Review of Part 1 of A History of the Jews and discussions on My Personal Beliefs

October 15th, 2020

I just finished reading Part 1 of A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson and I wanted to do a quick review as well as share some thoughts that I was having. The book is not a scholarly or academic endeavor but derives from the author’s reading and interpretation of some academic literature. The author states “This is a personal interpretation of Jewish history”. Part 1 of the book covers the history of the ancient Israelites from Noah/Abraham to the Babylonian exile and discusses the archeological finds, textual study, and the author’s personal interpretation of what happened and why it happened. Having read Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman and The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman, which were written by scholars, I doubtless had some reservations about some of the interpretations presented. I do not wish to go into all of the different differences of interpretation as I don’t think that it is necessarily important especially with the early part of Jewish history plus it may ruffle some people’s feathers a bit, but I will highlight some things that stuck out to me. To echo The Bible Unearthed:

The [Hebrew] Bible’s integrity and, in fact, it’s historicity, do not depend on dutiful historical “proofs” of any of its particular events or personalities, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the trumpet blasts that toppled the walls of Jericho, or David’s slaying of Goliath with a single shot of his sling. The power of the biblical saga stems from its being a compelling and coherent narrative expression of the timeless themes of a people’s liberation, continuing resistance to oppression, and quest for social equality. It eloquently expresses the deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences, and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive. In specific historical terms, we now know that the [Hebrew] Bible’s epic saga first emerged as a response to the pressures, difficulties, challenges, and hopes faced by the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah in the decades before it’s destruction and by the even tinier Temple community in Jerusalem in the post-exilic period. Indeed, archeology’s greatest contribution to our understanding of the [Hebrew] Bible may be the realization that such small, relatively poor, and remote societies as late monarchic Judah and post-exilic Yehud could have produced the main outlines of this enduring epic in such a short period of time. Such a realization is crucial, for it is only when we recognize when and why the ideas, images, and events described in the [Hebrew] Bible came to be so skillfully woven together that we can at last begin to appreciate the true genius and continuing power of this single most influential literary and spiritual creation in the history of humanity.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 318

Paul Johnson does a good job treating the biblical material not as a monolithic book and not having a take-all-or-leave-all attitude. His book is not one of apologetics or doctrinal authority which I appreciated. I think he successfully captured the various stages of development that occurred in the history of the Israelite people and their religion. He maintains the sort of nuance and complexity with the biblical materials that I think should be maintained (or at the very least acknowledged) when studying the bible for religious purposes. A passage from the earlier part of the book reads:

The Jews who worked the Bible into something approaching its present shape evidently thought that their race, though founded by Abraham, could trace forebears even further and called the ultimate human progenitor Adam. In our present state of knowledge, we must assume that the very earliest chapters of the book of Genesis are schematic and symbolic rather than factual descriptions. Chapters 1-5, with their identification of such concepts as knowledge, evil, shame, jealousy and crime, are explanations rather than actual episodes, though embedded in them are residual memories. It is hard, for instance, to believe that the story of Cain and Abel is complete fiction; Cain’s reply, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’, has the ring of truth, and the notion of the shamed and hunted man, with the mark of guilt upon him, is so powerful as to suggest historic fact. What strikes one about the Jewish description of creation and early man, compared with pagan cosmogonies, is the lack of interest in the mechanics of how the world and its creatures came into existence, which led the Egyptian and Mesopotamian narrators into such weird contortions. The Jews simply assume the pre-existence of an omnipotent God, who acts but is never described or characterized, and so has the force and invisibility of nature itself: it is significant that the first chapter of Genesis, unlike any other cosmogony of antiquity, fits perfectly well, in essence, with modern scientific explanations of the origin of the universe, not least the ‘Big Bang’ theory.
A History of the Jews, pg 7-8

This goes back to something I got from The Bible Unearthed that the early parts of the Bible are “neither historical truth nor literary fiction”. This also echoes what I read in Before Philosophy by Henri Frankfort that while the Mesopotamians observed their gods in nature, the Hebrews abstracted this and said that their singular God existed outside of nature, but was able to act in nature. Neither the earth, sun, nor heaven was divine, but reflections of God’s greatness, however, their stories still reflect elements of myths of origin, organization, and evaluation, albeit from a uniquely human-centered perspective. This Hebrew myth was that of a chosen people, a divine promise made, and of a terrifying moral burden. Although the divine transcended nature, it still had a specific relationship with human beings, or rather a specific group of human beings. History itself becomes the origin of meaning for the Hebrews rather than cosmic phenomena. History had become the revelation of the dynamic will of God. Touching on the mention of the Big Bang as well, I rather like this video of Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder discussing how science has proved the existence of God. He makes references to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe which is a spacecraft that was used to measure background radiation from the Big Bang. The following diagram is the condensed knowledge of the scientific community of how the universe was created and how it got to where we are today:

