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Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins
"A revelation, even to those who have read the Bible for a lifetime!
"We witness how in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat and devastation, the biblical authors fashioned a new form of political community--one in which a shared body of texts provided common ground for deeply divided communities and the marginalized in their communities. At the heart of the Hebrew Bible is, as Wright shows, not a creed but a What does it mean to be a people? In our time of deepening divisions, both this question and the ways in which these ancient writers addressed it deserve renewed, and serious, attention."
-- Robert M. Franklin, President Emeritus, Morehouse College
Why did no other ancient society produce something like the Bible? That a tiny, out of the way community could have created a literary corpus so determinative for peoples across the globe seems improbable.
For Jacob Wright, the Bible is not only a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon's devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total humiliation the foundation of a new idea of belonging. Lamenting the destruction of their homeland, scribes who composed the Bible imagined a promise-filled past while reflecting deeply on abject failure. More than just religious scripture, the Bible began as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community. Its response to catastrophe offers a powerful message of hope and restoration that is unique in the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds.
Wright's Bible is thus a social, political, and even economic roadmap - one that enabled a small and obscure community located on the periphery of leading civilizations and empires not just to come back from the brink, but ultimately to shape the world's destiny. The Bible speaks ultimately of being a united yet diverse people, and its pages present a manual of pragmatic survival strategies for communities confronting societal collapse.
"A fascinating look at the Bible and its origins — not necessarily who, what, when, and where, though those are all discussed, but above all, why? Why was it created? Why did it originate where it did? Why did it survive and resonate so much down through the ages? Armed with a scholar's acumen and a writer's dexterity with prose, Jacob Wright addresses these questions and offers us an intriguing alternative look at the origins of the Hebrew Bible and why it mattered both back then and still today.
"Sure to elicit much discussion and debate, this is a must read by one of the most interesting and provocative scholars working today."
-- Eric Cline, archeologist, historian, and author of the best-selling 1177 The Year Civilization Collapsed.
300 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 19, 2023
194 people are currently reading
1539 people want to read
About the author
Jacob L. Wright
13 books28 followersDr. Jacob L. Wright is a professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at Emory University, which boasts one of the world's leading doctoral programs in biblical studies. Before coming to Emory, he taught at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
As an American with a European education, he is widely known for his ability to blend a wide range of historical, religious, and geographical perspectives on the Bible. His writing and teaching are thoroughly interdisciplinary, demonstrating how the ideas of the Bible and other ancient writings bear directly on central problems that face our societies in modern times. He brings to his work first-hand acquaintance with archeological finds and primary sources from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. As a testimony to his distinctive interdisciplinary approach to biblical studies, he recently received a full Faculty Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which had not been awarded in biblical studies for many years prior.
Jacob Wright writes on an array of topics, ranging from social life in ancient Israel (feasting, war commemoration, urbicide, etc.) to the formation of biblical writings. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (De Gruyter), won the prestigious Templeton Award for first books in religion. His current research treats a wide range of phenomena related to war and society in ancient Israel.
As an American with a European education, he is widely known for his ability to blend a wide range of historical, religious, and geographical perspectives on the Bible. His writing and teaching are thoroughly interdisciplinary, demonstrating how the ideas of the Bible and other ancient writings bear directly on central problems that face our societies in modern times. He brings to his work first-hand acquaintance with archeological finds and primary sources from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. As a testimony to his distinctive interdisciplinary approach to biblical studies, he recently received a full Faculty Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which had not been awarded in biblical studies for many years prior.
Jacob Wright writes on an array of topics, ranging from social life in ancient Israel (feasting, war commemoration, urbicide, etc.) to the formation of biblical writings. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (De Gruyter), won the prestigious Templeton Award for first books in religion. His current research treats a wide range of phenomena related to war and society in ancient Israel.
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June 13, 2025
For three months I read intensively about the earliest history of the area of Israel/Palestine, and how Jewish culture came into being there in the first millennium BCE. I know that libraries have been filled with books about this, so it was no more than a first introduction. What immediately struck me is how fierce the debates about this early period are, both inside and outside the academic world. This obviously has to do with the political implications for today's world (the legitimacy of the state of Israel and the rights of the Palestinian people), with the fundamental tension between a (agnostic) scientific and a religiously inspired approach, but also with a number of methodological questions of historical research.
The latter concerns the question to what extent the stories of the Hebrew Bible can be used as a historical source. Opinions on this range from “absolutely not”, biblical history largely is a fictional story with minimal historical references and only archaeology can provide us with anything reliable (radically minimalist), to “mostly true”, biblical stories are based on hard historical events that have been passed down for centuries and eventually recorded fairly faithfully in writing (radically maximalist).
Of course, between these extreme positions there is a whole range of opinions that lean more in one direction or more in the other. And this diversity is logical, because – as with much of antiquity – we are dealing here with a striking lack of written and material sources, and reasoned speculation is the only way to present a sound historical story. The dozen books that I read on this subject made it clear to me that the last word on this has not yet been written, and perhaps never will be.
In its own way, the book under review is a daring attempt to shed more light on this thorny issue. Jacob L. Wright (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia) focuses on the redaction history of the Hebrew Bible, and attempts to explain why the biblical stories were written, especially since they are so atypical of the rest of the writings we know from the ancient Near East. His angle is political: the conquest and dismantling of the “Jewish states” (here Jewish is of course an anachronism) by Assyria in the late 8th century and early 6th century BCE caused a shock, and that trauma was transformed into the view that a nation is defined not so much by kings and courts, but by culture (language, customs, religion, etc.). That view was transformed into numerous stories, sometimes long-standing ones, sometimes completely invented ones, and which set in motion a dynamic that effectively – like a self-fulfilling prophecy – led to a Jewish nation. As Wright stresses, it's the first example of internal nation-building in history (followed by many more, inspired by this 'model').
The biblical stories bear the traces of that centuries-long process of highly complex redaction history, with different versions and different intentions. I could write much more about this (some more in my review in my History account on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but let me suffice to say that Wright's book made a great impression. His focus may be somewhat narrowly political (nation-building), and thus he ignores many spiritual aspects of the biblical stories, but to me this book was the first thoroughly argued synthesis that allowed me to place and interpret the whole, complex process of the emergence of the specific Jewish culture. Of course, it's very thorough and edging academic, but it comes highly recommended!
The latter concerns the question to what extent the stories of the Hebrew Bible can be used as a historical source. Opinions on this range from “absolutely not”, biblical history largely is a fictional story with minimal historical references and only archaeology can provide us with anything reliable (radically minimalist), to “mostly true”, biblical stories are based on hard historical events that have been passed down for centuries and eventually recorded fairly faithfully in writing (radically maximalist).
Of course, between these extreme positions there is a whole range of opinions that lean more in one direction or more in the other. And this diversity is logical, because – as with much of antiquity – we are dealing here with a striking lack of written and material sources, and reasoned speculation is the only way to present a sound historical story. The dozen books that I read on this subject made it clear to me that the last word on this has not yet been written, and perhaps never will be.
In its own way, the book under review is a daring attempt to shed more light on this thorny issue. Jacob L. Wright (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia) focuses on the redaction history of the Hebrew Bible, and attempts to explain why the biblical stories were written, especially since they are so atypical of the rest of the writings we know from the ancient Near East. His angle is political: the conquest and dismantling of the “Jewish states” (here Jewish is of course an anachronism) by Assyria in the late 8th century and early 6th century BCE caused a shock, and that trauma was transformed into the view that a nation is defined not so much by kings and courts, but by culture (language, customs, religion, etc.). That view was transformed into numerous stories, sometimes long-standing ones, sometimes completely invented ones, and which set in motion a dynamic that effectively – like a self-fulfilling prophecy – led to a Jewish nation. As Wright stresses, it's the first example of internal nation-building in history (followed by many more, inspired by this 'model').
The biblical stories bear the traces of that centuries-long process of highly complex redaction history, with different versions and different intentions. I could write much more about this (some more in my review in my History account on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but let me suffice to say that Wright's book made a great impression. His focus may be somewhat narrowly political (nation-building), and thus he ignores many spiritual aspects of the biblical stories, but to me this book was the first thoroughly argued synthesis that allowed me to place and interpret the whole, complex process of the emergence of the specific Jewish culture. Of course, it's very thorough and edging academic, but it comes highly recommended!
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June 2, 2025The angle Jacob L. Wright (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia) takes on biblical studies, is the question of why the Hebrew Bible was written at all. It's a very relevant question, because I have been reading quite intensively about the Ancient Near East for several years now, and nowhere else can I find anything similar. Individual stories, yes (Gilgamesh for example) and cosmological epics, yes (Enuma Elish for example), but such a diverse collection of stories that – in all their diversity – still radiate a certain coherence and homogeneity, no, that is unique. So yes, in addition to the classic how-what-where?-questions, the why?-question is absolutely relevant.
Now, of course, Wright is not the first to address this question, but I do have the impression that he is the first to have conducted a coherent, reasoned and in-depth investigation. I let him formulate his thesis himself: “What we witness in the Bible, then, is the genesis of a nation, not its death and replacement by religion. Of course, rituals and religious activities play an important part in this project of humanity, but in reducing the complexity of the biblical corpus to the realm of the spiritual, scholars have disregarded its most distinctive and important political innovations. In this book, I claim that the Hebrew Bible represents the first attempt in world history to construct what we may properly call a “national identity”.”
So, nation building, and even the first conscious attempt to do so through scriptures, not through weapons. In concrete terms, Wright points to the trauma caused by the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (in 720 BCE), and a century later that of the Southern Kingdom of Judah (the beginning of the legendary Babylonian exile), as the trigger that prompted the cultural elites in the area to compose a “National Narrative”, a collection of stories that underlined how the “Jewish” nation did not have to be a real state, but a full-fledged nation nonetheless, with the common elements of language, culture and especially religion as binding elements, and not – as elsewhere – a king (except perhaps Yhwh himself), a court, state apparatus, imperial politics, etc.
To illustrate and argue for his thesis, Wright delves deeply into the redaction history of the Hebrew Bible, a very complex subject about which entire libraries have been written, and that still is the object of fierce some debates, also in academia (see my general review of this book, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I found his interpretation of the earliest historical books particularly appealing, where he posits a contrast between a People’s History (composed in the Northern Empire) and a Palace History (from the Southern Empire), which were eventually fused: “In creating the People’s History, our scribes did not opt for one or the other tradition; rather, they embraced both. Not only that, but they also fused them together to form a larger narrative. The Family Story of Genesis connects disparate clans to common ancestors, while the Exodus-Conquest Account tells how a group of freed slaves consolidated to form a nation and migrated to a new land, embracing many “fellow travelers” along the way. And while the Jacob traditions present Israel’s tribes as indigenous groups, the addition of Abraham and Sarah to the Family Story seeks to unite competing groups by declaring all to be descendants of this immigrant couple.”
To be clear: Wright’s thesis is not entirely original. For example, I read a concise summary of the trauma thesis in Jan Assmann’s book Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism. And the dynamics between the survivors of the Northern and Southern Empires have also been described by other experts. But Wright does work more in-depth and systematically. For example, he also shows how the other, sometimes not at all obvious stories from the Hebrew Bible (think of Job and Ecclesiastes) fit into his thesis.
The disadvantage of a clear thesis and argumentation is that it can of course be somewhat forced, a compelling grid that – with the risk of an anachronistic reading – is placed over the past, and perhaps does not sufficiently value all relevant elements. In this case, it concerns the modern view of nation building (Benedict Anderson) that is placed on an infinitely complex process in the first millennium BCE, in a very precise area (Israel/Palestine). And that is also noticeable in this book by Wright: the political (the frustration about the loss of worldly power) is used here as a fundamental explanatory ground for what was undoubtedly a much broader process. Just think of the spiritual development of clarification of the exclusive monotheism that is so typical of Judaism in its later phase: that too is explained by Wright from the political domain, while I suspect that a much more complex interaction with internal and external elements was involved.
