authors who wrote first five books of the Bible Essay -- essays resear

Documentary hypothesis says that there were several authors who wrote first five books of the Bible. In my essay I will try to discuss J, P, and E - authors of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers. I must admit that all these authors had lived after the division of the kingdom. AUTHOR J This author was identified as J for using word Yahweh or Jehovah for the name of God. Also there is an interesting theory that author J was a woman. Of course, there are statements that prove it. First of all I want pay your attention on the fact that we are speaking about patriarchal society where a man was a head of the family and the role of a woman was to give a birth to children. But in the Bible we can find verses and even whole chapters that tell us about women and sometimes show that these women are smarter than patriarchs. There are several examples. The first one is creation of the Earth (Gen.2:4b-25). The author tries to show that culmination of the creation was a woman – Eve. J writes that Adam could not find a helper among the animals and birds so God decided to create a woman from his ribs. In Gen.2:7 J plays with the word Adam which is related to the Hebrew word Adamah (ground). She points out that a man, animals and birds were created from a mud while a woman – from a man. In Gen.3 the author indicates that Eve is more intellectually curious than Adam because the serpent speaks with Eve and she makes a decision to taste a fruit. Second example is Rebekah. The whole chapter (Gen.24:1-67) dedicates to finding Rebekah. Then in Gen.27:5-17 J shows Rebekah as intelligent and sly person. She teaches his beloved son Jacob how to overreach Isaac. One more thing about J’s sense of humor: she plays with names of Isaac’s sons in Gen.25:25,26,30 - the first one is Esau (may mean hairy) and his second name is Edom (red), and the second is Jacob (he deceives). We can see J does not like Esau/Edom and we can make a conclusion that she is scion of Jacob. One more example is in Gen.38 - J describes a story about clever and successive woman Tamar, wife of Judah’s son Er. She wants to have children but her husbands Er an Onan died and she was not given to Shelah as his wife. So she decided to outwit Judah. At the end of the story she has children, husband and Judah identifies that she was more righteous than he (that is very unusual for patriarchal society). After reading J’s passages ... ...ng is the fact that in this story we can see how the redactor put together passages of two authors. So in Gen.37:28a it is said that â€Å"Midianite merchants came by† but in Gen.37:28b – â€Å"sold him †¦ to the Ishmaelites†. The second is that E author names Moses’s father-in-law Jethro in Ex.3:1,18:1,2,5 (not Reuel – J). One more thing that proves that Moses is not the author of first five books of the Bible is that in Num.12:3 it is said that Moses is a very humble man. So, if he is humble, he could not write these words about himself, it has sense if it is written by E author. MY OPINION ABOUT USEFULNESS OF DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS To my mind, documentary hypothesis is very useful because it answers many questions. How can we imagine that God who †so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life† (John 3:16) could give such commandments as †eye for eye, tooth for tooth and hand for hand† (Ex.21:24) or â€Å"kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD† (Num.25:4)? All these things are result of peoples’ interpretation. Also documentary hypothesis has good explanation of the origin of doublets and triplets.