Placing Interpretation, Ancient and Modern, in a Historical Perspective

Placing Interpretation, Ancient and Modern, in a Historical Perspective The Development of Modern Historical Consciousness 1.1 The Historicization of Moses...............................................................................1 1.2 The Wider Context: Humanism and the Development of Criticism....................6 1.3 The Still Wider Context: The Construction (and Deconstruction) of History...11 1.3.1. The changing historical perspective/consciousness of the last 500 years..11 1.3.1.1 The Map of the World..........................................................................14 1.3.1.2 The Map of the Universe .....................................................................15 1.3.1.3 The Origin of Language.......................................................................15 1.3.1.4 The Origin of Writing ..........................................................................17 1.3.1.5 The Origin of the Species ....................................................................21 1.3.2 Summary: The result for the use of the Bible in writing history ................22 1.4 The Dehistoricization of Moses .........................................................................24 1.5 Their World and Ours ........................................................................................36 Summary: Although this book seeks to explain ancient methods of biblical interpretation, it is not being suggested that these methods could be used today, even if they were more commonly understood. Ancient Christian interpretation of the Scriptures presupposed a concept of Scripture quite different from that of modern scholars and even from that now officially espoused by many ecclesiastical institutions. The rules and procedures followed by ancient interpreters are also different from the modern ones. What has happened to make those ancient presuppositions untenable and the rules no longer viable? The answer to this question is the subject of this introductory chapter. It is our contention that there has been an irreversible development of historical consciousness, or growth of awareness of the process of development in history, that makes it impossible to apply the ancient presuppositions and rules today. This is not due, as many would have it, to the prejudices of the Enlightenment or to a loss of faith, but to a change in the structure of our consciousness of history (the past). We live in a different mental world or a mental world that is structured differently in significant ways from that of five hundred years ago. One factor in the development of contemporary historical consciousness has been the critical reading of ancient texts, which has resulted in a process of historicization of the biblical texts. The historicization of the biblical texts reveals that they had in fact been dehistoricized in an earlier period, that is, they had lost their historical and human setting. This double process has inevitably raised questions about the authority of the biblical text with the result that the Bible plays a different role today than it did five hundred years ago. Other factors that have altered the authority of the biblical text include the geographical and cosmological discoveries, and the development of comparative biology culminating in the theory of evolution of the species and indeed in all forms of life on the planet. More recent discoveries in genetics and the progressive mapping of the genome have only confirmed this quite different view of human origins. The resistance to these developments in the form of the phenomenon of fundamentalism will also be considered. This chapter attempts to sketch these developments in very broad strokes. 1 1.1 The Historicization of Moses Although what is now called the historical-critical method has been applied to the study of the entire Bible, it all began with the case of Moses or rather the putative 1 Here will be considered only developments that touch directly on the biblical world or the historical world constructed on the basis of the Bible. The development of the many diverse branches of science in the last 500 years lies outside the scope of this treatment. 1 Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Pentateuch. In Jewish and Christian circles Moses had universally been considered the author of these books for almost two thousand years, when in 1678 the French Oratorian priest, Richard Simon (16381712), prepared to publish a book entitled Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (A Critical History of the Old Testament). The events surrounding its publication provide an insight into the development of critical history in general, as well as historical consciousness in the broad area of theology including the history of the interpretation of Scripture. The work was being printed at Paris in 1678, had already been approved by a Sorbonne censor, by the superior general of the Oratory (the religious order to which Simon belonged), and had been given a royal privilege. In fact, 1300 copies had already been printed (only the title page and dedication were missing), when a copy of the preface and table of contents, distributed as publicity, was brought to the attention of the influential bishop and royal tutor, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (16271704). The latter was so alarmed by the table of contents, which included as the title of the fifth chapter: “Moses cannot be the author of all the books attributed to him,” that he intervened with the chancellor to halt the publication. The printed copies were confiscated and destroyed except for about fifteen or twenty and the royal privilege was withdrawn. Richard Simon was expelled from the Oratory. 2 One of the copies, however, made its way to England where it was translated into English and published in 1682 with the title “A critical history of the Old Testament.” In this way the phrase “critical history” entered into English. 3 Simon’s work was soon reprinted in various poorly executed editions at Amsterdam and in a Latin translation in 1681. In 1685 it was reprinted at Rotterdam with a new preface, marginal notes and the author’s responses to published criticisms. Simon published two more works with the title “Critical History”: Histoire critique de la creance & des coûtumes des 2 For the life and work of R. Simon (1638-1712), see J. Le Brun, "Simon (Richard)" Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible 12 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1996) pp. 1353-1383; F. H. Gorman, Jr., "Simon, Richard (1638-1712)" Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:468-470; Henning Graf Reventlow, Storia dell'interpretazione biblica. IV. Dall'Illuminismo fino al XX secolo (trad. italiana a cura di Enzo Gatti; Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2004) pp. 101-106. For a more comprehensive examination of the interpretation of Simon’s work by contemporary and later writers one may now usefully consult: Sascha Müller, Kritik und Theologie : Christliche Glaubens- und Schrifthermeneutik nach Richard Simon (1638-1712) (Münchener Theologische Studien. II, Systematische Abteilung Bd. 66.; St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2004). 3 The word “critical” alone is of course found earlier in English. The earliest examples given by the Oxford English Dictionary are from Shakespeare. 2 nations du Levant (1682), 4 and Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament (1689). 5 From this time on the major library catalogues show an increasing number of works published with the phrase “Critical History” in the title. Translations of Simon’s works appeared in German beginning in 1713 and later German scholars including J. D. Michaelis (1765), J. G. Gerder (1780), and J. Semler proclamed Simon the founder or father of biblical criticism. 6 The first volume of the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament was devoted to textual criticism. Against other contemporary scholars, Simon held that neither the Hebrew text nor the Greek Septuagint translation corresponded to the original, but that numerous variants had entered into the text. He insisted that these additions enjoyed the same authority as the rest of Scripture. Otherwise it would be necessaryto conclude that not all the material in the Bible was canonical. With regard to the origin of the Pentateuch, Simon tried to reconcile the traditional attribution of the books to Moses with the fact that certain parts, such as the account of Moses death in Deut 34 or the passages which speak of him in the third person, could not be from him. He proposed that there had existed écrivains publics (“official scribes” whom he also called prophets because they were inspired), who were at liberty to produce collections of old materials preserved in the state archives and to give these a new form, adding and omitting what seemed opportune. The present form of the Pentateuch and other books of the Old Testament is the result of their work, although some of the materials they used, such as the law, come from Moses and others such as the account of creation contain even older traditions. Repetitions in the Pentateuch would be due to parallel documents of this sort. It has been noted that Simon was in fact transfering into the composition of the Pentateuch the Catholic principle of “tradition.” 7 It has also been noted that Simon’s “official scribes” 4 Richard Simon, Histoire critique de la creance & des coûtumes des nations du Levant, publiée par le sr. de Moni. (Francfort: F. Arnaud, 1684). 5 Richard Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament : où l'on établit la verité des actes sur lesquels la religion chrêtienne est fondée. (Rotterdam: R. Leers, 1689). 6 See F. H. Gorman, Jr., "Simon, Richard (1638-1712)" Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:468. 7 Reventlow, Storia dell'interpretazione biblica. IV, pp. 104-106. For the relationship between Scripture and tradition in Simon’s thought, see especially S. Müller, Kritik und Theologie, pp. 399-429. 3 (editors) are modeled on the role of the editor in the tradition of humanistic learning of Simon’s own time. 8 Richard Simon was actually not the first to call in question the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Both Thomas Hobbes († 1679) 9 and Baruch Spinoza († 1677) 10 had rejected Mosaic authorship before him. Although some contemporary critics as well as later ones tended to put Simon in the same category as Hobbes and Spinoza, his approach was actually quite different and was not based on preconceived rationalistic principles. In fact Simon’s work was conceived as a response to and defense against the criticism of Spinoza. Already in the preface to the Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament Simon takes Spinoza to task for exaggeration and insufficient critical analysis. Spinoza had based himself on the testimony of Ibn Ezra († 1167) 11 to show that the Pentateuch is not from Moses, but Simon insists there is nothing in the commentaries of Ibn Ezra to justify the consequences that Spinoza had drawn. 12 More important than the concrete results of Simon’s investigations, now long since surpassed, are the principles and method that Simon proposed. He approached the text of the Old Testament from the point of view of the transmission of the text and of the information contained in the texts. He proposed a "critical" reading of the texts in which he distinguished between the question of authorship, authority (not dependent on authorship), and inspiration. It was this critical reading of the texts, including 8 John Van Seters, The Edited Bible. The Curious History of the "Editor" in Biblical Criticism (Winnona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) p. 190-191. Van Seters finds two types of editors in Simon’s theory: those who as archivists assembled and arranged the materials in their final compositional form, and those who later on, confronted with multiple defective copies, produced recensions such as the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch. “Both of these models of editors are drawn from the arena of humanistic learning in Simon’s own time and are entirely anachronistic for the early history of the Bible, but both of them continued to influence in modified form the scholarship of historical and textual criticism down to the present time.” 9 On Hobbes see: D.D. Wallace, “Hobbes Thomas (1588-1679)” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 1:511; H. G. Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) pp. 194-222. Hobbes criticism is found in his work Leviathan, esp. pt. 3, chaps 32-41. 10 On Spinoza see: E. M. Curley, “Spinoza, Benedict (or Baruch) de (1632-77)” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:498-499. 11 On Ibn Ezra see: M. A. Signer, “Ibn Ezra, Abraham ben Meir (1092/93-1167)” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 1:533-534. 12 The relationship between Spinoza and Simon is treated extensively by S. Müller, Kritik und Theologie, pp. 436-440 (6.4.4 “Simons direkte Auseinandersetzung mit Spinoza”). See also pp. 326435. Müller also criticises Mirri and Reventlow for their view of the relationship between the thought of Spinoza and Simon. 