Of the J document, P document, and documents E and D et. al.

[AHunter3]

So I was prowling through the used book place and picked up a copy of The Book of J and have been delving into it.

Frankly, while it is nice to have a surgically separated Book of J, newly retranslated from the Hebrew, in my possession, the enclosing discussion is not what I was hoping for. I might come back to it later, but…

I was hoping for the thrilling detective story, the literary archeology involved in determining that the text conventionally viewed as the Pentateuch, Torah, Old Testament, etc., (and is it also incorporated into the Koran?), is actually “x” number of distinguishable narratives that are interwoven but which can be separated at starting points and ending points here and here and here and here and so on.

Also, I’d like to see the other documents isolated from their interruptions, e.g., the P document with no J and so on.

And perhaps some overview of the general raft of opinions regarding the different authors, in addition to Bloom’s assertions about J.

(He may change my mind, but I’ve always thought of the J stuff as being “the icky stuff the fundamentalists hold onto most tightly”).

Point me, please!

[Krisfer_the_Cat]

I can’t help ya… but I want the info also if anyone else has it.

peers over your shoulder
hmmm I am currently reading two books that posit Jesus was a practicing Jew with an eye to reforming Judaism for JEWS. I wonder if that is whats causing the sudden spate of thunderstorms lately?

[Sir_Prize]

There is an interesting article in this months BAR magazine that discusses a few of the linguistic and political clues concerning what was written when.

http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/bswbba2905f3.html

The name David is spelled without vowels as DWD in pre-Exilic texts and inscriptions. (The W represents the letter waw in scholarly convention, pronounced v in modern Hebrew.) In Chronicles, however, the name is spelled with an additional letter, a vowel, yod (Y). By this time, in the post-Exilic period, a few letters, including yod, were used as vowels in the spelling of Hebrew

as we know from pre-Exilic inscriptions and from the Book of Ezekiel, this suffix was spelled -h on singular nouns (“his mother”), and -w on plural nouns (“his sons”). But by the fifth century B.C.E., less than a century after the return from Exile, it was spelled -w on singular nouns (“his mother”) and -yw on plural nouns (“his sons”).

Older still than J, however, are a number of poems still preserved among the narratives of the Hebrew Bible—the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 33, in which Moses blesses the tribes), Psalm 68 and Exodus 15, known as the Song of the Sea or, alternatively, the Song of Miriam. Exodus 15:1-18 is a victory hymn sung after the pursuing Egyptians are drowned in the waters of the “Reed Sea.”

Based on linguistic clues as well the mentions of Edom, Moab and the Philistines…

these considerations place the Song of the Sea most probably sometime between 1125 and 1000 B.C.E. To conclude, then, the Exodus tradition in the Bible goes back to the late 12th or 11th century B.C.E.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

You might check the Staff Report Who wrote the bible? (Part 1)

Far better than Book of J, may I suggest Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman (1987). Very well-written, reads like a detective story, and covers J, E, P, D and the redactor.

The problem with Book of J is that it starts with the premise that the J-author was the best of them all, with the deepest ideas and the best poetry, … and then pulls out all those lines and pretends it’s the J-document. The author ascribes lots of stuff to J-source that almost all other scholars attribute to E- or P-sources. In short, it’s a circular development.

[CalMeacham]

There is also a book out called Who Wrote the Bible?, not to be confused wiuth our staff report. It’s well-written and eminently readable by the layman, but I think he athor’s prejudices and personal theories show through. (Not surprising – the author was a Biblical scholar who admittedly wants to promote his own theories). well worth reading, but with a grain of salt.