But do not worry: the strong point in Wright's book is his clear position and thinking through of his thesis. He offered a key with which I finally succeeded in better understanding and interpreting both the origin and the meaning of the complex Bible collection. And to assess the relative historical value of the Hebrew Bible, apart from the heated debates between minimalists and maximalists. And that is no small achievement! Rating 4.5 stars.
Now, of course, Wright is not the first to address this question, but I do have the impression that he is the first to have conducted a coherent, reasoned and in-depth investigation. I let him formulate his thesis himself: “What we witness in the Bible, then, is the genesis of a nation, not its death and replacement by religion. Of course, rituals and religious activities play an important part in this project of humanity, but in reducing the complexity of the biblical corpus to the realm of the spiritual, scholars have disregarded its most distinctive and important political innovations. In this book, I claim that the Hebrew Bible represents the first attempt in world history to construct what we may properly call a “national identity”.”
So, nation building, and even the first conscious attempt to do so through scriptures, not through weapons. In concrete terms, Wright points to the trauma caused by the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (in 720 BCE), and a century later that of the Southern Kingdom of Judah (the beginning of the legendary Babylonian exile), as the trigger that prompted the cultural elites in the area to compose a “National Narrative”, a collection of stories that underlined how the “Jewish” nation did not have to be a real state, but a full-fledged nation nonetheless, with the common elements of language, culture and especially religion as binding elements, and not – as elsewhere – a king (except perhaps Yhwh himself), a court, state apparatus, imperial politics, etc.
To illustrate and argue for his thesis, Wright delves deeply into the redaction history of the Hebrew Bible, a very complex subject about which entire libraries have been written, and that still is the object of fierce some debates, also in academia (see my general review of this book, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I found his interpretation of the earliest historical books particularly appealing, where he posits a contrast between a People’s History (composed in the Northern Empire) and a Palace History (from the Southern Empire), which were eventually fused: “In creating the People’s History, our scribes did not opt for one or the other tradition; rather, they embraced both. Not only that, but they also fused them together to form a larger narrative. The Family Story of Genesis connects disparate clans to common ancestors, while the Exodus-Conquest Account tells how a group of freed slaves consolidated to form a nation and migrated to a new land, embracing many “fellow travelers” along the way. And while the Jacob traditions present Israel’s tribes as indigenous groups, the addition of Abraham and Sarah to the Family Story seeks to unite competing groups by declaring all to be descendants of this immigrant couple.”
To be clear: Wright’s thesis is not entirely original. For example, I read a concise summary of the trauma thesis in Jan Assmann’s book Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism. And the dynamics between the survivors of the Northern and Southern Empires have also been described by other experts. But Wright does work more in-depth and systematically. For example, he also shows how the other, sometimes not at all obvious stories from the Hebrew Bible (think of Job and Ecclesiastes) fit into his thesis.
The disadvantage of a clear thesis and argumentation is that it can of course be somewhat forced, a compelling grid that – with the risk of an anachronistic reading – is placed over the past, and perhaps does not sufficiently value all relevant elements. In this case, it concerns the modern view of nation building (Benedict Anderson) that is placed on an infinitely complex process in the first millennium BCE, in a very precise area (Israel/Palestine). And that is also noticeable in this book by Wright: the political (the frustration about the loss of worldly power) is used here as a fundamental explanatory ground for what was undoubtedly a much broader process. Just think of the spiritual development of clarification of the exclusive monotheism that is so typical of Judaism in its later phase: that too is explained by Wright from the political domain, while I suspect that a much more complex interaction with internal and external elements was involved.
But do not worry: the strong point in Wright's book is his clear position and thinking through of his thesis. He offered a key with which I finally succeeded in better understanding and interpreting both the origin and the meaning of the complex Bible collection. And to assess the relative historical value of the Hebrew Bible, apart from the heated debates between minimalists and maximalists. And that is no small achievement! Rating 4.5 stars.
September 5, 2023
If you have a read an academic text on the Hebrew Bible, you have probably read about the what, or the who, or the where, or when, or how. What I had never read about was the why. WHY did the Jewish people write the Hebrew Bible the way it is? What was going on historically that led to not only the writing of this anthology of texts, but for it to be compiled together in the way it is over hundreds of years.
In this way, Jacob Wright's Why the Bible Began is a thorough historical and theological examination of the Hebrew Bible, all to answer that elusive question: why. The short of it is that the Jewish people were looking to create an identify of peoplehood. Those living in the Davidic dynasty wrote from a Jewish identity in the monarchy. The Northerners who were separated from their southern counter-parts in Jerusalem, wrote from a Jewish identity based in the every day people. Others wrote from exile and so needed to think of their people as not place-bound.
Through four parts, Wright gives an intensely researched history of the region and culture, from the earliest moments of civilization in Mesopotamia, through the early Hellenistic period, and you slowly learn how the Hebrew Bible came down through the centuries to the present in the form it currently holds.
Written from an academic standpoint, but with chapters split into small pieces that can be slowly digested over a longer period of time, this book is one of the best books I have ever read relating to the Hebrew Bible. If you are interested in theology, history, or just this time period, this is one book you must check out!
In this way, Jacob Wright's Why the Bible Began is a thorough historical and theological examination of the Hebrew Bible, all to answer that elusive question: why. The short of it is that the Jewish people were looking to create an identify of peoplehood. Those living in the Davidic dynasty wrote from a Jewish identity in the monarchy. The Northerners who were separated from their southern counter-parts in Jerusalem, wrote from a Jewish identity based in the every day people. Others wrote from exile and so needed to think of their people as not place-bound.
Through four parts, Wright gives an intensely researched history of the region and culture, from the earliest moments of civilization in Mesopotamia, through the early Hellenistic period, and you slowly learn how the Hebrew Bible came down through the centuries to the present in the form it currently holds.
Written from an academic standpoint, but with chapters split into small pieces that can be slowly digested over a longer period of time, this book is one of the best books I have ever read relating to the Hebrew Bible. If you are interested in theology, history, or just this time period, this is one book you must check out!
April 4, 2024
This book does have moments of brilliance and chapters that do really get one to think. Two quick examples that come to mind are his chapter highlighting how the role and importance of women in the Bible is far beyond that of other contemporary literature, and his chapter highlighting the friendship and friction that existed between Israel's prophets and kings.
However, there is far more to be disappointed in with this book than to like. There is some great scholarship out there regarding the origins of scripture. Although this book pretends at that, I cannot call it mediocre, let alone great. Why? Five reasons come to mind. First and foremost, there is no room for God. The default assumption in this book is that God played no part in the creation of scripture. Beyond that, there is not even room for the miraculous. Any retelling of any miracle in scripture must have sprung from the "imagination" of the author. Even beyond that, there is barely even any room for the good. Anytime anyone is doing anything good, we must question their motives and/or doubt the veracity of the story.
The second reason dovetails off the first. For any pericope, Jacob Wright automatically assumes the worst. If there is any plausible reason to doubt its historicity, he will do so. If there is any convoluted reason to create questionable motives for its origin, he will take it. When Occam's Razor is convenient, he will lean back on it. When it produces the opposite of his desired result, he will ignore it.
The third reason I question the credibility of this book is Wright's selective use of facts. There are multiple times where he calls something into question that has been answered many times already by far better scholars than he or I. There are also commonly known archaeological finds that he has ignored because they do not fit into the narratives (peoples, priestly, palace, and national... it is his own version of JEDP) that he is trying to create.
Fourthly, Wright uses incredibly biased source material. At the end of each chapter, he has a bibliography of further reading. Try as hard as I might, cannot find a single article or source that was written by a conservative Christian, Jew, or Muslim. Even managing to spot a moderate is a rare find. He only is reading and quoting from sources that already confirm his biases. This is intellectually dishonest.
Finally, Wright tends to put the cart before the horse. His primary thesis is that nearly the entire Bible was written by exilic or post-exilic scribes and their purpose for writing was an effort of nation-building. I would agree that exilic scribes had a bigger role in compiling source material and that there was some level of editorial gloss, it is not nearly as much as he and many scholars from a few decades back (this thesis is tending to fall out of fashion) would claim. Even more, I would say that nation building was a side effect of their writing and compilation. It was an incredibly effective effect, but for the most part, I highly doubt that it was their intended purpose. This book didn't even begin to convince me otherwise.
For about a third of this book, I was doing a running commentary here on Goodreads. Although I continued to do so in the margins and in my notes, after a while I stopped adding it here. I think the little I did was more than enough to demonstrate how consistently shoddy the supposed scholarship in this book was...
(914)Many of the historical factors that shaped Israel's and Judah's formation find no mention in the Bible, while much of what is in the Bible portrays considerable detail far removed from history.
According to the Bible, the Hebrews are a people group already known to the Egyptians in the time of Joseph (Genesis 46:34). On the flip side, the invasion of the Apiru in the El Amarna tablets does fit fairly closely with a critical reading of the book of Joshua. God's promise to "drive the Canaanites out" before the Israelites would take the land does match the depopulation we know of as fact from the Bronze Age collapse. Also, both Joshua and Judges make it clear that the initial conquest was only partial at best. Both the historical narrative as we know it, and the biblical narrative as most scholars read it do not nearly line up with the narrative that Wright is trying to portray here in this chapter.
(1086)"The biblical account aligns these figures in a succession and assigns to each generation a different leader. Historically, however, many would have ruled at the same time, and some may have lived generations after Saul and David."
Any historical reading of Judges agrees that it is not a linear account. And the author presents no evidence either biblical or archaeological to validate his claim that some are post-Davidic. He simply states his speculation as fact for the purpose of sensationalism. That might work for Dan Brown, but this is supposed to be a work of history, not pseudohistorical fiction.
(1142)"These apologetic efforts present several serious problems and have therefore not convinced most scholars. It seems more reasonable to assume that Shishak, or his armies, never stepped foot in the Southern kingdom."
Those presenting alternate perspectives are labeled apologists while those agreeing are "most scholars" on a specific historical issue where there is nothing close to a consensus. This is then combined with an argument from silence. "The Assyrians recorded nothing of their defeat therefore it did not happen." Let's ignore the fact that most nations throughout most of history never recorded their defeats if it could at all be avoided as you yourself will later acknowledge a few chapters on.
(1483) "Although the palace history has these foreign kings harassing the Omride kingdom, it may be describing events that actually occurred during the reign of Jehu and his descendants."
Not only does this contradict the biblical record, it also contradicts the archaeological record that the author himself will refer to about six pages further down. So the author is contradicting himself for no other reason than to "discredit" the biblical account. This is what happens when a book is driven by agenda rather than fact.
(1571)"For the region of Samaria, archaeologists estimate that the Assyrians deported little more than 10-20% of the population."
There is no consensus on this. While all recognize that there was a deportation, numbers can vary from 5% to more than 50% depending on the source. Most legitimate scholars will shy away from numbers altogether since we simply do not have enough information. That it was enough to significantly alter the culture is not in question.
(1735)"They may have mentioned the king, but they may very well have omitted him, and if so, this would have been a highly unusual case for ancient West Asia."
This is already outdated. Hezekiah was not omitted. A fragment discovered in 2007 was finally deciphered in 2022. Hezekiah is credited with the pool of Siloam and the tunnel that today bears his name.
(1755)"Thus, while Judah was radically reduced in size, the population density around Jerusalem increased significantly, and this process of urbanization created the conditions of a more robust exchange of ideas that crystalized in the biblical writings."
It is true that the city grew rapidly in the time from Hezekiah to Josiah and the population center shifted northward and closer to what we know of as the Old City that can be seen today.
(1933)"Whatever his intentions may have been, it did not go well: Necho suspected him of a treasonous affair with Babylon and had him executed."
WHAT?!? This is absolutely not what happened to Josiah. He died in battle. Or possibly from the wounds sustained in battle, later on back home. The Egyptians record, the biblical record, and virtually every historian I have ever read from has said some version of this same thing. But... who knew? Everyone everywhere has always gotten it wrong. Fortunately, after nearly 2600 years of misinformation by everybody, Mr Wright is here to set the record straight.
