The Jewish Scriptures: Texts, Versions, Canons
Eugene Ulrich
The texts that eventually came to constitute the canonical books of the
Hebrew Bible or Old Testament display a pattern of developmental growth
in their composition. Like a cross-section of a tree with multiple rings,
they show repeated stages of new growth from their beginnings, which are
usually lost in the darkness of history, continually until the end of the Sec-
ond Temple period. This developmental growth did not cease until some
time after the destruction of the Temple in 70c.e., when it halted rather
abruptly.The Composition of the Scriptural Texts
The popular imagination, formed as early as rabbinic times, envisioned a
few holy men (e.g., Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel) as the authors of the
books that bear their names, similar to classical or modern authors who in-
dividually compose and publish books under their own name. Prior to the
Enlightenment, however, several attentive readers began to raise suspicions
about those views of authorship, and buoyed by the Enlightenment, ques-
tions concerning authorship gained momentum, resulting in sustained,
critical analysis of the literary character of the biblical books. The over-
whelming conclusion of this international and interconfessional scholar-
ship was that the books of the biblical anthology were composed in stages.
Small units of what usually began as oral material — stories, laws, songs,
proverbs — were gathered into larger, growing literary complexes. Earlier
source materials were brought together into a unified work by an anony-
mous person who is usually labeled an editor or redactor. Tradents and121EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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