The
Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, is the collection of scriptures making up the Bible used by
Judaism. The same books, in a slightly different order, also make up the Protestant version of the
Old Testament. The order used here follows the divisions used in Jewish Bibles. Most of the Hebrew Bible was written between the late 8th century BCE and early 6th century BCE. Biblical texts were written by
scribes (
Hebrew: ), the literate class of bureaucrats in a mostly non-literate, oral culture. The question of biblical authorship was not important until
Hellenization in the 4th century BCE, long after most biblical books had been written.
Ancient Greeks believed that a text's authority depended on its author, and Jewish tradition was pressured to identify authors for its writings.
Torah The first division of the Jewish Bible is the
Torah, meaning or . In scholarly literature, it is frequently called by its Greek name, the Pentateuch (). It is the group of five books made up of
Genesis,
Exodus,
Leviticus,
Numbers, and
Deuteronomy and stands first in all versions of the Christian Old Testament. There is a tradition within Judaism and Christianity that
Moses wrote the Torah. The Torah itself attributes certain sections to
Mosaic authorship. In later biblical texts, such as
Daniel 9:11 and
Ezra 3:2, it is called the "
Torah of Moses". According to
Rabbinic tradition, the five books of the Torah were written by Moses, with the exception of the last eight verses of Deuteronomy which describe his death. Moses would have lived in the
2nd millennium BCE, before the development of
Hebrew writing. Scholars date the Torah to the
1st millennium BCE. The Torah may, however, incorporate older
oral traditions, such as proverbs, stories, and songs. Most Jews and Christians believed in Mosaic authorship until the 17th century. Today, the majority of scholars agree that the Pentateuch does not have a single author and that its composition took place over centuries.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers The rise of
historical criticism in the 19th century led scholars to conclude that multiple authors wrote the Pentateuch over a long period. By the mid-20th century, the
documentary hypothesis had gained nearly universal consensus among scholars. According to the documentary hypothesis, the Pentateuch was created by combining four originally independent documents. The
Jahwist source () and the
Elohist source () were the first to be combined into one document. In the 7th century BCE, the
Deuteronomist produced Deuteronomy, which was later added to the combined document. In the
post-exilic period, the Pentateuch reached its final form with the addition of the
Priestly source (). The consensus around the documentary hypothesis began to break down in the 1970s, and this approach has since seen various revisions. While the identification of distinctive Deuteronomistic and Priestly theologies and vocabularies remains widespread, they are used to form new approaches suggesting that the books were combined gradually over time by the slow accumulation of "fragments" of text, or that a basic text was "supplemented" by later authors/editors. At the same time there has been a tendency to bring the origins of the Pentateuch further forward in time, and the most recent proposals place it in 5th century BCE
Judah under the Persian empire.
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy is treated separately from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. Its place in the documentary hypothesis is anomalous, as it, unlike the other four, consists of a single "source". The process of its formation probably took several hundred years, from the 8th century to the 6th, and its authors have been variously identified as prophetic circles (because the concerns of Deuteronomy mirror those of the prophets, especially
Hosea), Levitical priestly circles (because it stresses the role of the
Levites), and wisdom and scribal circles (because it esteems wisdom, and because the treaty-form in which it is written would be best known to
scribes). Deuteronomy was later used as the introduction to the comprehensive history of Israel written in the early part of the 6th century, and later still it was detached from the history and used to round off the Pentateuch.
Prophets Former prophets The Former Prophets (נביאים ראשונים, ''Nevi'im Rishonim''), make up the first part of the second division of the Hebrew Bible, the
Nevi'im, which translates as "Prophets". In Christian Bibles the
Book of Ruth, which belongs in the final section of the Hebrew Bible, is inserted between Judges and Samuel. According to Jewish tradition dating from at least the 2nd century CE, the
Book of Joshua was by
Joshua, the
Book of Judges and the
Books of Samuel were by the prophet
Samuel (with some passages by the prophets
Gad and
Nathan), while the two
Books of Kings were by
Jeremiah. Since 1943 most scholars have accepted
Martin Noth's argument that Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings make up a single work, the so-called "
Deuteronomistic history". Noth believed that the history was the work of a single author writing in the time of the
Babylonian exile (586–539 BCE). This author/editor took as his starting point an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, which had already been composed during the reign of
Josiah (last quarter of the 7th century), selecting, editing and composing it to produce a coherent work.
Frank Moore Cross later proposed that an earlier version of the history was composed in Jerusalem in Josiah's time; this first version, Dtr1, was then revised and expanded to create Noth's second edition, or Dtr2. Still later scholars have discovered further layers and further author-editors. In the 1990s some scholars began to question the existence of a Deuteronomistic history
Latter prophets Isaiah Modern scholars divide the
Book of Isaiah into three parts, each with a different origin:
"First Isaiah", chapters 1–39, containing the words of the historical 8th century BCE prophet
Isaiah and later expansions by his disciples; "
Deutero-Isaiah" (chapters 40–55), by an anonymous Jewish author in Babylon near the end of the
Babylonian captivity; This orderly sequence of pre-exilic, exilic and post-exilic material is somewhat misleading, as some scholars note that significant editing appears to have taken place in all three parts.
