The Old Testament

General Outlines

Who is the author of the Old Testament?

One wonders how many readers of the Old Testament,if asked the above question, would reply by repeating what they hadread in the introduction to their Bible. They might answer that, eventhough it was written by men inspired by the Holy Ghost, the author wasGod.

Sometimes, the author of the Bible’s presentationconfines himself to informing his reader of this succinct observationwhich puts an end to all further questions. Sometimes he corrects it bywarning him that details may subsequently have been added to theprimitive text by men, but that nonetheless, the litigious character ofa passage does not alter the general “truth’ that proceeds from it.This “truth’ is stressed very heavily. The Church Authorities answerfor it, being the only body, With the assistance of the Holy Ghost,able to enlighten the faithful on such points. Since the Councils heldin the Fourth century, it was the Church that issued the list of HolyBooks, ratified by the Councils of Florence (1441), Trent (1546), andthe First Vatican Council (1870), to form what today is known as theCanon. Just recently, after so many encyclicals, the Second VaticanCouncil published a text concerning the Revelation which is extremelyimportant. It took three years (1962-1966) of strenuous effort toproduce. The vast majority of the Bible’s readers who find this highlyreassuring information at the head of a modern edition have been quitesatisfied with the guarantees of authenticity made over past centuriesand have hardly thought it possible to debate them.

When one refers however to works written byclergymen, not meant for mass publication, one realizes that thequestion concerning the authenticity of the books in the Bible is muchmore complex than one might suppose a priori. For example, whenone consults the modern publication in separate installments of theBible in French translated under the guidance of the Biblical School ofJerusalem [ Pub. Cerf, Paris],the tone appears to be very different. One realizes that the OldTestament, like the New Testament, raises problems with controversialelements that, for the most part, the authors of commentaries have notconcealed.

We also find highly precise data in more condensedstudies of a very objective nature, such as Professor Edmond Jacob’sstudy. The Old Testament (L’Ancien Testament) [ Pub. Presses Universitaires de France,Paris “Que sais-je?” collection]. This book gives an excellentgeneral view.

Many people are unaware, and Edmond Jacob pointsthis out, that there were originally a number of texts and not justone. Around the Third century B.C., there were at least three forms ofthe Hebrew text: the text which was to become the Masoretic text, thetext which was used, in part at least, for the Greek translation, andthe Samaritan Pentateuch. In the First century B.C., there was atendency towards the establishment of a single text, but it was notuntil a century after Christ that the Biblical text was definitelyestablished.

If we had had the three forms of the text,comparison would have been possible, and we could have reached anopinion concerning what the original might have been. Unfortunately, wedo not have the slightest idea. Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls (Caveof Qumran) dating from a pre-Christian era near the time of Jesus, apapyrus of the Ten Commandments of the Second century A.D. presentingvariations from the classical text, and a few fragments from the Fifthcentury A.D. (Geniza of Cairo) , the oldest Hebrew text of the Bibledates from the Ninth century A.D.

The Septuagint was probably the first translation inGreek. It dates from the Third century B.C. and was written by Jews inAlexandria. It Was on this text that the New Testament was based. Itremained authoritative until the Seventh century A.D. The basic Greektexts in general use in the Christian world are from the manuscriptscatalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican City and CodexSinaiticus at the British Museum, London. They date from the Fourthcentury A.D.

At the beginning of the Fifth century A.D., SaintJerome was able to produce a text in latin using Hebrew documents. Itwas later to be called the Vulgate on account of its universaldistribution after the Seventh century A.D.

For the record, we shall mention the Aramaic versionand the Syriac (Peshitta) version, but these are incomplete.

All of these versions have enabled specialists topiece together so-called ‘middle-of-the-road’ texts, a sort ofcompromise between the different versions. Multi-lingual collectionshave also been produced which juxtapose the Hebrew, Greek, Latin,Syriac, Aramaic and even Arabic versions. This is the case of thefamous Walton Bible (London, 1667). For the sake of completeness, letus mention that diverging Biblical conceptions are responsible for thefact that the various Christian churches do not all accept exactly thesame books and have not until now had identical ideas on translationinto the same language. The Ecumenical Translation of the OldTestament is a work of unification written by numerous Catholic andProtestant experts now nearing completion [ Translator’s Note: Published December 1975 by Les Editionsdu Cerf and Les Bergers et les Mages, Paris] and should resultin a work of synthesis.

Thus the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quiteconsiderable. It is not difficult to understand why from version toversion, and translation to translation, with all the correctionsinevitably resulting, it was possible for the original text to havebeen transformed during the course of more than two thousand years.

ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE

Before it became a collection of books, it was afolk tradition that relied entirely upon human memory, originally theonly means of passing on ideas. This tradition was sung.

“At an elementary stage, writes E. Jacob, everypeople sings; in Israel, as elsewhere, poetry preceded prose. Israelsang long and well; led by circumstances of his history to the heightsof joy and the depths of despair, taking part with intense feeling inall that happened to it, for everything in their eyes had a sense,Israel gave its song a wide variety of expression”. They sang for themost diverse reasons and E. Jacob mentions a number of them to which wefind the accompanying songs in the Bible: eating songs, harvest songs,songs connected with work, like the famous Well Song (Numbers 21, 17),wedding songs, as in the Song of Songs, and mourning songs. In theBible there are numerous songs of war and among these we find the Songof Deborah (Judges 5, 1-32) exalting Israel’s victory desired and ledby Yahweh Himself, (Numbers 10, 35); “And whenever the ark (ofalliance) set out, Moses said, ‘Arise, oh Yahweh, and let thy enemiesbe scattered; and let them that hate thee nee before thee”.

There are also the Maxims and Proverbs (Book ofProverbs, Proverbs and Maxims of the Historic Books), words of blessingand curse, and the laws decreed to man by the Prophets on reception oftheir Divine mandate.

E. Jacobs notes that these words were either passeddown from family to family or channelled through the sanctuaries in theform of an account of the history of God’s chosen people. Historyquickly turned into fable, as in the Fable of Jotham (Judges 9, 7-21),where “the trees went forth to anoint a king over them; and they askedin turn the olive tree, the fig tree, the vine and the bramble”, whichallows E. Jacob to note “animated by the need to tell a good story, thenarration was not perturbed by subjects or times whose history was notwell known”, from which he concludes:

“It is probable that what the Old Testament narratesabout Moses and the patriarchs only roughly corresponds to thesuccession of historic facts. The narrators however, even at the stageof oral transmission, were able to bring into play such grace andimagination to blend between them highly varied episodes, that when allis said and done, they were able to present as a history that wasfairly credible to critical thinkers what happened at the beginning ofhumanity and the world”.

There is good reason to believe that after theJewish people settled in Canaan, at the end of the Thirteenth centuryB.C., writing was used to preserve and hand down the tradition. Therewas not however complete accuracy, even in what to men seems to demandthe greatest durability, i.e. the laws. Among these, the laws which aresupposed to have been written by God’s own hand, the Ten Commandments,were transmitted in the Old Testament in two versions; Exodus (20,1-21)and Deuteronomy (5, 1-30). They are the same in spirit, but thevariations are obvious. There is also a concern to keep a large writtenrecord of contracts, letters, lists of personalities (Judges, high cityofficials, genealogical tables), lists of offerings and plunder. Inthis way, archives were created which provided documentation for thelater editing of definitive works resulting in the books we have today.Thus in each book there is a mixture of different literary genres: itcan be left to the specialists to find the reasons for this oddassortment of documents.

The Old Testament is a disparate whole based upon aninitially oral tradition. It is interesting therefore to compare theprocess by which it was constituted with what could happen in anotherperiod and another place at the time when a primitive literature wasborn.

Let us take, for example, the birth of Frenchliterature at the time of the Frankish Royalty. The same oral traditionpresided over the preservation of important deeds: wars, often in thedefense of Christianity, various sensational events, where heroesdistinguished themselves, that were destined centuries later to inspirecourt poets, chroniclers and authors of various ‘cycles’. In this way,from the Eleventh century A.D. onwards, these narrative poems, in whichreality is mixed with legend, were to appear and constitute the firstmonument in epic poetry. The most famous of all is the Song ofRoland (La Chanson de Roland) a biographical chant about a feat ofarms in which Roland was the commander of Emperor Charlemagne’srearguard on its way home from an expedition in Spain. The sacrifice ofRoland is not just an episode invented to meet the needs of the story.It took place on 15th August, 778. In actual fact it was an attack byBasques living in the mountains. This literary work is not just legend; it has a historical basis, but no historian would take it literally.

This parallel between the birth of the Bible and asecular literature seems to correspond exactly with reality. It is inno way meant to relegate the whole Biblical text as we know it today tothe store of mythological collections, as do so many of those whosystematically negate the idea of God. It is perfectly possible tobelieve in the reality of the Creation, God’s transmission to Moses ofthe Ten Commandments, Divine intercession in human affairs, e.g. at thetime of Solomon. This does not stop us, at the same time, fromconsidering that what has been conveyed to us is the gist of thesefacts, and that the detail in the description should be subjected torigorous criticism, the reason for this being that the element of humanparticipation in the transcription of originally oral traditions is sogreat.