What is the Bible?

This post is written for people who don’t know much about the Bible and want to learn about it. For those who do know a reasonable amount about the Bible, the content here may be rather oversimplified, but they may still want to read it anyway.

The Old Testament

The background behind the Old Testament may be summarized as follows: in the Middle Bronze Age (from the nineteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century BC), Syria and Palestine were divided into generally tiny independent city-states, generally surrounded by enormous walls. In the Late Bronze Age, populations fell and many city states disappeared, and the Levant became divided among various depopulated and often unwalled city states subject to empires, particularly the Egyptian, Mitannian, and Hittite. In the twelfth century BC, possibly due to climatic changes, the Egyptian and Hittite empires fell apart, allowing rapid population growth in Syria and Palestine and new kingdoms to come into being -some of these descendants of the old Late Bronze Age kingdoms which were clients to the great empires. Two of those kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel (an indirect descendant of the Amarna-era kingdom of Shechem, itself a direct descendant of the archaeologically attested Middle Bronze Age kingdom of Shechem) and the kingdom of Judah (possibly a direct descendant of the Amarna-era kingdom of Jerusalem, itself obviously a direct descendant of the archaeologically attested Middle Bronze Age kingdom of Jerusalem) emerged by the second quarter of the ninth century BC (as we can tell from the archaeology and the Assyrian texts) and form the background to the writing of the Old Testament. Literacy exploded in Palestine during the eighth century BC (though it was present to a limited extent during the ninth, and, to a lesser degree, even the tenth century -we know this from the quantity of inscriptions found during excavations), allowing for the writing of some of the Bible. However, precisely during the second half of the eighth century BC, one major empire -the Assyrian- came back, with devastating consequences for the Levantine kingdoms. In 740 BC, the Assyrian Empire destroyed the kingdom of Arpad (now held by the Syrian government). In 732 BC, in support of the kingdom of Judah, the Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III destroyed the kingdom of Aram-Damascus. In 720/719 BC, the Assyrian Empire under Sargon II destroyed the kingdom of Israel (on this see Nadav Na’aman’s Ancient Israel and its Neighbors). The refugee flow into Judah led (as Israel Finkelstein argues) into the kingdom being at the peak of its population -around 120 thousand people- between 720 BC and 701 BC. In 701 BC, Judah rebelled and many of its cities were destroyed, leading its population to approximately halve, but the kingdom ultimately submitted. During the latter part of the seventh century BC, the Assyrian Empire was conquered by the Babylonians.

It is around this time -when Judah had as many as three thousand literate people- that most of the Old Testament was written (the list of cities in the Book of Joshua has been concluded by archaeological scholarship to be obviously late seventh century BC with some late eighth century BC elements). In 604 BC the Babylonians destroyed the rebellious kingdom of Ashkelon, and in 586 BC they destroyed the rebellious kingdom of Judah, thus causing a centuries long period of depression in their populations. The exiles in Babylonia kept alive the Old Testament, including writing the books of Kings, Ezekiel, much of Isaiah, Jeremiah, possibly Job, etc. The list of nations in Genesis 10 also appears to date around this time -Magog appears to derive from Gyges, who ruled Lydia in the mid-seventh century BC, and the kingdom of the Medes was also in existence only during the seventh and sixth centuries. After the destruction of Judah, some Judahites left for Egypt, thus leaving behind the Persian-era Elephantine papyri, which described a community of polytheistic Aramaic-speaking Jews unaware of the Pentateuch and worshipping at their own local temple which derived their rituals from oral authority by the Jerusalem priesthood. In 539 BC Babylonia became conquered by the Persians and over the succeeding decades many of the leading exiles returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple which had been destroyed by the Babylonians. It was at this time the books of the prophets Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi were written. Old Testament literary activity largely cuts off roughly between the years 500 BC and 200 BC due to the very small literate population at the time (in the hundreds) in the Persian province of Yehud. Chronicles, Esther, and Ezra-Nehemiah both obviously date to the rather populous and prosperous Hasmonean era, when Jerusalem once again gained its independence from foreign powers (Israel Finkelstein has written at least a couple papers on this) and are likely some of the last written parts of the Old Testament.

