in good faith study guide

DISCUSSION GUIDEfor

CHAI MITZVAH

Part Five: Is the Bible a Hoax?

Guide by Olga Kirschbaum

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PART FIVE: Is the Bible a Hoax?

INTRODUCTION: Divine Plan or Devious Propaganda?

Atheists insist that modern biblical scholarship (Biblical criticism) overwhelmingly agrees that the Bible is not what it purports to be

Atheists argue that countless academic Bible critics and biblical archaeologists, whoare deeply familiar with the ancient world and its texts, have concluded that the people and events in the Bible are bogus. Surely, atheists would say, a real Godwould have provided more accurate information. Many biblical critics also claim thatthe Bible is far from a divinely inspired treatise on good and evil. Rather, like themyths of other ancient Near Eastern cultures, it was crafted by Israelite elites whomade up the events and/or transformed old legends, hundreds of years after the fact,to vindicate their power.

Shay argues that modern biblical scholarship is in far less agreementthat atheists claim.

For one thing, scholars conversant in scientific methodology have come to widelydivergent conclusions about the historicity of the Bible. These differences can’t bewholly explained by political or religious preferences, though biases are evidentacross the board. Rather, there continue to be diverging views because of the natureof the evidence. We will likely never possess ironclad proof of the existence of thespecific people and events of the Bible—a mention of Abraham’s ancestral propertyin Ur, for instance; an Egyptian obelisk with carved hieroglyphs detailing the con-frontation of Moses and Pharaoh by name. This should not be surprising and is alsotrue of other peoples and events of the ancient past.

Shay further claims claim that it is rational to belief the Bible is what itpurports to be.

For belief in the Bible to be rational, the events and people of the Bible only need tobe plausibly compatible with our scientific understanding of ancient Near Easternhistory. In other words, the events of the Bible, which claim to be historical, cannot,thus, be anachronistic or mythical.

With regard to the question of authorship, I will argue that it is rational to believe inrevelation, the notion that God inspired the prophets who wrote down the Bible. Theassumption of revelation also means rejecting the idea that it was made out of wholecloth for the selfish political goals of specific elites.

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The stakes of the debate about the nature of the Bible are high accordingto Shay: one cannot be a monotheist and take the atheist perspective onthe Bible.

The Bible is not a history book but it does claim to recount the actual actions of Godand different peoples in history. It also purports to recount the laws God has revealedto make the world a good, rather than an evil, place. I agree with the atheists, if thesweep of events in the Bible were untrue, there would be no rational reason to privi-lege God’s laws. Even those who embrace the Bible’s vision as rational and justwould still be justifiably offended that those teachings and laws were bestowed fic-tional divine sanction.

Q and A:

• Before reading Shay’s book did you think the Bible broadly recounted historicalevents?

• Have you ever followed biblical scholarship (biblical criticism) and what did youlearn from it?

• Has what you hear about scholarship on the Bible been mainly from people whoare religious or mainly from people who are secular?

• Is knowing about if the Bible reports actual events and if it was written as itclaims it was important or meaningful to you?

• Do you agree with Shay that it would discredit monotheism if the Bible were justa bunch of stories, even if meaningful ones?

• Do you often read the Bible and if so how?

CHAPTER 25: The Case of the Mysterious Bible

Shay argues that the reason scholars don’t agree about whether theevents of the Bible occurred (historicity), or about who wrote it, andwhen it was written (authorship), is because of the evidence.

The case of the mysterious Bible presents a double puzzle. The first mystery iswhether the Bible is a false report or not. The second mystery is whether the FiveBooks of Moses were written by their stated author for their stated purpose. Scholars,like good detectives, need various types of evidence to evaluate the historicity of theBible. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have been investigating whether theBible is historically accurate. Archaeologists then often check whether this datamatches other sources for the history of the region. These other sources include inscriptions (usually royal), letters (often government), steles (like official plaques),annals (histories of kings), religious documents (such as myths, spells, rituals, andepics about heroes), and administrative documents (temple accounts, for example).