Gerald states that the quantum fluctuations at the beginning of the chart are the laws of nature (quantum physics and the laws of relativity). These forces are not physical, act on the physical, create the physical from nothing, and predate the universe which Gerald asserts is also the biblical definition of God. Throughout engineering school, I’ve learned about the Laws of Motion and the Laws of Thermodynamics as well which, along with the explanation above, tend to make me skeptical of certain claims asserted by Christians (specifically young-earth creationism or those that claim that the bible is literally true). At present, I am working on stripping away all of the bad theology to find my core beliefs and building my faith from that core.

Getting back to A History of the Jews, I liked a couple of passages that were talking about specific people, namely Abraham, Jacob, and Moses. I’ve transcribed them below:

Abraham may perhaps be most accurately described as a Henotheist: a believer in a sole God, attached to a particular people, who none the less recognized the attachment of other races to their own gods. With this qualification, he is the founder of the Hebrew religious culture, since he inaugurates its two salient characteristics: the covenant with God and the donation of The Land. The notion of the covenant is an extraordinary idea, with no parallel in the ancient Near East. It is true that Abraham’s covenant with God, being personal, has not reached the sophistication of Moses’s covenant on behalf of an entire people. But the essentials are already there: a contract of obedience in return for special favor, implying for the first time in history the existence of an ethical God who acts as a kind of benign constitutional monarch found by his own righteous agreements.
The Genesis account, with its intermittent dialogue between Abraham and God, suggests that Abraham’s grasp and acceptance of the momentous implications of his bargain were gradual, an example of the way in which the will of God is sometimes revealed in progressive stages. The truth was finally brought home to Abraham, as described in Genesis 22, when God tests him by commanding him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This passage is an important milestone in the Bible, as well as being one of the most dramatic and puzzling in the entire history of the religion, because it first raises the problem of the theodicy, God’s sense of justice. Many Jews and Christians have found the passage unconscionable, in that Abraham is commanded to do something not only cruel in itself but contrary to the repudiation of human sacrifice which is part of the bedrock of Hebrew ethics and all subsequent forms of Judeo-Christian worship. Great Jewish philosophers have struggled to make the story conform to Jewish ethics. Philo argued that it testified to Abraham’s detachment from custom or any other ruling passion except the love of God, his recognition that we must give God what we value most, confident that, God being just, we will not lose it. Maimonides agreed that this was a test case of extreme limits of the love and fear God rightfully demands. Nahmanides saw it as the first instance of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free will. In 1843 Soren Kierkegaard published his philosophical study of this episode, Fear and Trembling, in which she portrays Abraham as a “Knight of Faith”, who has to renounce for God’s sake not only his son but his ethical ideals. Most Jewish and Christian moral theologians reject this view, implying an unacceptable conflict between God’s will and ethical ideals, though others would agree that the episode is a warning that religion does not necessarily reflect naturalistic ethics.
A History of the Jews, pg 17

The first thing I want to touch on was the idea that Abraham was a Henotheist. Henotheism is the worship of a single God while not denying the existence or possible existence of other deities. Quite a few times throughout my readings I’ve come across the various gods that were worshipped in the ancient Near East: Mesopotamian gods, Moabite gods, Edomite gods, and apparently Canaanite El gods. The book mentioned later when talking discussing Isaiah about a shift in the religion:

The Israelites, under the inspiration of Isaiah, were moving towards pure monotheism. There are many passages in the earlier parts of the Bible where Yahweh is seen not so much as the sole God but as the most powerful one, who can act in other gods’ territories. In Deutero-Isaiah, however, the existence of other gods is denied, not just in practice but in ideological theory: “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. Moreover, it is now stated clearly that God is universal, ubiquitous and omnipotent. God is the motivating force, and the sole motivating force, throughout history. He created the universe; he directs it; he will end it. Israel is is part of his plan, but then so is everyone else. So if the Assyrians strike, they do so at his command; and if the Babylonians carry the nation into exile, that is God’s will too. The wilderness religion of Moses is beginning to mature into a sophisticated world faith, to which all humanity can turn for answers
A History of the Jews, pg 76

It is clear to me from reading the Old Testament and various other books, that God or the idea of God has changed over time and the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of development and successive revelations. The only conclusions that I have with this are that 1) The human writer’s ideas about God changed over time as their cultures, societies, and intellects changed or 2) God has been revealing himself this whole time, but we stopped at the New Testament. I certainly think that both of these have some truth. It certainly seems like the Bible is a human invention, but who’s to say that Isaac Newton, upon witnessing an apple falling from a tree, did not have a revelation given to him by God about one of God’s immutable laws: the law of universal gravitation. Who’s to say that any of the laws of the universe are not his divine law. I think this is a fundamental part of my belief system and that discovering things about the nature of the universe gets us closer to understanding the nature of God. While I think the doctrine of divine dictation doesn’t make sense, I can get behind the idea that the Bible is inspired by God (or at the very least the idea of God).

