Back in the day our understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures was quite elementary. The Documentary Hypothesis, form criticism (internal) and literary criticism (external), were discussed but deemed radical by most mainstream and almost all conservative theologians. Since I have been out of the loop for forty years and looking for new challenges, I bought a book, yes, again.
The book: “Berossus
and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus”, Russell E. Gmirkin, T & T Clark
International. NY (2006).
Quoting from page one: “This book proposes a
new theory regarding the date and circumstances of the composition of the
Pentateuch. The central thesis of this book is that the Hebrew Pentateuch was
composed in its entirety about 273 to 272 BCE by Jewish scholars at Alexandria that
later traditions credited with the Septuagint translation of the Pentateuch
into Greek.”
“The late
date of the Pentateuch, as demonstrated by literary dependance on Berossus and
Manetho, has two important consequences: the definitive overthrow of the
chronological framework of the Documentary Hypothesis, and a third century BCE
or later date for other portions of the Hebrew Bible that show literary
dependence on the Pentateuch.”
Zowee! If
Moses wrote the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, Moses just got another 500
years older. Reviewing, my study Bible says these books were written by Moses
around 1400 BCE, within his lifetime.
The Documentary hypothesis says they were written around 700 BCE, by
whomever, the Gmirken hypothesis dates the writing in either 273 and 272 BCE by
Hebrew scholars and religionists commissioned by a political authority to
produce a Hebrew history.
If a
gathering of 80 or so Hebrew scholars and religious types put together what we
now know as the Hebrew Bible, there must be a variety of God understandings
shared in the Hebrew Bible. This much is a fact. Some of these understandings were pulled from religious oral Hebrew history traditions and some from the surrounding cultures
of 273 BCE so as to tell a good story. This, then, is a theory that seems to
fit.
Why does
such a theory meet resistance within the conservative factions of Christianity? Just guessing but could it be that such a
Biblical history puts the understanding of a Cosmic Disciplinarian God of St.
Augustine and Martin Luther into question? What is this tree of good and
evil? Moses speak or Greek mythology? Everything is but a theory, anyway.
G. Goslaw
Landers, CA.
…..
