A General Introduction To The Bible
Torcuato Agravante
A first, extensive group of books, after a short introduction on the origin of the world and the human race, is concerned with events in the history of the Hebrew people, from its distant beginnings down almost to the threshold of the New Testament. Two different bodies of writings belong to this first group: the Pentateuch and the Historical Books. The latter are in turn subdivided into four sections:
The reader is referred to the introductions of the individual books. Here, in an introduction intended to facilitate understanding of the Old Testament as a whole, I shall limit myself to highlighting the salient moments of Jewish history (which is divided into two clearly distinct periods, by the Assyro-Babylonian deportation) in its relation to the formation of the sacred books.
We find no clear witness outside the Bible to the history of these distant ancestors. The tradition concerning this history gives a picture of a nomadic life that mirrors to a great extent what we know from other sources; they are therefore credible, at least in this respect, in the eyes of the critical historian. Legend certainly plays a part, but it is only ornamentation of a substance made up of authentic recollections. Ancient civilizations, before the age of writing, had a relish for story-telling that is being lost today; the stories were faithfully handed on thanks to fixed modes of expression.
Abraham: the father of the Hebrew people, the point of departure of their vocation. Jacob, also called Israel: the founding father of the twelve tribes; for this reason his name, rather than that of Abraham, who was the father of other peoples as well, becomes the symbol of a common membership, a bond of union amid all the vicissitudes that will scatter this people in the course of the centuries down to today. Isaac: between Abraham and Jacob, becomes somewhat less prominent; he is the man who passes on the blessing of God.
The next personage to emerge after Jacob is Joseph, whose surprising fate gave rise to a wonderful narrative that is rich in psychology and teaching, very edifying, and a finely constructed piece of literature.
Whether or not the tribes really and directly descended from Abraham and Jacob, and whether or not they were all in Egypt, it is certain that only later on did they acquire their clear characteristic features. Secular documents have little to tell us about their origin, and historians can give only vague bits of information. This is of little importance. The day would come when they recognized their solidarity and the fact that despite their divisions, they shared one and the same vocation.
The first five books of the Bible, that is, the Pentateuch or Law, are attributed to Moses. Today, however, critics are able to show that the final redaction of these texts occurred at a much later date. Moses nonetheless remains the most prestigious of the prophets and at the same time the humblest of believers. He was also the founder of the people and the one who gave organization to newly-born Israel. No one else has ever played so important a role. It is with good reason, then, that the fundamental work, the constitutional charter of Israel, is attributed to him. Besides, except for Jesus, has the history of humanity ever known a greater mystic who has taught human beings to recognize God and his jealous demands?
The Law that is attributed to Moses created the customs of the people; it strengthened their faith in the one God amid a polytheistic world; it gave them their worship and their social life. Observance of it was not a constricting noose but a way of spiritual growth; it forged their spiritual attitudes and formed their consciences.
The conquest was followed by a no less obscure period during which the tribes remained independent, without a common leader, with the result that there was real anarchy. During this period, the confession of faith in the one God of the patriarchs entailed a demand, the significance of which it is difficult for us to grasp, for while people obeyed the God of Israel, they also feared the vengeance of other divinities who were thought of as having been defeated in the war of conquest but still installed in neighboring countries.
Furthermore, the people found themselves threatened with strangulation, because other invaders made their appearance during the same period and sought to gain for themselves part of the territory of Canaan. Among these were the well-armed and well-organized Philistines. Sudden attacks caused Israel to throw itself entirely on the Lord when everything seemed lost; thus, there were surprising revivals, but these were followed by periods of great disorder.
The two states were increasingly caught in the vise of the great powers and were tossed about in conflicts, first between Egypt and Assyria and later between Egypt and Babylon. Samaria, the capital of Israel, fell in 721 B.C., and the people were deported to Nineveh. Judah, well defended on its hills, was sheltered by its distance from the routes of the armies and resisted for over a century, but it finally fell to the blows of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.