(2071)"In the Twentieth Century, territorial states would re-emerge in the form of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, but the fate of those states now hangs in the balance with several players reviving their ancient imperial ambitions."
As sad as the conflicts have been, ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and currently Hamas/Israel... nobody in their right mind truly believes any of these countries is going away anytime soon. I guess this author is not in his right mind.
(2218)"Scholars generally agree that the five laments could not have originated in the direct wake of 586 BC and that they were not written at the same time."
What scholars? This is a statement made without references or citations. Taking aside the fact that the book of Lamentations acts as a cohesive chiastic whole that suggests a single author at a single time, there are many scholars like Adele Berman, David Clines, and John Haynes who have written extensively on Lamentations and agree that it was all written shortly (within decades) after the fall. The fact that so much of the remainder of this book rests on this unsubstantiated (and I would argue faulty) premise does not bode well.
(2266) "It is possible that these conquered communities reflected on their fate in some literary form. Yet it is equally likely that they were eventually discouraged from speaking about the catastrophe, let alone fully admitting it and commemorating it."
What is even more likely is that the victors exaggerated the scope and effects of their victory as a means of a propaganda of fear against future potential enemies. The worst thing we can do is simply take the victor's word for it, but you seem to do so time and time again.
(2405) "This paean to Babylonian power provoked the authors of Genesis 1 to pen a counter vision."
The attempts to create contrasts and parallels between the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 are painful to behold, but I've got to give Wright credit. He takes a previously popular but largely debunked theory and does his best to work it for all its worth. The differences not just in content, but also in style, perspective, and worldview are so great that very few scholars today still cling to this idea. Beyond that, there is now serious question if the Chaldean Babylonians of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah were even aware of the Sumerian Babylonian creation myth of the Enuma Elish. It was, after all, written many (between 5-9 or more) centuries earlier by an entirely different language and culture who happened to inhabit the same land. The supreme god in the EE was only relegated to a local city deity by the exilic times. This is a problem many liberal scholars don't seem to get. While they recognize that the Bible evolved over time, they treat other ANE religions as static throughout history.
(2540) "When collecting, editing, and expanding older writings and creating new ones, many scribes would no longer be using Hebrew in their daily routines. It is really remarkable, then, that in their literary efforts, they sought to create continuity with the language of the oldest biblical writings"
If you think it through, this is actually a really good argument for why we should view the exilic and post-exilic scribes as compilers, and possibly editors of earlier writings and not necessarily as the writers themselves.
(2972)"All this is mere saber rattling for rhetorical effect."
This quote comes in the middle of a section talking about Ezra's recounting of the building of the Temple and Nehemiah's rebuilding of the wall (both of which he claims are semi-fictional accounts). He claims that the fear of violence and the threat of force are completely made up only for the purpose of lending these building accounts the gravity found in earlier war accounts like the Song of Deborah (which he claims they parallel). Anyone who has read even a cursory account of Persian history would know that the kingdom was far from stable, civil wars and local rivalries were rife and that especially Nehemiah's account gives a historically accurate glimpse of what provincial politics under Persian rule would have been like.
(3122)"Across the Bible's rich narrative tapestry, with its tales of lives both great and small, one activity is conspicuously absent: learning from books or teaching others about the past."
This has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read yet. The Psalms absolutely loaded with recountings of the past. Nearly every key prayer in the Old Testament is a recounting of the past. The Hebrew festivals were set up specifically to remember and celebrate what God had done in the past. Beyond all this, the Shemah, the very core of what it means to be Jewish, is a command to remember and to teach God's statutes from generation to generation. Yes, the author is right that Ezra and his contemporary scribes transitioned Israel from a cultic people of the Temple to a literate people of the book. But to say that there was no learning or teaching of the past prior to him is just plain dumb.
However, there is far more to be disappointed in with this book than to like. There is some great scholarship out there regarding the origins of scripture. Although this book pretends at that, I cannot call it mediocre, let alone great. Why? Five reasons come to mind. First and foremost, there is no room for God. The default assumption in this book is that God played no part in the creation of scripture. Beyond that, there is not even room for the miraculous. Any retelling of any miracle in scripture must have sprung from the "imagination" of the author. Even beyond that, there is barely even any room for the good. Anytime anyone is doing anything good, we must question their motives and/or doubt the veracity of the story.
The second reason dovetails off the first. For any pericope, Jacob Wright automatically assumes the worst. If there is any plausible reason to doubt its historicity, he will do so. If there is any convoluted reason to create questionable motives for its origin, he will take it. When Occam's Razor is convenient, he will lean back on it. When it produces the opposite of his desired result, he will ignore it.
The third reason I question the credibility of this book is Wright's selective use of facts. There are multiple times where he calls something into question that has been answered many times already by far better scholars than he or I. There are also commonly known archaeological finds that he has ignored because they do not fit into the narratives (peoples, priestly, palace, and national... it is his own version of JEDP) that he is trying to create.
Fourthly, Wright uses incredibly biased source material. At the end of each chapter, he has a bibliography of further reading. Try as hard as I might, cannot find a single article or source that was written by a conservative Christian, Jew, or Muslim. Even managing to spot a moderate is a rare find. He only is reading and quoting from sources that already confirm his biases. This is intellectually dishonest.
Finally, Wright tends to put the cart before the horse. His primary thesis is that nearly the entire Bible was written by exilic or post-exilic scribes and their purpose for writing was an effort of nation-building. I would agree that exilic scribes had a bigger role in compiling source material and that there was some level of editorial gloss, it is not nearly as much as he and many scholars from a few decades back (this thesis is tending to fall out of fashion) would claim. Even more, I would say that nation building was a side effect of their writing and compilation. It was an incredibly effective effect, but for the most part, I highly doubt that it was their intended purpose. This book didn't even begin to convince me otherwise.
For about a third of this book, I was doing a running commentary here on Goodreads. Although I continued to do so in the margins and in my notes, after a while I stopped adding it here. I think the little I did was more than enough to demonstrate how consistently shoddy the supposed scholarship in this book was...
(914)Many of the historical factors that shaped Israel's and Judah's formation find no mention in the Bible, while much of what is in the Bible portrays considerable detail far removed from history.
According to the Bible, the Hebrews are a people group already known to the Egyptians in the time of Joseph (Genesis 46:34). On the flip side, the invasion of the Apiru in the El Amarna tablets does fit fairly closely with a critical reading of the book of Joshua. God's promise to "drive the Canaanites out" before the Israelites would take the land does match the depopulation we know of as fact from the Bronze Age collapse. Also, both Joshua and Judges make it clear that the initial conquest was only partial at best. Both the historical narrative as we know it, and the biblical narrative as most scholars read it do not nearly line up with the narrative that Wright is trying to portray here in this chapter.
(1086)"The biblical account aligns these figures in a succession and assigns to each generation a different leader. Historically, however, many would have ruled at the same time, and some may have lived generations after Saul and David."
Any historical reading of Judges agrees that it is not a linear account. And the author presents no evidence either biblical or archaeological to validate his claim that some are post-Davidic. He simply states his speculation as fact for the purpose of sensationalism. That might work for Dan Brown, but this is supposed to be a work of history, not pseudohistorical fiction.
(1142)"These apologetic efforts present several serious problems and have therefore not convinced most scholars. It seems more reasonable to assume that Shishak, or his armies, never stepped foot in the Southern kingdom."
Those presenting alternate perspectives are labeled apologists while those agreeing are "most scholars" on a specific historical issue where there is nothing close to a consensus. This is then combined with an argument from silence. "The Assyrians recorded nothing of their defeat therefore it did not happen." Let's ignore the fact that most nations throughout most of history never recorded their defeats if it could at all be avoided as you yourself will later acknowledge a few chapters on.
(1483) "Although the palace history has these foreign kings harassing the Omride kingdom, it may be describing events that actually occurred during the reign of Jehu and his descendants."
Not only does this contradict the biblical record, it also contradicts the archaeological record that the author himself will refer to about six pages further down. So the author is contradicting himself for no other reason than to "discredit" the biblical account. This is what happens when a book is driven by agenda rather than fact.
(1571)"For the region of Samaria, archaeologists estimate that the Assyrians deported little more than 10-20% of the population."
There is no consensus on this. While all recognize that there was a deportation, numbers can vary from 5% to more than 50% depending on the source. Most legitimate scholars will shy away from numbers altogether since we simply do not have enough information. That it was enough to significantly alter the culture is not in question.
(1735)"They may have mentioned the king, but they may very well have omitted him, and if so, this would have been a highly unusual case for ancient West Asia."
This is already outdated. Hezekiah was not omitted. A fragment discovered in 2007 was finally deciphered in 2022. Hezekiah is credited with the pool of Siloam and the tunnel that today bears his name.
(1755)"Thus, while Judah was radically reduced in size, the population density around Jerusalem increased significantly, and this process of urbanization created the conditions of a more robust exchange of ideas that crystalized in the biblical writings."
It is true that the city grew rapidly in the time from Hezekiah to Josiah and the population center shifted northward and closer to what we know of as the Old City that can be seen today.
(1933)"Whatever his intentions may have been, it did not go well: Necho suspected him of a treasonous affair with Babylon and had him executed."
WHAT?!? This is absolutely not what happened to Josiah. He died in battle. Or possibly from the wounds sustained in battle, later on back home. The Egyptians record, the biblical record, and virtually every historian I have ever read from has said some version of this same thing. But... who knew? Everyone everywhere has always gotten it wrong. Fortunately, after nearly 2600 years of misinformation by everybody, Mr Wright is here to set the record straight.
(2071)"In the Twentieth Century, territorial states would re-emerge in the form of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, but the fate of those states now hangs in the balance with several players reviving their ancient imperial ambitions."
As sad as the conflicts have been, ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and currently Hamas/Israel... nobody in their right mind truly believes any of these countries is going away anytime soon. I guess this author is not in his right mind.
(2218)"Scholars generally agree that the five laments could not have originated in the direct wake of 586 BC and that they were not written at the same time."
What scholars? This is a statement made without references or citations. Taking aside the fact that the book of Lamentations acts as a cohesive chiastic whole that suggests a single author at a single time, there are many scholars like Adele Berman, David Clines, and John Haynes who have written extensively on Lamentations and agree that it was all written shortly (within decades) after the fall. The fact that so much of the remainder of this book rests on this unsubstantiated (and I would argue faulty) premise does not bode well.
(2266) "It is possible that these conquered communities reflected on their fate in some literary form. Yet it is equally likely that they were eventually discouraged from speaking about the catastrophe, let alone fully admitting it and commemorating it."
What is even more likely is that the victors exaggerated the scope and effects of their victory as a means of a propaganda of fear against future potential enemies. The worst thing we can do is simply take the victor's word for it, but you seem to do so time and time again.
(2405) "This paean to Babylonian power provoked the authors of Genesis 1 to pen a counter vision."
The attempts to create contrasts and parallels between the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 are painful to behold, but I've got to give Wright credit. He takes a previously popular but largely debunked theory and does his best to work it for all its worth. The differences not just in content, but also in style, perspective, and worldview are so great that very few scholars today still cling to this idea. Beyond that, there is now serious question if the Chaldean Babylonians of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah were even aware of the Sumerian Babylonian creation myth of the Enuma Elish. It was, after all, written many (between 5-9 or more) centuries earlier by an entirely different language and culture who happened to inhabit the same land. The supreme god in the EE was only relegated to a local city deity by the exilic times. This is a problem many liberal scholars don't seem to get. While they recognize that the Bible evolved over time, they treat other ANE religions as static throughout history.
(2540) "When collecting, editing, and expanding older writings and creating new ones, many scribes would no longer be using Hebrew in their daily routines. It is really remarkable, then, that in their literary efforts, they sought to create continuity with the language of the oldest biblical writings"
If you think it through, this is actually a really good argument for why we should view the exilic and post-exilic scribes as compilers, and possibly editors of earlier writings and not necessarily as the writers themselves.
