Who Wrote the Bible? - Richard Elliott
Friedman
CHAPTER 2 – J and E
Two Clues Converge
Two and a half thousand years
after the events that I described in the last chapter took place, three
investigators of who wrote the Bible each independently made the same
discovery. One was a minister, one was a physician, and one was a
professor. The discovery that they all made ultimately came down to the
combination of two pieces of evidence: doublets and the names of God.
They saw that there were apparently two versions each of a large number
of biblical stories: two accounts of the creation, two accounts of each
of several stories about the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, and so on.
Then they noticed that, quite often, one of the two versions of a story
would refer to God by one name and the other version would refer to God
by a different name.
In the case of the creation, for
example, the first chapter of the Bible tells one version of how the
world came to be created, and the second chapter of the Bible starts
over with a different version of what happened.1 In many ways they
duplicate each other, and on several points they contradict each other.
For example, they describe the same events in different order. In the
first version, God
creates plants first, then animals, then man and woman. In the second
version, God creates man first. Then he creates plants. Then, so that
the man should not be alone, God creates animals. And last, after the
man does not find a satisfactory mate among the animals, God creates
woman. And so we have:
Genesis 1
Genesis 2
plants
man
animals
plants
man &. woman
animals
woman
The two stories have two
different pictures of what happened. Now, the three investigators
noticed that the first version of the creation story always refers to
the creator as God—thirty-five times. The second version always refers
to him by his name, Yahweh God— eleven times. The first version never
calls him Yahweh; the second version never calls him God.
Later comes the story of the
great flood and Noah's ark, and it, too, can be separated into two
complete versions that sometimes duplicate each other and sometimes
contradict each other.2 And, again, one version always calls the deity
God, and the other version always calls him Yahweh. There are two
versions of the story of the convenant between the deity and Abraham.'
And, once again, in one the deity introduces himself as Yahweh, and in
one he introduces himself as God. And so on. The investigators saw that
they were not simply dealing with a book that repeated itself a great
deal, and they were not dealing with a loose collection of somewhat
similar stories. They had discovered two separate works that someone
had cut up and combined into one.
The Discovery of the Sources
The first of the three persons
who made this discovery was a German minister, Henning Bernhard Witter,
in 1711. His book made very little impact and was in fact forgotten
until it was rediscovered two centuries later, in 1924.
The second person to see it was
Jean Astruc, a French professor of medicine and court physician to
Louis XV. He published his findings at the age of seventy, anonymously
in Brussels and secretly in Paris in 1753. His book, too, made very
little impression on anyone. Some belittled it, perhaps partly because
it was by a medical doctor and not by a scholar.
But when a third person, who was
a scholar, made the same dis¬covery and published it in 1780, the
world could no longer ignore it. The third person was Johann Gottfried
Eichhorn, a known and respected scholar in Germany and the son of a
pastor. He called the group of biblical stories that referred to the
deity as God "E," because the Hebrew word for God is El or Elohim. He
called the group of stories that referred to the deity as Yahweh "J"
(which in German is pronounced like English Y).
The idea that the Bible's early
history was a combination of two originally separate works by two
different people lasted only eighteen years. Practically before anyone
had a chance to consider the implications of this idea for the Bible
and religion, investigators discovered that the first five books of the
Bible were not, in fact, even by two writers—they were by four.
They discovered that E was not
one but two sources. The two had looked like only one because they both
called the deity Elohim, not Yahweh. But the investigators now noticed
that within the group of stories that called the deity Elohim there
were still doublets. There were also differences of style, differences
of language, and differences of interests. In short, the same kinds of
evidence that had led to the discovery of J and E now led to the
discovery of a third source that had been hidden within E. The
differences of interests were intriguing. This third set of stories
seemed to be particularly interested in priests. It contained stories
about priests, laws about priests, matters of ritual, sacrifice,
incense-burning, and purity, and concern with dates, numbers, and
measurements. This source therefore came to be known as the Priestly
source—for short, P.