4 attention to the diversity of styles, which led to the conclusion that Moses could not be the author of all that was contained in the text. 13 Thus began the story of what we shall call the “historicization” of the text of the Pentateuch. By this term is understood the attempt to place the texts in their historical context and to describe the process by which they were produced, which of course may be at variance with the traditional or legendary version of their origin. Successive generations of scholars continued the critical reading and analysis of the biblical texts with the result that Moses tended to recede ever more as the possible author. Instead various sources, based on the different divine names YHWH (J) and Elohim (E) found in different texts were hypothesized. This kind of analysis came to be known as the “higher criticism” as opposed to the lower, that is, text criticism (with which it had all begun). A particularly important development was the theory put forward by de Wette (1805) that Deuteronomy was the book of the law found in 622/621 B.C. (2 Kings 22-23) and that it had been conceived to support and legitimate the religious reform initiated by the king of Judah, Josiah. 14 In 1853 Hupfeld formulated what became known as the newer documentary hypothesis in which four source documents were to be found in the Pentateuch: a later priestly (P) source and an earlier elohistic (E) document already combined by an earlier editor with a later Jehovistic (J) document (JE) and Deuteronomy as a separate source. The documentary hypothesis was given its “classical” form by Julius Wellhausen, who offered a different version of the historical development, suggesting that the literary sources arose in the order JEPD. 15 According to Wellhausen the legal material in P was much later than the prophets having been formed during the exile and after. Some form of the documentary source theory remains the most common explanation of the formation of the Pentateuch today. 16 13 Although Simon used the term “critical” in an already established technical sense (in reference to “text criticism”), as will be seen further on, some of his orthodox adversaries saw it as destructive criticism aimed at destroying the certainty and evidence of the Scriptures, which was not at all Simon’s intent. See Reventlow, Storia dell'interpretazione biblica. IV, p. 104. 14 Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, Dissertatio critico-exegetica, qua Deuteronomium a prioribus Pentateuchi libris diversum, alius cuisdam recentioris auctoris opus esse monstratur (Ienae: Literis Etzdorfii, 1805). 15 On Wellhausen see: R. Smend, “Wellhausen, Julius (1844-1918)” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:629-631. 16 For the history of Pentateuchal criticism see: Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der historischkritischen Erforschung der Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, (Neukirchen: 5 Looking back to the seventeenth century, one can appreciate the alarm of Bossuet, given the almost two thousand year tradition of Mosaic authorship. 17 The authority of the texts of the Pentateuch was traditionally attached to the notion of Mosaic authorship, although Richard Simon tried to distinguish the two questions of authorship and authority (as subsequent scholars have continued to try to do). In Roman Catholic circles the struggle continued into the 20th century and contemporary fundamentalists still defend Mosaic authorship. 18 We shall return to this question later by formulating it in a different way, not whether Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, but how he came to be regarded as the author. From the standpoint of the twenty-first century, the work of Richard Simon can be seen to have been only another step in a wider development of critical and historical consciousness already present in the humanist tradition that begins with the Italian Renaissance. It was virtually inevitable that this critical consciousness would be applied sooner or later to the biblical texts. 1.2 The Wider Context: Humanism and the Development of Criticism Although the work of Richard Simon represents a significant stage in the development of what is now known as historical-critical methodology, Simon was not the first to use the term “critical,” much less the first to practice criticism. 19 The Erziehungsverein, 1956) and more recently: C. Houtman, “Pentateuchal Criticism” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:257-262; Richard Elliot Friedman, “Torah (Pentateuch)” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. See also: Alexa Suelzer and John S. Kselman, "Modern Old Testament Criticism" The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. R. E. Brown, J.A. Fitzmyer, R.E. Murphy; Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990) pp. 1113-1129. 17 F. H. Gorman, Jr., "Simon, Richard (1638-1712)" Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 2:468, attributes Bossuet’s opposition to his “high view of the authority of the church fathers and his adherence to the principle of the unchangeability of Roman Catholic doctrine.” See also S, Müller, Kritik und Theologie, p. 116, who draws attention to the polemic of Bossuet against Simon in his posthumously published work, Défense de la Tradition et des Saints Pères (1743). 18 In 1906 the Biblical Commission responded negatively to the question whether it was permissible to hold that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch or whether these books were produced using sources posterior to Moses. See Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (a cura di Peter Hünermann; edizione bilingue; Bologna: Edizione Dehoniane, 2001) nos. 3394-3397. For the original fundamentalist defense against the “higher criticism” see: The Fundamentals. A Testimony to the Truth ed. by R.A. Torrey, A.C. Dixon and Others (Reprinted without alteration or abridgement from the original, four-volume edition issued by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in 1917), Vol. 1, chap. 2: “The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch” by Prof. George Frederick Wright. 19 Useful overviews of the development of historical-critical methodology may be found in: François Laplanche, "La marche de la critque biblique d'Érasme à Spinoza" Naissance de la méthode critique. Colloque du centenaire de l'École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem (Patrimoines 6 terminology deriving from the Greek krinein, meaning “to judge,” had reappeared in the modern period beginning with the work of Angelo Poliziano, who, in his lecture of 1492 on the Analytica priora of Aristotle spoke of those in antiquity called “criticos.” In the Lexicon published by Ambrosius Calepinus in 1502 one finds the entry “Criticus.” By 1580 the word had come to be used as a substantive (critica, la critique) by the renowned humanist Joseph Scaliger. 20 More important, however, than the mere use of the ancient terminology was the actual activity of the early humanists, such as Lorenzo Valla, inspired by the study of the ancient languages and texts. The most famous of the early “critiques” was Valla’s in 1440 directed at the early medieval document known as the Donation of Constantine, purporting to be a text written by the Emperor Constantine granting to Pope Sylvester and his successors temporal sovereignty over the Western part of the Empire. This document had been used as a legal basis for papal claims to temporal sovereignty and had entered into the medieval chronicles as an undisputed fact. Lorenzo Valla may have been inspired in his analysis of this text by the earlier critique directed by Francesco Petrarca († 1374) at the “false privilege exempting Austria from imperial jurisdiction” (1355). 21 In any case, by means of a lengthy and, for modern taste, excessively polemical analysis, Valla showed the absurdity of the document’s claims. The tools Valla used for his devastating analysis of this early medieval forgery were derived from the study of the classical Latin literature, the original basis of humanist culture. Valla demonstrated that the language used and the customs described in the document were in fact anachronistic. For example, certain words and phrases used in the document did not belong to Roman legal terminology in the fourth century. 22 Constantine’s reference to his crown 23 was likewise christianisme; Paris: Cerf, 1992) pp. 31-39; Kurt Röttgers, "Kritik" Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe; historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1979-) 3:651675. 20 For this information see Röttgers, "Kritik", pp. 653-654. On Scaliger’s contribution in general, see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: a study in the history of classical scholarship (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983/1994). 21 For the text in English translation, see Donald R. Kelley, Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) pp. 231-236. 22 Lorenzo Valla, La falsa donazione di Costantino (Milano: BUR, 1994) XII.39, pp.138-139. The Latin title of the work reads: De falso credita et ementita constantini donatione. Valla notes in particular the mistaken use of the term “satrap.” 23 Ibid. XV.48-50, pp. 157-161. 7 anachronistic as was his reference to the four patriarchal sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. 24 The latter had not yet been founded and was first given precedence by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Valla’s critique reflected and promoted a new historical awareness relying on the analysis of language and customs. The ability to point out anachronistic use of language presupposed not only a mastery of the ancient literature and the classical language but an awareness of the impermanence and changing character of language, in short, of historical relativism. For Valla, the classical Latin language represented an ideal, whose loss he could lament, and whose various linguistic and stylistic periods he knew well. His precise philological studies carried out in numerous other works on etymology and style enabled him to distinguish the forgery from the authentic. Philology lay at the base of the new historical consciousness and of humanism’s awareness of cultural relativism. 25 The humanist search for and study of the ancient texts, which lay at the heart of the Renaissance, proceeded with the awareness that the texts had been corrupted in the process of manuscript transmission. Hence an important part of the humanist project was the editing and restoration of the texts themselves, what later would be called text criticism. Another work by Lorenzo Valla was instrumental in the eventual development of New Testament text criticism. In 1443 he wrote the Collatio Novi Testamenti and in 1449 he took up the work again in what would later be known as the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, on which he would work for the rest of his life. In these works he collated Greek and Latin manuscripts and applied the philological method to the correction of the Vulgate, a text hitherto regarded as sacrosanct and itself the ultimate authority for theology. Valla died in 1457, the year after the Bible was first printed, and so did not live to see his works diffused through the new invention of printing, an invention that was to be decisive for the development of text crticism. 26 24 Ibid. XIV.43, pp. 144-151. 25 For the historical significance of Valla’s philological work, see in particular the treatment by Donald R. Kelley, Chap. 2 “The Sense of History” Foundations of modern historical scholarship: language, law, and history in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia Unversity Press, 1970) pp. 19-50. For the subsequent history of both Valla’s work and the Donation of Constantine, see: Giovanni Maria Vian, La donazione di Costantino (Bologna: il Mulino, 2004). 26 For a more extensive appreciation of the importance of Valla’s work for biblical criticism, see Henning Graf Reventlow, Storia dell'interpretazione biblica (3 vol.; Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 8 In 1504 another humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, discovered a manuscript of Valla’s work on the New Testament text in the monastery of Parc at Louvain and had it printed at Paris the following year, giving it the title Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum. In this way the work of Valla came to form the basis of Erasmus’ own edition of the Greek New Testament and consequently the beginning of New Testament textual criticism. This meant a direct challenge to the authority of the Vulgate, which had been the authoritative text for medieval theology. It may be difficult for us, accustomed as we are to accept the authority of the Greek text over that of the Vulgate and to the complexity of textual criticism, to appreciate what a revolution this involved. The pressure exerted by the authority of the Vulgate was sufficient to cause Erasmus in the third edition of the Greek New Testament to insert a Greek text for the famous so-called Joannine comma, now clearly acknowledged to be a creation of the Western Latin textual tradition. 