The Composition of Scripture, Part 1: Old Testament
Before we can arrive at the issue of the reception of the canon and those standards, the first order of business is to deal with criticisms of how the Old and New Testament came to be to begin with. In introducing this subject, we need to understand that there are different kinds of criticism.
1. Textual criticism – determining which in a set of textual variants are the most likely reading of the text.
2. Literary criticism – classical criticism, meant more to understand the art of how the literature was produced.
3. Source criticism – a discovery of the sources used by the author: not inherently dismissive, but it can provide skeptical material (e.g. The “Q” behind the Gospels).
4. Form criticism – analyzes units of documents to show the cultural-historical origins of such units. This is an exercise in deconstruction when the critic assumes up front, or concludes without sufficient reason, that such unit-origins must be diverse or divergent.
5. Redaction criticism – identifies a final-form origin, whether in a part or the whole, analyzing the aims and methods of such an author / redactor.
6. Tradition criticism – a highly subjective and dismissive hybrid of form and redaction criticism, positing a “tradition” that begins orally and later becomes the biblical text.1
Long story short, from the early eighteenth century English deists to the German schools that arose in the nineteenth century, what was called “Higher Criticism” was born. This is the sum of those forms of criticism that try to get behind the text, as to its background and sources. This is to be distinguished from “Lower Criticism” that ascertains the nature of the text itself.
One of the main reasons to familiarize ourselves with different kinds of critical scholarship is to avoid a kind of pendulum swing between skepticism and fundamentalism. Perhaps the main way this is done—without realizing we are doing it—is to shun any thoughts of the human authors being too human. Narrative selectivity and theological agenda is eyed with suspicion, as if the divine meaning and those normal literary elements stand in logical tension.
The antidote to this comes in reflecting upon the nature of biblical inspiration (which we will come to). Without such an eye toward intentional authorial emphasis, all sorts of questions refuse to be asked: Why do Kings and Chronicles cover the same history, yet feature such different angles? Why does Saul not recognize David when he comes to fight Goliath, when just one chapter earlier he had been described as the one who soothed the king’s spirit with his harp? And who all is being judged and who is the remnant in the prophetic books? Most of the Bible difficulties find resolutions to the degree that we understand the angles that the authors were taking.
We should also notice, by way of introduction, that the Hebrew canon does differ from the subsequent Old Testament agreed upon by the Jewish authority Josephus and Jerome’s Vulgate. However that difference has to do with ordering rather than content. The three divisions of the TNK into torah (Law), nevi’im (Prophets), and ketuvim (Writings) reflect a different priority of genre. If anything, the comparison of the two gives the student of Scripture increased perspective on the same progress of redemption.
Aside from the two different angles into the literary genre, there is the difference in consolidation of our Ezra-Nehemiah into one book, and the same for the singular books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. However, when we see these two differences for what they are, the actual substance of the canons are identical.
One way to look at the three sections that I have seen is to divide between: (1) Law — “acts of God”; (2) Prophets — “word of God”; (3) Writings — “life in the covenant.” Part of the trouble here is that there is overlap, whether we are speaking of our English Bibles or the Hebrew canon.
The Law (תּוֹרָה)
There are synonyms for this part of the Bible, namely, the Pentateuch or the Law of Moses or simply Books of Moses. The word Pentateuch is derived from the Greek for “five” (penta) and another word, teuchos, meaning roughly “scroll.” So it comes to mean something like the “fivefold scroll,” or again “book of five.” Those books are (i) Genesis; (ii) Exodus; (iii) Leviticus; (iv) Numbers; (v) Deuteronomy.
The traditional view is that Moses was its principal author and that it was addressed immediately to Israel within the dates 1440 to 1400, first at Sinai and terminating in the Plains of Moab. As to genre, we have to be nuanced. This is history, yet with a wide-angle lens of all mankind in Genesis 1-11 and yet a narrow-angle lens that we may call “covenant history.” Moreover there is a combination of narrative and poetry, covenant Treaty and law.
The main criticism against the traditional view in the modern world has been called the JEDP Theory, or the Documentary Hypothesis. The kind of criticism involved in this theory is also called source criticism, popularized by Julius Wellhausen in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1876). There were presuppositions not at all arising from an inductive examination of the text. One can detect a combination of Hegel and Darwin here. Even if one is not familiar with the stream of thought in the nineteenth century, the logic is simple enough to grasp.
1. All things are evolving from most simple to most complex.
2. The religion of mankind is a thing.
3. Israelite religion is a religion.
∴ Israelite religion evolved from most simple to most complex.