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The evidence scholars accumulate for any question, can be direct or indirect, i.e., circumstantial or corroborating. Scholars are most satisfied when they find directevidence for an event. Indirect evidence cannot prove that an event occurred and istherefore weaker than direct evidence, but it can demonstrate plausibility. For example,without direct evidence, a contemporary Irish American, let’s call him PatrickO’Leary, could plausibly claim that his ancestors were Irish famine victims if the indirect, i.e., circumstantial evidence matched. To wit: (1) O’Leary’s ancestors arrivedin the US in the late 1840s, (2) they lived in western Ireland, and (3) they had anIrish name used during the period of the famine. By contrast, a letter recounting thelife of slaves on an Alabama plantation cannot be plausibly dated to the 1970s.

As Shay shows, the question of evidence has divided scholars into threecamps.

Scholars disagree on the questions of historicity and authorship for several reasons.The first has to do with the quality of the evidence. The more distant the history thatwe examine, the less of both direct and indirect evidence we possess. The secondissue is that dating evidence is also tricky. If all we have are a few papyri “crusts” in along-lost, but now partly-deciphered language, how can we know how long this languagewas around? Last comes the question of which data is sufficient to close the case.Here scholars also take different positions. Some argue that the historicity of theBible can only be proven by direct evidence (a mention in another ancient document).As a result of these issues, scholars can broadly be grouped into three camps. Theseinclude the so-called maximalists, who consider the central events in the Bible to behistorically plausible. Another group are the so-called centrists, who consider traceaspects of the biblical story of these events to be historically plausible. The finalgroup are the minimalists, who focus on the lack of direct evidence as proof that theyare much later inventions with little or no historical basis. Most minimalists, for example, closely align with Palestinian nationalist claims, a political position thatdenies the link between ancient Israel and modern Israel to be a fiction. The minimalists accuse the maximalists of writing history to bolster modern Israeli nationalist or other religious claims.

Shay asks you to be the judge about the criteria these scholars use, theevidence, and the conclusions.


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? Q and A:

• Have you ever engaged in uncovering a family mystery, solving a conflict in thefamily or a work, etc… where you have to reconstruct a story of evidence?

• Have you ever remained undecided based on the evidence? • Have you ever been in a debate where you feel people’s reading of the evidenceis based on preconceived notions?

• What are the issues today that are dominated by politics and not by evidence? • Have you ever changed your mind based on hearing evidence and argumentsfrom the other side?

• Have you ever resisted changing your mind despite strong evidence?

CHAPTER 26: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob –Our Imaginary Friends

As Shay shows minimalists claim that the patriarchal narratives aremade up texts, written much later for political motives.

Minimalist scholars claim that the patriarchal narratives are stories that were inventedat a later period. Minimalists point out that there is no direct external evidence forthe existence of the patriarchs. However, they also dispute that the patriarchal storiesare historically plausible. Citing evidence cuneiform archives recovered at the ancientsites of Nuzi (Iraq) and Mari (Syria), the minimalists say, for example, that thenames of the patriarchs are not specific to the second millennium BCE since theywere also used as late as the neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 900–600 BCE). They also notethat the social customs described in the patriarchal stories, such as a barren wifeproviding a female slave to her husband, as Sarah did with Hagar, are likewise notunique to the second millennium BCE time frame. In addition, minimalists point toanachronisms in the text. For example, they claim that camels, which are mentionedin reference to Abraham, were not used by people in Canaan in the second millennium BCE.

Centrists claim that there the patriarchal stories are partially based onoral traditions from the 2nd millennium BCE.

