Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins
Why does the Bible exist? Whereas many introductory textbooks explore the “Four W’s” of inquiry (who, what, when, and where), Jacob L. Wright seeks to answer why a tiny nation over the course of several centuries produced a prolific and enduring corpus of texts. Setting aside answers one might expect from a confessional setting (“because God wanted to reveal divine truth to us”), and seeking to answer the question as a historian, Wright explores the historical and socio-political factors that led to this expansive collection of Hebrew texts (xv). Wright’s central claim is “that the Hebrew Bible represents the first attempt in world history to construct what we may properly call a ‘national identity’” (12). This national identity, forged in defeat, resulted in a guidebook for survival that communities today would do well to heed.
In the acknowledgments of Wright’s intriguing book, he plainly states his goal: “to demonstrate that the Bible’s achievements as an innovative and ambitious ‘project of peoplehood’ go unappreciated when readers reduce it to a moral guide, even for those who deem it a reliable one” (xii). It is through this lens that one must approach and appreciate Wright’s work. Wright is not introducing the Hebrew Bible as scripture, but rather exploring how this diverse collection of Hebrew writings came to be and came to function as a guide to peoplehood marked by lament, protest, and perseverance. Although titled Why the Bible Began, Wright is ultimately concerned with another question: What does it mean to be a people? Wright maintains that the people of Israel, or rather the scribes of Israel and Judah, forged an identity informed by division and military failure that ultimately resulted in a project of unity. From various stories and competing traditions emerged a compelling narrative of origins and purpose in a brilliant move that enabled a defeated state to become a unified nation in the hands of Judah’s scribes.
Wright takes a fourfold approach to answering the question of the Hebrew Bible’s origins and purpose. Part I: Rise and Fall, presents two narratives simultaneously: the history of the land at the crossroads of ancient civilization and the biblical story beginning with Abraham and Sarah that converge in the narrative of the destruction of Jerusalem. In eight chapters, Wright weaves together the biblical narrative with archaeological and historical realities with remarkable deftness. To give an example of the approach, Wright introduces the narrative of Abraham and Sarah, situates their importance in the biblical narrative, then uses their story as a springboard to introduce the three places of their journey: West Asia, Canaan, and Egypt. Once he has introduced the three intersecting regions in broad strokes, Wright moves forward in the biblical story with Miriam and Moses, then drills deeper into the importance of Egypt, introducing the Amarna letters and the Merneptah Stele. The Bronze Age collapse is foregrounded with Deborah, and so on through the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Part II: Admitting Defeat picks up with the division and defeat of a people left without institution or binding ideology. It is in this moment of crisis that one might expect the end of the national narrative. However, Wright contends “The story of their recovery from the Babylonian devastation is not one of a phoenix rising from the ashes, liberating itself from foreign bondage, and restoring what had been demolished. Instead, we witness a gradual exodus of an old order and discovery of something new” (136). In the rebuilding of the community after the exile, and the modest building projects of Persian-period Judah, emerges a people bound together by written traditions: history, law, wisdom, poetry, and songs that became the national curriculum.
Part III: A New Narrative explores the expansion and weaving together of multiple histories: the people’s history (the family story of Genesis combined with the exodus-conquest narrative that originally served as competing origin narratives), palace history, prophets, and competing law codes. Central to the project of peoplehood is the replacement of the king with the deity, forging a people bound together in the distant past by divine covenant, its laws situated within a narrative of divine deliverance.