The “findings” in the text were made to match the a priori framework. In this evolutionary view of Israel’s history—an upward movement from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism—culminating in the Prophets, with their emphasis on divine justice. That, it was said, is what necessitated one God. So the Pentateuch came together in a series of stages over several centuries, with four distinct documents (called sources) being brought together by redactors.
What is the proposed evidence for this? It may be divided under six heads; and the last of these gets into why those four letters (JEDP) are used as an acronym for it: (i) Use of the divine name (Yahweh and Elohim); (ii) Doublets: the same basic story repeated more than once (e.g., the thrice-used “my wife is my sister” accounts – Gen. 12:10-20; 20; 26); (iii) Two creation accounts (Gen 1:1-2:4; 2:5ff); (iv) Two Abrahamic covenants (Gen 15, 17); (v) Style and vocabulary – e.g., ‘Sinai’ vs ‘Horeb’ to refer to the same mountain; (vi) Different theological perspectives. About those four alleged perspectives, these are said to show the following four sources:
[J] or Jawist. (i) the oldest, around 950 B.C.; (ii) Originated in Judah; (iii) Uses the name of Yahweh; (iv) Theological focus on humanity and the earth; (v) Contact with God directly; (vi) Begins in Gen 2.
[E] or Elohist. (i) Around 800 B.C.; (ii) Emphasizes northern matters; (iii) Uses the name Elohim; (iv) Theological focus on religion and morality; (v) Contact with God mediated by dreams or angels; (vi) Begins in Gen 15.
[D] or Deuteroist. (i) Around 621 B.C.; (ii) Led to the reformation under Josiah; (iii) Theology of retributive justice; (iv) The book of Deuteronomy. This independent sources, allegedly in Babylonian exile, was a needed polemic of how YHWH is superior to Marduk. There is a remarkable similarity between the end of Deuteronomy and what comes to happen. The critic’s anti-supernatural bias leads to the view called vaticatum ex eventu, or “prophecy from [basically, after] the event.”2
[P] or Priestly. (i) Around 500 B.C. (post-exile); (ii) Focuses on areas associated with the priesthood; (iii) Genealogy, worship, ritual, law.
So that we are not guilty of reducing the whole argument against Mosaic authorship to one particular nineteenth century model, we need to consider the arguments against Mosaic authorship in general. Aside from the now discredited old myth that writing did not exist until after the time of Moses, these are usually divided under three heads: (i) a-Mosaica – passages that are awkward if Moses wrote them: e.g., Moses was the most humble man who ever lived (Num. 12:3); (ii) post-Mosaica – the record of his death (Deut 34); (iii) anachronistic terminology that reflects a later period: “Ur of the Chaldeans” (Gen 11:31) is said to not be in use until 1100; or “Dan” (Gen 14:14), which is said to post-date the land conquest.
In evaluation of these critical theories, let us first address the problem with source criticism. There are problems with the source critics keeping their own story straight. In other words, the sources have continued to be divided (e.g., J1, J2, E1, E2, and even an “L” source). There has also been an abandonment of an E source.
Now at first, this might seem like a cheap argument from the traditional side, since it may seem only to be saying that “My enemy is divided in its ranks,” which of course is common to all viewpoints. But actually the whole point is that source criticism depends on a solid reason for establishing any difference in sources. If the explanation fractures, it is the reason itself that is becoming questionable. Even though most scholars recognize the problems with the original JEDP framework, a scholar as recent as Brevard Childs still insisted that anyone who rejected it is “naive and arrogant.”3
Let me also make a comment on the crown-jewel example of “doublets” which is really a “triplet,” namely, the two times that Abraham pretended his wife was his sister to avoid trouble, and once that Isaac did so. I don’t mean to live up to Childs’ characterization of a naive or arrogant person, but I must say that this is utterly boring. If the claim was made that either man (Abraham and Isaac) foisted this on the same chieftain or only days or weeks apart, then the skeptic may have my attention. As it is, visitors from a foreign land are unknown. The notion that an identical deception either would not or could not occur by the same people ignores quite a bit of what we know of human experience.
As to the two divine names used in Genesis 1 and 2, Elohim (אֱלהִים) is the general name for God in Hebrew. It is grammatically plural and can be used of gods in general. That is not surprising when we consider that Greek does the same with theos (θεός). If that point is seized upon, namely that we cannot know the fixed referent in the case of the generic name, just remember that English does the same, and in fact that is the whole reason we are having this conversation! If the word “gods” could not “double” to refer to the true and the false, then how exactly does it do so in that very objection that either regards (a) there to be more than one, or else (b) no true one at all? The word-use by itself is question-begging.