27 Nevertheless, it has been argued, a decisive step had been taken in the formation of the modern mentality: the reversal of the relationship to the past. Explicit evidence-based research had been substituted for the medieval Auctoritates. 28 Another stage in the development of criticism and a major contribution to the reconstruction of the past is represented by the monumental studies of Joseph Scaliger (†1609), already mentioned as the first to use the word critica as a substantive. Scaliger seems to have been the first in the area of text criticism to suspect the existence of archetypes and of families of manuscripts. 29 But perhaps more important was his contribution to the field of historical chronology. The importance ascribed to studies in chronology in the Renaissance is difficult for us to appreciate, as a modern historian of Renaissance historiography has noted. 30 The study of chronology enjoyed enormous prestige among the learned. Scaliger devoted much of his scholarly life to trying to unravel and coordinate the various systems devised for measuring or 1999). On the effects of the invention of printing, see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The printing press as an agent of change. Communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe (2 vols. in one; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 27 For the history of the dispute over this text, which has lasted until relatively modern times, see B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament. Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) pp. 101-102. 28 29 François Laplanche, "La marche de la critique biblique, » p. 31. Ibid. 30 Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: a study in the history of classical scholarship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983/1994) 2:6. 9 recording time throughout the ages. His studies of biblical chronology in particular, however, brought him great frustration and led him to conclude that the biblical chronology could not be reconciled with other available data. As a believing Christian, rather than doubt the credibility of the biblical account, he decided that the texts must be corrupt and left his findings unpublished. 31 In many ways the more than two centuries of philological and critical textual studies of the Renaissance can be seen to reach a new stage of critical reflection in the ambitious French historical projects of the late seventeenth century, of Richard Simon and his contemporaries. In the preface to his Histoire critique of the Old Testament, Simon sought to explain his use of the word “critical” and insisted that the explanation of the literal sense should be the only object of critical study. In this he differed from his immediate predecessors such as Grotius and Spinoza, who approached the text with various metaphysical ideas. Simon insisted likewise that only the Hebrew Bible could provide the basis for such study of the text. This insistence on reading the texts without presuppositions had a parallel in the approach of the great contemporary church historian, Sebastien Le Nain de Tillemont (1637-1698). 32 Tillemont's goal was to study the history of the church and of the saints – and incidentally the history of the princes and powerful involved in that history – from the point of view of the sources and to search for the truth in the original texts disengaged from later interpretations. The distinction between a critical reading of the original texts and their received interpretations remains an essential aspect of critical historical investigation. From what has been said so far, it should be obvious that the roots of historical critical methodology are not to be found in the late developments of the Enlightenment, as some are still inclined to argue, but rather in the philological and textual studies of the humanists of the Italian Renaissance. Although one finds an anti-philosophical and anti-theological polemic among some of these scholars, 31 Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, 2:728-743. However, Scaliger admitted privately to the Vassani: “It’s a strange thing, I don’t dare to say this. If it was a pagan author, I would speak of it differently” (Grafton 2:742). 32 For information regarding Tillemont, see: Henri Leclercq, "Tillemont" Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1953) 15:2313; Henri Leclercq, "Historiens du Christianisme" Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1924) 6:2533-2735; G. Bardy, "Tillemont" Dictionnaire de la Théologie Catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1946) 15:1029-1033. 10 notably Valla, it is not the fruit of the anti-religious prejudice, found among many later figures of the Enlightenment, but is directed against the medieval scholastic approach toward authorities. All of the scholars previously mentioned considered themselves believing Christians. 1.3 The Still Wider Context: The Construction (and Deconstruction) of History When Richard Simon called in question the Mosaic authorship of the entire Pentateuch, he was, wittingly or unwittingly, shaking the foundations of the structure of human history as it was still commonly conceived at the end of the 17th century. Bossuet, himself the author of a “universal history” that relied heavily on “Moses” for the story of man in the ancient period, no doubt perceived the threat. 33 Today an awareness of the long and slow development of human existence is one of the hallmarks of contemporary consciousness possessed by every person with a general education in the natural history and human history. Yet such awareness is itself a relatively recent development in the lengthy human journey. Indeed, that the human journey is lengthy is a recent discovery. Our contemporary consciousness of historical development is very different from the European historical consciousness of five hundred years ago. A brief description of this difference is essential for understanding the problem posed for biblical interpretation by the development of historical consciousness. 1.3.1. The changing historical perspective/consciousness of the last 500 years. At the beginning of his great work, The Jewish Antiquities, originally published in A.D. 93-94, the Jewish author Flavius Josephus notes that the sacred Scriptures "embrace the history of five thousand years" and that "our lawgiver," that is, Moses, "was born two thousand years ago, to which ancient date the poets never ventured to 33 In his work on universal history (first published in 1681), Bossuet asserted that the books of the Old Testament were the oldest books in the world and that they were the only ones from antiquity where the knowledge of the true God was taught. See Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle. Premiere Partie. Depuis le commencement du Monde jusqu'à l'Empire de Charlemagne (neuvième edition; London 1707), p. 316. He also asserted that “Moïse a toûjours passé dans tout l’Orient, & ensuite dans toût l’Univers, pour le Législateur des juifs, & pour l’Auteur des Livres qu’ils lui attribuent” (p. 319). On Bossuet’s role in the history of historiography, see: Donald R. Kelley, Faces of History: historical inquiry from Herodotus to Herder (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) pp. 212-213, 243-244. 11 refer even the birth of their gods, much less the actions or the laws of mortals." 34 This chronological vision was destined to endure for well over another 1500 years. In the year 1493, one year after Christopher Columbus unwittingly arrived in the western hemisphere, the German humanist, Hartmann Schedel, published first in Latin and then in the same year in German, 35 a chronicle of world history that was to become famous and influential especially in German speaking lands. 36 This work may serve as a useful starting point for a comparison of our conception of history with that of 500 years ago. Schedel’s vision of world history is based on the biblical narrative, into which he has inserted data from other literary sources, including both classical secular and ecclesiastical writers. The author of the biblical narrative is of course Moses, “divine prophet and historian,” who lived 700 years before the Trojan War.” Following Augustine, Schedel divided the history of the world into seven ages. 37 The first of these begins of course with the account of creation, which, according to a chronology that appears only later, took place 5200 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Schedel presents the traditional picture of the physical universe with the round sphere of the earth at the center surrounded by thirteen spheres with the moon in the fourth sphere and the sun in the seventh (folio 4). What is remarkable is that the Ptolemaic vision of the universe has been integrated into the biblical one. The second age begins with Noah after the flood and lasts until Abraham. Schedel narrates how the 72 peoples descended from the three sons of Noah were gathered together at the time of the construction of the tower of Babel. They still had one 34 Jewish Antiquities I,3. (Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (ed. H. St. J. Thackeray; Loeb Classical Library 242; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998 [1930]) pp. ????). Josephus wrote in Greek at Rome where he had taken the name Flavius in honor of his royal patrons, the Flavian emperors Vespasian and Titus. Josephus modeled the title of his work on an earlier work by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in 7 B.C. entitled Roman Antiquities. His purpose in doing so was certainly to stress the greater antiquity of Jewish history stretching, as it did in the Scriptures, back to creation. By way of comparison, however, one may note that Plato in the Timaeus (23E) has the history of Athens stretch back at least nine thousand years. 35 Hartmann Schedel, Das buch der Cronicken und Geschichten (Nürnberg: S. Alt, 1493). A facsimile edition has recently been published: Hartmann Schedel, La chronique universelle de nuremberg: L'édition de 1493, coloriée et commentée (Introduction et Appendice par Stephan Füssel; Köln: Taschen, 2001) pp. 680. I wish to thank the librarian of Engelberg Abbey in Switzerland for allowing me access to their copy of the original German edition. 36 See Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon (München: Kindler Verlag, 1991) 14:868 for literature on this work. Schedel was much dependent on the Supplementum chronicarum of Filippo di Bergamo that had appeared ten years earlier. 37 See "Aetas" in C. Mayer (ed.), Augustinus Lexikon (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986), Vol. I, pp. 150158. the seven ages of the world correspond to the seven ages of man in Augustine's schema. 12 language, but then God separated the languages, with the implicit result of 72 languages, so that they could no longer understand one another and then the 72 peoples spread to all parts of the earth. The third age of the world begins with the birth of Abraham and lasts until David. Schedel notes that according to the Hebrew text this was 292 years, but according to the Septuagint 940 years. The fourth age of the world begins with David and lasts until the Babylonian captivity, 484 years according to the Hebrew, but 485 according to the Septuagint. The fifth age of the world begins with the Persian Empire established by Cyrus in the 30th year of the Babylonian exile and lasts until the birth of Jesus Christ. In this period Schedel weaves in numerous extra-biblical events including the founding of Rome, the establishment of the republican government with the two annual consuls, the founding of other cities such as Milan, and Toulouse, various figures from Greek philosophy and literature including Arrachus, Aesop, Sappho, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Herodotus, Sophocles, Parmenides, Hippocrates, Socrates, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Apuleius, Plotinus, and then similar personages from the Latin side: Virgil, Horace, Julius Caesar, Octavian, the Tiburtine Sybill, Ovid, Titus, Livy, and Strabo. These are juxtaposed with later biblical figures without much regard for precise chronology. The sixth age of the world begins with the birth of Jesus Christ, although the fifth lasts until the beheading of John the Baptist, and is continuing at the time of the publication of the book in 1493. The year 5273 from the creation of the world coincides with the year 73 from the birth of Christ, which is the date of the accession of Linus as Pope and first successor of Peter in the last year of Nero. After that Schedel generally gives two dates, from the creation and from the birth of Christ. In the sixth age his narrative is constructed on the basis of the succession of emperors and kings on the one hand, and the successors of Peter on the other. The sixth age, not surprisingly, takes up the greater part of the book. The last dated event in the work is the election of Pope Alexander VI in 6691 from the creation (=1492 A.D.) A seventh age lies in the future, that of the anti-Christ, and the final judgment at the end of the world. By 1493 a new critical spirit was already present in the work of the humanist scholars of the fifteenth century, exemplified in the studies of Lorenzo Valla, who had shown in his Declamatio (written 1440; first published 1517) that the so-called 13 donation (Donatio Constantini) of Constantine to Pope Sylvester I was a forgery dating from the eighth century. Schedel, who alludes to the donation of Constantine, was unaware of this. 38 Soon much more data would accumulate that could not easily be fitted into the old schemas represented in Schedel’s Chronicle. In the course of the 500 years to follow, virtually all of the basic categories or concepts used by Schedel to organize his work would have to be drastically revised or replaced. These include the notion of Moses as a “historian” or even source for history, the idea of creation in six days, the chronology of 5200 years before Christ, the Ptolemaic map of the world and the earth centered model of the universe, the notion of discrete unrelated species of living creatures, ideas about the origins of peoples and languages, and the periodization of world history in seven ages. Indeed it would be necessary to abandon the biblical narrative altogether as a framework for world history. 