The Bible has had several tangible incarnations, transitioning from its beginnings in an ancient Israelite culture of oral transmission (Schniedewin 2004, 7) into an incarnation on various scrolls, followed by consolidation into a single codex (Schniedewin 2004, 3) and then continuing to be rewritten over millennia (Schniedewin 2004, 5). It has also had several contextual evolutions (Schniedewin 2004, 5), as various cultures with different ideological notions have approached it differently. Archaic folk societies focused on community ownership and authorship, or, as with the ancient Semitic world, completely disregarded authorship (Schniedewin 2004, 5-6). For example, ancient Hebrew lacks a word for “author” and timeless lore such as Epic of Gilgamesh, The Enuma Elish, Baal and Mot and The Shipwrecked Sailor have no authors (Schniedewin 2004, 7). However, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal a startling rendition of the Book of Deuteronomy that was written in the first-person voice of God, as opposed to in the third-person from Moses’ perspective (Schniedewin, 8). Despite this claim of authorship, it is unlikely that God directly wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls; the use of a first-person voice was likely an attempt to cement the authority of the scrolls rather than a direct ploy to clarify authorship. Later, Greece’s own renaissance – the Hellenistic Age – procured many literary works depicting tales allegedly borne from ancient Israel. Combined with Greece’s own developing individualism, these writings often directly addressed authorship – usually attributed directly to God or an angel, either directly or by commanding a person. In modern America – similar to as in the Hellenistic age — reverence for individuality has given the Bible a new context in which to be understood (Schniedewin 2004, 9). American research has oft tried to find a single sect (if not individual) responsible for creating the Bible (Schniedewin 2004, 4 & 6). This distressing endeavor ties together the lack of interest in authorship amongst the ancients, and the glorification of the individual amongst Greeks and their ideological descendants, Americans.

Schniedewin states his theory that when the Bible was written is more important than by whom because authorship was nonexistent when the Bible was written, and also because knowing the greater audience provides deeper (albeit indirect) insight than trying to piece together the identities of countless Biblical authors and whatever may have been running through their minds (Schniedewin 2004, 11). However, this theory is troubled by the fact that most ancient Israelites could not read, and ancient cultures relied primarily on oral transmission between relatives to impart wisdom, stories and the early Torah itself (Schniedewin 2004, 11 & 12). This lack of emphasis on writing – and the later spread of literacy – is evidenced by the Bible itself, with the initial mention of the Ten Commandments does mention them being written and later mentions clearly stating they were written. Despite the seemingly stark difference between an oral culture and a society able to read a complex text such as the Bible, let alone write it, Schniedewin proposes that there might be a fluid and remarkably slight transition from keeping legacies vocally to writing and reading those same stories (Schniedewin 2004, 12). This possible fluidity is evidenced by very complex oral works such as Iliad and Odyssey, very simple written proverbs and also by the clear oral origins of many written works (Schniedewin 2004, 13).

Despite how gradually it became a written text, and however slowly its intended audience grew literate, there must be a time frame for when actual strokes made tangible the actual content of the Bible. Schniedewin argues that fragmentary beginnings of the Bible occurred as early as the tenth century BCE, but that its majority was written from the eighth through the sixth centuries BCE, between the days of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah (Schniedewin 2004, 17 & 18). This aligns with the unintentional boom of literacy due to bureaucratic and economic growth under the kings Hezekiah and Josiah, whom respectively ruled from 715-687 and 640-609 BCE, and the ensuing decline of the monarchy (Schniedewin 2004, 17 & 19). This contrasts other theories proposing later Biblical origins, whose theoretical time frames would make the Bible a fictional retrospective text with propagandist purposes (Schniedewin 2004, 18). However, despite dating the writing of the Bible much earlier than other researchers, Schniedewin points out that just because the Bible was written from the eighth through the sixth centuries BCE does not mean it was immediately a cohesive canonical codex (Schniedewin 2004, 18). Rather, tying in earlier points made in this paper, Schniedewin points out that the books underwent tremendous metamorphoses that incorporated social growths in literacy and technical developments in writing itself (Schniedewin, p 18). Also, this growth of the Bible inherently implies that any proposed dates for the writing of the Bible are innately much later than when this conversion into a tangible form began (Schniedewin 2004, 19). Rather than writing the Bible completely anew, it likely originated as small fragments that were coalesced, grown, interpreted and revised until the Bible was eventually written as a more cohesive work (Schniedewin 2004, 19). Thus, proposing that the majority of the Bible was written from the eighth through the sixth centuries implies that its origins are still several hundred years prior.

For more tangential evidence of why Schniedewin gives the Bible an earlier birth date than might even be expected, he delves into an example of a very early event that was described long before even the eighth century. An account in the Book of Kings of a pharaoh’s campaign is attested by an Egyptian account dated to at latest the tenth century BCE of the same event (Schniedewin 2004, 20). If this event had been described hundreds of years before the Book of Kings, it is likely that the Book of Kings incorporated earlier literary fragments as the Book of Kings was transmitted, composed and revised. Thus, these speculated fragments are early origins of the Bible, dating the roots of the Bible to over a dozen millennia ago. Schniedewin continues to harness this approach of examining events in the Bible, finding other instances they are described and postulating that the Bible must thus have additional roots in ancient written historical glimpses (Schniedewin 2004, 21). Schniedewin also examines instances of repetition where events were expanded, extrapolating that this is evidence of brief historical tidbits from even older source texts were incorporated and later revised and explained (Schniedewin 2004, 21). While these fragmentary accounts are arguably not the Bible itself but merely pieces that were later incorporated, they are undeniably the precursors of the Bible and evidence of the long, rich, complex and multi-eon process of writing the Bible.

Some researchers such as Schniedewin begin the history of the Bible with predecessive accounts of historical events also described in the Bible, while other researchers scan only ancient Israelite or even Hellenistic society for the still-evasive tale of how the Bible became a book. These very different approaches reflect a less-controversial point described earlier in this paper: the audience (or researcher) is as important to acknowledge as the subject itself.

Bibliography

Schniedewin, William M. 2004. How the Bible Became a Book. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.