Now, as to the meat of the critical theory, the idea is specifically that the two names obviously signify two divine beings. The other name is the one behind the capitalized word LORD in our English Bibles. It is Adonai (יְהוָֹה) and is the unspeakable name of God, or Tetragrammaton. But it is also the covenant name of YHWH. Here begins our explanation. The significance of that name being joined so closely with the other is that when Moses moves from Chapter 1 of Genesis to Chapter 2, he is moving from the cosmological account of creation (i.e. from the perspective of the whole universe) to the anthropological account (i.e. from the perspective of man’s vocation in that world). Since man is made in the image of God—and since God is reconstituting humanity in this new people called Israel—the book of Genesis is functioning as a kind of “reintroduction to reality” in the covenanting between God and a new people for a new world. The skeptic may not have interest in such things; but that is frankly his problem and not ours. He is not at liberty to call reason to witness against what is really something beyond his attention span. And as it turns out, “the use of multiple names for a god in a single text is reasonably common in extrabiblical Near Eastern texts.”4
The reality is that twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship has a better understanding of ANE texts than those early critical theorists had, and so there has been a fundamental failure to demonstrate such theories. Such critical models also suffer from an incoherent concept of source evidence. A tension between a redactor who left “seams” and the high quality of the text. For example, Genesis is described by one critical scholar as “deeply fractured and beautifully shaped.”5 That is not logically impossible, but it is rendered implausible when lined up against more longstanding, highly explanatory alternatives.
Can we state the vindication of Mosaic authorship in positive terms? In other words, can we give perfectly reasonable explanations for those items which the critic stares incredulously at? Yes. Consider such a vindication under seven heads: (i) To the anachronisms and Moses’ death: here we have instances of editorial activity, most of which make Scripture more clear to later generations. Just as in Bible translations into other languages, these changes like “Dan” (Gen. 14:14) would need to be made in the Pentateuch for later Jewish audiences. Over a long period of time some geographical and language changes would need to be made in the Pentateuch for later Jewish audiences; (ii) Whether Moses can be called the main author if others write or redact: consider that Moses had already delegated the authority of preserving the legal material to the priests (cf. Deut. 31:9-13, 24-26; 24:8). These men were also responsible to teach the law to the people. The traditional view need not maintain that Moses “wrote every word,” but only that he was the fundamental6 or essential author7; (iii) Consider some references to Moses' writing activity. For instance,
“write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure Joshua hears it” (Exod 17:14);
“At the Lord’s command Moses recorded the stages of their journey” (Num 33:2);
“Moses finished writing in a book the words of the law, from beginning to end, and the book was placed in the ark of the covenant” (Deut 31:24-26).
There was also the “Song of Moses” in Deuteronomy 31:22-32:43 and his writing of the laws (cf. Exod 24:4; 34:27; Deut 5:1b-28:69; 31:9). (iv) Exodus reflects an eyewitness account. In other words, there are an abundance of historical details (e.g., Exod 15:27), an accurate knowledge of Egyptian customs, and a clear first-person perspective of the text—God's people are currently on their way to the Promised Land. (v) Later Old Testament books attest to Mosaic authorship: “All the laws which Moses my servant commanded you” (Josh 1:7-8); “Written in the Law, in the Books of Moses” (2 Chr 25:4; Ezra 6:18; Neh. 13:1). (vi) There is the New Testament evidence: Jesus and the early church connected the Torah with Moses (Matt 19:7); the words “Moses said…” (Mark 7:10); or simply “the law of Moses” (John 1:17; 5:46; 7:23); (vii) The Jewish8 and Christian traditional view of Mosaic authorship was virtually uncontested until the Enlightenment.
The Prophets (נביאים)
Both the Samaritans9 and the Sadducees rejected the non-Mosaic books. There were evidently first century disputes within rival communities over the canonical status of “Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and Esther.”10
Whereas the Hebrew canon does not differ from the canon that the church has received when it comes to the books of the Pentateuch, a difference may be observed with the rest. The Prophets are divided here not between “major” and “minor” but between “former” and “latter.” Among the Former Prophets are (i) Joshua;11 (ii) Judges; (iii) Samuel; (iv) Kings. Among the Latter Prophets are (i) Isaiah; (ii) Jeremiah; (iii) Ezekiel; and (iv) The Twelve.