(2972)"All this is mere saber rattling for rhetorical effect."
This quote comes in the middle of a section talking about Ezra's recounting of the building of the Temple and Nehemiah's rebuilding of the wall (both of which he claims are semi-fictional accounts). He claims that the fear of violence and the threat of force are completely made up only for the purpose of lending these building accounts the gravity found in earlier war accounts like the Song of Deborah (which he claims they parallel). Anyone who has read even a cursory account of Persian history would know that the kingdom was far from stable, civil wars and local rivalries were rife and that especially Nehemiah's account gives a historically accurate glimpse of what provincial politics under Persian rule would have been like.
(3122)"Across the Bible's rich narrative tapestry, with its tales of lives both great and small, one activity is conspicuously absent: learning from books or teaching others about the past."
This has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read yet. The Psalms absolutely loaded with recountings of the past. Nearly every key prayer in the Old Testament is a recounting of the past. The Hebrew festivals were set up specifically to remember and celebrate what God had done in the past. Beyond all this, the Shemah, the very core of what it means to be Jewish, is a command to remember and to teach God's statutes from generation to generation. Yes, the author is right that Ezra and his contemporary scribes transitioned Israel from a cultic people of the Temple to a literate people of the book. But to say that there was no learning or teaching of the past prior to him is just plain dumb.
January 21, 2024
An impressive (although to my taste overly detailed and complex at times) reinterpretation of why the (Hebrew) bible was written the way it was over the last millennia BCE and how it came to be continuously transmitted to us since that time. Jacob Wright's overarching argument is that it was written to make sense of a series of defeats--of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and then the Persians, Greeks and (as the final touches were being put on it), the Romans. Rather than treating these defeats as rejections of their god and religion the Bible reinterpreted them as reaffirmations of it--god was using the defeats to punish people for straying from his word. In the process it created a "nation" that was distinct from a "state" and that could live on after the state was long gone.
Where the complexity comes in is that, of course, it was not like one person sat down in a particular year with all of these ideas in mind. Instead Wright's account is grounded in the documentary hypothesis of various authors J, E, Priestly, etc., who came from different places and wrote at different times. They were writing different narratives that suited their purpose, with the most important tension between the "palace narrative" which centers on David and Solomon and making the people part of a state (note, Wright interprets recent archeology as rejecting a unified monarchy and instead argues that the scribes who wrote that part were exaggerating the power to suit their purposes) vs. the "people's narrative" that centers around a family, great individuals, prophets and others--all of which are independent of any particular state.
The law too comes in, Wright argues, for this same purpose--of making a people/nation that is independent of a state. Wright points out two false assumptions about the Bible (the second part of this is him quoting New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman): "1) the Bible originated as religious scripture and 2) most ancient religions required scriptures. Both assumptions are demonstrably false... books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of the ancient Western world." As Wright points out, most of the other ancient Near Eastern literature we have not because it was transmitted and studied continuously for thousands of years but because it was rediscovered by archeologists in the last 150 years (e.g., Gilgamesh: A New English Version was rediscovered in 1849).
The strength of the book is Wright's breadth and (at least to my amateur understanding) depth in drawing on biblical exegesis (from a historical critical perspective), archeology, the study of other near eastern civilizations, and other literatures. He approaches all of it with a skeptical eye (e.g., he does not believe in the unified kingdom and accepts the modern view that the Babylonian exile only applied to a minority of the people, particularly the elites, not to everyone). I take him at his word that other Near Eastern accounts of kings were 100 percent positive with none of the flaws the Bible depicts for all of its kings and prophets. And that they were based on their victories--so when those victories turned to defeat the texts simply disappeared without living on in any way.
At times the book tries to shove too much of the Bible into supporting its thesis that the Bible is a celebration and rationalization of defeat. The accounts of the historical books are persuasive to me because you can picture the scribes from the different kingdoms, whether they are from a currently powerful kingdom or a recently defeated one. Applying the idea to Genesis, however, felt stretched and more like a possible literary interpretation than something that had a combination of historical and archeological evidence to support it.
Finally, the book is very strong on compare and contrast to the Ancient Near East (which I am not very familiar with, although I read Gilgamesh some time ago). But I wish it had included more thoughts on Homer and the ancient Greeks. From Homer's depiction of the Trojans to Aeschylus's depiction of the Persians the ancient Greeks also wrote about defeated people (albeit not themselves). They also depicted heroes whose flaws prevented them from succeeding, much like Moses flaws prevented him from entering Canaan. All of this, together with philosophy, helped create something that was more like a nation than a state (in fact, of course, until Alexander there never was a unified state in Greece). In many ways, of course, the Bible is unique and different in holding a special place in its religion, codifying laws, and the like. But some of what Wright argues is unique about it does seem to have a certain amount in common with the Greeks. I would love to know what Wright thinks about this possibly misguided view.
Where the complexity comes in is that, of course, it was not like one person sat down in a particular year with all of these ideas in mind. Instead Wright's account is grounded in the documentary hypothesis of various authors J, E, Priestly, etc., who came from different places and wrote at different times. They were writing different narratives that suited their purpose, with the most important tension between the "palace narrative" which centers on David and Solomon and making the people part of a state (note, Wright interprets recent archeology as rejecting a unified monarchy and instead argues that the scribes who wrote that part were exaggerating the power to suit their purposes) vs. the "people's narrative" that centers around a family, great individuals, prophets and others--all of which are independent of any particular state.
The law too comes in, Wright argues, for this same purpose--of making a people/nation that is independent of a state. Wright points out two false assumptions about the Bible (the second part of this is him quoting New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman): "1) the Bible originated as religious scripture and 2) most ancient religions required scriptures. Both assumptions are demonstrably false... books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of the ancient Western world." As Wright points out, most of the other ancient Near Eastern literature we have not because it was transmitted and studied continuously for thousands of years but because it was rediscovered by archeologists in the last 150 years (e.g., Gilgamesh: A New English Version was rediscovered in 1849).
The strength of the book is Wright's breadth and (at least to my amateur understanding) depth in drawing on biblical exegesis (from a historical critical perspective), archeology, the study of other near eastern civilizations, and other literatures. He approaches all of it with a skeptical eye (e.g., he does not believe in the unified kingdom and accepts the modern view that the Babylonian exile only applied to a minority of the people, particularly the elites, not to everyone). I take him at his word that other Near Eastern accounts of kings were 100 percent positive with none of the flaws the Bible depicts for all of its kings and prophets. And that they were based on their victories--so when those victories turned to defeat the texts simply disappeared without living on in any way.
At times the book tries to shove too much of the Bible into supporting its thesis that the Bible is a celebration and rationalization of defeat. The accounts of the historical books are persuasive to me because you can picture the scribes from the different kingdoms, whether they are from a currently powerful kingdom or a recently defeated one. Applying the idea to Genesis, however, felt stretched and more like a possible literary interpretation than something that had a combination of historical and archeological evidence to support it.
Finally, the book is very strong on compare and contrast to the Ancient Near East (which I am not very familiar with, although I read Gilgamesh some time ago). But I wish it had included more thoughts on Homer and the ancient Greeks. From Homer's depiction of the Trojans to Aeschylus's depiction of the Persians the ancient Greeks also wrote about defeated people (albeit not themselves). They also depicted heroes whose flaws prevented them from succeeding, much like Moses flaws prevented him from entering Canaan. All of this, together with philosophy, helped create something that was more like a nation than a state (in fact, of course, until Alexander there never was a unified state in Greece). In many ways, of course, the Bible is unique and different in holding a special place in its religion, codifying laws, and the like. But some of what Wright argues is unique about it does seem to have a certain amount in common with the Greeks. I would love to know what Wright thinks about this possibly misguided view.
August 10, 2023
In Why the Bible Began, Jacob L. Wright thoroughly and thoughtfully examines the Hebrew Bible to address the question, "What does it mean to be a people? Not a kingdom, city, clan, empire, or ethnicity, but a people." Through rigorous research, the author situates the conquered cities of Jerusalem and Judah within a larger cultural context and considers how and why the corpus of literature, now known best as the Old Testament, arose and persisted. He goes on to analyze its far-reaching impact on modern religion, theology, and politics.
This is, overall, quite a compelling and accessible volume with an excellent set of end notes to guide further study. I highly recommend it to anybody deeply interested in Biblical history, regardless of whether that interest is faith-based or secular.
Side note: Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins reads well with David M. Carr's Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins (Yale University Press, 2014), overlapping somewhat but ultimately answering similar questions from a different angle and providing a much-needed complementary perspective. For the casual scholar, the two volumes together provide an excellent jumping-off point for a (re)consideration of the genesis and legacy of Hebrew scripture.
[I received an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.]
This is, overall, quite a compelling and accessible volume with an excellent set of end notes to guide further study. I highly recommend it to anybody deeply interested in Biblical history, regardless of whether that interest is faith-based or secular.
Side note: Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins reads well with David M. Carr's Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins (Yale University Press, 2014), overlapping somewhat but ultimately answering similar questions from a different angle and providing a much-needed complementary perspective. For the casual scholar, the two volumes together provide an excellent jumping-off point for a (re)consideration of the genesis and legacy of Hebrew scripture.
[I received an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.]
October 6, 2023
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is one of the foundational sacred scriptures for three (3) [Abrahamic] religions. Each tradition takes a slightly different approach to interpreting what it actually says (exegesis), but few commentaries explore why each story is told the way it is told … perhaps because of a presumption that because they were inspired by God, they did not actually change or evolve … a presumption that is no longer the general consensus of biblical scholars. In fact, there is a significant wing that promotes the exact opposite supported by recent discoveries of ancient versions of the text that appear to illustrate how they evolved over time for different jewish communities. Stepping into that academic line of questioning, Why the Bible Began begins with accepting this evolution as fact and then takes it one step further by suggesting that there was a specific purpose to the work of these historical redactors and a specific reason these changes endured (why the work).
Most biblical scholars are familiar with the document hypothesis … this appears to take a slightly different approach. It starts with the idea that there really never was a United Monarchy … in fact, the starting point very nearly aligns with the minimalists view of early Israel. As such, we start to see parts of what appears to be conflicting traditions woven together for a specific goal … to create the idea of a people define by belief and practice instead of by territory or ruler in order to help the community survive being under the heel of external conquerors. What I found interesting is how this was a concept that was mostly driven by circumstances … in other words, it was the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that provided much of the skill and source material to weave together disparate traditions to make a unified national narrative. Then it was the subsequent fall of the Southern Judean Kingdom that forced the creation of a people narrative to united the community throughout all of the diaspora.
Over all, despite being more of an academic piece, it was well supported and very accessible if you are interested and open to this approach … it won’t work for everybody. There are a lot of references to assumptions that represent current research that make this more of a companion work that provides a solid overview with a deeper dive into the support to fully understand the why the author takes the stance that he does.
