Resources for Bible authorship and history for Sunday School

[LostGirl]

This last year I've taken the approach that if I MUST go to Sunday School, I might as well learn something useful so I've mostly looked up articles and books from all sorts of places including Dialogue around the topics being discussed and usually I read those instead of listening to the same recycled stuff. Unfortunately this has the side effect of severe frustration when I do listen, but overall at least I've come out of the year with more knowledge than when I went in.

This year is the Old Testament. Can anyone point me to similar resources for the Old Testament that they have found interesting? I am interested in things like the true authorship of the various parts, the purpose of the stories (ie when they are not literal stories about people who actually existed then who wrote them and why).

[dogbite]

Start with the ducumentary hypothesis which gives the commonly referenced J, D, P, E.

[dogbite]

Hmm wide consensus in the documentary hypothesis collapsed at the end of the twentieth century. It's now mostly D with a late P, in persia crafting the rest with Genesis a separate late addition. Interesting. Lots of shake up in pentateuch theory.

[2bizE]

I don't have many resources, but i always ask why.
Why do we even believe in the selection of writings found in the OT?

[rincewind]

Yale has an online open course that is pretty good. Lectures 1-5 discuss possible sources of the text and critical analysis methods.

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145

The Jewish Study Bible that is the text for the course is a modern translation from the Hebrew and has extensive commentary. The Jews are refreshingly honest about the inconsistencies and general messiness of the OT.

[moksha]

Since 1943 most scholars have accepted Martin Noth's argument that Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings make up a single work, the so-called "Deuteronomistic history." Noth believed that the history was the work of a single author writing in the time of the Babylonian exile (586–539 BCE).
-- Wikipedia

Some of this may have been influenced by the Babylonian Enûma Eliš or other past traditions and stories.

[LostGirl]

Yale has an online open course that is pretty good. Lectures 1-5 discuss possible sources of the text and critical analysis methods.

Thanks, I will take a look at that one.

[2bizE]

I find Benjamin the Scribe to have a lot of good and insightful material. Here’s a link.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/benjaminthescribe/

[Ghost]

I enjoyed the book "Who Wrote the Bible" by Richard Friedman. (By "the Bible," he means what we call the Old Testament.)

https://smile.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Ri ... 894&sr=8-1

This book gives a good overview of the Documentary Hypothesis, and the author is obviously enthusiastic about the topic in a way that makes his writing fun to read.

[deacon blues]

there is a book called "The Old Testament With The Joseph Smith Translation" by Julie Hite, Steven J. Hite and R. Tom Melville, published by the Veritas Group, Orem Utah. It puts Book of Moses, Joseph Smith Translation, and Book of Abraham, sides by side, for comparison. It shows the changes from the original King James version to the Joseph Smith translation. Kind of interesting.

[LostGirl]

Awesome, thank you for all of the suggestions.

[felixfabulous]

Take this free online course from Yale https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145. It covers all of the main points of modern biblical scholarship. I really enjoyed it.

[Hagoth]

Hmm wide consensus in the documentary hypothesis collapsed at the end of the twentieth century. It's now mostly D with a late P, in persia crafting the rest with Genesis a separate late addition. Interesting. Lots of shake up in pentateuch theory.

This thinking seems to open a whole new can of worms. As I understand it, the newer hypothesis is not that there were fewer authors than J,E,D,&P, but that there were actually more original, but unnamed, sources that were combined by later by an editor or editors, rather than authors J and E. Is that how you understand it? I mean, you can't just through the doublets and Yahweh/Elohim naming issues out the window with no explanation. I do find it fascinating that this hypothesis pushes the Pentateuch to a later date in the Persian or even Hellenistic periods.

[Hagoth]

I enjoyed the book "Who Wrote the Bible" by Richard Friedman. (By "the Bible," he means what we call the Old Testament.)

https://smile.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Ri ... 894&sr=8-1

This book gives a good overview of the Documentary Hypothesis, and the author is obviously enthusiastic about the topic in a way that makes his writing fun to read.

I second that motion. I really enjoyed Friedman's book.

[blazerb]

If you want a Mormon spin on the documentary hypothesis, you can listen to two episodes of the LDS Perspectives podcast:
http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/12/ ... ypothesis/
http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/12/20/genesis/

If I tried to share what they said in my GD class, all heck would break loose.

[dogbite]

This thinking seems to open a whole new can of worms. As I understand it, the newer hypothesis is not that there were fewer authors than J,E,D,&P, but that there were actually more original, but unnamed, sources that were combined by later by an editor or editors, rather than authors J and E. Is that how you understand it? I mean, you can't just through the doublets and Yahweh/Elohim naming issues out the window with no explanation. I do find it fascinating that this hypothesis pushes the Pentateuch to a later date in the Persian or even Hellenistic periods.

What little I've been seeing is more in support of the supplementary hypothesis rather than fragmentary. What broke documentary is the archaeology. The geography claims in the text is too late for the claims of the documentary hypothesis. Plus the archaeology indicates that Israel developed in place, not as an exodus. What I saw was that this pleased a lot of scholars and the E signal is really only visible in a few places and not well supported. So it gets rid of problems with the JDPE sources.

Interestingly on old NOM, there was a believer who tried to cite the Menorah in Exodus as a sign of the age of monotheistic Judaism and link that to Hopewell archaeology. Now those books post date the departure of Lehi and match what we see in the ground.

[RS Teacher]

Related specifically to the story of Job, I really enjoyed a book called Rereading Job: Understanding the Ancient World's Greatest Poem. By Michael Austin. This book helped me understand that everything you've ever learned about Job in Sunday School is exactly wrong.

[Hagoth]

This thinking seems to open a whole new can of worms. As I understand it, the newer hypothesis is not that there were fewer authors than J,E,D,&P, but that there were actually more original, but unnamed, sources that were combined by later by an editor or editors, rather than authors J and E. Is that how you understand it? I mean, you can't just through the doublets and Yahweh/Elohim naming issues out the window with no explanation. I do find it fascinating that this hypothesis pushes the Pentateuch to a later date in the Persian or even Hellenistic periods.

What little I've been seeing is more in support of the supplementary hypothesis rather than fragmentary. What broke documentary is the archaeology. The geography claims in the text is too late for the claims of the documentary hypothesis. Plus the archaeology indicates that Israel developed in place, not as an exodus. What I saw was that this pleased a lot of scholars and the E signal is really only visible in a few places and not well supported. So it gets rid of problems with the JDPE sources.

Interestingly on old NOM, there was a believer who tried to cite the Menorah in Exodus as a sign of the age of monotheistic Judaism and link that to Hopewell archaeology. Now those books post date the departure of Lehi and match what we see in the ground.

Interesting stuff. I'll have to catch up on it. I still have a question about the doublets, which were assumed to be from attempts to combine the writings of the two authors. I think the new theory might be a bit fuzzier about what "author" and "editor" mean.

I agree with the archaeology that supports a more localized immersion of Israelite traditions, but there is still some room for a small migration of "Israelites" from Egypt during the great collapse of the 13th century BC, when some oppressed societies in Egypt to the opportunity to get out of dodge. That's when Israelites are mentioned in the Merneptah stele too (although as a brag that they had been crushed by the Egyptians). I have wondered if some kind of small exodus happened and when they eventually settled in Caanan their stories were magnified and merged with the narrative of the locals, just as some of the Israelite stories also came from other sources, like the Babylonians.