Another division which is very helpful when it comes to proper interpretation is according to historical setting and audience. So we can recognize the Neo-Assyrian Prophets (750 to 612). In this set of books, there is a basic orientation of prophecy to the Northern Kingdom awaiting judgment through the agency of Assyria, yet also a turning to the Southern Kingdom for a warning to the remnant. Within this grouping, (i) Jonah is about God’s compassion and Israel’s failure to match that mission; (ii) Amos is about Israel’s injustice against the backdrop of pagan injustice; (iii) Hosea is about God’s covenant love for faithless Israel; (iv) Micah is more specifically about Judah’s injustice; and then (v) Isaiah (Chapters 1-39) God’s faithfulness to Ahaz and Hezekiah; whereas chapters 40 and onward look not merely to the post-exilic hopes but to the coming Servant of the Lord and the new world He will usher in; and then finally (vi) Zephaniah focuses on the Day of the Lord. Then we can recognize the Pre-exilic or Neo-Babylonian Prophets (612 to 600ff): (i) Habakkuk; (ii) Jeremiah; and (iii) Ezekiel.
As with the Torah, so with the Prophets, there have been modern criticisms. In no particular order, we can mention that Jonah has been the target of those who say it is not prophetic or historical, but parable. The idea is that it is telling a story. Some who say this are not focusing on a denial of supernatural elements, but rather pointing to the literary characteristics of the book. There is hardly any prophetic message, they say, but only a call to “Repent, for in …” But even granting that storied backdrop, it focuses more on the character’s life than on the message. Jonah represents a disobedient Israel. The fish represents the Babylonian exile. The mischief here is legion. By dividing the usual anti-supernaturalism from the skepticism, and by opposing typology ro historicity, this critical view can easily divide reactions into the extremes of accommodation and wooden literalism.
As to the larger prophetic books, we have two more infamous cases. It is said that there are really two (or even three) Isaiah’s. Hence the expression “Deutero-Isaiah” (or Second Isaiah). This makes a division between Chapters 1-39 which is “Isaiah” himself, whereas Chapters 40-66 began to be attributed to that Second Isaiah. On what grounds do they say this? First, there is the mention of Cyrus (44:28; 45:1, 13). How do you have an eighth century prophet speaking of sixth century and beyond events? Second, Ch. 1 through 39 is the eighth century context: that is, the Assyrian Crisis. Ch. 40 and following is jumping to the middle of the exile into Babylon: so, the sixth century BC and onward. Third, there are said to be theological differences between the first and second parts, chiefly about which attributes of God are on display. The kind of Messianic character depicted in the first half “gives way” to the Servant of the Lord in the second half.
While Daniel belongs to the Writings in the Hebrew canon, we will treat his book here because of the critics’ reason for discounting the canonical dating: prophecy itself. The background is the sixth century. Critics say it had to be written after 168-164. Why? It is because prophecy isn’t possible. Events of Antiochus IV’s death are “inaccurate,” so they draw the line there. Finally, because there is apocalyptic literature many assume it was written under a pseudonym.
Reply to Jonah as Mere Parable. First, parables are usually shorter with little explanation. Second, where there is symbolism, it is deeper than in parables. The “fish” is really an agent of salvation. The book begins with “The word of LORD…” The historicity of the king of Amittai is mentioned. And with the animals “repenting,” this only has to refer to the effects of human actions. Three times we read of “That great city” (also mentioned in Genesis 10 and 11), and the city may be a conglomeration in any event, a metropolitan area. How does the Bible itself view the book? In Matthew 12:38-41, Jesus roots the resurrection in the historicity of Jonah being in the fish. DeYoung argues that the Scriptures themselves argue for historicity about such portions. And he uses this as the quintessential passage. He considers the possibility that Jesus treated “Just as…” in the same way that we would cite “the men of Gondor,” but he then argues from the logic of the passage that this is not analogous.12
Reply to ‘Deutero-Isaiah’. First, if we look at the New Testament citations of Isaiah, we will see that each part of Isaiah is referenced. In other words, references from each of the two or three parts divided up in this theory. Yet they are treated as if given by one author. Second, the entire case about God’s character in Isaiah itself would be negated by the critical view. The basic theology teaches that God is like this—namely, “knowing the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10)—unlike the idols. Certainly, no long view, whether of the second exile community or of the end of the ages, could be too long, given such an ultimate Author. Third, as to alleged theological differences, the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” is a unifying concept for Isaiah. There is almost perfect balance throughout the sections of Isaiah. The expression is used only six times throughout the rest of the Old Testament. In sections 1-39 it is mentioned 12 times, and 13 times in 40 through 66.13 Finally, it should be noted that some of these themes that the critic sees as divergent show up in the opposite half. Longman and Dillard speak to this,
“The circularity in this argument is hard to miss. Having already divided Isaiah into two parts (1-39 and 40-66), any characteristics of the second part that are found in the first are declared to have been misplaced or to be in later additions. The theory is salvaged by dismissing as spurious any evidence to the contrary.”14