1.3.1.1 The Map of the World The first of these ideas to require dramatic expansion was the map of the world. The works of the Alexandrian mathematician and geographer, Claudius Ptolemaeus (fl. 127-145), had long provided the basic information for the construction of maps of the world as well as for models of the heavens in both the Greek speaking world and in the Arab world. In the course of the 15th century his work on geography (Geographike hyphegesis) became better known in Western Europe, especially in Italy and became the basis for new maps of the world with which Christopher Columbus was familiar. 39 These maps contained recognizable contours of Europe, the Near East and northern Africa, and to a lesser extent Asia, but of course showed nothing of what later came to be called the western hemisphere or Australia. Schedel reproduces this geographical vision (ff. 12v-13r). By 1507 maps begin to show the outline of the "new world." The first world map to show the geographic independence of North America from Asia is that of Martin Waldseemuller of 1507, which also gives the name "America" to the South American land mass. 40 It is hardly necessary 38 Hartmann Schedel, Das buch der Cronicken und Geschichten, Blatt (folio) CXXIX, mentions the diadem with precious jewels that Constantine offered to Pope Sylvester. The word diadem (diadema) was one of the anachronisms pointed out by Valla. See above, p. 8. 39 Claudius Ptolemy, The Geography (trans. Edward L. Stevenson; intro. Joseph Fischer; reprint of 1932; New York: Dover Publications, 1991). For maps based on Ptolemy's work, see Claudii Ptolemaei, Cosmographia: Tavole della geografia di Tolemeo (introduzione di Lelio Pagani; Cremona: Stella Polare, 1990). 40 See Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and The Great Discoveries (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1990) pp. 52-54. 14 to outline in detail the expansion of the European geographical consciousness that took place in subsequent centuries or to emphasize its importance for the modern world. 1.3.1.2 The Map of the Universe 16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth,(Gen 1:16-17) The next feature of Schedel's world to be drastically revised was the earth-centered model of the universe. In 1543 the Polish physician, astronomer and mathematician, Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) published, as he lay dying, his great work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, libri VI, the fruit of a life-time of scientific research. In it he attributed a daily motion to the earth around its own axis and a yearly motion around the stationary Sun. This innovation, known to later ages as the "Copernican revolution" led in turn to later discoveries such as the "laws" of gravitation. Although not universally accepted at once (witness the troubles of Galileo in the next century as late as 1633), the Copernican theory led to important changes in outlook. The physical universe now appeared much larger than it was formerly thought to be. If the earth was no longer the center of the universe but only a planet among others revolving around the sun, then the belief in man as the microcosm reflecting in himself the surrounding universe, the macrocosm, appeared no longer valid. Man was no longer the center of the universe. Last but not least, the theory was a successful challenge to the ancient “authorities” and as a result led the way to even more scientific exploration of all kinds. It also inevitably weakened the biblical framework for thinking about the world and history. 41 1.3.1.3 The Origin of Language The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words (Gen 11:1). In the year 1493 it was still possible for the world history chronicler Hartmann Schedel to present Hebrew as the original language of mankind. The story of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11) explained the division of humanity into 72 peoples and 41 Bossuet (Discours, p. 137-138) passes over these questions and offers no visual construct as Schedel had done. The inconsistencies in the genesis account (e.g., the creation of light before the sun) are treated as Moses’ didactic devices to teach about the Creator. 15 72 languages. The number 72 was mirrored also in the 72 translators of the Septuagint who accomplished their work in 72 days and in the number of Jesus' disciples. The tower of Babel as an explanation for the diversity of languages and nations had already had a long history. The story was interpreted to mean that God had given and fixed the number of languages at this point in human history. The number 72 was determined on the basis of the number of the descendants of Noah found in the Septuagint translation, which turned out to be 72, while the number in the Hebrew was found to be 70. 42 To be sure, not all thinking about the nature and origin of language in the ancient world was so simplistic. On a more philosophical level, the nature of language had been the object of learned discourse from the time of Plato. 43 The Stoics had devoted considerable attention to developing a theory of the correspondence between words and the nature of things. 44 Thomas Aquinas had departed from much traditional thinking by asserting that language is created by humans rather than being given by God. The fact that they are human creations accounts for their diversity. Thomas also rejected the idea of "sacred" languages and the notion of Hebrew as the original language. 45 The biblically based vision of 72 languages and nations stemming from Babel represented by Schedel was soon to be brought into even greater doubt by the vast activity of exploration already in progress in 1493, which brought back to Europe the knowledge of new peoples and languages previously unimagined. Such knowledge has grown steadily through recent centuries to the point that today the estimate of the number of human languages is between 4000 and 8000. 46 The increased data available and the decipherment of ancient languages has led to comparative studies, which have revealed the existence of language families and thrown much light on the 42 For the history of this idea, see the exhaustive work of Arno Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel; Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker (4 v.in 6; Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1957-63). On the origin of the number 72, see esp. pp. 140-142. On Hartmann Schedel, see pp. 1040-1041. 43 See Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, pp. 140ff. and Giuseppe Colombo, "La correttezza dei nomi nel Cratilo di Platone" Origini del Linguaggio. Frammenti di Pensiero (a cura di Celestina Milani; Colognola ai Colli,VR: Demetra, 1999) pp. 62-78. 44 For the Stoic theory of the nature and origin of language see M. Pohlenz, La Stoa, Storia di un movimento spirituale (2 vols; Firenze: Nuova Italia, 1967) Vol. 1, pp. 57-81. 45 See Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, pp. 810-815. 46 See Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages. Vol. 1: Classification ( London: Edward Arnold, 1987) pp. ??? 16 development of languages over centuries and millennia. Among the earliest studies of this type was the work of the English scholar Richard Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, published in 1605 in which the author attempted to show that English was a Saxon language and that the roots of the English nation were German, a thesis not popular at the time among English scholars. 47 More than a hundred and fifty years later another English writer, William Jones, concluded that a relationship existed between Sanskrit and European languages, thus founding the concept of Indo-European languages. 48 The comparative studies of Jacob Grimm in the Germanic languages led to further discoveries about the nature of sound shifts that occur in the course of language development and to the formulation of 'Grimm's law." 49 More recent comparative studies have led to the grouping of virtually all known languages into "families" and to the formulation of theories about the relationship of these among one another and to earlier stages of the development of languages. 50 The comparative study of languages has led to a steadily lengthening historical perspective. More recently, because of the discovery of the role of DNA in genetic development and the possibility of plotting the spread of genes, attempts have been made to correlate genetic development and spread with linguistic development. 51 We now have a good idea of how long it takes for genetic mutations to develop and for distinct languages to evolve. 1.3.1.4 The Origin of Writing 47 See Domenico Pezzini, "Richard Verstegan" Origini del Linguaggio. Frammenti di Pensiero (a cura di Celestina Milani; Colognola ai Colli,VR: Demetra, 1999) pp. 146-162. 48 See David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) pp. 296. Jones essay, "The Third Anniversary Discourse" delivered in 1786 and published two years later, has been reprinted in Donald E. Hayden et al., Classics in Linguistics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967) pp. 58-70. 49 See Celestina Milani, "Il pensiero di Jacob Grimm" Origini del Linguaggio. Frammenti di Pensiero (a cura di Celestina Milani; Colognola ai Colli,VR: Demetra, 1999) pp. 284-298. 50 See Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994). 51 See for example: Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Franceso Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1995). CavalliSforza notes that Darwin, although he did not know about DNA, had foreseen this possibility in The Origen of the Species published in 1859. 17 History, the reconstruction of the human past, is directly dependant on the invention of writing. 52 Before the invention of writing, humans could communicate with one another only within the limits of geographical and temporary proximity. To be sure, they could pass on from one generation to the next a limited memory of deeds and exploits of ancestors or mythological ideas, if they had them. But it was a very limited memory. Humans in 4000 B.C. had no idea of the great antiquity of their race and they had no memory of their origins or even that they themselves had invented (and continued to invent) their complex instrument of communication, language. The invention of writing radically altered that situation. Now humans were able to communicate with other humans over long distances and to codify information in a form that later generations could decipher and assimilate. 53 This led to an exponential growth in the quantity of available information accumulated through centuries and millennia of experience, of trial and error. Information lost by one generation might now be retrieved by another. By 1492 the human race had a acquired a vast quantity of information, geographical, astronomical, medical, historical, literary, artistic, that was not available in 4000 B.C., a chronological distance of only 5500 years, a short time measured by what is now known about the antiquity of the human race. Yet until relatively recent times there were only vague ideas about the origin of writing or even awareness that it had not always been available. Diodorus of Sicily (fl. 56 B.C.) records that the Egyptians attributed the invention of the alphabet and many other cultural institutions to Hermes. 54 Pliny, after mentioning various ideas about the origin of letters comes to the conclusion: “the use of letters appears to be eternal.” 55 52 Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, observes: „Die Schrift begründet erst historisches Selbstbewußtsein durch den Wunsch und die Fähigkeit, Gesprochenes für kommende Zeiten festzuhalten; sie grenzt indes den Bereich des historisch Wichtigen und des sprachlich Konstitutiven erheblich ein“ (p. 2024). 