Everybody says Moses wrote the Torah, which includes Genesis & Exodus, the BIG Bang B.C. books. But, as usual, Everybody is wrong. Not least because Moses DIES.
According to the Documentary Hypothesis, there are basically four biblical editorial academies. Imagine: the bible was written by committees of committees. If you've ever tried to pull off a big project by "consensus," you'll appreciate that the finished product took a really, really long time.
Now for the Alphabet Lesson:
The J (German acronym for Y - YWHW) refers to God as YHWH (which is supposed to be unpronounceable, and hence never spoken aloud). Super-strict Jews generally say Hashem instead.
I've been told to avoid using "Yahweh" in poems intended for a Jewish audience, which is kinda ironic because I thought Yahweh would connect all through a common belief in the Old Testament. So, in my attempt to reach out to Jews @ Yeshiva, I almost insulted them. Sigh. Inter-faithing is fraught with challenge. Oy.
The “J” school probably lived around Jerusalem, and hob-nobbed with the Court elite. Harold Bloom even speculated that J was a woman living in Soloman's court, given J's highly refined & literary-text-savvy writing style. At first I thought: NO WAY a woman would write the second Genesis story!! By after thinking about it, given how progressive the Hebrews were, relative to contemporary tribes, a woman's lib's reading make sense. [But that's for another post.]
The “E” school refers to God as Elohim and likely was from Northern Israel. E is nowhere near as big a deal as J.
“D” is for "the Deuteronomy writer." Guess what they wrote? BTW there are more curses in Deutero than in most rap songs. For Real. Check it out.
The “P” or Priestly writer loved loved loved lists, regulations, and lots of historical-seeming facts. All those genealogies you skip over? Brought to you by P.
A super-anal canon lawyer is sure to test the patience of a lay audience. Such painfully excessive detail especially annoys me because it's mostly made up/arbitrary; the more precise the detail, the more likely it's factually false.
But the point is not historical accuracy. It's about discipline. The priests standardized worship and religious practice in order to create cultural cohesion. And it worked.
As a fiction writer, I have a special angry spot in my heart for people who tell me how pointless fiction is, and how morally superior "facts" are compared to fictional/dramatized stories. You know, those people who only read "non-fiction" or journalism, in order to seek The Truth. People like my Dad.
"I don't waste my time reading things that aren't true," my father told me when I was a kid. He was referring to literature. Sigh. Well, I won't be dedicating my first novel to you, Dad.
Of course, Daddy and his ilk read the newspaper, and watch TV newscasts and documentaries. You know, "real news." Presumably, the Bible is True, and therefore it's not literature, which isn't "true."
The P-Priestly writer probably penned Gen 1, and J probably created Genesis 2.
Clearly, the J writers are the Lyrical Masters. It should be obvious J is telling stories: Myths, fables, historical novellas (like Joseph's tale) are based very loosely, if at all, on real people and real events. But apparently, nothing is obvious.
The Genesis stories were transmitted orally, and as oral stories are wont to do, mutated from generation to generation, but with common motifs. The Final editors (compiling in Babylon?) didn't know which version was more correct, so they included all of it.
The idea was that scholars would read the complete text and argue among themselves as to how to interpret the stories, conflicts and all. Hence the importance of studying Torah, and the social esteem of the Rabbi. The Scriptures were tough, and required a lifetime of study.
Personally, I'm don't mind that both stories are included. Consider: factual problems in the bible are a SIGN of QUALITY REPORTING. They collected all the available evidence.
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