The sources J, E, and P were
found to flow through the first four of the five Books of Moses:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. However, there was hardly a
trace of them in the fifth book, Deuteronomy, except for a few lines in
the last chapters. Deuteronomy is written in an entirely different
style from those of the other four books. The differences are obvious
even in translation. The vocabulary is different. There are different
recurring expressions and favorite phrases. There are doublets of whole
sections of the first four books. There are blatant contradictions of
detail between it and the others. Even part of the wording of the Ten
Commandments is different. Deuteronomy appeared to be independent, a
fourth source. It was called D.
The discovery that the Torah of
Moses was really four works that had once been separate was not
necessarily a crisis in itself. After all, the New Testament also began
with four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—each of which told the
story in its own way. Why then was there such a hostile reaction, among
Christians and Jews, to the idea that the Old Testament (or Hebrew
Bible) might begin with four "gospels" as well? The difference was that
the Hebrew Bible's four sources had been combined so intricately and
accepted as Moses* own writing for so long, about two thousand years;
the new discoveries were flying in the face of an old, accepted, sacred
tradition. The biblical investigators were unraveling a finely woven
garment, and no one knew where these new investigations would lead.
The Story of Noah—Twice
These first books of the Bible
had as extraordinary a manner of composition as any book on earth.
Imagine assigning four different people to write a book on the same
subject, then taking their four different versions and cutting them up
and combining them into one long, continuous account, then claiming
that the account was all by one person. Then imagine giving the book to
detectives and leaving them to figure out (1) that the book was not by
one person, (2) that it was by four, (3) who the four were, and (4) who
combined them. For those readers who want to get a better sense of how
this looks, I have translated the biblical story of Noah's ark, as it
appears in Genesis, with its two sources printed in two different kinds
of type. The flood story is a combination of the J source and the P
source. J is printed here in regular type, and P is printed in boldface
capitals. If you read either source from beginning to end, and then go
back and read the other one, you will be able to see for yourself two
complete, continuous accounts, each with its own vocabulary and
concerns:
The Flood—Genesis 6:5-8:22
(Priestly text in boldface capitals, J text in regular type)
GENESIS 6:
5 And Yahweh saw that the evil of humans was great in
the earth, and all the inclination of the thoughts of their heart was
only evil all the day.
6 And Yahweh regretted that he had made humans in the
earth, and he was grieved to his heart.
7 And Yahweh said, "I shall wipe out the humans which
I have created from the face of the earth, from human to beast to
creeping thing to bird of the heavens, for I regret that I have made
them."
8 But Noah found favor in Yahweh's eyes.
9 THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH: NOAH WAS A
RIGHTEOUS MAN, PERFECT IN HIS GENERATIONS. NOAH WALKED WITH GOD.
10 AND NOAH SIRED THREE SONS : SHEM, HAM, AND JAPHETH.
11 AND THE EARTH WAS CORRUPTED BEFORE GOD, AND THE EARTH
WAS FILLED WITH VIOLENCE.
12 AND GOD SAW THE EARTH, AND HERE IT WAS CORRUPTED, FOR
ALL FLESH HAD CORRUPTED ITS WAY ON THE EARTH.
13 AND GOD SAID TO NOAH, "THE END OF ALL FLESH HAS
COME BEFORE ME, FOR THE EARTH IS FILLED WITH VIOLENCE BECAUSE OF THEM,
AND HERE I AM GOING TO DESTROY THEM WITH THE EARTH.
14 MAKE YOURSELF AN ARK OF GOPHER WOOD, MAKE ROOMS WITH
THE ARK, AND PITCH IT OUTSIDE AND INSIDE WITH PITCH.
15 AND THIS IS HOW YOU SHALL MAKE IT: THREE HUNDRED CUBITS
THE LENGTH OF THE ARK, FIFTY CUBITS ITS WIDTH, AND THIRTY CUBITS ITS
HEIGHT.
16 YOU SHALL MAKE A WINDOW FOR THE ARK, AND YOU SHALL
FINISH IT TO A CUBIT FROM THE TOP, AND YOU SHALL MAKE AN ENTRANCE TO
THE ARK IN ITS SIDE. YOU SHALL MAKE LOWER, SECOND, AND THIRD STORIES
FOR IT.
17 AND HERE I AM BRINGING THE FLOOD, WATER OVER THE
EARTH, TO DESTROY ALL FLESH IN WHICH IS THE BREATH OF LIFE FROM UNDER
THE HEAVENS. EVERYTHING WHICH IS ON THE LAND WILL DIE.