As do the minimalists, the centrist scholars agree there is no direct external evidencefor the patriarchs. Some noted biblical archaeologists, such as Israel Finkelstein andAmihai Mazar, agree with the minimalists that a number of cities, peoples, and otherdetails (such as the aforementioned camels) are anachronisms in the patriarchalnarratives. Nevertheless, Mazar, though not Finkelstein, also claims that there aretoo many indications of second millennium details in the text to argue that it is totallya first millennium invention. He mentions, for example, that the Bible’s depiction of

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Canaan as a wealthy urban region only fits the second millennium reality. He alsopoints to the Amorite origin of the names of the patriarchs as another indication ofthe story’s second millennium origin, since the Amorites were important figures inthe second, not the first, millennium, even if they still existed later

Maximalist claim that while there is no evidence for the patriarchs theyare plausible figures

Maximalist historians argue that patriarchal stories best fit the second millennium.They could not have been invented later, though they were likely edited at a latertime. Maximalists agree that there is no direct external evidence for the existence ofthe patriarchs. Nevertheless, Kenneth Kitchen, for one, argues that the patriarchalnames were most popular during the second millennium, even if they were in con-tinued use later. Aldwyn may rank among the most common Old English names stillin use today, but to say it is as popular today as it was in the Middle Ages is a stretch.Similar to Mazar, the maximalists also argue that the patriarchal picture of Canaanitesociety only suits the second millennium period. Maximalists also strenuously disputethe so-called “smoking gun” anachronism in the patriarchal story—yes, those camels.Kitchen draws attention to two pieces of evidence from historical Canaan: a figure ofa kneeling camel holding two jars in a tomb from the thirteenth century BCE, and acamel jaw found in a tomb from c. 1900–1550 BCE, suggesting that domesticatedcamels were a luxury item in the area.

Q and A:

• What meaning do the patriarchal stories have for you? • Are there aspects of the patriarchal stories that have seemed fantastical or irrational to you?

• Do you think it is necessary to have proof of the patriarchs to accept the storiesor are you satisfied with the plausibility of the stories?

• Which of the three positions, minimalist, centrist, and maximalist are most convincing to you?

• Which do you find the least convincing?

CHAPTER 27: So What Happened Next, Really?

As Shay demonstrates the minimalists argue that the Exodus is a fabrication.

Minimalists find no direct archaeological evidence—not for the Israelites’ slavery,nor for their flight from Egypt, nor for forty years of sojourn in the Sinai desert. Arewe really to believe that two million wandering Jews would not have left any trace inthe Sinai? The discrepancy between the evidence and the narrative is so great as to

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be ludicrous. Minimalists aver that the well-documented evidence of Semites livingin Egypt and working on construction projects is no proof that these people were related to the Israelites. It is like saying that just because a National League CentralDivision team wins the World Series, doesn’t mean the Chicago Cubs won. In fact,taking things one step further, where’s the proof that Israelites existed at all as anethnic group before the first millennium BCE? Minimalists also tout the opinion ofEgyptologist and archaeologist Donald Redford that the journey of the Israelitesfrom Egypt through the Sinai desert would better fit the period of the first millennium.

The centrists argue that the Exodus story is either a fiction or based on akernel of truth.

Israel Finkelstein reiterates many of the minimalist views. Unlike the minimalists,however, he does not discount the option that the Exodus story might very well include memories of an expulsion of Semitic populations from Egypt, possibly theHyksos, who were thrown out in the sixteenth century BCE. Mazar accords moreweight to second millennium parallels in the story. Among these Canaanites, theHyksos not only colonized Lower Egypt, but also ruled it during the Thirteenth andFourteenth Dynasties, effectively creating the Fifteenth Dynasty (seventeenth andsixteenth centuries BCE). They were then expelled from Egypt in the mid-sixteenthcentury by the pharaoh Ahmose I and sent fleeing across the Sinai into Canaan,much like the Israelites. […]Mazar also considers it possible that the story of the Israelites’ participation in building projects in Ramses reflects the historically documented participation of Semitic populations in the building of Pi-Ramses in thethirteenth century BCE.

The maximalists consider the Exodus story not only to be plausible butreject the notion that it could have been fabricated at a later date.