The chapters and sections in this work are:
Introduction
Part I - The Rise and Fall
Chapter 1 - Abraham and Sarah: From One to the Many
Chapter 2 - Miriam: Empire and Exodus
Chapter 3 - Deborah: A New Dawn
Chapter 4 - King David: Between North and South
Chapter 5 - Ahab and Jezebel: Putting Israel on the Map
Chapter 6 - Jehu and Elisha: Israel’s Downfall and Judah’s Jubilation
Chapter 7 - Hezekiah and Isaiah: Putting Judah on the Map
Chapter 8 - Josiah and Huldah: Judah’s Downfall and Deportation
Part II - Admitting Defeat
Chapter 9 - Daughter Zion : Finding One’s Voice
Chapter 10 - The Creator: Comforting the Afflicted
Chapter 11 - Haggai the Prophet: Laying the Foundation
Chapter 12 - Nehemiah the Builder: Restoring Judean Pride
Chapter 13 - Ezra the Educator: Forming a People of the Book
Chapter 14 - Hoshayahu the Soldier: Peoplehood as a Pedagogical Project
Part III - A New Narrative
Chapter 15 - Jeremiah and Baruch: A Monument to Defeat
Chapter 16 - Isaac and Rebekah: The Family Story
Chapter 17 - Moses and Joshua: The People’s History
Chapter 18 - Hannah and Samuel: The Palace History
Chapter 19 - Solomon and the Queen of Sheba: The National Narrative
Chapter 20 - Jonah and the Whale: The prophets as Survival Literature
Chapter 21 - Yhwh and His People: Codes, Covenant, and Kinship
Part IV - A People of Protest
Chapter 22 - The Matriarch: Women and the Biblical Agenda
Chapter 23 - The Hero: Redefining Gender Roles
Chapter 24 - The Other: Tales of War, Outsiders, and Allegiance
Chapter 25 - The Soldier: Sacrificial Death and Eternal Life
Chapter 26 - The Prophet and the Priest: Open Access, Public transparency and Separation of Powers
Chapter 27 - The Sage: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
Chapter 28 - The Poet: Song of Songs and Psalms
Chapter 29 - The Queen: Peoplehood without Piety
Chapter 30 - Conclusions: Nations, Nationalism, and New Bibles
Some of the other points that really got my attention are:
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#WhyTheBibleBegan #NetGalley
Most biblical scholars are familiar with the document hypothesis … this appears to take a slightly different approach. It starts with the idea that there really never was a United Monarchy … in fact, the starting point very nearly aligns with the minimalists view of early Israel. As such, we start to see parts of what appears to be conflicting traditions woven together for a specific goal … to create the idea of a people define by belief and practice instead of by territory or ruler in order to help the community survive being under the heel of external conquerors. What I found interesting is how this was a concept that was mostly driven by circumstances … in other words, it was the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that provided much of the skill and source material to weave together disparate traditions to make a unified national narrative. Then it was the subsequent fall of the Southern Judean Kingdom that forced the creation of a people narrative to united the community throughout all of the diaspora.
Over all, despite being more of an academic piece, it was well supported and very accessible if you are interested and open to this approach … it won’t work for everybody. There are a lot of references to assumptions that represent current research that make this more of a companion work that provides a solid overview with a deeper dive into the support to fully understand the why the author takes the stance that he does.
The chapters and sections in this work are:
Introduction
Part I - The Rise and Fall
Chapter 1 - Abraham and Sarah: From One to the Many
Chapter 2 - Miriam: Empire and Exodus
Chapter 3 - Deborah: A New Dawn
Chapter 4 - King David: Between North and South
Chapter 5 - Ahab and Jezebel: Putting Israel on the Map
Chapter 6 - Jehu and Elisha: Israel’s Downfall and Judah’s Jubilation
Chapter 7 - Hezekiah and Isaiah: Putting Judah on the Map
Chapter 8 - Josiah and Huldah: Judah’s Downfall and Deportation
Part II - Admitting Defeat
Chapter 9 - Daughter Zion : Finding One’s Voice
Chapter 10 - The Creator: Comforting the Afflicted
Chapter 11 - Haggai the Prophet: Laying the Foundation
Chapter 12 - Nehemiah the Builder: Restoring Judean Pride
Chapter 13 - Ezra the Educator: Forming a People of the Book
Chapter 14 - Hoshayahu the Soldier: Peoplehood as a Pedagogical Project
Part III - A New Narrative
Chapter 15 - Jeremiah and Baruch: A Monument to Defeat
Chapter 16 - Isaac and Rebekah: The Family Story
Chapter 17 - Moses and Joshua: The People’s History
Chapter 18 - Hannah and Samuel: The Palace History
Chapter 19 - Solomon and the Queen of Sheba: The National Narrative
Chapter 20 - Jonah and the Whale: The prophets as Survival Literature
Chapter 21 - Yhwh and His People: Codes, Covenant, and Kinship
Part IV - A People of Protest
Chapter 22 - The Matriarch: Women and the Biblical Agenda
Chapter 23 - The Hero: Redefining Gender Roles
Chapter 24 - The Other: Tales of War, Outsiders, and Allegiance
Chapter 25 - The Soldier: Sacrificial Death and Eternal Life
Chapter 26 - The Prophet and the Priest: Open Access, Public transparency and Separation of Powers
Chapter 27 - The Sage: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
Chapter 28 - The Poet: Song of Songs and Psalms
Chapter 29 - The Queen: Peoplehood without Piety
Chapter 30 - Conclusions: Nations, Nationalism, and New Bibles
Some of the other points that really got my attention are:
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#WhyTheBibleBegan #NetGalley
July 6, 2023
From the rubble of the Babylonian invasion and the fall of Jerusalem, the people of Israel created a remarkable and enduring work of literature unequaled in the ancient world. In "Why the Bible Began," the author argues that the Jewish Bible created a national identity from experiences of trauma and diaspora. By carrying the history and wisdom of their forebears with them in written form, the people of Israel could remain a nation no matter where they lived.
This is a beautifully written, deeply researched, and easy to understand academic work. Because it's an academic work, it resorts to citations and "further reading" lists instead of comprehensive explanations. For instance, it claims that David was a Judean warlord rather than a king of a united Israel—but offers no support for this claim within the text. I understand that explanations like this are outside the scope of the book, and we're intended to consult other sources for this information. But as a reader, I found this practice frustrating. The book felt incomplete. Still, it's an engaging book and well worth reading.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
This is a beautifully written, deeply researched, and easy to understand academic work. Because it's an academic work, it resorts to citations and "further reading" lists instead of comprehensive explanations. For instance, it claims that David was a Judean warlord rather than a king of a united Israel—but offers no support for this claim within the text. I understand that explanations like this are outside the scope of the book, and we're intended to consult other sources for this information. But as a reader, I found this practice frustrating. The book felt incomplete. Still, it's an engaging book and well worth reading.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
July 19, 2023
Why the Bible Began is a fascinating book on a topic in which many people take great interest.
The book starts off with the history of Israel and Judah (including countries/regions surrounding the aforementioned countries). The remainder of the book goes into the explanation as to what is believed to be the origins of the Bible (I really should say Hebrew Bible) itself. The explanation, which of course is most of the book, goes into great detail as to the whens, whys, and how's that make the Bible a cohesive book about one people.
I do admit that the section on the history of Israel and Judah is lengthy and a bit complicated, but once through that section, I found the book much more fascinating and informative than I expected! In fact, I was surprised by what was presented, however, I see all points as valid and it does give food for thought. I know that many might disagree. Regardless, I highly recommend reading Why the Bible Began - I promise, it does not disappoint!
The book starts off with the history of Israel and Judah (including countries/regions surrounding the aforementioned countries). The remainder of the book goes into the explanation as to what is believed to be the origins of the Bible (I really should say Hebrew Bible) itself. The explanation, which of course is most of the book, goes into great detail as to the whens, whys, and how's that make the Bible a cohesive book about one people.
I do admit that the section on the history of Israel and Judah is lengthy and a bit complicated, but once through that section, I found the book much more fascinating and informative than I expected! In fact, I was surprised by what was presented, however, I see all points as valid and it does give food for thought. I know that many might disagree. Regardless, I highly recommend reading Why the Bible Began - I promise, it does not disappoint!
March 5, 2024
I've read numerous books on the Hebrew Scriptures over the decades, and this may be the very best. A summary of the current state of scholarship (and archaeological research), he presents the best understanding of ancient Israelite history, the development of the religion, and the writing, editing, and formation of the canon. Here was synthesized bits and pieces I'd encountered in recent years in various places, but never all put together. And some of it was also new to me. The picture presented is radically different from what I learned in my Old Testament classes thirty years ago.
December 31, 2023
It was a disappointment. Bible history is quite possibly my favorite subject, and Gopnik’s New Yorker review led me to expect so much more. It may well be a good introduction to the subject—why or how the Bible began—but I could not deal with the saccharine tone, the rife oversimplification, the insipid writing, and the failure to locate the argument relative to the weight of the scholarly opinion.
The thesis is clear enough: the Bible is essentially a nation-building project of the communities, first Israel and then Judah, that had been devastated by war and by the loss of their political sovereignty and of the traditional military means of restoring it. In these circumstances, the scribes in those communities collected, redacted and compiled a panoply of traditions, legal as well as literary, into a corpus (the Hebrew Bible) which a nation could identify as uniquely its own and as central to its political identity. Fine. It all sounds plausible, and Wright offers more than a few insights that struck me as fresh.
Leaving aside the questions over how truly original that overall thesis is, what irked me the most was that Wright chose to present it as if addressing a bunch of precocious 6th-graders. Only a few examples of what I mean: short chapters, written in a cliche-studded prose with examples from Superman and Wonder Woman; the lack of any citations, except for chapter-by-chapter bibliography, which makes it difficult to understand the support for any individual proposition in the text; and the annoying, feel-good tone throughout.
In trying to simplify so much, Wright oversimplifies to a fault: the answer to most “why” questions he puts forward seems to be “because the scribes did it this way.” In this telling, the scribes are sort of like the Founding Fathers, the Bible a kind of the “Federalist,” and Wright freely, wantonly even, ascribes to them all kinds of proto-democratic, Enlightenment-flavored motivations. It all feels a bit silly, in way that the good points sprinkled here and there do little to abate.
The Bible is thoroughly domesticated, its rough parts carefully smoothed over. To the extent that Wright does not altogether sidestep anything that might offend modern sensibilities (e.g., haram), he does a lot of special pleading to point out that the offensive bits are actually not that offensive at all.
Finally: not the most important point, but the editing here was sorely disappointing for an academic publisher (Cambridge UP). The number of misspellings and the awkward or incorrect grammar and word choices (“reticent” instead of “reluctant,” which, despite becoming endemic, is still awful) should be unacceptable.
The thesis is clear enough: the Bible is essentially a nation-building project of the communities, first Israel and then Judah, that had been devastated by war and by the loss of their political sovereignty and of the traditional military means of restoring it. In these circumstances, the scribes in those communities collected, redacted and compiled a panoply of traditions, legal as well as literary, into a corpus (the Hebrew Bible) which a nation could identify as uniquely its own and as central to its political identity. Fine. It all sounds plausible, and Wright offers more than a few insights that struck me as fresh.
Leaving aside the questions over how truly original that overall thesis is, what irked me the most was that Wright chose to present it as if addressing a bunch of precocious 6th-graders. Only a few examples of what I mean: short chapters, written in a cliche-studded prose with examples from Superman and Wonder Woman; the lack of any citations, except for chapter-by-chapter bibliography, which makes it difficult to understand the support for any individual proposition in the text; and the annoying, feel-good tone throughout.
In trying to simplify so much, Wright oversimplifies to a fault: the answer to most “why” questions he puts forward seems to be “because the scribes did it this way.” In this telling, the scribes are sort of like the Founding Fathers, the Bible a kind of the “Federalist,” and Wright freely, wantonly even, ascribes to them all kinds of proto-democratic, Enlightenment-flavored motivations. It all feels a bit silly, in way that the good points sprinkled here and there do little to abate.
The Bible is thoroughly domesticated, its rough parts carefully smoothed over. To the extent that Wright does not altogether sidestep anything that might offend modern sensibilities (e.g., haram), he does a lot of special pleading to point out that the offensive bits are actually not that offensive at all.
Finally: not the most important point, but the editing here was sorely disappointing for an academic publisher (Cambridge UP). The number of misspellings and the awkward or incorrect grammar and word choices (“reticent” instead of “reluctant,” which, despite becoming endemic, is still awful) should be unacceptable.