53 It may be worth observing that every act of reading is an act of decipherment of codified information. Only those who know the language being codified and the means of codification (the script) can decipher the text. 54 C. H. Oldfather (ed.). Diodorus of Sicily. (Loeb Classical Library 279; London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1933): Book I,16: “It was by Hermes, for instance, according to them, that the common language of mankind was first further articulated, and that many objects which were still nameless received an appellation, that the alphabet was invented, and that ordinances regardng the honours and the offerings due to the gods were duly established; he was the first also to observe the orderly arrangement of the stars and the harmony of the musical sounds and their nature, to establish a wrestling school, and to give thought to the rhythmical movement of the human body and its proper development.” On older Egyptian ideas attributing the origin of writing to Thot, see Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, pp. 33, 36 and for similar ideas among the Chinese, p. 44. For numerous other references, see p. 1952, n. 222. 55 Pliny, Nat. hist. VII, lvi,57: “I have always thought letters came from the Assyrians, but some, like Gellius, beleive them to have been introduced among the Egyptians by Mercury, others among the Syrians; in any event they were introduced into Greece from Phoenicia by Cadmus, to the number of 18 John Cassian, writing in the first quarter of the fifth century, relates a tradition that Ham, the son of Noah, knew that he would not be able to take a book of wizardry and magic onto the ark and so he engraved this knowledge on metal plates and stone, which could not be ruined by water. After the flood he found them and handed them on. This seems to presume that writing was always available. 56 Much of the history of speculation on the origin of language and writings centers, in fact, on the history of the interpretation of the story of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) and related texts in the biblical primitive history, as Arno Borst has described in such fascinating detail. He suggests that the invention of printing led to increased speculation about the invention of writing. However, for a long time the question of biblical writing was treated as an exception. Although dissident voices had been raised earlier and were raised increasingly in the 17th century, many continued to insist that Hebrew was the original language and that both the language and the script originated with Adam or had been communicated to Adam by God. 57 The great Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) still thought that the world was created 4,053 years before the birth of Christ and that all but eight humans had perished in the deluge in the 1,657th year of the world. He produced a work entitled, Turris Babel, in 1679 in which he classified the world’s languages in five major branches: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic. Although he hnew that languages had developed from the time of the flood, he still retained the idea that Hebrew was the primeval sixteen, to which during the Trojan War Palamedes added these four, ZYFX, after which Simonides, the melic poet, invented the same number,UXWQ , the import of all which is recognized by us. Aristotle prefers to believe that the most ancient letters were eighteen in number, and that two, YZ, were added by Epicharmus rather than Palamedes. Anticlides relates that a certain man in Egypt named Meno invented them fifteen thousand years before Phoroneus, the most ancient king of Greece, and he tries to prove this from the monuments. On the other hand Epigenes declares that among the Babylonians for seven hundred and twenty thousand years observations of the heavenly bodies were inscribed on baked tiles, and he is a weighty author among the best, such as Berosus and Critodemus, who give as a minimum four hundred and ninety thousand years. From which the use of letters appears to be eternal.” [this trans. from Lovejoy, Primitivism, pp. 385-386] 56 John Cassian, The Conferences (trans. Boniface Ramsey; New York: Paulist Press, 1997) VIII, 21,78, p. 307: “And so, as the ancient traditions testify, Ham, the son of Noah, who was instructed in these superstitions and sacriligeous and profane arts, knowing that he would be utterly unable to take a book about them into the ark, which he was going to enter with his righteous father and his holy brothers, engraved these wicked arts and profane commentaries on plates of varius kinds of metal whcih could not be ruined by exposure to water, and on very hard stone. 8. When the Flood was over, he sought for them with the same curiosity with which he had concealed them and handed them on – a seedbed of sacrilege and unending wickedness - to his descendants.” 57 Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, p. 1952. For numerous references to both proponents and dissenters from the Adamic theory, see n. 222. 19 language. 58 He incorporated in his maps the continents of North and South America and even an indistinct Australia (Terra Australis Incognita), but retained the earth centered cosmos. 59 By 1786, because of the accumulated comparative evidence, it was no longer possible for scholars to give credence to the idea of writing being somehow connected with human origins. In the already mentioned “Third Anniversary Discourse” William Jones also speculated about the relationship of various forms of writing in antiquity. 60 Jones did not yet have at his disposition the large amount of information about “dead” languages that became available through the great decipherments of the first half of the 19th century, first of the hieroglyphics and then of cuneiform. 61 The new information made it possible to trace the development of different systems of writing and previously unknown languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian. It became possible to date the first systems of writing toward the end of the fourth millennium or early third millennium. The accumulated knowledge of archaeology, biology and anthropology suggested, however a much longer human history, which led to the introduction of the category 58 Joscelyn Godwin, Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979) pp.34-35. On Kircher see also Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, pp. 1368-71. 59 See Godwin, Athanasius Kircher, p. 33. This is probably to be explained by the fact that it was not until 1741 that Pope Benedict XIV permtted the publication of Galileo’s complet (uncensored) works. The prohibition against heliocentrism was removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitarum in 1758. 60 William Jones, "The Third Anniversary Discourse" in Donald E. Hayden et al., Classics in Linguistics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967) pp. 64-65: “The characters, in which the langauges of india were originally written, are called Nagari, from Nagara, a City, with the word Deva sometimes prefixed, because they are believed to have been taught by the Divinity himself, who prescribed the artificial order of them in a voice from heaven. These letters, with no greater viation in their form by the change of straight lines to curves, or conversely, that the Cusic alphabet has received in its way to india, are still adopted in more than twenty kingdoms and states, from the borders of Cashgar and Khoten, to Rama’s bridge, and from the Sindhu to the river of Siam; nor can I help beliving, although the polished and elegant Devanagari may not be so ancient as the monumental characters in the caverns of Jarasandha, that the square Chaldaic letters, in which most Hebrew books are copied, were originally the same, or derived from the same prototype, both with the Indian and Arabian characters; that the Phoenician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets were formed by various changes and inversions, had a similar origin, there can be little doubt; and the inscriptions at Canarah, of which you now possess a most accurate copy, seem to be compounded of Nagari and Ethiopic letters, which bear a close relation to each other, both in the mode of writing from the left hand, and in the singular mannor of connecting the vowels with the consonants.” These observations have of course been considerably refined and made more accurate in the last two centuries since Jones wrote. 61 Champollion and H. Rawlinson 20 of “prehistory.” 62 The first to introduce this word and concept into English was Sir John Lubbock, who also formulated the standard periodization of Paleolithic, Neolithic, bronze and iron ages. 63 However, as Kelley notes, the English came late to this understanding, “for continental scholars – French, German, and especially Scandinavian – had appreciated the ‘high antiquity of man’ (Lyell’s phrase) for almost half a century.” 64 1.3.1.5 The Origin of the Species 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. (Gen 1:25) The last and most contentious element of the biblical narrative to lose its place in the narrative of world history was the idea of discrete species of living creatures including the human race. The biblical narrative had in fact distributed the various forms of plant and animal life from the second to the sixth day of creation. In 1859 Charles Darwin finally published the results of many years’ research: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in which he expounded the theory about the relationship of various forms of life that became known as “evolution.” A key element in the theory was the notion of “natural selection,” as he stated in the introduction: As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. 65 62 Donald R. Kelley, Fortunes of History: historical inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) pp. 254-259: “’Prehistory’ (Vorgeschichte; préhistoire; preistoria) was an international creation of nineteenth century scholarship, and it drew especially on two new disciplines with old names, that is, ‘anthropology’ (the philosophical study of human nature) and ‘archeology’ (Thucydidean prehistory).” 63 John Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times, As Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1872. 64 Kelley, Fortunes of History, p. 256. 65 Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, p. 5 21 Although he avoided the already controversial term “evolution,” at the end of the book he stated that: "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." 66 He did not develop the notion of human evolution in the book, but merely stated that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". 67 Darwin was not the first to propose a theory of evolution, a term that was already controversial when he published his book. But he was the first to propose a coherent and carefully argued theory of how the species developed through the process of “natural selection.” His book became unexpectedly popular, was translated into many languages and was reprinted many times, becoming a classic scientific text. The question of human evolution was developed by others and later by Darwin himself in his two-volume work: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex published in 1871. The controversy generated by Darwin’s publication and the theory of evolution in general has continued to the present time. It has often been perceived as a conflict between a theory of impersonal natural processes versus a divinely guided order. 68 The question of evolution was a major factor in the development of the original fundamentalist movement. 69 The fourth volume of The Fundamentals contained several essays on the subject. 70 The fundamentalist reaction was against both historical criticism and modern science, but it should not be confused with the ancient views of Scriptural interpretation, which were intellectually much more sophisticated and part of a different world. Fundamentalism was not a return to something old, but a reaction to new developments. 1.3.2 Summary: The result for the use of the Bible in writing history We began this section by describing the biblically based view of the history of the world as it was commonly depicted in 1492. The combination of historical critical analysis and the scientific discoveries of subsequent centuries resulted by the late 66 Ibid., p. 492. 67 Ibid., p. 490. 68 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) pp. 18-21. 69 See Marsden, Fundamentalism, passim. 70 The Fundamentals. A Testimony to the Truth ed. by R.A. Torrey, A.C. Dixon and Others (Reprinted without alteration or abridgement from the original, four-volume edition issued by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in 1917), Vol. 4, chap. 5 “The Decadence of Darwinism” by Rev. Henry H. Beach. 22 nineteenth century in the complete disassembling of this structure. The bible could no longer be used as a framework for reconstructing the human past. It became one more source among others to be used critically in that reconstruction. The theory of evolution added one more obstacle to the “primitivist” 71 biblical model and added dramatically to the weight of the progressivist model. 