Maximalists agree with minimalists and centrists that there is no direct evidence ofthe Israelites’ stay in Egypt. However, they argue that the mud and humidity in theEastern Delta, caused most of the non-permanent material culture from the journeyto have been destroyed. Pharaoh, moreover, exerted unilateral control over thescribal classes and would have had personal interest in burying any record of this demoralizing defeat. Maximalists claim that two cities that the Israelites are reportedto have built, Pithom and Ramses, are likely to be references to the Egyptian cities ofP(r)’Atum and P(r)R’mss. In addition, the biblical description of the taskmasters andthe foreman; the use of bricks, targets, and quotas; and hard service are consistentlyattested to in Egyptian depictions and documents. The covenant at Sinai resemblesHittite treaties that established a contract, or covenant, between two kings based onmutual obligation, and which are numerous for the period of 1200 BCE. Likewise, ifthe “Red Sea” is properly understood as the Reed Sea, the story is plausible.

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Q and A:

• What meaning does the Exodus story have for you? • Have you ever asked if the Exodus was true, does it matter to you? • What was your view on the historicity of the Exodus and the details of the Exodus account before reading Shay?

• Which of the three positions do you find most compelling and why?• Which of the three views do you find least compelling and why?

CHAPTER 28: Fifty Thousand Canaanites Walk Into a Bar

Minimalists claim that Israelites are simply Canaanites who migratedfrom the cities to the hills.

In their view, there is no evidence of mass destruction in Canaan to support the biblical time frame. Only a few sites mentioned in the Book of Joshua, such as Betheland Hazor, show any signs of destruction. They nonetheless do agree that, duringthe thirteenth century, that area of the highlands where the Bible describes the Israelites settling did indeed become more populated than before, but they declarethis a mere coincidence. The new inhabitants of the highlands were not a separategroup, but rather indigenous Canaanites who developed a separate identity as Israelites, perhaps in the ninth century or even later. The Merneptah Stele, anEgyptian victory stele from the early 1200s BCE, depicts Egyptian campaigns andvictories in Libya and Canaan and distinctly mentions a people called Israel:Canaanhas been plundered into every sort of woe: Ashkelon has been overcome; Gezer hasbeen captured; Yano’am is made non-existent; Israel is laid waste and his seed isnot. Minimalists like Thompson argue that this stele could just as well refer to a region or a group whose identity is not correlated to the later people called Israel.

Centrists argue that a people of Israel populated the hill country andTransjordan (today Jordan), though they were likely a combination ofSemitic slaves and local Canaanites.

Unlike minimalists, centrists generally accept the Merneptah Stele as evidence that apeople called Israel existed in the early 1200s BCE. They claim that, grammatically,the word “Israel” in the Merneptah Stele refers to an ethnic group and not a place,contrary to what Thompson suggests. Centrists also accept that the date of c. 1200BCE for the Merneptah Stele corresponds more or less to the biblical chronology ofthe land of Israel conquest narratives. Mazar claims that archaeological evidence ofthe destruction of sites such as Ai, which is mentioned in the Book of Joshua, sug-

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gests that the text does contain memories of real events. He suggests that the archae-ological evidence reveals signs of conflicts between Canaanite groups and betweenIsraelites and urban Canaanites. Other centrist scholars, such as Finkelstein, agreewith the minimalists that the Israelites were most likely predominantly Canaanitepastoralists. Nevertheless, he distinguishes them as a group at an earlier date thanthe minimalists, partly due to the near absence of pig bones in early Iron Age de-posits from archaeological sites in the highlands.

Maximalists claim that the Israelites were a separate nation who conqueredthe land, though they destroyed the cities incompletely.

They believe that some scholars overemphasize the purported level of destruction.They point out that the Book of Joshua reports that only three cities were destroyed— Jericho, Hazor, and Ai — and those to varying degrees. Thus they refute the claimthat the lack of widespread destruction in the archaeological record wildly contradictsthe biblical narrative. In addition to reevaluating the convergence of the archaeologicaldata and the narrative in the Book of Joshua, Kitchen argues that the substantialpopulation growth of the late Iron Age cannot be accounted for by natural organicgrowth, and so some form of mass immigration is needed to explain it.

Q and A:

• Were you aware of the different theories behind the emergence of the Jewish before reading Shay’s book?