Touching on the second part from the passage about Abraham concerning the sacrifice of Isaac, in Who Wrote the Bible? Friedman says in the notes on the identification of the authors for Gen 22:11-16a that:

The story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac is traced to E. It refers to the deity as Elohim in vv. 1, 3, 8, and 9. But, just as Abraham’s hand is raised with the knife to sacrifice Isaac, the text says that the angel of Yahweh stops him (v. 11). The verses in which Isaac is spared refer to the deity as Yahweh (vv. 11-14). These verses are followed by a report that the angel speaks a second time and says, “… because you did not withhold your son from me….” Thus the four verses which report that Isaac was not sacrificed involve both a contradiction and a change of the name of the deity. As extraordinary as it may seem, it has been suggested that in the original version of this story Isaac was actually sacrificed, and that the intervening four verses were added subsequently, when the notion of human sacrifice was rejected (perhaps by the person who combined J and E). Of course, the words “you did not withhold your son” might mean only that Abraham had been willing to sacrifice his som. But still it must be noted that the text concludes (v. 19), “And Abraham returned to his servants.” Isaac is not mentioned. Moreover, Isaac never again appears as a character in E. Interestingly, a later midrashic tradition developed this notion, that Isaac actually had been sacrificed. This tradition is discussed in S. Spiegel’s The Last Trial (New York: Shocken, 1969; Hebrew edition 1950).
Who Wrote the Bible?, pg. 238-239

For me, it is apparent that the binding of Isaac is an example of a story being compiled from different sources and modified to suit the needs of the community at the time that it was written. But I don’t think that is where the deeper discussion lies. Something interesting that was mentioned in the passage from A History of the Jews was that of divine foreknowledge and free will potentially playing a role in the story. While I don’t think I can get into what was said by the Jewish philosophers that were mentioned, I want to share a brief thing about free will that I’ve thought about and explored. I’ve learned that a person never has to do anything, but rather they choose to do it. This is more of a motivational type saying – if someone says they have to do a certain thing, I say no, they choose to do that thing. They could choose not to do that thing but the reason they are choosing to do it is that the outcome of doing it is more desirable than the outcome of not doing it. This feeds into another idea that I’ve had in that the only reason we do anything is because we want to do it. A person may say “but I go to the gym even though I don’t want to go” which I say may be true, but that just means there is a stronger want that makes them go: they want to be healthy, they want to look good, and/or they want to get stronger, etc. Similarly, the person may not end up going to the gym because they didn’t want to go, but the want is still there: they wanted not to go. My point is to say that if you can understand your wants, you can modify your choices to achieve happiness and success. My thoughts about all of this hadn’t gotten into the idea of free will when I happened to look up a couple of Youtube videos on the subject that would argue that we do not have free will:

This invariably opens up a whole can of worms and I am sure that I will come back to it at some point, but to summarize briefly what I understand at the present moment: In order to choose thing A over thing B, you have to want thing A over thing B but can you control what it is that you want? The answer is no, you cannot choose to want thing B over thing A. This is very simplistic and doesn’t come close to unpacking this, but for me, this seems to have potentially life-altering consequences for anyone who subscribes to it. I should like to explore this more and see how it practically applies to living one’s life as well as if it comes in conflict with specific Christian doctrine and theology. One of the videos above mentioned stoicism which is something that has been recommended by my counselor to look into as well. I will be reading The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius at some point in the future which I am looking forward to which should hopefully provide some illumination on this topic.