October 12, 2023
It is an interesting story that seeks to clarify how the narrative corpus of the Bible was formed. Often using archeological means, the story describes the elements of the biblical tale that are almost certain to have occurred and those with which a great deal of embellishments or outright lies were utilized. Often times this is done in the form of combining individual narrative from disparate peoples into one rendition so as to fabricate a United history that did not actually exist. The new rendering of Israeli and Jewish history is often an amalgamation of various real stories coupled with outlandish tenets so as to bolster the prestige and historical legacy of Israel and its people. It reconciles biblical assertions with historical truths in way that is both honest yet respectful of the reverence culturally shown to the preeminent Christian corpus. At times clunky and dense, the story is often bogged down by the jump from one historical fact to the other in a form not conducive to the rendering of a successful narrative story. While the story is interest enough, the execution did not engender positive sentiments.
January 29, 2024
the fact that i finished this book is a (old) testament to the perseverance of the human spirit.
reading this book felt like slogging through page after page of jumbled thoughts that could have come from a BYU sophomore’s final Old Testament paper.
if pressed, i’d say there’s 2-3 interesting insights this book provides, but i might just start ambien if i need something to help me sleep.
reading this book felt like slogging through page after page of jumbled thoughts that could have come from a BYU sophomore’s final Old Testament paper.
if pressed, i’d say there’s 2-3 interesting insights this book provides, but i might just start ambien if i need something to help me sleep.
January 18, 2025
Are you telling me we could have been worshiping Chemosh the supreme fish god and Astarte, the fertile mother goddess THIS WHOLE TIME?!?
May 29, 2025
fun read
September 18, 2024
Excellent book describing the reasoning for why the scribes edited the Hebrew literature to fit a narrative after the destruction of their respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Wright's main thesis is that the book is really a curated version of the history to downplay the role of kings so that the Jews who remained after the defeat could have a national narrative. This allowed for the people to keep an identity without a kingdom- a nation without a state.
My only wish would be if the author went into some detail as to when this national narrative (i.e. The Hebrew Scriptures/Bible) actually became authoritative. He discussed how Nehemiah/Ezra was the mythologized version of this authoritative event, but he explains how it is really the scribes wish fulfillment as if it was put into effect at this time. Rather, if it wasn't during the late Persian Era (especially with the evidence of the Elaphantine Temple and letters to Jerusalem that indicate a more polytheistic Judaism was still practiced), when exactly was it that this more monotheistic, authoritative version laid out in the Bible was considered authoritative? This perhaps, is a question for another book.
One other minor complaint- the version I read had numerous grammatical errors, mainly missing words. This did not detract from the book, but I was surprised they were left in there and no one caught them.
My only wish would be if the author went into some detail as to when this national narrative (i.e. The Hebrew Scriptures/Bible) actually became authoritative. He discussed how Nehemiah/Ezra was the mythologized version of this authoritative event, but he explains how it is really the scribes wish fulfillment as if it was put into effect at this time. Rather, if it wasn't during the late Persian Era (especially with the evidence of the Elaphantine Temple and letters to Jerusalem that indicate a more polytheistic Judaism was still practiced), when exactly was it that this more monotheistic, authoritative version laid out in the Bible was considered authoritative? This perhaps, is a question for another book.
One other minor complaint- the version I read had numerous grammatical errors, mainly missing words. This did not detract from the book, but I was surprised they were left in there and no one caught them.
January 8, 2024
Recommended for anyone who takes the Bible seriously. Challenging both intellectually and it also is a new perspective that challenges conventional beliefs about the Bible and how it came to be. I took a very good MOOC with the author that explores some of his ideas. It’s still available on coursera.
One thing I was not aware of is that none of the contemporaneous cultures developed a comparable scripture.
Wright agrees with current scholarship that the Bible was largely assembled and written in the post-Exilic period, after 586 BC. In other words when there was no independent Jewish state. Wright says basically that the purpose of the Bible was to create a national identity that could sustain the Jews as a people with no political state of their own. In this who can doubt that it is successful.
One thing I was not aware of is that none of the contemporaneous cultures developed a comparable scripture.
Wright agrees with current scholarship that the Bible was largely assembled and written in the post-Exilic period, after 586 BC. In other words when there was no independent Jewish state. Wright says basically that the purpose of the Bible was to create a national identity that could sustain the Jews as a people with no political state of their own. In this who can doubt that it is successful.
February 8, 2025
This was the most comprehensive book I have ever read on the story of the Hebrews and the making of the Hebrew Bible. The story covers all aspects of the lives of the various prophets and important women who shaped the history and kept a nation together. It provides a new insight into the purposes of each of the various books, the goals of the scribes and the why of the Bible's story. It is an amazing story because this is how a relatively small group of people living among a number of power empires kept their uniqueness across centuries of domination. This is not a book you can read only once and grasp all the details. There is so much to understand in this volume.
April 19, 2024
It's a decent book, though one I found myself grazing/skimming later on. Wright notes that plenty of books have been written on questions such as who wrote the Bible (that's literally the title of an excellent book by Richard Elliot Friedman) but Wright looks at a less investigated question: why. Why was the Jewish Bible as we know it assembled?
His answer: to create a sense of peoplehood, to create a proto-national identity for the Jews. And it was incredibly successful, as evidenced by how we still have Jews nowadays, whereas Moabites and others are all long gone. Wright argues you had a couple dueling notions come together to form the Bible as we know it. He says there was the Court History, focusing on the imperial courts. This mostly came from the southern kingdom of Judah. There was also the People's History, which he associates with the northern kingdom of Israel. After the northern kingdom fell, some fled to the south and took their history with them. When the southern kingdom fell, some of their priests adopted the notion of a People's History to keep the community going.
Wright argues that the patriarchs were intially a series of separate stories of leaders that were eventually combined together into one narrative, but even now, he says, you can see how some of the early leaders were largely associated with sites from the northern kingdom and others from the southern kingdom. There is also the Conquest Narrative, as Wright notes how Joshua's conquest begins wtih towns located at the south end of the Northern kingdom, skipping Judah altogther.
He says a lot of the Biblical narrative was backdated by the Judah court. During the divided kingdom days, he says that Israel was always the real power center. Wright even says that the line of Ahab was among the first to really support YHWH. There was a King David before, but he may not have been that powerful.
The later books in the Bible were to expand on the sense of peoplehood. For those who had doubts on YHWH, well - check out Joab and Ecclesiastes. Those books are designed to keep the sceptics in the community by giving them their say. Wright calls Esther the most Biblical book in the Bible because it's all about keeping a sense of people, divorced from a specific location, theology, or even God. It's often noted what a weird book it is to put in the Bible as it never even mentions God, but for Wright, it makes a lot of sense to put it in there for just that reason. Oh, and there is some archeology indicating that for a while there was not just YHWH, but a corresponding female diety, possible wife.
It's got some good material, but at times it felt like it argues more by assertion, especially in the early going when it discusses the patriarchs and the improtance of Ahab's family in the promotion of YHWH. The latter parts did sometimes drag, as it felt like Wright had already made his points and was just beating a dead horse for another 100 pages.
Interesting nugget: there was a Jewish colony in Egypt at a place called Elephantine around 540 BC. We have a ton of documents from there, as they wrote to Jerusalem on proper ways to pray and go about the religion. It's the same era as Ezra and Nehemiah. They do many things that seem wrong: they work on the Sabbath, do intermarriage with others, make contributions to other gods, but in their letters to Jerusalem on how to do things, they were never told not to do any of the above. They didn't have a problem with it, even at that late stage.
His answer: to create a sense of peoplehood, to create a proto-national identity for the Jews. And it was incredibly successful, as evidenced by how we still have Jews nowadays, whereas Moabites and others are all long gone. Wright argues you had a couple dueling notions come together to form the Bible as we know it. He says there was the Court History, focusing on the imperial courts. This mostly came from the southern kingdom of Judah. There was also the People's History, which he associates with the northern kingdom of Israel. After the northern kingdom fell, some fled to the south and took their history with them. When the southern kingdom fell, some of their priests adopted the notion of a People's History to keep the community going.
Wright argues that the patriarchs were intially a series of separate stories of leaders that were eventually combined together into one narrative, but even now, he says, you can see how some of the early leaders were largely associated with sites from the northern kingdom and others from the southern kingdom. There is also the Conquest Narrative, as Wright notes how Joshua's conquest begins wtih towns located at the south end of the Northern kingdom, skipping Judah altogther.
He says a lot of the Biblical narrative was backdated by the Judah court. During the divided kingdom days, he says that Israel was always the real power center. Wright even says that the line of Ahab was among the first to really support YHWH. There was a King David before, but he may not have been that powerful.
The later books in the Bible were to expand on the sense of peoplehood. For those who had doubts on YHWH, well - check out Joab and Ecclesiastes. Those books are designed to keep the sceptics in the community by giving them their say. Wright calls Esther the most Biblical book in the Bible because it's all about keeping a sense of people, divorced from a specific location, theology, or even God. It's often noted what a weird book it is to put in the Bible as it never even mentions God, but for Wright, it makes a lot of sense to put it in there for just that reason. Oh, and there is some archeology indicating that for a while there was not just YHWH, but a corresponding female diety, possible wife.
It's got some good material, but at times it felt like it argues more by assertion, especially in the early going when it discusses the patriarchs and the improtance of Ahab's family in the promotion of YHWH. The latter parts did sometimes drag, as it felt like Wright had already made his points and was just beating a dead horse for another 100 pages.
Interesting nugget: there was a Jewish colony in Egypt at a place called Elephantine around 540 BC. We have a ton of documents from there, as they wrote to Jerusalem on proper ways to pray and go about the religion. It's the same era as Ezra and Nehemiah. They do many things that seem wrong: they work on the Sabbath, do intermarriage with others, make contributions to other gods, but in their letters to Jerusalem on how to do things, they were never told not to do any of the above. They didn't have a problem with it, even at that late stage.
November 25, 2025
I found this book by stumbling on an interview to the author by Erica Stevenson, and it turned to be incredibly interesting. I haven't read the Bible in close to 4 decades, so this stirred dormant memories, so is unclear what things I was remembering, which things discovering new.
Main takeaways from the book:
- Israel and Judea during their formative years were rivals, if not enemies. Unifying them as one nation/people was a concerted effort, and the creation of the Bible was fundamental to this intentional creation of national mythology.
- Samaria was the capital of Israel, and thus a lot of the Judea originated text paint Samaritans in bad light.
- Judea was an underdog to Israel, but Israel's fall was much dramatic, and precipitated the creation of a king-less national mythology (ie Adam, Eve, Abraham, etc.) in Israel.
- Judea's myths were more focused on kingdom (David, Salomon), and their eventual fall had to be explained not as a result of military inferiority, but as God's will as punishment for some fault or other.
- Combining these 2 national stories together left many internal contradictions that can still be found in the text.
- The story of Moses is particularly interesting since the character arc shows the evolution of the story, the iterations it went through and how it was shoehorned into what it is today.
Most of the interesting ideas come in the first half of the book, the second half of the book has more of an analysis into specific characters, which I didn't find that engaging.
Funny enough, just two days after finishing it (or was it "on the third day"), I discovered a documentary called "Creating Christ" which proposes a radical idea. While it comes from non-professional scholars, to me it made So Much Sense. So much that I actually paused the documentary and went to the Bible to double-check their quotes multiple times:
The gist of it is that the first Christians were still radical, militaristic, fundamentalist, who adherent to the Tora's code of conduct (food prohibitions et al), leaded by Christ's brother James -as stated in the Bible. And then a Roman citizen comes up with a variant of the Messianic Cristian movement, one that emphasizes, peace, obedience, turning the other cheek, and paying taxes to the Romans, which puts him into direct conflict with James -again, as described in the bible.
That Roman citizen is Saul of Tarsus, which according to the Bible did all of this because God spoke to him directly, and is known now as Saint Paul founder of the church and main author of the new testament.
However, according to this other book, Saul did all this per Emperor Flavius command, who needed to pacify the jews that kept on revolting despite multiple Roman attacks and crucifixions. One very interesting point is that some of the miracles describes in the New Testament as performed by Jesus, had been documented earlier as performed by Flavius when he was in Egypt as part of his "I'm a living God" tour, which was a tradition amongst rulers at that time.
