Our Old Testament is the end product of this gradual process. And our appreciation of its contents can be heightened by a recognition of how this process of "getting it down" into its present form was done. It is, of course, possible to read these books profitably without extensive knowledge of their origins, but to know how the accounts were woven together is often a help when we run across two or three different accounts of the same event. (You needn't remember every detail of what follows, but it will help if you can keep the general picture in mind.) Let us see how the first six books of the Old Testament (called the "Hexateuch," from the Greek meaning "six scrolls") came into their present form.
Here's how it happened. Perhaps as long ago as 900 B.C. (nearly 3,000 years ago!) an early writer compiled a series of stories about the tribes in southern Palestine, and sometime later additions were made to this account so that the Northern tribes would not be left out of the story. In these accounts, the Hebrew word used for God was one which we would write as "Yahweh," and which in Hebrew would be YHWH (or, as it is sometimes written, JHVH). For this reason the document is called the "J" document, and where JHVH occurs in the early part of our Old Testament we can be pretty sure that the passages in question are from "J."
Later on (perhaps between 750-700 B.C.) another writer wrote a similar account of the history, this time with chief emphasis on the Northern tribes. Since he did not believe that the "name" of JHVH was known until the time of Moses, he used another Hebrew word for God, Elohim. His document is therefore known as the "E" document. Later on the accounts were woven together, to form what you should be able to guess is called "JE."
Now the Northern tribes, who had by this time become a kingdom, met a disastrous military defeat in 722 B.C., and in the chaos following this experience a group of people came to feel that the disaster was due to the faulty worship of God. Consequently they wrote another history, with special emphasis on how worship should be conducted. About a hundred years after the defeat, in 621 B.C., this document was discovered in the Temple. It led to sweeping reforms. Much of this document seems to be contained in what we call "Deuteronomy," so it is called, naturally enough, "D." So important did it become that it was woven into the other historical accounts, to form "JED."
There was a final step. The Southern Kingdom likewise went down to military defeat, and the people were taken into exile. Once again they wrote their history, this time with special emphasis on the importance of Jerusalem as a center, of worship and of the priests as the directors of the religious life of the people. Because of its "priestly" emphasis this document is known as "P." The four documents were woven together to form "JEDP," and it is out of this composite that the books of Genesis through Joshua come. In the opening chapters of Genesis, for example, the account of the Creation in Gen. 1: 1 to 2: 4 is from the "T" strand, while the account in ch. 2: 4f. is from "J."
These different writers sometimes stress different elements in their nations' history, but they are united in their belief that their nations' history can be understood only in terms of God's sovereignty over that history. History as the workshop of God -- that is their theme. God speaks to them through these historical events, and they come to discern his will as they read the events in the light of that belief.
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