Getting back to A History of the Jews (This book has certainly got me thinking, haha), the author mentioned some stuff about Jacob and his name transition to Israel and that this was the time when the Israelites started seeing themselves as a group:

Working out the specific tribal histories of all the groups mentioned in the bible would be impossibly complicated, even if the materials existed. The salient point is that Jacob-Israel is associated with the time at which the Israelites first became conscious of their common identity within the structure of a tribal system which was already ancient and dear to them. Religious and family links were equally strong and inextricable in practice, as they were to be throughout Jewish history. In Jacob’s day, men still carried their household gods about with them, but it was already becoming possible to think in terms of a national God too.
A History of the Jews, pg 21

I agree that it would be terribly difficult to trace the tribal histories, but I think the mention of thinking about a national God in Jacob’s day is not necessarily correct, in my opinion, from other things that I have read. To summarize from Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman, the Documentary Hypothesis/JEPD Theory is a theory formulated from the study of passages in the Torah that had certain similarities. Grouping these similarities revealed evidence that certain parts of the Torah were authored/compiled by different people (J, E, P, D, and R) in Israel’s history as opposed to being authored solely by Moses (via divine dictation as some people believe). The J stands for Jahwist/Yahwist and was associated with the divine name Yahweh/Jehovah. The E stands for Elohist and was identified as referring to the deity as God (in Hebrew, Elohim). The P stands for Priestly and is associated with the majority of matters concerning priests. D stands for Deuteronomist and was the source found only in Deuteronomy. There is also an R which stands for Redactor who was the person that compiled all of the sources together. J and E were compiled sometime between the transition from tribal communities (1200 BCE) to the monarchy and fall of Israel in (722 BCE). Friedman emphasizes that the J source developed in the southern kingdom and the E source developed in the northern kingdom. When the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE it is plausible to suspect that a lot of northern kingdom refugees migrated to the southern kingdom and brought the E source with them where it was then combined with the J source to form the JE source. P appeared not long after JE was compiled and served as a counter-balance to some of the stories from JE. The P source focused heavily on priests and priestly duties and served to elevate certain priestly families. There was basically a power struggle between Aaronid priests and Mushite (Moses) priests and this shows up in the stories with Aaron and Moses as the primary characters. I can’t remember the full evidence, but one thing I do remember was that in some parts of the Bible the text reads Levitical priests and in other parts, it reads priests and Levites. The P source is associated with King Hezekiah who reigned from 715-686 BCE and who implemented religious reforms that favored priests (I believe Aaronid priests). The D source is associated with King Josiah who reigned from 640-609 BCE and has two distinct source periods Dtr-1 and Dtr-2. The author-compiler of Dtr-1 was likely in the court of King Josiah and may have also been the same person that wrote Dtr-2 which was likely written in the days around the fall of the southern kingdom (605-586 BCE). The D source is a compilation of the history from the book of Deuteronomy to the books of 1 & 2 Kings (excluding Ruth) and was used to explain the world that the ancient Israelites occupied (That world being the world from 722 BCE to 586 BCE). Friedman asserts that the author/compiler of this “Deuteronomic history” was likely Jeremiah due to several pieces of evidence of which I remember that one piece of evidence was that the books of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy had similar language and sentence structures. The Redactor then compiled all of these pieces together to form the first Bible. Friedman asserts that this redactor was likely Ezra and that it was likely composed in exile (between 586 and 538 BC) or shortly after the return from exile. Friedman also mentioned that a colleague of his posited that the first Bible likely contained The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. All in all, it was quite a fascinating read and something that I found very insightful. Based on the categorization in Who Wrote the Bible? the story of Jacob becoming Israel is found in both the E source (Gen 32:22-32) and P source (Gen 35:9-15). The dating of these sources was before the fall of Israel in 722 BCE for the E source and sometime after the fall of Israel in 722 BCE for the P source. It makes sense based on the other things that I’ve read that this would be the time that a national consciousness began to arise (This time coinciding with the climax of the continual crystallization of the monarchical, state, and priestly institutions that were forming specifically in Judah). I went back and reread a section from The Bible Unearthed entitled Searching for the Patriarchs because I wanted to see if there was anything related to this story of Jacob becoming Israel, but The Bible Unearthed is more concerned about locales and how they relate to the stories rather than the stories themselves. I did come across this one section entitled Judah’s Destiny which I have transcribed in full:

The German biblical scholar Martin Noth long ago argued that the accounts of the events of Israel’s earliest periods of existence – the stories of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the wandering in Sinai – we’re not originally composed as a single saga. He theorized that they were the separate traditions of individual tribes that were assembled into a unified narrative to serve the cause of the political unification of a scattered and heterogeneous Israelite population. In his opinion, the geographical focus of each of the cycles of the stories, particularly of the Patriarchs, offers an important clue to where the composition – not necessarily the event – of the story took place. Many [of] the stories connected with Abraham are set in the southern part of the hill country, specifically the region of Hebron in southern Judah. Isaac is associated with the southern desert fringe of Judah, in particular the Beersheba region. In contrast, Jacob’s activities take place for the most part in the northern hill country and Transjordan – areas that were always a special interest to the northern kingdom of Israel. Noth therefore suggested that the patriarchs were originally quite separate regional ancestors, who were eventually brought together in a single genealogy in an effort to create a united history.
It is now evident that the selection of Abraham, with his close connection to Hebron, Judah’s earliest royal city, and to Jerusalem (“Salem” in Genesis 14:18), was meant also to emphasize the primacy of Judah even in the earliest eras of Israel’s history. It is almost as if an American scripture describing pre-Columbian history placed inordinate attention on Manhattan Island or in the tract of land that would later become Washington, D.C. The pointed political meaning of the inclusion of such a detail in a larger narrative at least calls into question its historical credibility.
As we will see in much greater detail in the chapters to follow, Judah was a rather isolated and sparsely populated kingdom until the eighth century BCE. It was hardly comparable in territory, wealth, and military might to the Kingdom of Israel in the north. Literacy was very limited and its capital, Jerusalem, was a small, remote hill country town. Yet after the northern kingdom of Israel was liquidated by the Assyrian empire and 720 BCE, Judah grew enormously in population, developed complex state institutions, and emerged as a meaningful power in the region. It was ruled by an ancient dynasty and possessed the most important surviving Temple to the God of Israel. Hence in the late eighth century and in the early seventh century, Judah developed a unique sense of its own importance in divine destiny. It saw its very survival as evidence of God’s intention, from the time of the patriarchs, that Judah should rule over all the land of Israel. As the only surviving Israelite polity, Judah saw itself in a more down-to-earth sense as the natural heir to the Israelite territories and the Israelite population that had survived the Assyrian onslaught. What was needed was a powerful way to express this understanding both to the people of Judah and to the scattered Israelite communities under Assyrian rule. Thus the Pan-Israelite idea, with Judah in its center, was born.
The patriarchal narratives thus depict a unified ancestry of the Israelite people that leads back to the most Judean of patriarchs – Abraham. Yet even though the Genesis stories revolve mainly around Judah, they do not neglect to honor northern Israelite traditions. In that respect it is significant that Abraham built altars to YHWH at Shechem and Bethel (Genesis 12:7-8), the two most important cult centers of the northern kingdom – as well as at Hebron (Genesis 13:18), the most important center of Judah after Jerusalem. The figure of Abraham therefore functions as the unifier of northern and southern traditions, bridging north and south. The fact that Abraham is credited with establishing the altars at Bethel and Shechem is clear testimony to the Judahites’ claim that even the places of worship polluted by idolatry during the time of the Israelite kings were once legitimately sacred sites connected to the southern patriarch.
It is entirely possible and even probable that the individual episodes in the patriarchal narratives are based on ancient local traditions. Yet the use to which they are put in the order in which they are arranged transform them into a powerful expression of seventh century Judahite dreams. Indeed, the superiority of Judah over all the others could not be emphasized more strongly in the last blessing of Jacob to his son’s quoted earlier. Though enemies might be pressing on all sides, Judah, it is promised, will never be overthrown.
The patriarchal traditions therefore must be considered as a sort of pious “prehistory” of Israel in which Judah played a decisive role. They describe the very early history of the nation, delineate ethnic boundaries, emphasize that the Israelites were outsiders and not part of the indigenous population of Canaan, and embrace the traditions of both the north and the south while ultimately stressing the spirit or superiority of Judah. In the admittedly fragmentary evidence of the E version of the patriarchal stories, presumably compiled in the northern kingdom of Israel before its destruction and 720 BCE, the tribe of Judah plays almost no role. But by the late eighth and certainly seventh century BCE, Judah was the center of what was left of the Israelite nation. In that light, we should regard the J version of the patriarchal narratives primarily as a literary attempt to refine the unity of the people of Israel – rather than as an accurate record of the lives of historical characters living more than a millennium before.
The biblical story of the patriarchs would have seemed compellingly familiar to the people of Judah in the seventh century BCE. In the stories, the familiar peoples and threatening enemies of the present were ranged around the encampments and grazing grounds of Abraham and his offspring. The landscape of the patriarchal stories is a dreamlike romantic vision of the pastoral past, especially appropriate to the pastoral background of a large population of the Judahite population. It was stitched together from memory, snatches of ancient customs, legends of the birth of peoples, and the concerns aroused by contemporary conflicts. The many sources and episodes that were combined are a testimony to the richness of the traditions from which the biblical narrative was drawn – and the diverse audience of Judahites and Israelites to whom it was aimed.
The Bible Unearthed, pg. 43-46

