Who Wrote the Bible
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Who Wrote the Bible is a documentary that was produced by A&E Network and aired from 1994 to 1995. The program is currently available in the DVD+R format on two discs that runs a combined total of 150 minutes. The discs don't have a main menu page or special features but they do contain ten minute skip forward markings.
The program chronicles new scientific research and theological insight into the origin of The Holy Scriptures. Leading Biblical experts journey back to the land and the times of the Bible's very creation to probe its most profound mysteries: Did Moses really write the Torah? What secrets does the oldest existing piece of the Bible reveal? And what hints of its genesis can the Dead Sea scrolls tell us? The program covers events from ancient Qumran to Jerusalem and from Galilee to Egypt in an effort to answer these questions.
The program is broken down into 12 sections that the producers labeled as Acts. The following is a summary of the program's contents. (The time markings for each Act were ascertained from simply playing each disc from beginning to end).
[edit] Introduction - Disc One, 0 minutes
The word Bible means library and is, therefore, a compilation of books into a formal holy library that was built over a long period of time. It is a group of texts that was written at different places, at different times, by different people. Why were they drawn together? As we study them and understand them historically, we can see that they come from the most desperate groups that couldn’t possibly agree with each other on things. Why were they ever gathered altogether?
This introduction is repeated at the beginning of the second disc (prior to Act VII)
[edit] Act I: In the Beginning - Disc One, 6 minutes
The first five books are known as the Books of Moses, Pentateuch, or the Hebrew Torah. It is believed that this is the first scriptures written and tradition says they were written by Moses. Most scholars feel there’s been human intervention as time has passed. Others don’t feel Moses wrote them at all due to some inconsistencies such as Moses describing his own death and a list of Edomite kings that lived long after his death (according to Isaac ibn Yashosh - an 11th Century Jewish scholar in Moorish Spain).
Many scholars feel that the stories contained within the Pentateuch were oral traditions told many times over around the communal campfire.
The Old Testament is broken down into: 1. The Pentateuch (Genesis - Deuteronomy); 2. the histories (Joshua - 2nd Kings) and 3. the writings. Meanwhile, the New Testament is broken down into: 1. The Four Gospels (Matthew - John), 2. The Acts and Letters and 3. Book of Revelation. There’s also the Apocrypha.
[edit] Act II: The Legacy - Disc One, 16 minutes
At Qumran were found the Dead Sea scrolls which were written during the Second Temple Period prior to 70 AD. A lot of the Dead Sea scroll texts are found in the Bible, but many include much more information. The Book of Samuel, for example, is longer while the Book of Jeremiah is shorter. It is felt that an extremist group called the Essenes, who had many disagrements with the Temple authorities, hid the scrolls.
[edit] Act III: Holy Wars - Disc One, 27 minutes
There are many contradictory texts found in the first five books. Duet 34:5 tells of Moses death, Some stories are told twice with conflicting details such as: Geneses 6:19 vs Genesis 7:2 (a different count of animals entering Noah’s ark); or Genesis 1: 25-27 vs Genesis 2: 18-19 (a different account as to order of the creation of humans and animals); or Genesis 1:27 vs. Genesis 2:18-22 (whether men and women were simultaneously created or created at different times). Scholars call these doublets and these doublets refer to God by a different name - Elohim (God) and Yahweh or Jehovah (Lord).
The Documentary Hypothesis: Many scholars have come to the conclusion that the Pentateuch was written by at least two authors. These authors have been given monograms that denote their names for god: J for Jehovah and E for Elohim. A third author has also been identified as P who wrote stories about the establishment of the priesthood after the Exodus. An example of a J and E doublet can be found in Exodus 3:2 and 3:6.
In 1807 Wilhelm DeVitt added a fourth author called D for Deuteronomist.
[edit] Act IV: A Nation Divided - Disc One, 38 minutes
Many scholars feel that the Ten Commandments were the first written documents and all the rest of the Pentateuch was written by others following Moses’s death. In 1000 BC, under King David, two high priests were appointed. When David died, his two sons vied for the kingship and each son had the backing of one of the two high priests. When Solomon won out, the deposed high priest was banished (I Kings 2:26). This banished priest and his followers rebelled and ultimately split the kingdom into two entities in 922 BC. Judah (and Benjamin) formed the Kingdom of Judea in the south around Jerusalem while the other 10 tribes formed the Kingdom of Israel in the north. Each kingdom produced their own sacred texts that shared much in common but with a decidedly different viewpoint. The E author, it is argued, resided in the second rate state (because it had no temple) of Israel and his stories always emphasizes the importance of the second born son and his ability to always come out ahead.
