Who Wrote The Bible? by Richard Friedman

WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?

By Richard Elliot Friedman

The Bible is a "Divine source of comfort and inspiration." So wrote His Majesty George VI, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, in September of 1939. This message appeared in the front of New Testaments given to his servicemen in World War II. In March of 1941, President Roosevelt wrote a similar message about the Bible that was published in New Testaments given to Americans.

Is King George right? Does the Bible come from God? Is it revelation from divinely inspired men? Or is the Bible solely the product of human thought and imagination? Today, many intellectuals have come to believe the latter, or that, if there is a God, He has nothing to say to humans. Associated with this belief is their hypothesis that the Bible consists of oral traditions, later written down and edited by a variety of persons, none of which, from Moses to Mark, are any of the traditional authors of the Bible. This is contrary to the testimony of the Scriptures (the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity) and Jesus (the Second Person of the Trinity). For instance, in Mark 10:5 Jesus spoke of Moses as having written what is in Deuteronomy. From the earliest Church Council, called by Emperor Constantine, Christians have affirmed that God became a man, Jesus, who was both 100% man and 100% God. It follows that, as diety, anything Jesus said was infallible. The fact that He did not know the exact time of the Second Coming, only shows the limitations of being in a human body, (Jesus also felt pain, became hungry and thirsty, and so on). Nevertheless, He was still infallible.

The Documentary Hypothesis

In the nineteenth-century, Karl Graf had the idea that there were independent source documents for the first five books of the Bible. The first two sources of this documentary hypothesis were J and E. Basically, J was a writer who used "Jehovah" as the name for God, while E used "Elohim." Not as old a source was D, and even later in time was the P document. According to the documentary hypothesis, none of these sources was Moses. This assertion is in spite of internal evidence to the contrary: see Exodus 17:14; 24:4,7; 34:27; Numbers33:2; Deuteronomy 28:58, 61; 29:20-27; 30:10; 31:9-13, 22, 24-26. According to conservative scholars, Moses did copy earlier documents when he wrote Genesis. Also, he may have had parts of the Pentateuch written for him, like Paul's letters. Nevertheless, Jesus' testimony implies that Moses was an historical person and wrote most of the Pentateuch. See Matthew 19:7, 8; 23:2; Mark 10:3, 5; 13:26; Luke 24:27, 44; John 3:14; 7:19, 22.

With the exception of a period just after World War I, a general trend since the nineteenth century has been the secularization of Western society. The ideas of Graf and others following him fit right in with this trend. The great appeal of the documentary hypothesis to these types is that it denies the infallibility of Jesus and implies that Jesus is not divine.

The documentary hypothesis created a whole new field of academic innovation. Instead of trying to understand God's revelation, naturalistic scholars now ask questions such as "What was going on in a society to produce a set of laws?" And "What led a community to adopt them?" (Friedman, page 30) A caution for this approach is that it has remained confined to biblical studies - no other literary discipline has adopted it.

I am not surprised to encounter the anti-supernatural presupposition in biblical studies. It is as deeply rooted in science. However, naturalism can only go so far. For example, in science there have been many ideas and lines of arguments proposed to naturally explain the origin of life. A big problem is that the DNA molecule is so complex that it cannot form naturally. (Click here for more on this.) A bigger problem is explaining where the huge amount of information came from that our DNA contains. All scientific evidence points to a Creator, yet many scientists ignore this fact. (Click here for more on this.) In the final analysis, the anti-supernatural presupposition has come up wanting in science, and the same thing is happening with biblical studies. For one example of this, I will point out some of the deceptions biblical scholars have had to resort to in order to play the naturalistic game.

Who Wrote the Bible?

Richard Elliot Friedman, is a Harvard Ph.D. and professor of Hebrew at the University of California, San Diego. He first published Who Wrote the Bible? as a hardcover with Summit Books in 1987. The latest edition is a softcover that Harper-Collins published in 1997. The back cover of this edition carries the claim that Friedman's book is a legitimate intellectual contribution. There are also glowing reviews on Amazon.com from persons with naturalistic presuppositions.

I started to read Friedman's book and right away I encountered a misrepresentation of historical details in his chronology of the idea of multiple authorship of the Bible. I had to read only to page 69 to see several more problems. I will report only on these.