Part IV: A People of Protest explores the survival strategies of the last gen- eration of biblical scribes in the post-exilic era, who, in Wright’s contention, galvanized the collection into a work that called for an egalitarian and equalizing movement; what results is an instruction manual for a people of protest. The latest books of the canon, the Writings, include in its didactic literature of the com- munity both the stories of laws of exclusion of the foreigner in the Pentateuch, and the story of Ruth the faithful Moabite. The optimism of Proverbs is paired with the protest of Job and Kohelet, the skeptics. Wright posits that the scribes of the post-exilic period preserved, updated, and drafted stories that redefine gender roles, address issues of belonging, and provide a model of peoplehood that does not depend on physical borders and political power. The heroes of Wright’s history are the anonymous scribes who turned a story of defeat into a manual for survival and unity. In this final revision, Wright identifies a curbing of the warrior stories of old in favor of renewed emphasis on domestic life and study, a primary value for a kingless and struggling people. An example can be found in the shaping of the Psalter. It is widely recognized in Psalms scholarship that Psalms 1-2 serve as a two-fold introduction to the collection. Wright identifies in this two-fold introduction the editorial moves of the final stages of the peoplehood project in individual texts and as a growing collection. “If David is the implied author of this book, he has metamorphosed from a triumphant warrior to one who meditates day and night on Yhwh’s instruction” (446). Wright finds a similar movement, not just within the Book of Psalms, but within the growing collection. He writes, “In the same way, Joshua 1 makes the success of the nation’s war hero depend on his study of, and faithfulness to, the Torah. . . . These editorial moves grow in significance when we consider how they demarcate the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible. While Joshua 1 introduces the second section of the Bible. . . Psalm 1 introduces the third and final section. . . . Both introductions orient the reader to the first section of the canon, the Torah or ‘Pentateuch’” (446). Wright identifies in the scribal activity a decisive move away from combat to meditation as a means of survival.
Wright’s alternative history of the Hebrew Bible concludes, not with an analysis of the factors that led to a closed canon, but to a call for alternative canons: “perhaps what we need are new bibles—collections of narratives, laws, wisdom, poetry, and songs like the Hebrew Bible that inspire citizens to engage in a deep conversation about what it means to be a people” (470). In Wright’s conclusion, he proposes that “nations need narration” and offers the biblical text as a model of “robust and persistent engagement around issues of belonging” (469-470). Although more often held up as a model of static authority, Wright contends that the biblical corpus offers instead a dialogue of competing perspectives across generations that is not flattened out by an imposed uniformity. Wright reveals, on the last pages, that this book is not only about understanding the origins of the Hebrew Bible; he is ultimately concerned with how modern societies narrate their histories.
There is much to commend about Wright’s project. It is refreshing to read a lively, story-driven approach. His use of biblical figures to begin each chapter and introduce critical issues is ingenious. Part I gave me the feeling of listening in on an impeccably researched, scripted podcast series with lead-ins, non-linear connections, and helpful recaps. While Wright is not primarily concerned with the standard “who, what, when, where” questions, he provides a captivating glimpse of what textbook writing can look like in the 21st century. I especially appreciate the attention to Egypt in the opening material, which in survey textbooks of the Bible is often left only to the Exodus, giving the impression that Egypt’s influence in the biblical text is limited to Israel’s experience in the land of Egypt. Throughout the work, but especially in Part I, Wright provides helpful footnotes that include not only definitions of key terms (cuneiform, the divine name, etc.), but also personal notes about the author’s interest in the subject that make the discussion clear and engaging. Worth mentioning on its own is Chapter 16, in which Wright takes the Isaac and Rebekah narrative as a case study for textual analysis, probing the difficulties of the documentary hypothesis as traditionally presented and exploring new models of scribal activity that are helpful for updating classroom discussions of the long-held but long-challenged theory.
Students will likely struggle with the language of “constructed” and “reconstructed” histories that Wright so easily employs, and indeed the entire concept of the Bible as a scribal project will challenge anyone who wants to think of the biblical text as only a work of divine communication to humanity. It will be imperative for anyone who wishes to employ this work in a classroom to contextualize Wright’s project as an answer to the question of why the Bible began as a historical inquiry.
While Wright turns a critical eye to many of the long-held assumptions of modern critical biblical studies, it is difficult to accept some of his readings of the biblical narratives as anything other than impositions of modern concerns onto an ancient text. He points out, as others have before, that the Deuteronomistic history, which was posited by Martin Noth as the individual genius of a lone scholar, reflects Noth’s own social context. Wright’s hypothesis of an ingenious scribal community working for the betterment (salvation?) of their society likewise seems reflective of a longing for a thriving and relevant scholarly guild that can rally in moments of national crises and offer hope and unity to a hurting and divided people. It is a call that biblical scholars would do well to heed.
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