Reply to Critics of Daniel. The linguistic evidence of both languages used points to a time prior to the second century BC. The timeline is too short for a book to be written, copied, circulated and adopted into the canon if it were a post-third-century product. Yet Daniel appears in the LXX in the early third century BC and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Writings (כְּתוּבִים)
Beginning with structure, the books included here are: Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. Again, this has implications for interpretation. Ruth is the excellent woman (Boaz the excellent man). For Dr. Futato and others, this is why it follows Proverbs. Ruth is the female counterpart to the message of Proverbs addressed to the male perspective.15 Likewise with another contrasting pair: Esther follows Lamentations — the faithful woman in exile; while Daniel is the man living in exile. Then finally, Chronicles ends the Hebrew canon with the summons, “Let us go up…”
Naturally the critics will apply their same presuppositions to this part of the canon as to the other two. The evolutionary view of Israelite history that was absorbed by the likes of Wellhausen saw things progressing from animism to henotheism to monotheism. Consequently, the Psalms were a product of post-exilic maturity of the prophets. How did this work? First, there was the collapse of the monarchy, which led to a new prominence of individual piety. Into the official voids that ensued, there was the development of a legalism with an overemphasis on the law. Wellhausen dated most of the Psalms very late (500-400 BC), and some in his school went further, arguing for a date as late as the Maccabean era (160’s BC).
Another advocate of form criticism was Hermann Gunkel. He identified the Psalms as arising from individual or communal life situations (Sitz im Leben). He also stressed the oral origins of the Psalms. He pictured a long oral history with patterns of speech which were fixed by the time it was codified in writing. The upshot is a development from ritual-worship toward individual use. This began a tradition of critical theories that focused on the Psalms originating in “the cult” setting so that they were only later used by individuals. For Brevard Childs, the Psalms really were Davidic, but not because he wrote them. David became the “model worshiper,” and thus the Psalms functioned within a cult context and were historicized by placing them within the history of David, who is pictured as a person who experiences the full range of human emotions.
Our reply here will not differ much from the earlier replies, since these critiques do nothing but pour new imaginations on the same logical errors. This is purely and simply nineteenth century philosophy applied to biblical genre and development issues. Evolutionary presuppositions control the “investigation.” With respect to the Psalms, as you move from the oral to the written, you move from the dynamic to the rigid, the simple to the formalized—and as one can even imagine a bit of Neitzsche interposed on the Hegellian foundation, one even senses the Dionysian David giving way to the Apollinarian prophets and priests.
Concluding Remarks
Ultimately, if Jesus and the Apostles, whom He promised as a perfect channel of His own teaching, held a view on the Hebrew canon, then this takes precedence over all. To come right to that point, many have pointed to Luke 24:44 as just such a rule. There Jesus said,
“that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
It is evident that this was one way to say Law, Prophets, and Writings, since the Psalms were the first book of the Writings, and this was often a way of describing the whole.
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1. cf. Charles L. Quarles lists 2 through 6 in “Higher Criticism: What Has It Shown?” in Cowan & Wilder, ed., In Defense of the Bible (Nashville: B&H Academic 2013), 66-68.
2. Evangelical authors, Goldingay and Lucas, are said to have accepted this evidence and concluded that this was not problematic because “such writings were known in the ancient Near East and did not intend to deceive their audience,” though Longman (1991) and Longman-Dillard (1996: 373) argue against this.
3. Childs quoted in Tremper Longman & Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 43.
4. Longman & Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 48.
5. David M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), vii
6. Edward J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Revised Ed. 1960)
7. Longman & Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 42.
8. cf. Ecclesiasticus 24:23, Aristobulus [cf. Beckwith, 19], Philo, Josephus, Mishnah, and Talmud.
9. The theory of H. E. Ryle’s Canon of the Old Testament (1892) held that Jewish acceptance of their canon came in three stages, corresponding to the three parts of the TNK. Consequently, the Samaritans final break with the Judeans occurred while only the Torah was formally canonized, that is, in the fifth century B.C.
10. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 2.
11. As with the books of Moses, so here, Joshua’s authorship is challenged due to the expression “to this day” (4:9; 5:9; 6:25; 7:26; 8:28-29; 9:27; 10:27; 13:13; 15:63; 16:10), which makes little sense for Joshua to have said in his own day.
12. Kevin DeYoung, Taking God At His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016),
13. Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 306.
14. Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 305, n.2.
15. cf. Mark Futato, Lectures on Judges through Esther, RTS Fall, 2016.