72 For a long time, defenders of the biblical framework tried to reconcile it with scientific models through various forms of concordism 73 such as interpreting the “days” of the creation account in the 71 The word is being used here in the technical sense as described by Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (with supplementary essays by W. F. Albright and P.E. Dumont; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 (1937). Lovejoy and Boas state: “ Chronological primitivism is one of the many answers which may be and have been given to the question: What is the temporal distribution of good, or value, in the history of mankind, or, more generally, in the entire history of the world? It is, in short a kind of philosophy of history, a theory, or a customary assumption, as to the time – past or present or future – at which the most excellent condition of human life, or the best state of the world in general, must be supposed to occur” (p. 1). Boas has also described the notion as follows: “Chronological primitivism maintains that the earliest stage of human history was the best, that the earliest period of national, religious, artistic, or in fact any strand of history was better than the periods that have followed, that childhood is better than maturity. In short, it argues that to discover the best stage of any historical series one must return to its origin. Primitive man, for instance, was better than civilized man, primitive Christianity was better than later developments of Christianity, the arts of savages and children are better than those of educated men and adults.” See George Boas, “Primitivism” The Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas (edited by Philip P. Wiener; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973-74), Vol. 3, p. 577. With regard to the biblical account, Boas notes: “The condition of Adam before the Fall in the Garden of Eden is the Judeo-Christian equivalent of life in the Golden Age. In the first chapter of Genesis Adam, created in the image and likeness of God, is given dominion over the earth and all its creatures; in the second chapter he is ordered to “dress and keep” the Garden. The amount of work involved was presumably thought of as light and pleasant, prelapsarian life as easy and delightful. There are, however, very few details given in Scripture of just what Adam and Eve did before they met the Serpent; but later writers filled in the gaps, as Milton was to do, by imagining what was most pleasant and by asserting that it existed at the earliest period of human history. On the whole they excluded from primitive life all forms of hard primitivism. Man's condition before the Fall was, when dwelt upon in any detail, like life in the Golden Age, accounts of which the Christian writers could get from Ovid, if they had no text of Hesiod. There was a complete absence of whatever an author believed to be an evil, whether a defect of human nature or of the natural landscape” (p. 581). 72 The word is being used here to refer simply to the progressive accumulation of knowledge about the human condition by human beings. This word has a long and contentious history, partly for religious and theological reasons. With regard to the existence of the concept of progress in antiquity, E. R. Dodds has observed: "The Ancients had no conception of progress: they did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea." So wrote Walter Bagehot (Physics and Politics, p. 41) in the year 1872, and his assertion has often been echoed since. Yet it was possible for the late Ludwig Edelstein, in his posthumous book The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (1967), to declare that "The ancients formulated most of the thoughts and sentiments that later generations down to the nineteenth century were accustomed to associate with the blessed or cursed word—progress' " (p. xxxiii); and this is a view to which many contemporary scholars would subscribe. The explanation of this seeming conflict of opinion lies partly in the Greek vocabulary and the Greek habit of thought, partly in the ambiguity of the concept itself.” See E.R. Dodds “Progress in Classical Antiquity” The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. 3, p. 624. 73 Concordism, formulated in the 19th century, is the view that the biblical account of creation, when properly understood, will be in concord (agreement) with the correct scientific cosmology. 23 first chapter of Genesis as lengthy or indefinite periods of time. In the end it must be recognized that every attempt to reconcile the model of primitivism with that of progressivism will produce only some unsatisfactory form of concordism. It is somewhat like trying to square the circle. It is also common today to try to resolve the apparent conflict by attributing to Genesis a “theological” (as opposed to a “scientific”) interpretation, which would not be in conflict with modern science operating on a different level of experience. However that may be, it should be recognized that no such distinction would have been made in antiquity or before 1493. 1.4 The Dehistoricization of Moses If, according to all the information now at our disposal, Moses could not possibly have authored the Pentateuch, then how, why and when did he become the author? The process of historicizing Moses and the Pentateuch reveals that there was in fact a prior process of dehistoricizing the same writings through which their human origins and historical settings were lost or forgotten. The process of dehistoricization, which permitted Moses to become the author of the Pentateuch, was probably concomitant with the production of the writings. We can attempt tentatively to retrace that process. Tracing the process of dehistoricization is of course a continuation of the process of historicization of the texts. In the writings of the New Testament Moses is generally identified with the Law or the Pentateuch and is treated as the presumed author. Accordingly in Mark 12:26 we read: “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? Luke 20:37 has a slightly different version: “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush.” The reference is to Ex 3:2-6. Particular commands are attributed to Moses such as that of offering “the gift that Moses commanded” (Matt 8:4; Mk 1:44; Lk 5:14) where the reference is to Lev 13:2, 34. The command that a brother should marry his brother’s widow (Deut 25:5-10) 24 comes from Moses (Matt 22:24; Mk12:19; Lk 20:28). Similarly the permission to divorce (Deut 24:1-4) is said to be from Moses (Matt 19:7-8; Mk 10:3-4). Paul also assumes that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. Referring to Lev 18:5, he states: “Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it (Rom 10:5).” And referring to Deut 32:21, he says: “First Moses says, "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry (Rom 10:19)." The statement that “Moses is read” (2 Cor 3:15) refers presumably to the Pentateuch and is similar to the statement Luke attributes to James: “For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sabbath in the synagogues (Acts 15:21)." Moses is also understood to have been a prophet and to have foreseen the coming of Jesus Christ: “Moses said, `The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as he raised me up. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you” (Acts 3:22). Here the reference is to Deut 18:15-19. The phrase “Moses and the prophets” is employed especially by Luke to refer to Scripture in general or in its entirety. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham responds: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Lk 16:29). At the end of the Gospel (Lk 24:27) he states: “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”. Luke 24:44 includes the psalms: "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." The same idea if found at the end of Acts. “Moses and the prophets” foretold “what would come to pass” (Acts 26:22) and Paul, speaking to the Jews in Rome, tries “to convince them about Jesus both from the law of Moses and from the prophets” (Acts 28:23). The figures of Moses and Elijah in the Transfiguration scene (Matt 17:2-3; Mk 9:4; Lk 9:30) appear to represent also the two divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures. John’s Gospel (1:45) contains the same idea “ Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." (See also: John 5:45-47 “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.") All are agreed that, interpreted correctly, all the Scriptures speak of Jesus of Nazareth. 25 In the Hellenistic Jewish world of the first century A.D. there was also no doubt that Moses was the author of the first five books of the Scriptures. In his work On the Life of Moses, Philo of Alexandria (died after 41 A.D.) says that some describe Moses as “the legislator of the Jews, others as the interpreter of the Holy Laws.” (Mos. I,1). Moses composed the “sacred books” (i/erai\ bi/bloi) under God’s guidance (Mos. II, 11). Since Moses is above all a lawgiver, Philo must explain why the sacred books (a(i i(erw/tatai bi/bloi- Mos. II, 45) begin with an account of creation: in relating the history of early times, and going for its beginning right to the creation of the universe, he wished to shew two most essential things: first that the Father and Maker of the world was in the truest sense also its Lawgiver, secondly that he who would observe the laws will accept gladly the duty of following nature and live in accordance with the ordering of the universe, so that his deeds are attuned to harmony with his words and his words with his deeds. (Mos. II,48). 74 In order to overcome the difficulty (and perhaps objection) that Moses dies before the end of Deuteronomy, Philo explains that “the divine spirit fell upon him and he prophesied with discernment while still alive the story of his own death” (Mos. II,291). Flavius Josephus († after 100 A.D.), probably relying on Philo, offers a similar explanation. “Our lawgiver Moses” thought it best to lead his readers “first to study the nature of God” and then to “imitate as far as possible that best of all models.” He sought to lead “their thoughts up to God and the construction of the world.” He convinced them that “of all God’s works on earth we men are the fairest” and having won their obedience to piety, he would have no difficulty in persuading them to observe the laws (Ant. I, 18-22). 75 After passing in review a variety of precepts drawn from Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, Josephus concludes: “Such then is the constitution that Moses left; he further delivered over those laws which he had written forty years before. . .” On the following days he gave them blessings and curses and then recited a poem in hexameter verse. “All these books he consigned to the priests, together with the ark, in which he had deposited the two tables, and the tabernacle.” (Ant. IV, 302-304). 76 To deal with the account of Moses’ death, Josephus explains 74 Philo (Vols. 1-10; ed. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929-1962) VI, pp. 594-595. A similar explanation is found at the beginning of Philo’s work on the creation of the world De opificio mundi I,1. 75 Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (ed. H. St. J. Thackeray; Loeb Classical Library 242; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998 [1930]) pp. 11-13. 76 Ibid. pp. 147-149. 26 that, while bidding farewell to Eleazar and Joshua, “a cloud of a sudden descended upon him and he disappeared in a ravine.” Since this is not what the biblical text (Deut 34) states, he adds “but he has written of himself in the sacred books that he died, for fear lest they should venture to say that by reason of his surpassing virtue he had gone back to the Deity” (Ant. IV, 326). 77 The belief of Jews and Christians seems to have been unanimous in the first century that Moses had written the Pentateuch. We can easily push this back two centuries. In the document known as the Letter of Aristeas (LA), purporting to be from the early third century (from the reign of Ptolemy II [285-247 B.C.]) but probably from the first half of the second century, Moses is said to have enacted the legislation (LA 144). The Letter, which describes the miraculous translation of the Law into Greek by the seventy-two elders sent from Jerusalem, refers to the transcription of the “whole Law” (LA 310). 78 This is a vague term and it is not possible to know to what it refers. Earlier in the letter mention is made of “Scrolls of the Law of the Jews” (LA 30) and “books”. The writer has Demetrius of Phalerum, the king’s librarian, say in urging the king to support the translation of these books: “Writers therefore and poets and the whole army of historians have been reluctant to refer to the aforementioned books, and to the men past (and present) who featured largely in them, because the consideration of them is sacred and hallowed, as Hecataeus of Abdera says.” (LA 31). The reference to Hecataeus is very interesting because he is known to have been commissioned by Ptolemy I Soter († 283) to write a history of Egypt in the last decades of the fourth century. In a fragment from Hecataeus preserved by Diodorus Siculus, he is quoted as saying: A man called Moses, highly esteemed in both practical wisdom and courage, went out of Egypt into what is now called Judea. He took possession of the region and founded cities, among them the one named Jerusalem which is now the most famous. He also dedicated a temple most honored by them, introduced the ritual and worship of 79 the deity, and legislated and regulated political affairs. From the point of view of the biblical text as we know it, this quotation is somewhat confused, but it does show that Hecataeus knew of the Jewish tradition in which Moses played a central role. 77 Ibid., p. 158-159. 