To me the political motivation - both to write the Old and New Testament, sound much more convincing than the supernatural one.
Main takeaways from the book:
- Israel and Judea during their formative years were rivals, if not enemies. Unifying them as one nation/people was a concerted effort, and the creation of the Bible was fundamental to this intentional creation of national mythology.
- Samaria was the capital of Israel, and thus a lot of the Judea originated text paint Samaritans in bad light.
- Judea was an underdog to Israel, but Israel's fall was much dramatic, and precipitated the creation of a king-less national mythology (ie Adam, Eve, Abraham, etc.) in Israel.
- Judea's myths were more focused on kingdom (David, Salomon), and their eventual fall had to be explained not as a result of military inferiority, but as God's will as punishment for some fault or other.
- Combining these 2 national stories together left many internal contradictions that can still be found in the text.
- The story of Moses is particularly interesting since the character arc shows the evolution of the story, the iterations it went through and how it was shoehorned into what it is today.
Most of the interesting ideas come in the first half of the book, the second half of the book has more of an analysis into specific characters, which I didn't find that engaging.
Funny enough, just two days after finishing it (or was it "on the third day"), I discovered a documentary called "Creating Christ" which proposes a radical idea. While it comes from non-professional scholars, to me it made So Much Sense. So much that I actually paused the documentary and went to the Bible to double-check their quotes multiple times:
The gist of it is that the first Christians were still radical, militaristic, fundamentalist, who adherent to the Tora's code of conduct (food prohibitions et al), leaded by Christ's brother James -as stated in the Bible. And then a Roman citizen comes up with a variant of the Messianic Cristian movement, one that emphasizes, peace, obedience, turning the other cheek, and paying taxes to the Romans, which puts him into direct conflict with James -again, as described in the bible.
That Roman citizen is Saul of Tarsus, which according to the Bible did all of this because God spoke to him directly, and is known now as Saint Paul founder of the church and main author of the new testament.
However, according to this other book, Saul did all this per Emperor Flavius command, who needed to pacify the jews that kept on revolting despite multiple Roman attacks and crucifixions. One very interesting point is that some of the miracles describes in the New Testament as performed by Jesus, had been documented earlier as performed by Flavius when he was in Egypt as part of his "I'm a living God" tour, which was a tradition amongst rulers at that time.
To me the political motivation - both to write the Old and New Testament, sound much more convincing than the supernatural one.
October 6, 2024
Even for those who are not practicing Jewish or Christian forms of faith, the Hebrew Bible still represents an extraordinary collection of resources regarding the heritage of ancient Israel. It makes complete sense as part of the ancient Near Eastern world, but no collection like it was preserved like it.
Jacob Wright sets forth his construction of how he imagined the text came together in its final form in Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins (galley received as part of early review program).
The author begins by reconstructing the history presented in the pages of the Hebrew Bible, and then would go on to describe the processes which led to the formulation of the text.
The author’s primary thesis has a lot of merit: the Hebrew Bible, in the form in which we have received it, is primarily the work of exilic and postexilic Jewish people striving to make sense of what has happened to their nation, their God, and His covenant promises, and work to tell a story of a people of God and for God to endure as a nation without a state.
Well and good. But then we have a dizzying array of narratives suggested (The Family Story, the People’s History, the Palace History, the National Narrative, etc.), some from the northern Israelites, some from the southern Judahites, some of which reflecting substantive historical events, others imagining historical events, and the like.
The author’s investigation at many points is compelling, and he weaves together interesting ways of looking at the text and its development. But I must part ways with him in terms of the idea the Israelites were whole cloth inventing former narratives. I understand the historian’s skepticism about accepting the inspiration of a narrative, or even all the details of a historical narrative. But the one thing which has been pretty constant over the past couple of hundred years has been the vindication of the ancients in terms of at least a kernel of historical truths in the stories they would tell. Am I really to believe the Song of Deborah, which has some of the most ancient features in the Hebrew text, is a later, northern Israeliteish invention? Why would anyone invent an origin narrative in which one suggests one’s ancestors were slaves in another land, liberated only by their God, who would then punish that rebellious generation? Why would anyone invent the hot mess of stories found in Judges?
In this way the historical reconstruction by the author tells you a lot about the author as well. As an exercise in historical imagination, there’s a lot of good stuff here. But historical imagination is limited, and we always do well to maintain a posture of humility, being willing to believe that perhaps the ancients knew a little bit more about even that which was ancient to them than we do.
Jacob Wright sets forth his construction of how he imagined the text came together in its final form in Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins (galley received as part of early review program).
The author begins by reconstructing the history presented in the pages of the Hebrew Bible, and then would go on to describe the processes which led to the formulation of the text.
The author’s primary thesis has a lot of merit: the Hebrew Bible, in the form in which we have received it, is primarily the work of exilic and postexilic Jewish people striving to make sense of what has happened to their nation, their God, and His covenant promises, and work to tell a story of a people of God and for God to endure as a nation without a state.
Well and good. But then we have a dizzying array of narratives suggested (The Family Story, the People’s History, the Palace History, the National Narrative, etc.), some from the northern Israelites, some from the southern Judahites, some of which reflecting substantive historical events, others imagining historical events, and the like.
The author’s investigation at many points is compelling, and he weaves together interesting ways of looking at the text and its development. But I must part ways with him in terms of the idea the Israelites were whole cloth inventing former narratives. I understand the historian’s skepticism about accepting the inspiration of a narrative, or even all the details of a historical narrative. But the one thing which has been pretty constant over the past couple of hundred years has been the vindication of the ancients in terms of at least a kernel of historical truths in the stories they would tell. Am I really to believe the Song of Deborah, which has some of the most ancient features in the Hebrew text, is a later, northern Israeliteish invention? Why would anyone invent an origin narrative in which one suggests one’s ancestors were slaves in another land, liberated only by their God, who would then punish that rebellious generation? Why would anyone invent the hot mess of stories found in Judges?
In this way the historical reconstruction by the author tells you a lot about the author as well. As an exercise in historical imagination, there’s a lot of good stuff here. But historical imagination is limited, and we always do well to maintain a posture of humility, being willing to believe that perhaps the ancients knew a little bit more about even that which was ancient to them than we do.
October 16, 2025
This book was honestly pretty disappointing for me. I heard interesting things about it so I decided to pick it up, and while I feel like there was a lot of interesting scholarship here regarding Old Testament authorship, and historiography Wright’s overall thesis of WHY the Bible was written was, I thought, incredibly stupid and anachronistic.
However, like I said, there is a lot of admirable work and interesting insight that shines through in this book. I thought that Wright’s conception of the gradual creation of what he terms “the National Narrative” (Torah + Judges, Joshua, Samuel, and Kings) as a carefully crafted editorial hybridization of older stories from both the north and the south (family story + exodus/conquest story = “people’s history” and “people’s history + palace history of Judah = National Narrative) was incredibly interesting, and he clearly has a strong grasp on the discipline of biblical criticism.
Where Wrights work falls apart is in the conclusions he reaches about the purpose of these ancient Hebrew scribes was, namely, that they sought to create a work of “national” literature, and that the Hebrew Bible represents the earliest incarnation of a coherent sense of “national identity” or “peoplehood” in history. Wright acknowledges early on in his work that his theory is going against the grain of the mainstream academic consensus that the “nation” is an inherently modern concept, but offers precious little in the way of a meaningful defense of his position. He just states that the Hebrew Bible was a primarily political (as opposed to religious) work and that the academic consensus is too restrictive. I found this annoying and anachronistic, and it is, as a thesis of his book, ever present throughout the text. Part 4 of the book was also dedicated almost entirely to a ridiculous attempt to present the Hebrew Bible as somehow uniquely inclusive of women, minorities, and other marginalized communities. It felt very unserious.
The ending and various statements throughout the text ultimately led me to the conclusion that this book was really a sort of Trojan Horse for Zionist apologetics. Of course, Wright nowhere specifically states this as his agenda, but his attempts to frame Jewish identity, from its earliest origins, as a distinct nationality, and a statement he makes in Part 1 where he depicts a group of scholars who disagree with his premise as “challenging the validity of modern state of Israel”, it seems clear, and this ideological lens diminishes the quality of Wrights research to an embarassing degree.
There was definitely good information in this book, but I hated the way it was used.
2.5/5
However, like I said, there is a lot of admirable work and interesting insight that shines through in this book. I thought that Wright’s conception of the gradual creation of what he terms “the National Narrative” (Torah + Judges, Joshua, Samuel, and Kings) as a carefully crafted editorial hybridization of older stories from both the north and the south (family story + exodus/conquest story = “people’s history” and “people’s history + palace history of Judah = National Narrative) was incredibly interesting, and he clearly has a strong grasp on the discipline of biblical criticism.
Where Wrights work falls apart is in the conclusions he reaches about the purpose of these ancient Hebrew scribes was, namely, that they sought to create a work of “national” literature, and that the Hebrew Bible represents the earliest incarnation of a coherent sense of “national identity” or “peoplehood” in history. Wright acknowledges early on in his work that his theory is going against the grain of the mainstream academic consensus that the “nation” is an inherently modern concept, but offers precious little in the way of a meaningful defense of his position. He just states that the Hebrew Bible was a primarily political (as opposed to religious) work and that the academic consensus is too restrictive. I found this annoying and anachronistic, and it is, as a thesis of his book, ever present throughout the text. Part 4 of the book was also dedicated almost entirely to a ridiculous attempt to present the Hebrew Bible as somehow uniquely inclusive of women, minorities, and other marginalized communities. It felt very unserious.
The ending and various statements throughout the text ultimately led me to the conclusion that this book was really a sort of Trojan Horse for Zionist apologetics. Of course, Wright nowhere specifically states this as his agenda, but his attempts to frame Jewish identity, from its earliest origins, as a distinct nationality, and a statement he makes in Part 1 where he depicts a group of scholars who disagree with his premise as “challenging the validity of modern state of Israel”, it seems clear, and this ideological lens diminishes the quality of Wrights research to an embarassing degree.
There was definitely good information in this book, but I hated the way it was used.
2.5/5
October 6, 2023
**Received ebook for free from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Wright’s latest book takes a look at nearly every book of the (Hebrew) Bible and presents a cohesive theory as to when and why the Bible was written. In short, Wright posits that the entire enterprise was a systematic, post-exilic way of creating a single nation (Israelite, Israel, Judea, Jewish - or whatever moniker you prefer) by weaving various legends sourced from disparate tribes and kingdoms in the region of Israel/Judea into a single history. For example, he suggests that the patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - were initially three unrelated folk heroes (without taking a firm stand on the historicity of these characters and/or specific stories about them) who were eventually combined into a single family to make the history cohere.
While there are lots of gems throughout (the chapter towards the end on Esther was particularly interesting), I found the book to be somewhat difficult to read, with too much time spent teasing future chapters and saying what is going to be covered later rather than just presenting the current chapter.
In addition, while he ends each chapter with an extensive bibliography for further reading, too many points are presented as “scholars believe” or “many think” without presenting the evidence (textual, archeological, or otherwise) to back up a claim. As someone who has studied the Bible through both a traditional religious and academic lens for many years, many of these views that are presented as consensus would benefit from some more explicit discussion.
Overall, while I enjoyed parts of the book and found much in it that could align with traditional (Orthodox) Jewish theology, the gaps in explaining what has led to academic consensus on a variety of points throughout the book make it a difficult primer for those not already versed on all of the relevant issues.
Wright’s latest book takes a look at nearly every book of the (Hebrew) Bible and presents a cohesive theory as to when and why the Bible was written. In short, Wright posits that the entire enterprise was a systematic, post-exilic way of creating a single nation (Israelite, Israel, Judea, Jewish - or whatever moniker you prefer) by weaving various legends sourced from disparate tribes and kingdoms in the region of Israel/Judea into a single history. For example, he suggests that the patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - were initially three unrelated folk heroes (without taking a firm stand on the historicity of these characters and/or specific stories about them) who were eventually combined into a single family to make the history cohere.