In the Introduction to Who Wrote the Bible?, Friedman gives a brief chronology of the idea of multiple authorship of the Bible. On page 21, he relates Spinoza's questioning the Bible as God's revelation: "Spinoza had been excommunicated from Judaism. Now his work was condemned by Catholics and Protestants, as well. His book was placed on the Catholic Index, within six years thirty-seven edicts were issued against it, and an attempt was made on his life." Friedman's use of tenses implies that he is still following a chronological order, leaving the reader the impression that finally, an attempt was made on Spinoza's life, but after his book was placed on the Index and thirty-seven edicts against it had been issued. Actually, the assassination attempt was early in his life, as Spinoza was leaving the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam. (An educated guess is that the attempt to silence Spinoza was by other Jews because he was refusing to come back to the fold biblically, and they feared that this might affect the comparatively high degree of tolerance Jews were enjoying in Holland.) Friedman should have related the attempt on Spinoza's life first, but he didn't. So much for good scholarship, but why this deception?

Also, Friedman should have explained that what bothered most believers about Spinoza was not advocacy of multiple authorship of the Pentatuch. Rather, it what we call his pantheism, but what they called atheism. Spinoza hotly denied this charge, craftily changing the definition of atheism, by saying atheists have no character, while he did. Additionally, the only book Spinoza published in his lifetime was anonymously, which is not what Friedman implies. So Friedman continues to be deceptive. Why? Is Friedman promoting atheism along with multiple authorship of the Bible? Or is trying to make Christians look bad? Whatever the reasons, This is not a good way to start a supposedly scholarly book, but it does set the stage for the deceptions that follow. I will mention just one more major one and a few interpretive difficulties.

The Flood Account

My major problem with Friedman is in Chapter Two, titled "J and E." Approximately one-third of this chapter is a faulty analysis of the flood story in Genesis 6:5-8:22, which he says highlights the idea of multiple authorship. On pages 54 and 60 he claims there are twocontinuous stories in this section of the Bible. On page 54 he states that the two stories are "complete, continuous accounts." Now I think one might get two somewhat complete accounts out of this section, especially since there is duplication. Biblical writers often use repetition for teaching and memory purposes. We must remember that the Scriptures were often read aloud to mostly illiterate listeners.

Friedman claims that one story is the J account, using only "Yahweh" for God. And the other is the P account, using only "Elohim." What is this J and P split doing in the J and E chapter? But this is a small problem. The big problem is that the J and the P sources do not yield two "complete, continuous accounts."

The biggest hurdle for the J and P sources is one verse, Genesis 7:16. It contains both "Elohim" and "Yahweh," so following his theory, Friedman has to split the verse. That makes the J account read "And there was rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights. And Yahweh closed it for him. And the flood was on the earth for forty days and forty nights . . . " (pages 56-57). The "And Yahweh closed it for him" part sticks out like a sore thumb. It makes no sense. What does the "it" refer to? We need the "other account" to learn it was the door. This is hardly a continuous or complete account. Even if the word "door" were there, the placement of the sentence is all wrong. We need the P account to understand the J account, especially for persons who are hearing the flood story being read to them.

Similarly, P's account makes no sense by itself. It jumps from loading the ark (verse 16a), (which reads "And those which came were male and female, some of all flesh came, as God had commanded him"), to everyone expiring (verse 21), ("And all flesh, those that creep on the Earth, the birds, the beasts, and the wild animals, and all the swarming things that swarm on the Earth, and all the humans expired"). It would be continuous story if there were some mention of the flood between these two verses. After all, the story is about a global flood.

Friedman can solve the above problem by not claiming that the two separate accounts are continuous and complete; but then he would lose the force of his argument, and his theory would have no support. He could claim R or someone else wrote vs. 16b. That would smooth out the J account, but P would still be awkward. However, Friedman has already invoked R to bail out other difficulties, Exodus 34:1b is an example. Too frequent usage would give his analysis more of the "ad hoc" flavor already associated with his claim of at least seven authors for the five books of Moses. (They are J, E, DTR¹, DTR², P, R and others.) Friedman put himself in a bind. He didn't have to choose the flood story to highlight his analysis, but he did. He didn't have to make deceptive statements, but he did. As it stands, the flood account is evidence against J and P as separate authors. One cannot separate the flood story his way and have it make sense.

Other Difficulties

One of the interpretive difficulties of the "J and E" chapter is on pages 64-65. Friedman claims that there are two birthright accounts: One "birthright" is Ephraim and Manasseh, according to the E account; the other is Judah, given in the J source. According to Friedman, these "birthrights" are in two "deathbed" scenes. Well, there's only one death reported so there are not two deathbed scenes. Friedman has forced his interpretation to fit his idea, an excellent example of the games being played under the name of scholarship.