I didn’t want to get too in-depth with this other than to say I feel that Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman (along with Richard Elliott Friedman) have done a good job of summarizing a plausible explanation for the history of ancient Israel and while I’m not saying that Paul Johnson’s history is wrong and that this history is right, I tend to favor the academic interpretation over the personal interpretation. I don’t have the time to really dive into the intricacies of the academic research on ancient Israel nor do I want to, but I want to ensure that I don’t lose sight of how complicated the history of the composition of the Bible actually is. The reason I’m putting these big long passages into this is to 1) relay specifically what I’ve read and what has convinced me of my beliefs in the hopes that if someone were to read this they would understand where I’m coming from and the complexity with which I hold these beliefs and 2) to organize the passages that stuck out to me so that I can refer to and modify them later, rather than having to refer back to the books themselves. I can imagine that there are some people that I will interact with that will take great offense to what my personal beliefs are with regards to the history of Israel from the academic sources I’ve read and I want to make sure that it’s understood that my beliefs are not simple. Moving ahead to Moses, I liked what Paul Johnson had to say about him:

Moses is the fulcrum figure in Jewish history, the hinge around which it all turns. If Abraham was the ancestor of the race, Moses was the essentially creative force, the molder of the people; under him and through him, they became a distinctive people, with a future as a nation. He was a Jewish archetype, like Joseph, but quite different and far more formidable. He was a prophet and a leader; a man of decisive actions and electric presence, capable of huge wrath and ruthless resolve; but also a man of intense spirituality, loving solitary communion with himself and God in the remote countryside, seeing visions and epiphanies and apocalypses; and yet not a hermit or anchorite but an active spiritual force in the world, hating injustice, fervently seeking to create a utopia, a man who not only acted as [an] intermediary between God and man but sought to translate the most intense idealism into practical statesmanship, and noble concepts into details of everyday life. Above all, he was a lawmaker and judge, the engineer of a mighty framework to enclose in a structure of rectitude every aspect of public and private conduct – a totalitarian of the spirit.
The books of the Bible which recount his work, especially Exodus, Deuteronomy and Numbers, present Moses as a giant conduit through which the divine radiance and ideology poured into the hearts and minds of the people. But we must also see Moses as an intensely original person, becoming progressively, through experiences which were both horrific and ennobling, a fierce creative force, turning the world upside down, taking everyday concepts accepted unthinkingly by countless generations and transforming them into something totally new, so the world becomes a quite different place in consequence, and there can be no turning back to the old ways of seeing things. He illustrates the fact, which great historians have always recognized, that mankind does not invariably progress by imperceptible steps but sometimes takes a giant leap, often under the dynamic propulsion of a solitary, outsize personality. That is why the contention of Wellhausen and his school that Moses was a later fiction and the Mosaic code a fabrication of the post-Exilic priests in the second half of the first millennium BC – a view still held by some historians today – is skepticism carried to the point of fanaticism, a vandalizing of the human record. Moses was beyond the power of the human mind to invent, and his power leaps out from the page of the biblical narrative, as it once imposed itself on a difficult and divided people, often little better than a frightened mob.
Yet it is important to note that Moses, though an outsize figure, was in no sense a superhuman one. Jewish writers and sages, fighting against the strong tendency in antiquity to deify founder-figures, often went out of their way to stress the human weaknesses and failings of Moses. But there was no need; it is all in the record. Perhaps the most convincing aspect of the biblical presentation is the way in which it shows Moses as hesitant and uncertain almost to the point of cowardice, mistaken, wrongheaded, foolish, irritable and, what is somewhat remarkable, bitterly conscious of his shortcomings. It is very rare indeed for a great man to confess: “I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.” [Exodus 4:10ff] Lack of articulation is about the last disqualification a lawgiver and statesmen will admit. Still more striking are the images of Moses as an isolated, rather desperate and inefficient figure, struggling with the burdens of a huge role he has reluctantly accepted but grimly seeks to discharge.
A History of the Jews, pg 26-28

I agree with Paul Johnson’s assertion that Moses is the fulcrum-figure in the Old Testament narrative and I like the description that he gave of Moses throughout. I also agree with his statement about Wellhausen’s assertion and I’m very glad that Richard Elliott Friedman rejects that assertion as well. Friedman asserts that the earliest stories as we know them would have been compiled around the time of the fall of Israel (722 BCE) at the latest (i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers). Friedman addresses the fact that most historians subscribe to the P source as post-exilic quite nicely and I suggest anybody reading this to read that book (I don’t think I mentioned it during my review, but Who Wrote the Bible? is laid out like a mystery novel which was very cool and engaging). The third part of that passage is interesting because it talks about the humanness of Moses. In Who Wrote the Bible? Friedman talked about how the different sources were essentially competing for the narrative between Aaron and Moses, priests and non-priests, and Levite priests and non-Levite priests. I couldn’t find it again, but Friedman talked about how these competing narratives ended up making Moses into a very flawed and human character like what is described in the passage from A History of the Jews. I’ve included a couple of passages from what I could find about this dynamic:

P was written as an alternative to JE. The JE stories regularly said: “And Yahweh said unto Moses….” [Exod 6:1; 7:14; 8:16; 10:1; Num 11:16,23; 14:11]. But the author of P often made it: “And Yahweh said unto Moses and unto Aaron….” [Exod 6:13; 7:8; 9:8; 12:1; Lev 11:1; 13:1; 14:33; 15:1]. In JE, miracles are performed in Egypt using Moses’ staff [Exod 7:15, 17; 9:23; 10:13]. But the author of P made it Aaron’s staff [Exod 6:10-12; 7:19; 8:1, 12-13]. In JE, Aaron is introduced as Moses’ “Levite brother.” [Exod 4:14]. This would only mean that the two are fellow members of the tribe of Levi, not that they are literally brothers. But the author of P states categorically that Aaron and Moses were brothers, sons of the same mother and father, and that Aaron was the firstborn [Exod 7:7]. In a P genealogy of the Levites, Aaron’s family is given but not Moses’s [Exod 6:20-25].
In P, there are no sacrifices in any of the stories until the last chapter of Exodus. There, the first sacrifice in P is the story of the sacrifice on the day that Aaron is consecrated as High Priest [Exod 40:13, 29-32]. After all, all sacrifices in P are performed by Aaron or by his sons. The author of P, it seems, did not want to promote the idea that there was a precedent for anyone besides an Aaronid priest to offer a sacrifice. In JE, there are stories that involve sacrifices by Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and others. But the author of P either left the sacrifice out of the story or, in some cases, left the story out altogether.
Who Wrote the Bible, pg 170-171

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about P is the way its author deals with Moses. This author was in an extremely sensitive position. The rival priesthood, who were quite possibly descendants of Moses, brought a torah which made Aaron look bad. This writer could not so easily respond by writing a work that made Moses a heretic or an unjust accuser. It was Moses, after all. Moses was the national hero and founder, who led the liberation from slavery and mediated the covenant at Sinai. It was one thing to say that Aaron was Moses’ older brother. That was not offensive in itself. After all, Jacob and Joseph were not firstborn either. It was another thing to try to make up a story in which Moses was denigrated.
Who Wrote the Bible?, pg. 177

It’s clear that there were competing narratives. They couldn’t completely get rid of Moses since he was that fulcrum-figure that was mentioned earlier. Friedman further discusses these sources with regard to the D source:

The combination of P with J, E, and D was even more extraordinary than the combination of J and E with each other had been centuries earlier. P was polemic-it was an answer-torah to J and E. JE denigrated Aaron. P denigrated Moses. JE assumed that any Levite could be a priest. P said that only men who are descendants of Aaron could be priests. JE said that there were angels, the animals occasionally could talk, and that God could be found standing on a rock or walking through the Garden of Eden. P would have none of that.
D, meanwhile, came from a circle of people who are hostile to P as the P-circle were to JE. These two priestly groups had struggled, over centuries, for priestly prerogatives, authority, income, and legitimacy.
Who Wrote the Bible, pg 196

I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not believe the Bible to be simple. There has been plenty of research studying the complexities of the text and as much as I would like to understand everything, I’m afraid I do not have the time (or expertise) to do it justice. I would like to wrap up this discussion with the following from The Bible Unearthed regarding the Exodus:

It is clear that the saga of liberation from Egypt was not composed as an original work in the seventh century BCE. The main outlines of the story were certainly known long before, in the allusions to the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness contained in the oracles of the prophets Amos (2:10; 3:1; 9:7) and Hosea (11:1[;] 13:4) a full century before. Both shared a memory of a great event in history that concerned liberation from Egypt and took place in the distant past. But what kind of memory was it?
The Egyptologist Donald Redford has argued that the echoes of the great events of the Hyksos occupation of Egypt and their violent expulsion from the delta resounded for centuries, to become a central, shared memory of the people of Canaan. These stories of Canaanite colonists established in Egypt, reaching dominance in the delta and then being forced to return to their homeland, could have served as a focus of solidarity and resistance as the Egyptian control over Canaan grew tighter in the course of the Late Bronze Age. As we will see, with the eventual assimilation of many Canaanite communities into the crystallizing nation of Israel, that powerful image of freedom may have grown relevant for an ever widening community. During the time of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Exodus story would have endured and been elaborated as a national saga – a call to national unity in the face of continual threats from great empires.
It is impossible to say whether or not the biblical narrative was an expansion and elaboration of vague memories of the immigration of Canaanites to Egypt in their expulsion from the delta in the second millennium BCE. Yet it seems clear that the biblical story of The Exodus drew its power not only from ancient traditions and contemporary geographical and demographic details but even more directly from contemporary political realities.
The seventh century was a time of great revival in both Egypt and Judah. In Egypt, after a long period of decline and difficult years of subjugation to the Assyrian empire, King Psammetichus I seized power and transformed Egypt into a major international power again. As the rule of the Assyrian Empire began to crumble, Egypt moved in to fill the political vacuum, occupying former Assyrian territories in establishing permanent Egyptian rule. Between 640 and 630 BCE, when the Assyrians withdrew their forces from Philistia, Phoenicia, and the area of the former kingdom of Israel, Egypt took over most of these areas, and political domination by Egypt replaced the Assyrian yoke.
In Judah, this was the time of King Josiah. The idea that YHWH would ultimately fulfill the promises given to the patriarchs, to Moses, and to King David – of a vast and unified people of Israel living securely in their land – was a politically and spiritually moving powerful one for Josiah’s subject. It was a time when Josiah embarked on an ambitious attempt to take advantage of the Assyrian collapse and unite all Israelites under his rule. His program was to expand to the north of Judah, to the territories where Israelites were still living a century after the fall of the kingdom of Israel, and to realize the dream of a glorious United monarchy: a large and powerful state of all Israelites worshiping one God in one Temple in one capital – Jerusalem – and ruled by one king of Davidic lineage.
The ambitions of mighty Egypt to expand its empire and of tiny Judah to annex territories of the former kingdom of Israel and establish its independence were therefore in direct conflict. Egypt of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, with its imperial aspirations, stood in the way of the fulfillment of Josiah’s dreams. Images and memories from the past now became the ammunition in a national test of will between the children of Israel and the pharaoh and his charioteers.
We can thus see the composition of the Exodus narrative from a striking new perspective. Just as the written form of patriarchal narratives wove together the scattered traditions of origins in the service of a seventh century national revival in Judah, the fully elaborated story of conflict with Egypt – of the great power of the God of Israel and his miraculous rescue of his people – served an even more immediate political and military end. The great saga of a new beginning and the second chance must have resonated in the consciousness of the seventh century’s readers, reminding them of their own difficulties and giving them hope for the future.
Attitudes towards Egypt in late monarchic Judah were always a mixture of awe and revulsion. On one hand, Egypt had always provided a safe haven in time[s] of famine and an asylum for runaways, and was perceived as a potential ally against invasions from the north. At the same time there had always been suspicion and animosity toward the great southern neighbor, whose ambitions from earliest times were to control the vital overland passage through the land of Israel northward to Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. Now a young leader of Judah was prepared to confront the great pharaoh, and ancient traditions for many different sources were crafted into a single sweeping epic that bolstered Josiah’s political aims.
New layers would be added to the Exodus story in subsequent centuries – during the Exile in Babylonia and beyond. But we can now see how the astonishing composition came together under the pressure of a growing conflict with Egypt in the seventh century BCE. The saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction. It is a powerful expression of memory and hope born in a world in the midst of change. The confrontation between Moses and [P]haraoh mirrored the momentous confrontation between the young King Josiah and the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho. To pin this biblical image down to a single date is to betray the story’s deepest meaning. Passover proves to be not a single event but a continuing experience of national resistance against the powers that be.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 68-71

They argue later that there was no mass exodus based on evidence that the early Israelites were themselves Canaanites. I think, for normal conversations that I’d have with someone, this is a bit much. Clearly, there was some nugget of truth to the Exodus and Moses, but the key takeaway that I feel is important is that the stories presented in the earliest parts of the Bible are neither historical truth nor literary fiction, but intricately woven together memories and stories, oral and written, from times past. I hope to get away from this in-depth discussion of the ancient Israelites, as it does get into the weeds a bit and I don’t think the belief that this person existed or that event happened exactly as it is described in the bible is necessary to be a practicing and faithful Christian, but I want to be able to assert why I believe that the Bible is neither historical truth nor literary fiction with confidence so that the conversation doesn’t result in the other person thinking I’m some spawn of Satan. Most people don’t think like this, but there is a certain amount of discomfort and difficulty when discussing this with people that I hope to alleviate. I think I might save the next part of A History of the Jews for after I get into the Greek history and philosophy and potentially the New Testament. Also, since the works of Josephus touch on the history of Judaism I may read the introduction to that, but then save it for after the New Testament since he is writing after the time of the New Testament. At present though, I think the next book I’m going to read is A History of Religious Ideas by Mircea Eliade.