78 A recent English translation by R.J.H. Shutt may be found in : James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1983-1985) 2:7-34. 79 Diod. 1.281-29.5 =Photius, Bibl. 244 [Droge, p. 6] 27 From the period of the second and third centuries B.C. fragments of several other Hellenistic Jewish works survive that bear witness to the belief that Moses was the author of the Law. Of these one of the most significant is Aristobulus whose fragments have been preserved by Eusebius. He is thought to have written during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometer (181-145 B.C.). 80 Aristobulus refers to “our lawgiver Moses “(frag. 2, 3). He is aware of the legend of the translation by the seventy-two, but insists that translations had existed earlier, even “before the conquests of Alexander and the Persians” (frag. 3,1). Both Plato and Pythagoras had known these translations and found their own doctrines in “our legislation.” Aristobulus makes numerous references to Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy and says of the creation account: Just so has Moses called the whole genesis of the world words of God in our Law. For he continually says in each case, “And God spoke and it came to pass.” And it seems to me that Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato with great care follow him in all respects. They copy him when they say that they hear the voice of God, when they contemplate the arrangement of the universe, so carefully and so unceasingly held together by God. 81 In the same fragment, Orpheus is also said to have imitated Moses in his books on the Hieros Logos. In the fifth fragment he makes references to the creation account in six days and the “rest” of the sabbath, suggesting that “those of the peripatetic school” as well as Homer and Hesiod were influenced by this account.82 The notion of the greater antiquity of Moses and the borrowing from his works on the part of the philosophers is a topos to which we shall have occasion to return, for it justifies finding philosophical teachings in the interpretation of the law. The fragments of other authors preserved from this period (third to second centuries B.C.) also witness to the common belief that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Among these are Eupolemus and Artapanus. Eupolemus is quoted as saying that “Moses was the first wise man, that he first taught the alphabet to the Jews, and the Phoenicians received it from the Jews, and the Greeks received it from 80 A discussion of the dating together with a recent translation by A. Yarbro Collins may be found in : James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 19831985) 2:831-842. 81 Ibid., p. 840. 82 Ibid., pp. 841-842. It may be noted in passing that Aristobulus also attributes the book of Proverbs to Solomon (frag. 5). 28 the Phoenicians, and that Moses first wrote laws for the Jews.” 83 Artapanus shows familiarity with the text of the Pentateuch and attempts to integrate it with other knowledge of the history of Egypt. Moses is conflated with Mousaeus, the teacher of Orpheus and is said to have “invented boats and devices for stone construction and the Egyptian arms and the implements for drawing water and for warfare, and philosophy.” 84 Another work from the second century that deserves mention is the book of Jubilees. 85 It bears witness in a different way to the development of what has been called “Mosaic discourse.” 86 We may conclude from the writings cited that in the Hellenistic Jewish world Moses was held to be the author of the Pentateuch by about 300 B.C. Is it possible to push this back further? The fact that the Samaritans venerated the Pentateuch means that it must have received approximately its present form before 400 B.C. The definitive split between the Jews and Samaritans is generally dated to the mid-fourth century. Alexander the Great, according to Josephus, authorized the erection of the Gerizim temple. 87 By comparing parallel texts it is also possible to observe a growth in the use of the name of Moses in reference to the law between the time of the Deuteronomistic History (usually ascribed to the period of the Exile) and the writing of EzraNehemiah-Chronicles (400-300 B.C.). 88 In 1 Chron 15:15, which relates the story of 83 See the discussion and translation by F. Fallon in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1983-1985) 2:861-872. 84 See the discussion and translation by J. J. Collins in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1983-1985) 2:891-903. Collins classifies Artapanus as “romance.” 85 See the discussion and translation by O. S. Wintermute in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1983-1985) 2:34-51. The book purports to be an account of matters revealed to Moses during the forty days that he spent on Mount Sinai (Exod 24:18). 86 Hindy Najman, The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003). 87 Ant. II,315-324 [Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (ed. H. St. J. Thackeray; Loeb Classical Library 242; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998 [1930]) vol. ?, pp. ??]. See Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) p. 250. 88 For a discussion of the dating of 1-2 Chronicles together with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, see R. W. Klein, “Chronicles, Book of 1-2” Anchor Bible Dictionary, and H.G.M. Williamson, “Ezra and Nehemiah, Books of” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John H. Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999) 1375-382. 29 the transferal of the ark to Jerusalem, the text reads: “And the Levites carried the ark of God upon their shoulders with the poles, as Moses had commanded according to the word of the LORD.” The references to “the poles” are to Exod 25:13-15 and for the Levites to Num 1:50. In the parallel text (the source of Chronicles) of 2 Sam 6, there is no mention of pole or Levites or of a command of Moses. In 1 Chron 22:13, following the dynastic promise of Nathan, the text reads: “Then you will prosper if you are careful to observe the statutes and the ordinances which the LORD commanded Moses for Israel.” The parallel text of 2 Sam 7:13ff. contains no mention of statues and ordinances or of Moses. In the story of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple in the time of Josiah, 2 Kgs 22:8 states that “The high priest Hilkiah informed the scribe Shaphan, ‘I have found the book of the law in the temple of the Lord.’” The parallel text of 2 Chron 34:14 has instead: “Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given through Moses.” 2 Kgs 23:21 relates that Josiah commanded the people: “Keep the passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.” In 2 Chron 35:1-19 this is expanded considerably with the introduction of the Levites, who are commanded to slay the Passover sacrifice “according to the word of the LORD by Moses” (vs. 6). Verse 12 states that the Levites distributed the sacrifices “as it is written in the book of Moses.” In the book of Nehemiah it is stated that the whole people gathered “and they called upon Ezra the scribe to bring forth the book of the law of Moses which the Lord prescribed for Israel” (Neh 8:1). Ezra then reads from the book of the law and on the second day “They found it written in the law prescribed by the Lord through Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month” (Neh 8:14). The allusions here are to Exod 23:14 and Lev 23:33-36. From this brief comparative survey we can conclude that the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah-Chronicles clearly associated the Law with Moses and that, because of the references or allusions, the “book” or the “Law” to which they are referring is most likely the five books known later as the Pentateuch. This does not necessarily mean that the book of the Law from which Ezra himself read was the Pentateuch, although it has often been hypothesized that the scribe Ezra had a significant role in the final form of the Pentateuch. To retrace Moses as author further back requires more speculative hypotheses. At this point it may be useful to mention some recent theories of the writing/composition 30 of the Pentateuch. In an analysis of the scribal culture of the ancient world and of the book of Deuteronomy in particular, K. van der Toorn has offered a comprehensive overview of the composition of the Pentateuch and its association with the name of Moses. He suggests that the book of Deuteronomy is the work of several generations of scribes, who produced three new editions each separated by about 40 years. For almost two hundred years the text existed in a single copy. Each new edition would have involved a revision of the whole manuscript, the insertion of a new framework, new material and a rephrasing of the older material. He hypothesizes that the scribes behind Deuteronomy were from priestly families that moved to Judah from the Northern kingdom after 722 and traced their origins to Levi.(why?) They developed a profile as legal scholars. Their work would have stretched from the late monarchy to the time of Ezra. Toorn describes the four versions of Deuteronomy as first: the “Covenant” edition in which the law serves to establish a religious orthodoxy, prescribes a format with a place for one God only and only one place to worship Him (2 Kings 23:2, 21; cf. 23:3). The second, the “Torah” edition describes the Law as the “book of the Torah” (Deut 4:44, 28:61, 29:20, 29:28, 30:10), presents the Law “as a design for the future as revealed in the past” and describes a theocratic utopia as a source of inspiration. The third, the “History” edition, presents the Law as “an enduring witness against past generations” and explains the disasters that struck Judah and Jerusalem. The scribe who produced the third edition is also the author of the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua to Kings) and has rewritten the text of Deuteronomy to make it serve as the beginning and basis of the historical work. (pp. 160-161) In the fourth and final edition, the “Wisdom” edition, the Law is presented with universal overtones as a superior form of wisdom to be appreciated as such by all human beings. Although Toorn suggests that the scribe who produced the first edition cloaked himself with the authority of Moses, the lawgiver of old, he admits that Moses’ role in the first addition may not have been prominent. 89 In order to legitimate the measures taken in the religious reform under Josiah (2 Kings 22-23), the scribe would have invented the idea of a previous covenant in the land of Moab before the entrance into the Promised Land (Deut 28:69). The first edition would have been subsequent to this 89 Toorn, Scribal Culture, p. 168. 31 reform and would have incorporated existing texts such as royal decrees and revisions of earlier legal material such as the Covenant Code of Exod 21-23. 90 In the second “Torah” edition Moses appears as a prophet, not Elijah or Isaiah nor an ecstatic or diviner, but one “who gives Torah and communicates God’ Law.” The scribe is transforming the concept to make Moses resemble himself. Moses’ role as prophet is linked to his role of intermediary at Mt. Horeb where he received the oral Torah, which he put down in writing not long before he died and entrusted to the priests. Baffling cases are to be decided by an oral Torah from the priests (Deut 17:8-13) who have inherited the office of Moses. Toorn suggests that in this edition Moses is “the model and prototype of a succession of prophets” ((Deut 18:15-18). This latter text was written as a legitimization of those who were sitting on “the seat of Moses” (Matt 23:2), that is, the scribes. They had acquired the authority to interpret and update traditional law. 91 The author of the “History” edition turns Moses into a preaching prophet. The homiletic material in his additions (Deut 1-3, 27, 31-34) are concerned with the lessons of history that Moses had taught and reflect the rhetorical training of the scribe. (p. 179). In the final “Wisdom” edition Moses becomes chiefly a teacher, who “expounds” the Torah (Deut 1:5). In this way the figure and role of Moses grows through successive editions of Deuteronomy. But it grew even more as the Pentateuch grew. Moses plays a significant role in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. What is the source of this material and how did it become attached to Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history? Toorn attempts to answer the question by connecting it with the question of the canon or rather the question of how the Pentateuch came to be imposed or regarded as normative. After reviewing a variety of theories about the creation of the “canon,” Toorn concludes that the establishment and imposition of a “canonical” version of the Pentateuch must have been the result of the work of Ezra somewhere around 450 B.C. Ezra had been sent by the Persian authorities from Babylonia to Jerusalem to reorganize the province of Judah and the Persian king “endorsed the mission of Ezra by adopting Jewish national law as the law of the 90 Ibid., p. 154. 91 Ibid., p.169. 32 Persian king” (Ezra 7:26). 92 That this was a normal part of Persian policy is suggested by a parallel with Egypt where in 518 Darius, the Persian king, ordered the governor to create a commission to put the laws into a written code, a task that took more than ten years. 