While there are lots of gems throughout (the chapter towards the end on Esther was particularly interesting), I found the book to be somewhat difficult to read, with too much time spent teasing future chapters and saying what is going to be covered later rather than just presenting the current chapter.
In addition, while he ends each chapter with an extensive bibliography for further reading, too many points are presented as “scholars believe” or “many think” without presenting the evidence (textual, archeological, or otherwise) to back up a claim. As someone who has studied the Bible through both a traditional religious and academic lens for many years, many of these views that are presented as consensus would benefit from some more explicit discussion.
Overall, while I enjoyed parts of the book and found much in it that could align with traditional (Orthodox) Jewish theology, the gaps in explaining what has led to academic consensus on a variety of points throughout the book make it a difficult primer for those not already versed on all of the relevant issues.
January 19, 2025
This is a great read on why the Old Testament was written. His main thesis is that rather than a book written from a position of power, which is more typical, the Old Testament was written after both Israel and Judea had been ravaged by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. They were a broken people who sought to document their struggles and their relationship with God.
It's a fascinating story. Although much of the Old Testament is from ancient documents dating back 3000 years or more, the book we call the Old Testament wasn't collected into its current form until later, probably starting during the 6th century B.C. And then it took generations of painstaking work to complete the project.
There are endless fascinating topics in this read. One example is that although the Old Testament starts with the Pentateuch which contains some of the oldest materials to make up the Old Testament, the Pentateuch wasn't put into its current form, which includes combining four different historical traditions, until after much of the rest of the Old Testament was written.
There is endless material here for helping in understanding how and why and in what form the Old Testament was written, but for me, the overwhelming teaching is what an extensive and amazing project this was to document over centuries the history of a relatively small and unknown people, and to explain their relationship with God. It answers for us why it remains the most read book ever written.
Please note that this book does not require a specific or any theology or belief. The story remains amazing regardless!
It's a fascinating story. Although much of the Old Testament is from ancient documents dating back 3000 years or more, the book we call the Old Testament wasn't collected into its current form until later, probably starting during the 6th century B.C. And then it took generations of painstaking work to complete the project.
There are endless fascinating topics in this read. One example is that although the Old Testament starts with the Pentateuch which contains some of the oldest materials to make up the Old Testament, the Pentateuch wasn't put into its current form, which includes combining four different historical traditions, until after much of the rest of the Old Testament was written.
There is endless material here for helping in understanding how and why and in what form the Old Testament was written, but for me, the overwhelming teaching is what an extensive and amazing project this was to document over centuries the history of a relatively small and unknown people, and to explain their relationship with God. It answers for us why it remains the most read book ever written.
Please note that this book does not require a specific or any theology or belief. The story remains amazing regardless!
November 17, 2023
A book that examines the various voices that came to form a unique text in the ancient world: the Bible. How did a small nation produce such a rich text and why? Most nations, past and present, for example, tell foundational stories about victories and success. The Bible does something different: it spends a good deal of time documenting failure, after defeat, after catastrophe. “The Bible’s project of peoplehood grew out of the will to admit defeat, yet also the refusal to allow it to be the final word” (p. 152). And again: “The pervasive presence of defeat is an important clue to the enigma of the Bible’s existence. It suggests that the most formative time for biblical literature was the period following the destruction of the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, the decades leading up to the destruction of the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, and especially the centuries thereafter, during which new communities re-emerged in both the North and the South” (p. 151).
This is, obviously, only a small part of Wright’s argument. He asks the question: why? Why do we have a collection of texts that contradict one another nearly at every point (Ruth versus Ezra-Nehemiah, Lamentations versus Ezekiel, et cetera) and how did these texts become what they are today? It’s a fascinating exploration. I recommend this book if you’re interested in biblical literature.
My favorite chapter was the section on Lamentations. It resonated with me for some strange reason.
Full Disclosure: I took two graduate courses with Professor Wright while at Emory.
This is, obviously, only a small part of Wright’s argument. He asks the question: why? Why do we have a collection of texts that contradict one another nearly at every point (Ruth versus Ezra-Nehemiah, Lamentations versus Ezekiel, et cetera) and how did these texts become what they are today? It’s a fascinating exploration. I recommend this book if you’re interested in biblical literature.
My favorite chapter was the section on Lamentations. It resonated with me for some strange reason.
Full Disclosure: I took two graduate courses with Professor Wright while at Emory.
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March 16, 2024Well thought out reflections on why the Jewish Bible was written.
While it may not be the deepest book, it is very well written and obvious that Dr. Wright has done his research. Essentially his thesis is that over several centuries the Jewish Bible is put together to show that what it is to be a “people of the book” can be understood more deeply not through military victory and empire, but rather by creating identity from defeat, diaspora and exile.
He makes a strong case for his contention and shows a good knowledge and understanding of contemporary research but sometimes seems to get a little ahead of himself in his assumptions. A quick case in point: it is understood that after the destruction of Israel, it appears that scribes brought a history with them to Judah and this was redacted quite heavily by later Judean scribes. However, he then asserts that even later scribes who held an allegiance to Israel must have added additional material. Now, while I suspect he might correct in this assumption, we have very little to go on that would show the veracity of this hypothesis.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and it gave me a very interesting perspective on how the Bible was written.
While it may not be the deepest book, it is very well written and obvious that Dr. Wright has done his research. Essentially his thesis is that over several centuries the Jewish Bible is put together to show that what it is to be a “people of the book” can be understood more deeply not through military victory and empire, but rather by creating identity from defeat, diaspora and exile.
He makes a strong case for his contention and shows a good knowledge and understanding of contemporary research but sometimes seems to get a little ahead of himself in his assumptions. A quick case in point: it is understood that after the destruction of Israel, it appears that scribes brought a history with them to Judah and this was redacted quite heavily by later Judean scribes. However, he then asserts that even later scribes who held an allegiance to Israel must have added additional material. Now, while I suspect he might correct in this assumption, we have very little to go on that would show the veracity of this hypothesis.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and it gave me a very interesting perspective on how the Bible was written.
March 6, 2025
يقول المؤلف في مقدمة الكتاب أن الكثير كتب عن تاريخ التوراة والكثير كتب عن ما هو التوراة وكيف كتب التوراة ومن كتب التوراة ولكن لم يكتب أحد سابقا لماذا كتب التوراة، أو كما يقول عنوان الكتاب لماذا بدأ التوراة؟ لذا المؤلف ألف هذا الكتاب ليناقش سبب كتابة التوراة برأيه. هناك سبب لتحاشي الباحثين الإجابة عن الأسئلة التي تبدأ بلماذا، لأن اسئلة لماذا لا تعطي تحليل متزن وهي أقرب الأسئلة للرأي الشخصي والإجابة عليها غالبا ما يلحق الإجابة بسؤال أخر بلماذا، جرب مع صغار السن إذا سألك بسؤال فيه لماذا تدخل معه بدوامة من أسئلة المتابعة التي لا تنتهي.
لذا مشكلتي مع هذا الكتاب في فكرتين، الأولى هي بالسؤال هذا وصعوبة الإجابة عليه والثاني هو أسلوب الكاتب بالكتابة. في إجابته على هذا السؤال المؤلف يرى أن سبب كتابة التوراة هي حاجة المؤلفين في ذلك الزمن للبحث عن علاقة جامعة لشعبهم بعد الهزيمة المروعة التي حاقت بهم وطردوا من أرضهم بسببها. لذا قرر كاتبي التوراة بجمع شتات قومهم بوضع موجوعة من الكتب المقدسة التي تحكي ماضيهم المجيد. لكي يدعم فكرته هذه ، المؤلف يقوم بعمل مربك بتتبع كتب التوراة وتحليل��ا لتدعيم ��كرته. المشكلة الثانية هي أسلوب الكاتب المربك والذي يعطي انطباع أنه كاتب هاوٍ أكثر من كونه متمرس بالكتابة.
بالمحصلة إذا تريد أن تقرأ عن هذا الموضوع فالكتاب هذا لا يجب أن يكون خيارك الأول فهو سيزيد حيرتك أكثر.
لذا مشكلتي مع هذا الكتاب في فكرتين، الأولى هي بالسؤال هذا وصعوبة الإجابة عليه والثاني هو أسلوب الكاتب بالكتابة. في إجابته على هذا السؤال المؤلف يرى أن سبب كتابة التوراة هي حاجة المؤلفين في ذلك الزمن للبحث عن علاقة جامعة لشعبهم بعد الهزيمة المروعة التي حاقت بهم وطردوا من أرضهم بسببها. لذا قرر كاتبي التوراة بجمع شتات قومهم بوضع موجوعة من الكتب المقدسة التي تحكي ماضيهم المجيد. لكي يدعم فكرته هذه ، المؤلف يقوم بعمل مربك بتتبع كتب التوراة وتحليل��ا لتدعيم ��كرته. المشكلة الثانية هي أسلوب الكاتب المربك والذي يعطي انطباع أنه كاتب هاوٍ أكثر من كونه متمرس بالكتابة.
بالمحصلة إذا تريد أن تقرأ عن هذا الموضوع فالكتاب هذا لا يجب أن يكون خيارك الأول فهو سيزيد حيرتك أكثر.
August 2, 2023
Jacob Wright, a Bible professor and author of several books focused on Biblical studies, has now authored "Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins." In this book, Wright argues that the Bible is good for more than just simply to be used as a "moral guide." He discusses the History of the Bible, the meaning found in ancient writings, and its origins. I appreciated that he wanted to get past the rote answer of "The Bible exists because God wanted to reveal divine truth to us."
This book is more academic than practical which made it a little difficult to read through at times. However, I can appreciate the time and effort Wright obviously put into authoring this book. For someone who's looking for something a little deeper than the typical Bible studies you find at the store, this will be your book! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
This book is more academic than practical which made it a little difficult to read through at times. However, I can appreciate the time and effort Wright obviously put into authoring this book. For someone who's looking for something a little deeper than the typical Bible studies you find at the store, this will be your book! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
July 6, 2025
***.5
An interesting book, but I kept finding myself lost in the details and missing the overall point he was trying to make. Which is partially my fault, to be sure, I should have been paying better attention to the audiobook. As a result, I'm not entirely sure what is so "alternative" about the history presented in the book, it seemed to coincide with my [albeit limited] understanding of how various authors contributed to what became codified as the Tanach over a period of a several hundred years. Getting a bit of insight into what each was thinking and their goals was the ostensible purpose of the book, and I'd probably have to read the whole thing again to state with any confidence that I get it now.
Still, there's some good history, and it's nice to read about it from someone who's not out to prove/disprove any particular interpretation based on a religious or political motivation. Nor does he try to shoehorn the Tanach into the lens of Christian scripture.
An interesting book, but I kept finding myself lost in the details and missing the overall point he was trying to make. Which is partially my fault, to be sure, I should have been paying better attention to the audiobook. As a result, I'm not entirely sure what is so "alternative" about the history presented in the book, it seemed to coincide with my [albeit limited] understanding of how various authors contributed to what became codified as the Tanach over a period of a several hundred years. Getting a bit of insight into what each was thinking and their goals was the ostensible purpose of the book, and I'd probably have to read the whole thing again to state with any confidence that I get it now.
Still, there's some good history, and it's nice to read about it from someone who's not out to prove/disprove any particular interpretation based on a religious or political motivation. Nor does he try to shoehorn the Tanach into the lens of Christian scripture.
July 16, 2023
Jacob Wright's thought-provoking book, 'The Bible: A Blueprint for Hope and Restoration,' offers a captivating exploration of the extraordinary origins and enduring significance of the Bible. With meticulous research and insightful analysis, Wright unveils how a marginalized community transformed their profound loss into a powerful narrative of resilience and renewal. A must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Bible's profound impact on human history.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the digital advance copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the digital advance copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.
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