Jeremiah Jeremiah lived in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE. The
Book of Jeremiah presents
Baruch ben Neriah as the prophet's companion who writes his words on several occasions, and there has accordingly been much speculation that Baruch could have composed an early edition of the book. In the early 20th century
Sigmund Mowinckel identified three types of material in the book, Jeremiah 1–25 (Type A) being the words of Jeremiah himself, the biographic prose material (Type B) by an admirer writing c. 580–480 BCE, and the remainder (Type C) from later periods. There has been considerable debate over Mowinckel's ideas, notably the extent of the Jeremiah material and the role of Baruch, who may have been the author of the Type B material.
Ezekiel The
Book of Ezekiel describes itself as the words of
Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of
Babylon between 593 and 571 BCE. While Ezekiel himself may have been responsible for some of this revision, there is general agreement that the book as we have it today is the product of a highly educated priestly circle that owed allegiance to the historical Ezekiel and was closely associated with the Temple. This process is believed to have reached its final form in the
Persian period (538–332 BCE), although there is disagreement over whether this was early or late. For the individual books, scholars usually assume that there exists an original core of prophetic tradition which can be attributed to the figure after whom the book is named. The noteworthy exception is the
Book of Jonah, an anonymous work containing no prophetic oracles, probably composed in the
Hellenistic period (332–167 BCE).
Writings , 1795
Psalms While a number of the
Psalms bear headings which seem to identify their authors, these are probably the result of the need to find a significant identification in tradition. The individual psalms come from widely different periods: "some ... presuppose a reigning king and an established cult in the Temple; others clearly presuppose and mention the events of the Exile."
Job The unknown author of the
Book of Job is unlikely to have written earlier than the 6th century BCE, and the cumulative evidence suggests a post-Exilic date. It contains some 1,000 lines, of which about 750 form the original core.
Proverbs The
Book of Proverbs consists of several collections taken from various sources. Chapters 10:1–22:16 are probably the oldest section, with chapters 1–9 being composed as a prologue – there is some question whether this happened before or after the Exile (587 BCE). The remaining collections are probably later, with the book reaching its final form around the 3rd century BCE.
Ruth The
Talmud refers to
Samuel as the author of
Ruth, but this conflicts with several details inside the book. It has been proposed that the anonymous author was a woman, or if a man then one who took women's issues seriously. The book is largely a unity, although the genealogy of David appears to be a later addition.
Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) The
Song of Songs was traditionally attributed to
Solomon, but modern scholars date it around the 3rd century BCE. Scholars still debate whether it is a single unified work (and therefore from a single author), or more in the nature of an anthology.
Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes The
Book of Ecclesiastes is usually dated to the mid-3rd century BCE. A provenance in Jerusalem is considered likely. The book's claim of
Solomon as author is a literary fiction; the author also identifies himself as "Qoheleth", a word of obscure meaning which critics have understood variously as a personal name, a
nom de plume, an acronym, and a function; a final self-identification is as "shepherd", a title usually implying royalty.
Lamentations Lamentations is assigned by tradition to the
Prophet Jeremiah; linguistic and theological evidence point to its origin as a distinct book in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, with the contents having their origin in special mourning observances in Exilic and post-Exilic Jewish communities.
Esther The
Book of Esther was composed in the late 4th or early 3rd century BCE among the Jews of the eastern diaspora. The genre of the book is the novella or short story, and it draws on the themes of wisdom literature; its sources are still unresolved.
Daniel The
Book of Daniel presents itself as the work of a prophet named
Daniel who lived during the 6th century BCE; the overwhelming majority of modern scholars date it to the 2nd century BCE. The author, writing in the time of the Maccabees to assure his fellow-Jews that their persecution by the Syrians would come to an end and see them victorious, seems to have constructed his book around the legendary Daniel mentioned in Ezekiel, a figure ranked with Noah and Job for his wisdom and righteousness.
Ezra–Nehemiah The
Book of Ezra and the
Book of Nehemiah were originally one work,
Ezra–Nehemiah. H.G.M Williamson (1987) proposed three basic stages leading to the final work: (1) composition of the various lists and Persian documents, which he accepts as authentic and therefore the earliest parts of the book; (2) composition of the "Ezra memoir" and "Nehemiah memoir", about 400 BCE; and (3) composition of Ezra 1–6 as the final editor's introduction to the combined earlier texts, about 300 BCE. Lester Grabbe (2003) puts the combination of the two texts Ezra and Nehemiah, with some final editing, somewhat later, in the Ptolemaic period, c. 300–200 BCE.
Israel Finkelstein has argued that the core of Ezra–Nehemiah probably dates to the Persian period but was very likely augmented in the
Hasmonean era (2nd–1st centuries BCE).
Chronicles Chronicles is an anonymous work from Levitical circles in Jerusalem, probably composed in the late 4th century BCE. Although the book is divided into two parts (1st and 2nd Chronicles), the majority of studies propose a single underlying text with lengthy later additions and amendments to underline certain interests such as the cult or the priesthood. ==Deuterocanonicals/Biblical apocrypha==