God and live (Exod 33:20). In Isa 40:1, commands are given that God’s people should be comforted, but there is no indication as to who is being told to give these commands. The Greek version adds the word priests before speak tenderly to Jerusalem in order to meet this difficulty. An example of expansion and interpretation in the Aramaic targums can be found at Ezek 16:2–3. The Hebrew has, speaking of Jerusalem, Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was a Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. The targum has, Your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanites. There I revealed myself to Abraham your father between the pieces [of the covenant; cf. Gen 15:17] and made known to him that you would go down to Egypt. With an uplifted arm I redeemed you, and for the sake of your fathers I drove out from before you the Amorites and destroyed the Hittites.

However, examination of translations, especially the Greek, provides information not only about how passages were interpreted in antiquity; they also give indications of how the biblical books were composed. The Greek version of Jeremiah is shorter than the Hebrew versions, the additions in the Hebrew amounting to amplifications and clarifications. A good example is Jeremiah 27:19–22 (ch. 34:19–22 in the Greek). In what follows, material common to both versions is in normal type; what is found in the Hebrew only is in italics:

19. For thus