18 AND I SHALL ESTABLISH MY COVENANT WITH YOU. AND
YOU SHALL COME TO THE ARK, YOU AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR WIFE AND YOUR
SONS’ WIVES WITH YOU.
19 AND OF ALL THE LIVING, OF ALL FLESH, YOU SHALL BRING
TWO TO THE ARK TO KEEP ALIVE WITH YOU, THEY SHALL BE MALE AND FEMALE.
20 OF THE BIRDS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, AND OF THE
BEASTS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, AND OF ALL THE CREEPING THINGS OF THE
EARTH ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, TWO OF EACH WILL COME TO YOU TO KEEP
ALIVE.
21 AND YOU, TAKE FOR YOURSELF OF ALL FOOD WHICH WILL BE
EATEN AND GATHER IT TO YOU, AND IT WILL BE FOR YOU AND FOR THEM FOR
FOOD."
22 AND NOAH DID ACCORDING TO ALL THAT GOD COMMANDED HIM—SO
HE DID.
GENESIS 7:
1 And Yahweh said to Noah, "Come, you and all your
household, to the ark, for 1 have seen you as righteous before me in
this generation.
2 Of all the clean beasts, take yourself seven pairs,
man and his woman ; and of the beasts which are not clean, two, man and
his woman.
3 Also of the birds of the heavens seven pairs, male
and female, to keep alive seed on the face of the earth.
4 For in seven more days I shall rain on the earth
forty days and forty nights, and I shall wipe out all the substance
that I have made from upon the face of the earth."
5 And Noah did according to all that Yahweh had
commanded him.
6 AND NOAH WAS SIX HUNDRED YEARS OLD, AND THE FLOOD
WAS ON THE EARTH.
7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons'
wives with him came to the ark from before the waters of the flood.
8 OF THE CLEAN BEASTS AND OF THE BEASTS WHICH WERE
NOT CLEAN, AND OF THE BIRDS AND OF ALL THOSE WHICH CREEP UPON THE EARTH,
9 TWO OF EACH CAME TO NOAH TO THE ARK, MALE AND
FEMALE, AS GOD HAD COMMANDED NOAH.
10 And seven days later the waters of the flood were
on the earth.
11 IN THE SIX HUNDREDTH YEAR OF NOAH'S LIFE, IN THE SECOND
MONTH, IN THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH, ON THIS DAY ALL THE
FOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT DEEP WERE BROKEN UP, AND THE WINDOWS OF THE
HEAVENS WERE OPENED.
12 And there was rain on the earth, forty days and forty
nights.
13 IN THIS VERY DAY, NOAH AND SHEM, HAM, AND JAPHETH, THE SONS
OF NOAH, AND NOAH'S WIFE AND HIS SONS' THREE WIVES WITH THEM CAME TO
THE ARK,
14 THEY AND ALL THE LIVING THINGS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND,
AND ALL THE BEASTS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, AND ALL THE CREEPING THINGS
THAT CREEP ON THE EARTH ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, AND ALL THE BIRDS
ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND, AND EVERY WINGED BIRD.
15 AND THEY CAME TO NOAH TO THE ARK, TWO OF EACH, OF ALL
FLESH IN WHICH IS THE BREATH OF LIFE.
16 AND THOSE WHICH CAME WERE MALE AND FEMALE, SOME OF ALL
FLESH CAME, AS GOD HAD COMMANDED HIM. And Yahweh closed it for him.
17 And the flood was on the earth for forty days and
forty nights, and the waters multiplied and raised the ark, and it was
lifted from the earth.
18 And the waters grew strong and multiplied greatly on
the earth, and the ark went on the surface of the waters.
19 And the waters grew very very strong on the earth, and
they covered all the high mountains that are under all the heavens.
20 Fifteen cubits above, the waters grew stronger, and
they covered the mountains.
21 AND ALL FLESH, THOSE THAT CREEP ON THE EARTH, THE
BIRDS, THE BEASTS, AND THE WILD ANIMALS, AND ALL THE SWARMING THINGS
THAT SWARM ON THE EARTH, AND ALL THE HUMANS EXPIRED.