• What if any are the political consequences of the Jews being “just Canaanites” inyour view?

• In your life have you always felt the Jews were one people or not?• If not, why not? • Which of the three arguments do you find most convincing? • Which of the three arguments do you find least convincing?

CHAPTER 29: The Clothes Have No Emperor

Minimalists deny the existence of a United Monarchy under King Davidand King Solomon.

They point out that there is a paucity of direct evidence of David and Solomon in Israel, but direct evidence is something one would certainly expect to find in abundancefor kings: royal households should have produced Hebrew inscriptions or writing forthe period, as well as external evidence for a period of monarchy in the form of greatbuildings or fortifications. Some minimalists even doubt the ninth century BCE TelDan inscription that refers to the House of David. Instead, they claim that either the

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inscription is a forgery or the word “dwd” in the inscription, which is usually understood as House of David, can be read as a place-name rather than as a refer-ence to the dynastic house of David or the name of a temple.

They find little evidence of scribal activity from the greater Jerusalem region. Consequently, they claim that there existed no royal administration; therefore, thecity could not have been a capital of kings.

Centrists argue that David and Solomon existed in fact, although theirkingdom may have been smaller than that described in the biblical depiction of the United Monarchy and perhaps later.

Finkelstein and Mazar concur that David and Solomon were historical figures, bothaccepting the Tel Dan inscription mentioning Beit David [House of David] as a decisive piece of evidence for both their existence and the existence of the Davidicmonarchic line. Finkelstein claims however that the United Monarchy did not existin the tenth century and that David and Solomon ruled small chiefdoms at most.Proper monarchies might have existed, but only under the Omrides who ruled inSamaria during the ninth century BCE. To further support his theory, Finkelsteinclaims that architectural features of the town of Megiddo resemble those of buildingsin Samaria attributed to King Omri. In contrast to Finkelstein, Mazar claims thestructures of Megiddo could well have been constructed during the time attributedto the United Monarchy. External sources such as the campaign list of the Egyptianpharaoh Sheshonq I attest to many of the cities described in the Bible during thetime of the United Monarchy. Amihai Mazar considers the Large Stone Structure inJerusalem to be part of David’s palace,

Maximalists scholars consider the biblical description of David to belargely historical.

The Tel Dan inscription of a House of David is a decisive indication of the king’s historical existence. Kitchen argues that, since no Mesopotamian rulers had directcontact with the area in the period, and few Egyptian documents from the time survive, one cannot expect much external direct evidence for the United Monarchy.Nevertheless, Sheshonq I’s indication of “the heights of David” in a list createdbarely fifty years after the king’s reign is, as it is for Mazar, decisive. For Kitchen,contextual factors are also important. David’s kingdom resembled the other “mini”empires that existed in the region from the period of 1180–870 BCE. Eilat Mazar isjoined by Avraham Faust and Amihai Mazar, as noted above, in upholding the inter-pretation of the Large Stone Structure as part of David’s palace, suggesting that thisoffers direct evidence for a state at the period. Archaeologists led by Yosef Garfinkelhave excavated a fortified city at Khirbet Qeiyafa, thirty kilometers southwest ofJerusalem on the main road from Philistia and the coastal plain to Jerusalem andHebron in the hill country, which was a strategic location for the Kingdom of Judah.


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Q and A:

• Are you familiar with the stories of David and Solomon, and if so, how did youget to know them?

• Are they meaningful to you today and if so, more or less, than the stories of thepatriarchs or the Exodus?

• Have you been to archeological digs in Israel associated with David and Solomon?• Which of the three perspectives do you find most convincing and why? • Which do you find least convincing and why?

CHAPTER 30: When Shakespeare Became Marlowe and Friends

Shay shows how for a long time scholars followed one hypothesis on whowrote the Bible and when, called the documentary hypothesis.

