2
The Formation of the Bible
The Hebrew Bible, from which most of the history of the Jews discussed
in the previous chapter is known, was believed by them to have been
written by divine inspiration. Most of the Bible consists in a continuous
historical narrative, in the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses), Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, Kings, Ezra– Nehemiah and Chronicles, of the origins of
Israel from the travails of Abraham and his descendants down to the
return to Zion of some Babylonian exiles and their attempts to re-
establish Jerusalem as a religious and national centre. The books of
Ruth, Esther and Daniel contain separate narratives of significant events
at various points within this national history. The books of Isaiah, Jer-
emiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos and a number of lesser preachers
from Obadiah to Malachi preserve oracular teachings ascribed to
prophets whose lives and careers are in some cases also mentioned in
the historical books. Wisdom teachings and theological reflection are
found in the pithy apophthegms of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the sober
narrative of Job. The book of Psalms contains a rich collection of reli-
gious lyric poetry, very different from the intense love poetry of the
Song of Songs. Beginning with an explanation of the creation of the
universe and humankind, and ranging in topic from national, and
indeed international, concerns to the most personal and private, these
books use a wide variety of literary genres and styles. Instructions for
worship, and legal commands and prohibitions, feature strongly in the
Pentateuch (especially Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) and were
to play a major role in the later development of Judaism, but they con-
stitute only a small part of the Bible as a whole.^1
How had this collection come to be written? People in antiquity
thought of the biblical books as each having had an author, but it is
likely that many of these works were the product of several generations
of writers who reworked or added to a text inherited from earlier gen-
erations, sometimes incorporating material from an oral tradition,