22 Everything that had the breathing spirit of life
in its nostrils, everything that was on the dry ground, died.
23 And he wiped out all the substance that was on the face
of the earth, from human to beast, to creeping thing, and to bird of
the heavens, and they were wiped out from the earth, and only Noah and
those who were with him in the ark were left.
24 AND THE WATERS GREW STRONG ON THE EARTH A HUNDRED FIFTY
DAYS.
GENESIS 8:
1 AND GOD REMEMBERED NOAH AND ALL THE LIVING, AND ALL
THE BEASTS THAT WERE WITH HIM IN THE ARK, AND GOD PASSED A WIND OVER
THE EARTH, AND THE WATERS WERE DECREASED.
2 AND THE FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP AND THE WINDOWS OF
THE HEAVENS WERE SHUT, and the rain was restrained from the heavens.
3 And the waters receded from the earth continually,
AND THE WATERS WERE ABATED AT THE END OF A HUNDRED FIFTY DAYS.
4 AND THE ARK RESTED, IN THE SEVENTH MONTH, IN THE
SEVENTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH,
ON THE MOUNTAINS OF ARARAT.
5 AND THE WATERS CONTINUED RECEDING UNTIL THE TENTH
MONTH; IN THE TENTH MONTH, ON THE FIRST OF THE MONTH, THE TOPS OF THE
MOUNTAINS APPEARED.
6 And it was at the end of forty days, and Noah
opened the window of the ark which he had made.
7 AND HE SENT OUT A RAVEN, AND IT WENT BACK AND FORTH
UNTIL THE WATERS DRIED UP FROM THE EARTH.
8 And he sent out a dove from him to see whether the
waters had eased from the face of the earth.
9 And the dove did not find a resting place for its
foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for waters were on the face of
the earth, and he put out his hand and took it and brought it to him to
the ark.
10 And he waited seven more days, and he again sent
out a dove from the ark.
11 And the dove came to him at evening time, and here was
an olive leaf torn off in its mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had
eased from the earth.
12 And he waited seven more days, and he sent out a dove,
and it did not return to him ever again.
13 AND IT WAS IN THE six HUNDRED AND FIRST YEAR, IN THE
FIRST MONTH, ON THE FIRST OF THE MONTH, THE WATERS DRIED
FROM THE EARTH. And Noah turned back the covering of the ark and
looked, and here the face of the earth had dried.
14 AND IN THE SECOND MONTH, ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY
OF THE MONTH, THE EARTH DRIED UP.
15 AND GOD SPOKE TO NOAH, SAYING,
16 "GO OUT FROM THE ARK, YOU AND YOUR WIFE AND YOUR SONS'
WIVES WITH YOU.
17 ALL THE LIVING THINGS THAT ARE WITH YOU, OF ALL FLESH,
OF THE BIRDS, AND OF THE BEASTS, AND OF ALL THE CREEPING THINGS THAT
CREEP ON THE EARTH, THAT GO OUT WITH YOU, SHALL SWARM IN THE EARTH AND
BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY IN THE EARTH."
18 AND NOAH AND HIS SONS AND HIS WIFE AND HIS SONS' WIVES
WENT OUT.
19 ALL THE LIVING THINGS, ALL THE CREEPING THINGS AND
ALL THE BIRDS, ALL THAT CREEP ON THE EARTH, BY THEIR FAMILIES, THEY
WENT OUT OF THE ARK.
20 And Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and he took some of
each of the clean beasts and of each of the clean birds, and he offered
sacrifices on the altar.
21 And Yahweh smelled the pleasant smell, and Yahweh
said to his heart, "1 shall not again curse the ground on man's
account, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from their
youth, and I shall not again strike all the living as I have done.
22 All the rest of the days of the earth, seed and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
shall not cease."
Each in Its Own Words
The very fact that it is possible
to separate out two continuous stories like this is remarkable itself,
and it is strong evidence for the hypothesis. One need only try to do
the same thing with any other book to see how impressive this
phenomenon is.