For a long time, people were satisfied that God revealed the first five books of theBible to Moses and the later books to subsequent prophets. That universal confi-dence is certainly gone. By the nineteenth century biblical skeptics hypothesizedabout why, when, and how the Bible was written. A theologian turned biblical criticby the name of Julius Wellhausen espoused the so-called documentary hypothesis(DH). Relying on internal biblical data only, he claimed to have discovered that theBible was actually made up of four different sources written by four different authorsJEDP at four different times, and for four different reasons which had later been puttogether by a final redactor (editor). The author or authors of J, which stood for oneparticular name of God, Yahweh (which starts with J in German, hence the initial J),wrote in the tenth century in Solomon’s court. The author E, which stands for Elo-him, another Hebrew name of God, wrote a prose that was not quite as stirring. Thetext of D, for Deuteronomist, was allegedly written in King Josiah’s court inJerusalem in the seventh century. P, which stands for the Priestly Code, was com-posed by priests in exile keen to exert their supremacy.

Since the 1980s there is no more consensus on any hypothesis about whowrote the Bible and when.

The consensus concerning the premise of the DH crumbled irreversibly in the 1980s.Roger Whybray sought to examine why a final redactor would purposely include repetitions and unevenness in the text if the initial authors of the text avoided theseinconsistencies and repetitions? He suggests that the Pentateuch was the product ofa single author who used a series of fragments to compose the text. Rolf Rendtorffand Erhard Blum also adopt a fragmentary model but, unlike Whybray, claim thatthe Bible emerged as the result of authors adding smaller units to an existing work

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over time. Other scholars have asked if, as Wellhausen believed, the different availablegroups of texts (i.e., laws, or two versions of the same story) were competing or evencontradictory, why would the final editor of the Bible bring them all together as the DHposits? Scholars like Joshua Berman show this is not only illogical—it is unaccountedfor. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, editors suppressed material they did notagree with.

Shay shows how the debates about who wrote the Bible and when rely oninternal evidence only.

The problem with resolving the biblical whodunit is that there are no physical biblicalscrolls that would help scholars date the Bible. In the absence of manuscript evidence,scholars must rely on internal evidence in order to date the Bible. They must compareHebrew and foreign words, writing style, and content of the stories to other Hebrewlanguage and ancient Near Eastern texts for which we have more certain dates.Scholars have also worked hard on establishing the means, opportunity, and motivefor putative writers of the Bible. Could putative authors at a given time have hadknowledge about the events described? Finally, as to motive, scholars must considerwriting conventions at various times in the region. They examine why other peoplein surrounding cultures committed particular ideas to writing.

Q and A:

• Has the question of who wrote the Bible bothered you? • Before reading Shay’s book who did you think wrote the Bible and when? • What do you think about the Documentary Hypothesis, do you find it convincing?• What do you think about the criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis and doyou find them convincing?

• Have you ever had to date something, or gone to an auction, what was theprocess like?

• How strong do you think the evidence is for dating the Bible?

CHAPTER 31: Dating the Bible- Something to Do on a Saturday Night

Minimalists argue the Bible is a made up tale written in the 400s-200s BCE.

Minimalist scholars date the Bible to the Persian (fourth century BCE) and even Hellenistic (second century BCE) periods based predominantly on historical and linguistic evidence. They make their claims according to the Bible’s main contents.Minimalists argue that the Bible’s overall message was devised after the Babylonianexile as a justification for the return of the Jews. In addition, they claim that it was

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only during the Babylonian exile that the Israelites gained enough exposure to astrong written culture to write a text like the Bible. Given the lack of evidence ofscribal schools, they claim that too few Israelites knew how to write at all, let aloneauthor complicated books.