93 Ezra is described as a “proficient scribe of the Law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6), that is, an expert in the Law of Moses and the Persian authorities refer to his law code as “the Law of your God that is in your hand” (Ezra 7:14). In order to fulfill his mission of implementing a national law, Ezra would have had to fuse documents such as Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code into a higher unity, which became the Pentateuch or the five books of Moses. 94 Ezra had received his scribal training in Babylonia and would have been familiar with the editing of works such as the Gilgamesh Epic, which shows a similar process of weaving together different sources. Toorn concludes that Ezra may have carried out this work himself or as the supervisor of an editorial committee. In any case, “the Pentateuch is as much the Book of Ezra as it is the Book of Moses.” 95 Although the documentary hypothesis in some form (usually four documents JEPD and one or more “redactors”) has continued to be the most common explanation for the formation of the Pentateuch, more recently other approaches have been offered that effectively eliminate the redactor (editor) or redactors.96 A revisionist history of the redactor (from 1678 to the present) has even been produced. 97 The basic theory 92 Ibid., p. 249. 93 Ibid., Toorn cites the Demotic Chronicle for this information. See note 55 to p. 249. 94 Ibid., p. 250. 95 Ibid. Toorn also states that, although Ezra is regarded as a symbol of Jewish restoration, in reality “Ezra counts as the founding father of Judaism.” “Ezra was indeed an innovator in the sense that he fused separate and at times conflicting legal and narrative traditions – the various strands of the Pentateuch – into one literary work and defined it as the Law of Moses. It is a feat of scribal acumen because it incorporates early legal texts, such as the Covenant Code, alongside law that was meant to supercede them, such as Deuteronomy; it has different visions on the temple and the priesthood cohabiting under the single authority of Moses; it succeeds in weaving parallel historical traditions into one narrative. Ezra’s work has been characterized as a compromise. It is indeed artificial and replete with redundancy, but it stands as a symbol of Jewish identity. That identity, embodied in the Law, was a scribal creation.” p. 252. Whether or not one agrees with this version of the formation of the Pentateuch, it is a good description of the final result. Toorn is not the first to attribute the work to Ezra .... . 96 For recent surveys of explanations of the formation of the Pentateuch, see R. E. Friedman, “Torah (Pentateuch)” The Anchor Bible Dictionary (pp. ??) and Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Pentateuch,” The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (ed. John Barton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 181-197. 97 John Van Seters, The Edited Bible. The Curious History of the "Editor" in Biblical Criticism (Winnona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) pp. 428. 33 put forward by Van Seters, which he has developed in great detail in a number of works, 98 is that instead of anonymous redactors working on distinct documentary sources, what we really have is a succession of authors, each adding to and building on the work of his predecessor. The first of these “historians” would have been the Deuteronomist, who incorporated the book of Deuteronomy into an expansive historical work (Joshua to Kings). 99 This history is replete with tales and legends, but it has a design, a sense of unity and purpose through the whole. A major task of the history was “to have been the combination and reconciliation of the northern Mosaic traditions, reflected in Deuteronomy, with the royal ideology of the house of David in the south.” 100 The Yahwist (the traditional “J” source) supplemented the work of the Deuteronomist “by extending the history back in time to the beginning of the world.” This author uses stories about the eponymous ancestors “to express a strong ethnic identity so important to a people scattered in exilic and diaspora communities.” He expresses this identity “in a more universalistic fashion” and as “a positive relationship to all the families/nations of the earth.” 101 The Yahwist builds on the work of the Deuteronomist presenting Moses as a prophet, intercessor, and one who suffers on behalf of his people, but his presentation of Moses as leader is much more prominent. The Israelites are referred to as “Moses’ people” (Ex 32:7; 34:10; Num 11:10-17), but Moses is not a model for monarchy. There is no hint of a court or dynastic succession. He is not even a priest. The term used for the leader of the people in the book of the Covenant, nasi’, reflects perhaps “a new model of leadership in the exilic community, one that is both religious and political.” The sharing of authority with a council of elders in Numbers 11 seems to reflect the Diaspora situation. 102 The final author, the traditional “Priestly writer” (P) or source, would have built on both the Yahwist and Deuteronomist to create a system of institutional and cultic identity 98 John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); In Search of History. Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (Winnona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997); The Life of Moses. The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus-Numbers (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994). 99 In Search of History, p. 360. 100 Ibid., pp. 358, 360. 101 Ibid. p. 361. See Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14. 102 The Life of Moses, pp. 462-464. 34 that could be meaningful both for the diaspora Jews and for the renewed cultic community in Jerusalem. 103 What then can be said of the historical Moses? He seems to vanish into the mists of the seventh century B.C. Some would argue that it is futile to search for a historical Moses. Others insist (somewhat a priori) that there must have been a historical figure behind all this tradition. 104 The fact is that any such historical figure would have lived centuries before there was a written Hebrew language, even if we place the Exodus in the 13th century B.C. and not much earlier as the ancients did. The name “Moses” is of course clearly an Egyptian name. This has led to speculation that the original Mosaic tradition was associated with the liberation from Egypt, but not with the giving of the law. 105 Rather the “serpent of bronze” (the Egyptian cobra) would have been associated with Moses. According to 2 Kings 18:4, this serpent was destroyed by the king Hezekiah: “And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had burned incense to it; it was called Nehushtan.” It is not easy to reconcile this account with the story of Numbers 21, which presents the bronze serpent in a version acceptable in a monotheistic setting. The obvious conclusion is that strict monotheism is a later development. This would be confirmed by the monotheistic reform of Josiah related in 2 Kings 23 in which numerous polytheistic cult objects were destroyed. 106 103 In Search of History, p. 361. 104 For a survey of the variety of opinions, see Dewey M. Beegle, “Moses” Anchor Bible Dictionary. 105 See G. Garbini, Mito e storia nella bibbia (Brescia: Paideia, 2003) pp. 87-107. 106 2 Kings 23:4-7 4 “And the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. 5 And he deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places at the cities of Judah and round about Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and the moon, and the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. 6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.” 35 1.5 Their World and Ours To summarize and conclude this chapter it may be useful to compare the historical outlook of 500 years ago with our own. 107 In the course of the last 100 years advances in physics have produced the theory of the “big bang” origin of the universe. According to this theory the physical universe would have originated close to 14 billion years ago. Our sun would have been formed about 5 billion years ago. Living organisms may have come into existence between 4.4 and 2.7 billion years ago. The evolution of mammals from synasids (mammal-like reptiles) took place about 70 million years ago and modern humans (Homo Sapiens) belong to the family of hominidae that may have split off 5.4-6.3 million years ago. Speculation varies but DNA evidence suggests that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. 108 The term Paleolithic, based on the production of tools from stone, now covers a very long period including not only the culture of Homo Sapiens but also of older hominids. The Neolithic period, marked by the development of farming, appears in the Levant about 8500 B.C. All of this of course belongs to “prehistory,” for writing, as we have seen, first appears in Egypt and in Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium. Records that allow more precise dating are found only in Egyptian (hieroglyphic) and in Sumerian (cuneiform) in the third millennium. It follows that history in the sense of a reconstruction of the human past from written records covers only a small portion of the long human journey. This is all very different from the world view of 500 years ago, which was basically already in place 2000 years ago. For Hartmann Schedel the world had been created 6691 years before he wrote and 5200 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The biblical account of creation found in Genesis, into which the cosmology and geography of Ptolemy had been incorporated, offered the basic view of human origins. Moses was the author and the original language was Hebrew. In 1492 it was 107 The comparison is based upon what the average well-educated and well-informed person might think. 108 Estimates and terminology change and vary. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas, gives the following summary: “To simplify matters a little, here is the chronology of our most recent ancestor (Homo sapiens): Three hundred thousand and perhaps more years ago various types of archaic sapiens already peopled various parts of the world. Two hundred thousand years ago, Neandertal can be found in Europe, and one hundred thousand years ago modern humans (sapiens sapiens) are found in South Africa and Israel. Subsequently, Neandertal appears in the Middle East about sixty thousand years ago, when there is no sign of modern humans in the area” (p. 56). Admitting that the dates are uncertain, he also states: “The first modern human lived about one hundred thousand years ago, perhaps numbering between twenty and one hundred thousand people (estimates based on uncertain data). They inhabited the areas where the modern human race first developed – eastern Africa or the Middle East (or both)” (p. 158). 36 not generally known that languages and writing were human inventions and comparatively little was understood about the complex history of ideas. In Hegelian terms, human beings were “alienated” from their own creations. The reason for this historical introduction has been to be able to distinguish our modern point of view from that of the ancients and to be able to situate ancient interpretation in its own world. The world of the Bible is quite different from our world today. That was not the case in 1492. Even though the cosmology and geography of Ptolemy had been incorporated into that world, it was still recognisable as the biblical world. The difference between these two intellectual worlds, the ancient and the modern, also goes far to explain the very different attitudes and interests of the ancient and modern interpreters of the Bible. The modern interpreter with a greatly expanded historical awareness seeks to situate a text in its original historical context in order to understand what its original meaning might have been. The ancient interpreter, with a comparatively limited historical horizon and little awareness that it could be expanded, had little interest in the original historical meaning. 109 He (and sometimes she) tended instead to look for the perennial or atemporal meaning that could be found by a process of decipherment rather than through historical reconstruction. His notion of Scripture was dehistoricized and so was the meaning he sought to discover. This dehistoricised understanding of “Scripture” as it was understood in the ancient world will be explored and developed in the third chapter. 109 In an otherwise admirable exposition of Patristic thought, Robert L. Wilkin makes the observation: “The church fathers were no less aware than we that the books of the Bible came from disparate authors and different historical periods” (The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. Seeking the Face of God [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003] p. 314). The problem is that the ancient authors had much less historical information at their disposal and they did not have the critical instruments necessary for analysing their sources. Nothing is gained by minimizing the difference between the worlds of the ancient and modern interpreters. 37