The books that recount the history of Israel down to the fall of the monarchy, and especially the Pentateuch, are a mosaic of fragments in different genres and from different periods, all of them brought together in a degree of unity. Before the books took shape, shorter literary units had been formed in the course of the centuries; in these units earlier texts of varied origin were brought together for a variety of reasons. Prior to the period when anything was written down, there was oral tradition that preserved both the ancient prose material and the even more ancient poetic material.
Thus this part of the Old Testament, which is the fundamental part and the part whose historical coherence is of greater importance, is already the reflection of a tradition and an interpretation that had been revised several times over and the texts that had been worked on until they achieved their present form. Here are the main stages of this journey, as the scholars have been able to reconstruct them:
1. In the early period of the monarchy the ancient traditions, written and oral, were collected and integrated with testimonies and the stories of more recent events. The Yahwist and Elohist traditions, as well as the early annals for the reigns of Saul and David, were already established in the tenth and ninth centuries before Christ.
2. Beginning in the eighth century B.C., we enter a second stage of literary formation. This period marked the beginning of the activity of the prophets, who in their preaching reflected anew, and in a deeper way, on the preceding revelation as seen in the light of the contemporary religious and social condition of the people.
3. The seventh century saw the writing down of the substance of Deuteronomy, which presented the divine law anew on the basis of both ancient traditions and the theology preached by the prophets. The earlier historical narratives were reinterpreted in the light of all this.
4. In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., the painful experience of exile led to a new rethinking of the entire historical and religious experience of Israel, this time by priestly circles that enriched the collections already written down with contributions from their own traditions as brought up to date with the fruits of their present thinking.
There is reason to think that our Old Testament text, at least for the first group of writings (from Genesis to the Books of Kings, inclusive) was already complete toward the beginning of the fourth century B.C.
Allusions in the Prophets and many Psalms help us understand somewhat the lot of the exiles; they also help us understand their overflowing joy as they returned after 538 B.C. In addition, the general history of this period provides information on the lot of deported populations.
We today have not grown up with a religion that is tied to a country, a monarchy, or a single temple; it is, therefore, difficult for us to imagine what a torment exile was for the surviving Jews of the Kingdom of Judah. In addition to the harsh personal experience of deprivation, the Exile meant the total ruin of a people to the point that they were uprooted and their worship suppressed.
The exiles who did not return organized into groups in foreign territory, chiefly in Babylonia and Egypt. Since they had no religious reasons for remaining attached to their new country, they would be more mobile and able to migrate. Thus, especially during the period of Greek domination, groups of Jews scattered across the Mediterranean world; wherever they went, they occupied a quarter of a city and opened a synagogue. They did, however, retain ties with Jerusalem, to which they went at times on pilgrimage.
The regime of the Persians, who had authorized the restoration of a Jewish province, ended two centuries later, as unexpectedly as it had begun. This marked a second step taken by Providence, which was preparing the way for the coming of Christianity. The East had done its work; it was now the turn first of the Greeks and then of the Romans; in the future the task would be entrusted to all the nations. One name stands out at the beginning of this new upheaval: Alexander the Great. The Bible hardly mentions him, and then only long after the event (see 1 Mac 1:1). But the young conqueror filled the world with astonishment at his rapid victories. The countries along the Nile and the Euphrates now entered into the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world; a common mentality spread abroad.
Alexander did not have time to enjoy his vast conquest, for he met death in Babylon in 323 B.C. His generals competed for power. Of importance for the biblical story were the dynasty of the Lagids or Ptolemies, who gained control of Egypt, and the dynasty of the Seleucids, who took possession of Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia. In 319 B.C., Judea was under the relatively peaceful control of the Ptolemies, but at the beginning of the second century B.C., the situation changed rapidly. In 198 B.C., Antiochus III defeated Egypt at Panion in Palestine, and Judea entered the orbit of the Seleucids. The new monarch brought his state to its greatest heights, but the generals of Rome were already taking to the roads of the East. The king had to accept burdensome conditions of peace: sending his own sons as hostages to Rome, handing over Asia Minor, and paying an enormous tribute. There is an echo of this in the biblical episode of Heliodorus (2 Mac 3).
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