Another problem for the J and E authorship theory is in the blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:1-27). In it, J uses "Yahweh" in Genesis 49:18 and "Elohim" in 49:25. Friedman gets around this difficulty by a note in the Appendix, saying there is another source, not J, E, DTR¹, DTR², P, or R for Genesis 49:1-27. However, a person reading the "J and E" chapter doesn't know this; he thinks it is J. Also, on pp.64-65, Friedman leads the reader to think it is J. However, a note on page 258, which is not a footnote, says it is probably not J. This note is hard to dig out and place in context. Friedman buries this problem in this rather deceptive manner because it is evidence against his contention that there are two separate accounts, J and E.

Another difficulty in the "J and E" Chapter is on page 65. Friedman claims Reuben saves Joseph in one story (E), and Judah does it in another (J). The claim about Reuben flies in the face of what Genesis 37:30 reports. This verse helps explain that Reuben's plan was to save Joseph (thereby getting back into the good graces of his father), but he does not actually save Joseph. Friedman is being deceptive again.

A last interpretive difficulty, on pages 66-67, is the least. In the Appendix, Friedman presents two spy stories. One is J, which highlights Caleb (a southern hero). The other is P. So the spy story (like the flood story)is a J and P story. Again, this is odd for a chapter titled "J and E." Is it because Numbers 13:1, 14:3, 8, 9, and 10 all have "Yahweh" in them? Friedman probably wants to assign these verses to E, but cannot. That would counter one of his theses. For the same reason, he can't give them to J either. So it is P to the rescue! The upshot is that we have P using "Yahweh" here as a name for God, and "Elohim" in the flood account. Here also is the ad hoc flavor again.

Friedman identifies the sources for the five books of Moses in the Appendix. He assigns the Garden of Eden story to J, the writer who uses "Jehovah" for the name of God. But Jehovah as a name of God does not appear in this story! From Genesis 2:4 to 3:24, the name "Jehovah Elohim" appears twenty times with "Elohim" appearing four times. How could this be the J source? Jehovah is not mentioned at all! This problem was pointed out by the German biblical scholars C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch in the nineteenth century, but apparently their criticism has been ignored. There is a similar difficulty with Genesis 14:1-24. The names for God in this passage are "Elohim" (three times) and "Jehovah Elohim" (once). Following the theory one would think the source would be E, or maybe P. But in the Appendix, we find it is J! To be fair to Friedman, this assignment of Genesis 14:1-24 is bracketed and has an asterisk, but he does not explain why. He might be wanting to say that it is not J, but we don't know. We could have an editing error, but that is odd, given that the original was published in 1987 - there has been plenty of time and opportunity to correct this.

A "Just-So" Story

Evolution, the idea that we descended from a common ancestor, is a just-so story, made up to explain why we are here and why we are like we are. Another example of a "just so" story is Charles Darwin's explanation as to why we are hairless compared to other animals, especially primates. He argued in Descent of Man (1871), that our ancestral females preferred mates with less hair. Thus, over time our hairy ancestors were bred out. Now this is good news for bald men everywhere, but it is not good science. There is not a shred of evidence to support Darwin's idea. It is a just-so story, carried on, not by evidence, but by naturalistic belief. The same is true for evolution. There is no evidence for descent from a common ancestor. (Click here for more on this.) And the same is true for higher criticism - it is a just-so story to provide a naturalistic explanation for the Bible. It and the others are all driven by the anti-supernatural presupposition.

The most effective propaganda is propaganda that is disguised as good science or scholarship. Friedman's book is propaganda disguised as good scholarship and reflects what has happened in the field of biblical studies. A supposed methodology for literary analysis of the Bible has been taught for a century now, but it has been rejected as a method in all other fields, including literary studies. Professor Eta Linnemann was taught this technique and has published using it. When she became a Christian, she realized the technique was not a methodology, but an ideology based on an anti-supernatural presupposition. (see my review of her book) Linnemann cites Samuel R. Kulbig, Zur Datierung der `Genesis-P-Stuke' (2nd ed., Riehen, 1985), who states that the whole late-dating of the so-called priestly writing (P) was the product of an intuition. There was, and still is, no proof of this idea, Linnemann reports, only "unproven assertions and judgments based on personal taste" (page 131 of her book). She threw her book using this technique into the trash and urges others to do the same. People should likewise throw Friedman's book in the trash.