We are excited to have guest blogger Jared Anderson present a series of posts on the history of the Bible. This brief series will first present a graphical overview of the history of the Jewish Scriptures followed by a narrative expansion, and then the New Testament will receive the same treatment. Jared welcomes your questions and comments at any point.
Before we divulge the timeline, following is a brief introduction of Jared so you know his merits.
Jared is finishing his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under Bart Ehrman, focusing on the Gospels and New Testament. Jared received an Honors Bachelor of Arts from the University of Utah, where he majored in Middle Eastern Studies with an emphasis in Hebrew, as well as learning Greek and Latin under Margaret Toscano. His honors thesis explored Joseph Smith’s study and use of languages.
After graduating Magna cum Laude at the U of U, Jared completed his Master’s degree at UNC Chapel Hill with a thesis on the text of the Fourth Gospel in the writings of the third-century Church Father Origen of Alexandria. His dissertation will reconstruct and analyze the form of the Gospel of Mark used by the author of Matthew. Jared plans to write academic and popular books about the formation, transmission, and translation of the Bible, spreading awareness of how this fascinating and influential anthology came to be, as well as publish about the changing role of religion.
Jared currently teaches World Religions at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. He is very interested in promoting an open, progressive, and vibrant approach to religion in general and Mormonism in particular, and has presented papers on these topics. He is active on Mormon Stories, Mormon Matters, as well as participating on Mormon Expression, and is active on facebook groups such as Mormon Stories and MO 2.0. He welcomes friends and communication in those forums.
Jared and his wife Katrina live in Salt Lake City with their children: Olivia (12), Isaac (10), Grace (8), Asher (3) and Miriam (22 months). Jared is an active member in his ward.
Without further delay, here is the Old Testament timeline:
Jewish Literature
(According to Erich Zenger, Einleitung in das Alte Testament [4th ed.; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001])
Note that most of these books draw from earlier sources
| Text | Date (BCE) | |
| Song of Deborah (Judges 5) | 1050-1000, or even 12th cent (Oxford Bible Commentary) | |
| Song of Moses? (Ex. 15) | 11th or 12th cent BC? | |
| Psalms | earliest 12-10th century | |
| Exodus 34 | 900 | |
| Elijah tales | 9th cent | |
| Amos and Hosea | mid 8th cent. | |
| 1st Isaiah, Micah | end 8th cent. | |
| J and E* | 900-722? | |
| Core Deuteronomy (12-26) | 622 | |
| Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakuk | end 7th century | |
| Joel | end 7th/beg 6th? (Soggin) | |
| Ezekiel, Jeremiah | beg 6th cent | |
| Deuteronomistic Hist (Joshua-2 Kings, rest of Deut) | mid 6th cent | |
| 2nd Isaiah | mid 6th cent | |
| P, Haggai, Zechariah | 520-518 | |
| Deuteronomistic Jeremiah | c. 520 | |
| 3rd Isaiah | end 6th cent (Soggin) | |
| Ruth | 5th cent | |
| Completion of Torah (the Jewish name for the first 5 books of the Jewish Bible) | 400 | |
| Job | 6th cent. (4th?) | |
| Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Esther, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs | 4rd-2nd cent. | |
| 12 prophets complete | c.240 | |
| Psalms | c. 200 (completed) | |
| Jesus ben Sirach | c. 175 | |
| Daniel | c. 150 (167-165) | |
| Judith | 150-100 | |
| 1-2 Maccabees | c. 30 | |
| Wisdom of Solomon | c. 100 |
*The dating of the elements in the Pentateuch is highly debated. Current scholarship questions whether the evidence allows us to postulate distinct sources J and E, suggests that the Priestly material looks more like a redactional layer than a source. In summary:
1) It is difficult to argue there was a “Yahwist Source” (J); instead we should speak of “Narrative Cycles”
2) Redactional work took several stops; most of this process was likely during/after the Deuteronomistic and Priestly stages
3) “P” should be seen not so much as a Priestly Source but a redactional layer (commentary or complement to older sources)So even though the DH is a great starting point, recent research has called key points into question. So the distinct older sources of the DH are gone, reduced to older traditions, and as far as dating goes, the end has become the beginning (with the Priestly source being one of the earlier steps instead of the last). D seems to have the most lasting power. I like Ska’s views of the Pentateuch coming together as a national epic necessitated by disputes after the Babylonian exiles returned to Judea post 539. (Ska, Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006])
Information found in Jared’s post come from his online courses through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Anyone can take these courses. If you are interested, click here.