As time passed, the northern kingdom of Israel slipped into paganism and moral decay. About half of the 18 kings were assassinated. In 750 BC Syria conquered Israel and its 10 tribes were scattered to the winds. Only Judea was left, but it too succumbed to paganism until King Josiah cleaned up the place. Part of his reformation campaign was the “discovery” of a long lost sacred text (2nd Kings 22:8) that many scholars think was Deuteronomy. These scholars also feel that Josiah’s high priest Jeremiah was responsible for this supposed discovery. They also feel that Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch ben Neriah, wrote these books either directly or through dictation from Jeremiah. Not only that, but Baruch also wrote all the books from Deuteronomy to 2nd Kings as well as the Book of Jeremiah. Why they think so is that the prose of those texts matches. (The following have close similarities: Deut 10:16 matches Jer 17:24; Deut 4:19 matches Jer 8:2 and Jer 19:13; Deut 4:20 matches Jer 11:4)
A recently discovered clay seal now in a Jerusalem museum was attached to a 7th Century BC Hebrew script text (which has grammar matching the above Biblical citations) has Baruch’s signature.
[edit] Act V: The Written Word - Disc One, 54 minutes
Who edited and compiled the Bible is just as important as to who wrote the first manuscripts. In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea and the Jewish Babylonian exile began. When Cyrus the Great conquered Syria, he took kindly to the Jews and restored them to their homeland in Jerusalem around 500 BC. Ezra, the Jewish leader at that time, may have been the one who consolidated the books of the Pentateuch.
The program points out that the Documentary Hypotheses isn’t universally accepted and then briefly discusses the other books of the Old Testament. King David wrote Psalms while Solomon wrote the Songs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. First and Second Samuel was once a part of First and Second Kings and are also believed to be the work of Baruch. Isaiah may have been written around 900 BC by at least two authors because of a change in writing styles. The first part chides the people for misconduct while the second part is a voice of hope. Amos, meanwhile, was written around 750 BC by a shepherd or orchardist who condemns the aristocracy.
[edit] Act VI: The Hebrew Bible - Disc One,1:08 hours
In 3rd Century BC a Greek world holds sway throughout the eastern Mediterranean due to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Joshua to Malachi were written, but all were separate documents that were being circulated amongst the Jews. Alexandria, Egypt, which had a substantial Jewish population, was a center of learning and had a large library. To get anywhere in society and business, one had to speak Greek and the Jews, desiring to be a part of this robust world, were losing their ability to speak and read Hebrew. It was here that 72 Jewish scholars got together to translate their sacred documents into the Greek language so that they could be accessible to the average citizen. Thus was born the Septuagint scriptures. But those scriptures weren’t cannonized and set aside as a difinititive library or bible.
The destruction of the Alexandria Library by Julius Caesar in 47 BC is considered a great tragedy among Biblical scholars for they’re certain that many original Hebrew sacred texts that could have been compared with their Septuagint counterparts for accuracy went up in flames. Also lost were many additional sacred texts that the modern Bible makes reference to (ie. Numbers 21:14; Joshua 10:13 and I Chronciles 29:29)
In about 70 AD, at the time Rome was destroying the Second Temple and laying waste to Jerusalem, Jewish leaders held a council at Yavne to decide which of their scritural texts should be bound together into an official Testament. Also at the same time, a young Jewish sect that believed Jesus was the Son of God was starting it ascendency amongst the world’s religions.
With that note, the first disc ends.
[edit] Act VII: Godspell - Disc Two, 5 minutes
(The first five minutes of this second disc is a repeat of the introduction found on first five minutes of Disc One)
Christ was born in Judea, a province in the Roman Empire. The first four books were originally written in Greek and called “Godspell” or “good news”. Tradition says that Matthew was written by the disciple Matthew, the tax collector, and the Book of John by John the Beloved. Mark was written by an associate of Peter while Luke by a traveling companion to Paul. It is felt that Mark was the first to be written in about 65 AD, followed by Luke and Matthew in 80 - 85 AD. John was written around 90 - 95 AD. The authors, however, never identify themselves and their names were later added by scribes. No original manuscripts have ever been found, just fragments of early copies. The earliest fragment found was a shredded copy of John found in Egypt in the 1920s. It has been identified as being written about a century after Christ’s crucifixion. The Chester Beatty fragment of the Book of Mark was written in ca 250 AD.
It is felt that Mark was the first gospel to be written and that Matthew and Luke borrowed extensively from it as there’s a lot of similarities between these three texts (ie Mark 10:14, Matthew 19:14 and Luke 18:16). These three books are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels. In addition, Matthew and Luke have similar text not found in Mark. The question is, where did this similar text come from? No one knows the source and is referred to by the Latin quelle (unknown), or simply Q.