Centrists claim the Bible includes oral traditions from the second millennium, but was written down from 1000 BCE onwards, with themajority dating from the late 700s BCE

Linguist William Schniedewind argues that the Bible could not have been composedin the Persian period (fifth or fourth centuries) because, the community that returnedfrom Babylon was small and weak and did not produce very much writing and Aramaichad replaced Hebrew by then as the main language. Schniedewind claims that mostof the Bible was written down during this period under Hezekiah’s reign (late eighthcentury). In his view, the authors based their patriarchal narratives on oral traditions,which explains some of the archaic features of some of the Biblical Hebrew. InSchniedewind’s view, the Bible was canonized in the Persian period (fifth and sixthcenturies), but not written then. William Dever assigns much of the content of materialin D to the period of 1000–600 BCE based on linguistic and thematic evidence. If theBible had been written in the Hellenistic period, Dever thinks it would have had verydifferent content. Alexander Rofé posits that P, for example, includes both archaicmaterial from 1200–1000 and evidence of redaction from the Persian period (fifth tothird centuries).

Traditionalists argue the Bible was written down during the time of theevents it narrates and was updated in 700 BCE during the reign of Josiahand again in the reign of Ezra.

Kitchen, Berman, and Provan rely on extensive evidence of treaty formats andcovenants from the third to the first millennium in order to assume a date for theoverall framework of the revelation at Sinai somewhere in the fourteenth and thirteenthcenturies. Likewise, he considers the laws in Deuteronomy to closely parallel secondmillennium legal materials from the area. In Kitchen’s view, later authors could nothave invented such close parallels. Likewise, both Kitchen and Berman note remarkablesimilarities between the Tabernacle and Ramses II’s military tent during the Battle ofKadesh against the Hittites in the thirteenth century. For Kitchen, Faust, and Berman,the Bible demonstrates awareness of significant details related to Egyptian and localculture, suggesting that much of the Bible was written down contemporaneously withthe events it described. Further, Kitchen claims that it is perfectly plausible to considerthat the biblical texts were written in a late Canaanite alphabet and then later updated.

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Q and A:

• Which of the three arguments do you find most convincing? • Which do you find the least? • How familiar are you with history of the Middle East from 1200 BCE to 200 BCE?• Have you read the later biblical book and prophets, if so, were the texts mean-ingful for you?

• Have you visited any of the great museum collections of the ancient Near Eastand thought of these cultures in relation to the Bible?

• Since reading Shay’s arguments about idolatry, has this changed your view ofthese cultures?

CHAPTER 32: Motive, Please!

Minimalist scholars argue that the motive behind writing the Bible wasto assert power and legitimacy.

Israelite royal scribes authored the Bible after their return from Babylon, crafting animagined history to accentuate their own power. The returnees would have had astrong need to justify their presence in the land, so they invented a history andpromulgated it. This invented history was meant to shore up the status of the royalhouses and afford the people a tradition that they could turn to. The book was shotthrough with a theology meant to assure them that God had created all, favored theirnation, and granted their leaders victory

Centrist scholars contend that the Bible includes many different types oftexts collected to explore many different issues.

Schniedewind argues that Hezekiah wrote down the Bible to affirm the history andpower of his kingdom. Others, like Rofé and Dever, claim that the Bible is a combinationof different types of ancient writings from etiological tales (the patriarchal narratives)to epics (the victory against Pharaoh) to laws (much of Deuteronomy), not unlike thesources found in neighboring cultures. Each genre possessed its own conventionalmotive: etiological tales to explain a people’s origin, laws to demand norms of behavior,myth to explain how the world works, and history to glorify certain kings. In the caseof the Bible, however, later editors compiled these various strands together into onebook to bolster their own status, though they did not reduce the Bible to a work ofpolitical propaganda.

According to maximalist scholars, the Bible’s motive was edification viaa narrative of a nation’s history and the origin of its laws.

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Kitchen argues that Israelites returning from Babylon would possess no knowledgeof the Egyptian material in the Bible, and they would have no reason to write such astory as appears in the Bible. The Bible attests to its own purpose—it was written toteach the Israelites. That the authors of the Bible claim divine inspiration is not exceptional, as many authors of wisdom texts from the ancient world made similarclaims, as did many writers of Greek philosophy and law, according to Yoram Hazony.Kitchen provides many indications that people in the ancient Near East wrote downlaws and prophecies as a matter of practice rather than simply remembering them asoral traditions. Many maximalist scholars claim that while the biblical authors did,indeed, use the very literary conventions and styles common to the ancient Near East,their writings nonetheless contained a vision and message unique to their nation.