But it is not only that it is
possible to carve out two stories. What makes the case so powerful is
that each story consistently uses its own language. The P story (the
one in boldface) consistently refers to the deity as God. The J story
always uses the name Yahweh. P refers to the sex of the animals with
the words "male and female" (Gen 6:19; 7:9,16). J uses the terms "man
and his woman" (7:2) as well as male and female. P says that everything
"expired" (6:17; 7:21). J says that everything "died" (7:22).
The two versions do not just
differ on terminology. They differ on actual details of the story. P
has one pair of each kind of animal. J has seven pairs of clean animals
and one pair of unclean animals. ("Clean" means fit for sacrifice.
Sheep are clean; lions are unclean.) P pictures the flood as lasting a
year (370 days). J says it was forty days and forty nights. P has Noah
send out a raven. J says a dove. P obviously has a concern for ages,
dates, and measurements in cubits. J does not.
Probably the most remarkable
difference of all between the two is their different ways of picturing
God. It is not just that they call the deity by different names. J
pictures a deity who can regret things that he has done (6:6,7), which
raises interesting theological questions, such as whether an
all-powerful, all-knowing being would ever regret past actions. It
pictures a deity who can be "grieved to his heart" (6:6), who
personally closes the ark (7:16) and smells Noah's sacrifice (8:21).
This anthropomorphic quality of J is virtually entirely lacking in P.
There God is regarded more as a transcendent controller of the universe.
The two flood stories are
separable and complete. Each has its own language, its own details, and
even its own conception of God. And even that is not the whole picture.
The J flood story's language, details, and conception of God are
consistent with the language, details, and conception of God in other J
stories. The P flood story is consistent with other P stories. And so
on. The investigators found each of the sources to be a consistent
collection of stories, poems, and laws.
The Doorstep
The discovery that there were four separate, internally consistent
documents came to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis. The process
was also called "Higher Criticism."4 What had begun as an idea by three
men of the eighteenth century came to dominate investigations of the
Bible by the end of the nineteenth century.
It had taken centuries of collecting clues to arrive at this stage
which one could regard as fairly advanced or really quite minimal,
depending on one's point of view. On the one hand, for centuries no one
could easily challenge the accepted tradition that Moses was the author
of the Five Books, and now people of acknowledged piety could say and
write openly that he was not. They were able to identify at least four
hands writing in the first five books of the Bible. Also, there was the
hand of an extremely skillful collector known as a redactor, someone
who was capable of combining and organizing these separate documents
into a single work that was united enough to be readable as a
continuous narrative.
On the other hand, what these detectives of biblical origins had
arrived at was only the doorstep. They were able to see that a puzzle
existed, and they were able to begin to get an idea of how complex the
puzzle was going to be. True, they could identify four documents and a
redactor, but who wrote those documents? When did they live? What was
their purpose? Did they know each other's work? Did any
of them know that they were writing a Bible, a work to be held as
sacred and authoritative? And the mysterious redactor": was it one
person, or were there several? Who were they? Why did they combine the
documents in this complex way? The answers were buried in the pages of
the Bible and in the soil of the Middle East. By digging into both, my
predecessors and I found out how the stories in those pages were
connected with that world.
Two Countries, Two Writers
The first two sources, J and E, were written by two persons who lived
during the period that I described in the last chapter. They were tied
to the life of that period, its major events, its politics, its
religion, and its catastrophes. In this chapter I intend to demonstrate
this and to identify the persons who wrote them.
First, the author of J came from Judah and the author of E came from
Israel. A number of biblical scholars before me have suggested this,
but what is new here is that I mean to present a stronger collection of
evidence for this than has been made known before, I mean to be more
specific about who the two writers were, and I mean to show more
specifically how the biblical stories actually related to these two men
and to the events of their world.
The mere fact that different stories in the first books of the Bible
call God by different names of course proves nothing in itself. Someone
could write about the queen of England and sometimes call her the queen
and sometimes call her Elizabeth II. But, as I have said, there was
something more suspicious about the way the different names of the
deity lined up in the first few books of the Bible. The two different
names, Yahweh and Elohim, seemed to line up consis¬tently in each
of the two versions of the same stories in the doublets. If we separate
the Elohim (E) stories from the Yahweh (J) stories, we get a consistent
series of clues that the E stories were written by someone concerned
with Israel and the J stories by someone con¬cerned with Judah.5