Pablo
Born and raised in Northern California, Pablo received his education at Ricks College and BYU with a BA in Spanish, minor in PE Coaching. Pablo served his LDS mission during the years 94-96 in Rosario, Argentina. He now runs a skate shop and batting cages in Orem, UT. He's married and has 4 boys.
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Jared,
I have a few questions as I am unfamiliar with some of the terms you have used.
1) For whhat does J and E stand? Is it something like the Q source of the Gospels?
2) What do you mean by a Yahwist source?
3) I have no idea what DH is.
Mike
Yeah, these are expanded in my narrative history. I should have included a key!!
1) J and E are two of the traditional sources for the “Documentary Hypothesis”. J stands for the “Yahwist” source (because it was formulated by a German, so Jahweh), and E for “Elohist”, which refers to the name for God used in those different sources. These theories have been complicated and refined but remain and important starting point for discussion.
2) So the “Yahwist” source refers to the source that uses “Yahweh” as a term for God. Distinctive elements of this source include striking anthropomorphism (God seems VERY human, this is the God of the second creation narrative in Gen 2:4-3:24, who walks in the garden, plays in the mud, engages in surgery, etc). To save typing, this is pretty solid and uses good sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahwist
3) DH refers not to “dear husband” in this case but the “Deuteronomistic History”. This links also explains “D” as a bonus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuteronomist
Jared,
Thanks for the links. I will check them out. Thanks to Bart Ehrman and Ben Witherington for “dummying down” the history and source material of the New Testament, I have some clue of what is going on there. However, I am very unfamiliar with the primary source material and history of the canonization for the Old Testament – so this is new ground for me.
If my wife ever addressed me as “dear husband”, I think that would mean I was in deep poop.
Mike
This is a brief and accessible little book, though not very detailed: http://www.amazon.com/How-Bible-Came-John-Barton/dp/0664257852
Obviously I’m no scholar, as my questions will show. Maybe this will be answered in the following posts, but at what point were these books compiled into what we now know as the Old Testament? And who put the thousand years worth of books together into what we now have?
Also, I’m curious as to Jared’s ideas as to why we have some of the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon that were thought to be written after Lehi’s exodus.
Well I will take your words very precisely to make a point… who is “we”? Even today, Christians use different Old Testaments. The Catholic have the Apocrypha, and the Orthodox have a few books more. The order of the books in the Christian Old Testament is different than the order in the Jewish Scriptures. But the short answer to your question is the Jewish set by the end of the first century, though a few books remained debated. A more accurate answer is that canonization was a gradual process of a core of books becoming more and more authoritative with flexibility in other areas. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that the Psalter (book of Psalms) was not set even around the time of Jesus. Jesus’ reference to the “Law, prophets, and Psalms” (Luke 24:44) is an early canon formulation. Who put the books together? Mostly priests and scribes, literate power players in Israelite culture.
As for the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon, I think the theory of multiple authorship of Isaiah is profoundly convincing. Why are chapters composed in the mid 500s BC in the Book of Mormon? I am not disturbed by the idea that Joseph was inspired to put them there.
We already know that the Book of Mormon as we have it is because of Joseph. The plates weren’t in English, right? A detailed comparison of the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon and Bible (which I actually did over a few months in undergrad) demonstrates without doubt that Joseph was copying from the KJV. I think that explains their presence without any historical problems.