The findings of maximalists accord with the teachings of tradition.

The traditional view of the writing and transmission of the Bible harmonizes somemaximalist academic views with traditional beliefs. The implication of the traditionalpicture is that the Bible is a coherent text whose narrative should be taken at facevalue. Much of what biblical critics view as editorial errors by the compiler of theBible are understood by the ancient rabbis, from close reading, to be important andprovocative clues regarding events otherwise described in quite sparing and economical prose.

Q and A:

• Which one of the three positions do you find most convincing? • Which one of the three positions do you find least convincing? • What are the differences between a traditionalist view and a fundamentalistview?

• What meaning does the biblical text have for you, how do you read it? • After having gone over much of the evidence are you persuaded that it is plausibleor rational to accept the notion that the Bible is a divine text describing realevents?

CHAPTER 33: How to Read the Bible, Take Two

Shay shows there are many ways to read the Bible today.

Go to any liberal arts college and take a class on the Bible in ancient Near Easternstudies or in Judaic studies and you’ll doubtlessly find yourself in the center of a debate about the great biblical whodunit. Your professors will most likely endorsecentrist or — to a lesser extent — minimalist stances. If you study the Bible in a literature department, you would analyze the style and themes of the Bible and

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perhaps explore its messages on particular topics. Or, as in the case of much comparative literature, you will read the Bible in light of other texts. Some scholars,like Yoram Hazony, think that the Bible belongs in philosophy departments alongsidethe classics of the discipline. The biblical texts deal with topics such as ethics, episte-mology, moral philosophy, and even political theory, just like other ancient texts welearn. And just as some Greek philosophers claimed divine inspiration for their written works. And, if you happen to take a Bible course in a religious studies department, you might get a mix of the above-mentioned university approaches. Ifyou study the Bible in a seminary or religious institution, you’ll likely encounter atraditional interpretive apparatus or two.

Shay claims that the focus on the historicity and authorship of the Bible inthe university has detracted from being inspired by the Bible’s message.

The Joseph story is a good example of the importance of reading for meaning. Criticsclaim that chapter 38 of the Joseph story, which recounts the story of Judah andTamar, was a later addition to the text, and they offer a number of reasons for whythe story was inserted. J. A. Emerton views the story as containing etiological (origin)motifs about the clans of Judah. Robert Alter feels that the Judah/Tamar story isconnected to the unfolding of the Joseph story. Most academic scholars consider thetext to be an artificial addition, rather unrelated. Biblical critics are most concernedwith the political message of the text. The traditional view, by contrast, sees theJudah and Tamar episode as fundamental to the narrative, without which we losethe moral message of the text and its life lesson about relationships.

Historical and archeological investigation of the Bible doesn’t just meandiscrediting it, Shay argues it can give it more meaning.

As scholars like Kenneth Kitchen, Joshua Berman, Avraham Faust, and many othershave shown, the greater our historical knowledge about the time of the Bible and thecultures that surrounded it, the better our understanding of the revolutionary ideasthe Bible introduced. There is no other book on earth as influential. It is the founda-tional text to the monotheistic revolution. From the stories of the Exodus and thegiving of the law to the wisdom and poetry of Job, Proverbs, Psalms, or the Song ofSongs, the Bible is not easy reading, but it is well worth the time. Abraham, Rebecca,Judah, Tamar, Miriam, Moses, Devorah, Ruth, Esther, Ezra, and many other Biblicalfigures continue to inspire.


P A R T F I V E

Q and A:

• What are the ways that you have read the Bible in the past? • Has Shay’s view of the Bible changed how you read it? • Has Shay’s view of the Bible and historicity made you more or less interested inthe historicity or authorship of the Bible and its historicity?

• Historians who study the Bible can both reinforce and decrease our confidencein the moral message of the biblical text, so how should we approach historicalworks on the Bible, with what criteria?

• What arguments or concepts about Part 5 surprised you’re the most?

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