Genesis and the Moses Story

Genesis and the Moses story were two competing myths of origin for Israel that were literarily and conceptually independent from each other. They both explained in different ways how Israel came to be.See also Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Siphrut 3; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010)

By Konrad Schmid
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism
University of Zurich, Switzerland
October 2010
 
In the 20th century, the so-called Documentary Hypothesis with its four elements J, E, P, D was a commonly accepted explanation for the literary growth of the Pentateuch. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that there are three similar narrative accounts of Israel's history of the creation, the ancestors, the exodus, and the conquest of the land: J, E, and P. The story line of the Pentateuch was considered very ancient. J adapted the structure of the narrative from the old creeds of ancient Israel, and the structure of the narrative accounts of E and P were mere epigones or imitations of J. However, in the last thirty years, serious doubts have arisen concerning this model. Only P, because of its clear structure and its specific language, has remained generally uncontested.

The Origin of Biblical Israel

Philip R Davies

University of Sheffield

 I

The most important development in recent years in the study of the history of ancient Israel and Judah has been, in my opinion, the interest in Judah during the Neo-Babylonian period, a period previously somewhat neglected, and strangely so, since it offers the most peculiar anomaly: for the entire period, a province called ‘Judah’ was in fact governed from a territory that, as the Bible and biblical historians themselves would describe it, was 'Benjamin’. The former capital of the kingdom of Judah, Jerusalem, was replaced by Mizpah. In the majority of modern histories of Israel/Judah that I have consulted, no explanation is offered for this choice.

How long this state of affairs continued remains unclear: the narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah are silent about this (as they are confused about the rebuilding of the Temple), and, as Edelman has recently argued (Edelman 2005), Jerusalem was probably not restored as the capital of Judah until the middle of the 5th century at the earliest (indeed, if Jerusalem had been the capital before the time of Artaxerxes, the story of Nehemiah would be largely pointless!).

Thus, for well over a century, the political life of Judah was centered in a territory which had once been part of the kingdom of Israel. How, when and why it became attached to Judah is unknown. The claim in 1 Kings 12:16-21 that Benjamin sided with Judah when the ‘kingdom’ was ‘divided’ is hardly to be taken as reliable. If, when the Assyrians divided the territory of the former kingdom of Israel into provinces, the territory we know as ‘Benjamin’ was allocated to Assyria’s vassal Judah, it seems not to have been involved in the campaign of Sennacherib—or had it been, it would  have probably been removed from Judah. Perhaps it was annexed by Josiah: but if so, why would it not have been reclaimed by Egypt or by Babylon after his death?). The reign of Manasseh looks more probable, given the favourable relations between him and Assyria.

Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall of Nehemiah

Israel Finkelstein, Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel  

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Vol 32.4 (2008): 501-520 

Abstract

Knowledge of the archaeology of Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) period — the size of the settlement and whether it was fortified — is crucial to understanding the history of the province of Yehud, the reality behind the book of Nehemiah and the process of compilation and redaction of certain biblical texts. It is therefore essential to look at the finds free of preconceptions (which may stem from the account in the book of Nehemiah) and only then attempt to merge archaeology and text.

The Current View

A considerable number of studies dealing with Jerusalem in the Persian period have been published in recent years (e.g. Carter 1999; Eshel 2000; Stern 2001: 434-36; Edelman 2005; Lipschits 2005, 2006; Ussishkin 2006). Although the authors were aware of the results of recent excavations, which have shown that the settlement was limited to the eastern ridge (the City of David), they continued to refer to a meaningful, fortified 'city' with a relatively large population.

LIBRARY

ATLASES

• Bible Atlas
• Oxford Bible Atlas
• New Bible Atlas   

BOOKS

Biblical History:

• Josephus "The Antiquities of the Jews" 
• Walter Dietrich "The Early Monarchy in Israel. The Tenth Century B.C.E."
• Mario Liverani "Israel's History and History of Israel" 
• Ilana Pardes "The Biography of Ancient Israel. National Narratives in the Bible"
• Ahab Agonistes "The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty" 
• Clyde E.Fant & Mitchell G.Reddish "A Guide to Biblical Sites in Greece and Turkey"
• Martti Nissinen "Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East" 
• Lawrence J. Mykytiuk "Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200 - 539 B.C.E." 
• Lester L.Grabbe "A History of The Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period"
• Niels Peter Lemche "Historical Dictionary of Ancient Israel"
• Lester L.Grabbe "An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism. History and Religion of the Jews in the time of Nehemiah, the Maccabees, Hillel and Jesus"
• Mario Liverany "Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography"
• Niels Peter Lemche "The Israelites in History and Tradition"
• Thomas L. Thompson "Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition"
• Shlomo Sand "The Invention of the Jewish People"

Biblical Archaeology:

• Richard Plant "A Numismatic Journey Through the Bible" 
• Amihai Mazar "Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan"
• Israel Finkelstein & Amihai Mazar "The Quest for the Historical Israel. Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel"
• Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman "The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts"
• Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silberman "La Biblia Desenterrada"
• Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, "David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition" 
• Adam Zertal "The Manasseh Hill Country Survey. The Eastern Valleys and the Fringes of the Desert" 
• Eric H.Cline "Biblical Archaeology. A Very Short Introduction" 
• John R.Bartlett "Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation"
• Susan Pollock & Reinhard Bernbeck "Archaeologies of the Middle East"
• Milton C.Moreland "Between Text and Artifact. Integrating Archaeology in Biblical Studies Teaching"
• John C.H.Laughlin "Fifty Major Cities of the Bible" 
• Yitzhak Magen & Yuval Peleg "The Qumran Excavations 1993-2004. Preliminary Report"
• Beth Alpert Nakhai "Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel"
• Archaeological Study Bible 
• Neil Asher Silberman & David Small "The Archaeology of Israel. Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present"
• Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson "A dictionary of archaeology"
• William G. Dever "Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel"
• Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme "Before the God in this Place for Good Remembrance. A Comparative Analysis of the Aramaic Votive Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim

History of Religions and Cults:

• Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions 
• Sarah Iles Johnston "Ancient Religions"
• Frank Moore Cross "Canaanite Myth And Hebrew Epic. Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel"
• J.C.L.Gibson "Canaanite Myths and Legends"
• Eva Pocs and Gabor Klasiczay "Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology"
• Raphael Patai "The Hebrew Goddes" 
• Bob Becking & Marjo C.A.Korpel "The Crisis of Israelite Religion. Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & Post-Exilic Times"
• Ahmed Osman "Christianity. An Ancient Egyptian Religion"
• Karin Finsterbusch, Armin Lange and K.F.Diethard Romheld "Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition"
• Tilde Binger "Asherah. Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament"
• Etienne Nodet "A Search for the Origins of Judaism" 
• J.Glen Taylor "Yahweh and the Sun. Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel"
• Elizabeth Bloch-Smith "Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead"
• Magnar Kartveit "The Origin of the Samaritans"

Biblical Criticism:

• P R O L E G O M E N A to the HISTORY OF ISRAEL. by JULIUS WELLHAUSEN
• Stanley E.Porter "Distionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation" 
• Giovanni Garbini "Myth and History in the Bible" 
• Richard Elliott Friedman "Who Wrote the Bible?"
• Richard Elliott Friedman "The Bible with Sources Revealed" 
• Ingrid Hjelm "The Samaritans and Early Judaism. A Literary Analysis"
• Emanuel Tov "Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible"
• Diana Edelman "The Origins of the Second Temple. Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem" 
• Philip R.Davies "Whose Bible Is It Anyway?"
• Philip R.Davies and David J. A.Clines "Among the Prophets. Language, Image and Structure in the Prophetic Writings"
• Gary Greenberg "101 Myths of the Bible. How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History" 
• Leon Vaganay "An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism"
• Michael Fishbane "Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking"
• Gregory T.K.Wong "Compositional Strategy of the Book of Judges"
• Barry G.Webb "The Book of the Judges. An Integrated Reading"  
• Kenneth C.Davis "Don't Know Much About the Bible. Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned" 
• William M.Schniedewind "How the Bible Became a Book" 
• Steven L.McKenzie and M.Patrick Graham "The History of Israel's Traditions. The Heritage of Martin Noth"
• Rolf Rendtorff "The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch"
• David T.Lamb "Righteous Jehu and His Evil Heirs. The Deuteronomist's Negative Perspective on Dynastic Succession" 
• Rutherford H.Platt, Jr. "The Order of All the Books of the Forgotten Books of Eden" 
• Karen Armstrong "A History of God"
• Martin Noth "The Chronicler's History"
• R.N.Whybray "The Making of the Pentateuch. A Methodological Study"
• R.N.Whybray "Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs" 
• Richard D.Nelson "The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History"
• The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible. The relationship Between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered. Ed. by Adrian Schenker
• John Van Seters "Pentateuch: A Social Science Commentary"
• Lester L.Grabbe "Ezra-Nehemiah"
• Lester L.Grabbe "Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period"
• Ingrid Hjelm "Jerusalem's Rise to Sovereignty. Zion and Gerizim in Competition"
• Thomas L. Thompson "The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel. The Literary Formation of Genesis and Exodus 1-23"
• David J.A. Clines "The Theme of the Pentateuch" 

Dead Sea Scrolls:

• James H.Charlesworth "The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Princeton Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls"
• The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Schoolarship
• Jonathan G.Campbell "Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls"
• Donald W.Parry & Emanuel Tov "Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. Texts Concerned with Religious Law"
• Donald W.Parry & Emanuel Tov "Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. Exegetical Texts"
• Donald W.Parry & Emanuel Tov "Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. Calendrical and Sapiential Texts" 
• Frederick H.Cryer & Thomas L.Thompson "Qumran Between the Old and New Testaments" 
• Hershel Shanks "Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls"
• C.D. Elledge "The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls"  
• David L.Washburn "A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls"
• Hanan Eshel "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State"
• Emanuel Tov "Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran Collected Essays"
• Dorothy M.Peters "Noah Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Conversations and Controversies of Antiquity" 
• Florentino García Martínez & Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar "The Dead Sea Scrolls. Study Edition"
• Peter W.Flint "The Bible at Qumran. Text, Shape, and Interpretation"
• Philip R.Davies "The Damascus Covenant. An Interpretation of the Damascus Document"
• Florentino García Martínez "The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. The Qumran Texts in English"
   

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