[edit] Act VIII: a New Testament Emerges - Disc Two, 17 minutes
Saul of Tarsus, or Paul, spreads Christianity throughout Asia Minor, Macedonia and on to Rome. His letters are the first Christian documents written. They were letters written to individual communities that were then copied and circulated amongst the communities of believers. Soon, a collection of Christian scripture began to form. Some of Paul’s letters were dictations written by a scribe (see Romans 16:22).
The Book of Revelations is the most controversial and was written 60 years after the life of Christ. The book is attributed to John, but John was a common name. Tradition says its authorship is John the Beloved, but others feel it was John the Baptist. All evidence is, at best, flimsy.
By the 2nd Century, the Four Gospels were circulating independently of one another: Rome had Mark, Antioch had Matthew, Athens had Luke, and Ephesus had John. The Roman f patriarch Marcion was a catalyst in drawing up a list of accepted scripture. He was very anti-Jewish, however, and anything relating to Jews was edited out of his list, including the entire Old Testament. He felt that the Jewish God was different from the Christian God. The Apocrypha was written by Alexandrian Greeks (the Septuagint Manuscripts) and many Jews kept it out of their 70 AD Hebrew Bible because they were written too late and were in Greek.
A consensus became imperative when Constantine commissioned to have 50 copies of Christian scripture published as a result of the Nicaene Conference in 325 AD.
[edit] Act IX: Out of the Past - Disc Two, 31 minutes
In the late 1800s, biblical archeologist became excited when fragments written in ancient Hebrew were found in a Cairo synagogue’s storage room written by Simeon Ben Sirach in 200 BC that matched the Book of Sirach found in the Catholic Bible.
A bigger discovery took place in December of 1945 at Nag Hammadi when 13 ancient scriptural papyri were found that belonged to a 4th century heretical sect called the Gnostics. One of the scriptures, the Gospel of Thomas, matched 20% of the Biblical gospels and indicated that the author had an intimate knowledge of Jesus. Thomas is basically a compilation of Jesus’s saying and has no story line.
[edit] Act X: Emergence - Disc Two, 40 minutes
In the 4th Century, St Jerome of Dalmatia used the Greek and Hebrew texts to make a Latin translation - the Vulgate Bible. The oldest existent copy of the Old Testament is the circa 1000 AD Aleppo Codex (a codex is a set of separate sheets stitched together rather than a scroll), while the oldest New Testament text is the circa 300 AD Greek written Codex Sinaiticus recovered from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai and currently residing in the British Museum.
Until 500 years ago, all Bibles were copied by hand in monasteries. They were, therefore rare and expensive, and only cathedrals and churches had copies. Johann Gutenberg changed all that in 1447 with the invention of moveable type which made the scriptures available to the common man, provided he could read Latin. Martin Luther changed that by having a German version printed in 1534, (in the mid-1300s John Wycliffe wrote an English version for which he was labeled a heretic and burned at the stake) and William Tyndale made an improved English version in 1534 (for which he was also executed) that comprises 80% of today’s King James Version of the Bible.
Breaking out from under the influence of the Catholic Church, King Henry VIII commissioned the official Great Bible of 1539 followed by Queen Elizabeth I who commissioned the Geneva Bible which was the first to have verse numbers and was used by William Shakespeare and the Pilgrims. Finally, in 1604, King James authorized yet another version that was based on Hebrew and Greek texts that is found in most Protestant religions today.
[edit] Act XI: Mystical Text - Disc Two, 49 minutes
Many believe the Bible, and particularly the Torah, to have been written by the hand of God. They also believe Hebrew is a sacred language. There are 613 laws in the Torah. Those laws are broken down into 248 positive (honor thy parents) and 365 negative (thou shall not kill) laws. Coincidentally, there are 248 columns of text in the Torah and 365 days in a year. If you add 248 to 365, you get 613. With this type of mysticism, new copies have to follow an exacting template in order for the Torah to gain mystical status.
Some of the ancient Torah scrolls have all the words and paragraphs running together in the belief that when one reads to Torah as one long word, the name of God is thus revealed.
Gematria: a type of numerology with mystical significance. There are no numerical symbols in Hebrew, therefore all alphabetical letters have been assigned a numerical value. In Gematria, one adds up the numerical value of a given word and then sees what other word has the same value. Words with the same numerical values have something in common. For example, the words "God" and "Nature" in Hebrew have the name numerical value, therefore it is understood that God and Nature are the same. The words "Love" and "One" also have the same numerical value which means that to love makes a person at one with God.
[edit] Act XII: Living Words - Disc Two, 1:00 hour
The summation of this A&E Program tells the viewer that it's not important to figure out who it was that wrote the Bible but rather who it is that reads the Bible. Because, even though technology has changed the world in which we live, human nature hasn’t changed. The Bible tells us how God deals with human beings over time, therefore we can get insight into how God deals with us by reading it.