Of the various books of the Old Testament, only 2 Kings is actually a historically useful and independent source for major events, particularly the (archaeologically confirmed) war between Israel and Gath on one side and Aram-Damascus on the other in the late ninth century BC and the Syro-Ephraimite war of the 730s. The Assyrian and Babylonian records and archaeology (especially post-2010 or so; the field changed rapidly between about 1960 and 2010) are today far, far more useful for illuminating the biblical era than the Bible itself. The prophets provide only a modest amount of historical information and much of the material from the other historical books (Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, 1 Kings, etc.) is simply non-historical. The discovery of the non-existence of the united Solomonic kingdom came from three or so lines of evidence -the evidence the Omride Jezreel enclosure having the same pottery as the first elaborate palaces at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer (originally thought to have been built under Solomon), the evidence from radiocarbon dating, and (most controversially), the evidence the famous Egyptian campaign list of the emperor Shishak (placed in the Bible during the immediate post-Solomonic era) better reflects the Saulide kingdom of the Bible and its immediate aftermath rather than the Solomonic kingdom of the Bible and its immediate aftermath.

The books of Kings do a fairly decent job at describing the evolution of religious policy under the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms, though how reliable their information is remains uncertain.

The most important part of the Old Testament is the primary history, or Genesis-Kings (excluding Ruth). Genesis-Numbers appears to be a sort of diatessaron of multiple sources -an eighth century BC source (known as E), a seventh century BC (or thereabouts; it could reasonably be earlier or later, but is more likely later) source (known as P), and a very likely exilic source found mainly in Genesis (known as J -though some parts generally attributed to J are clearly have pre-exilic origins, most appear to be exilic). This is known as the “documentary hypothesis” and was created in more or less its modern form in the mid-nineteenth century in response to the curious mixture of contradictions and internal consistencies in both style and substance within the biblical text. Genesis describes the origin of the world, Noah’s ark landing on the mountains of Urartu, the Tower of Babel, the stories of the Patriarchs and their journeys from Mesopotamia to Palestine, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Israelites’ move into the land of Goshen (the name today is preserved in the name of the city of Faqus). It’s fair to say little to none of this is historical. Genesis (especially the J source) is extremely reliant on Babylonian mythology, suggesting an exilic origin, although the fact a fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh was found at Amarna-era Megiddo indicates it’s possible Babylonian mythology was already well-known in Palestine prior to the exile.

The Book of Exodus describes Israel’s exit out of Egypt. Whether this really happened is extremely uncertain. Israel is first mentioned anywhere in a stele by Merenphtah from 1209 BC (and there are a reasonable amount of texts relating to Late Bronze Age Palestine, so it’s reasonable to say there were no Israelites in Palestine prior to the thirteenth century BC). There may also be an earlier thirteenth century BC Egyptian stele mentioning Israel. The Bible’s own chronology places the Exodus in 1446 BC, but it’s nearly impossible a largely illiterate people would have been able to accurately remember such a figure, and the lack of clear fifteenth and fourteenth century BC evidence for Israel suggests its origin in Palestine is later. The opening to the book of Exodus mentions the cities of Pithom and Raamses, which were very prominent in Egypt both during the Ramesside era (thirteenth century BC) and the Middle Bronze Age (seventeenth/sixteenth centuries BC). Raamses only acquired the name during the Ramesside era, however, which is why it has been widely thought that Ramesses II was the pharaoh of the Exodus (the term “pharaoh” for Egyptian king as commonly used in the West very much came from the Bible). The complete lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus proves nothing -the much grander Vandal migration into Tunisia also has no archaeological evidence for it, and nobody dares deny it. Whether or not the Exodus happened or not, the most plausible origin for the Sinai tradition are the Egyptian turquoise and copper mines of Serabit el-Khadim, which were worked on during both the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze ages and were abandoned under Ramesses VI. What we do know was that the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC were times of great migrations -by the Libyans, Greeks, Phrygians, Arameans, etc. -and a thirteenth century BC Exodus would fit that context decently. A real thirteenth century BC Exodus would be, while very inconsistent with the specifics of the sixth century BC Book of Joshua, perfectly consistent with the pattern of migrations going on at the time. Leviticus describes various laws promulgated at Mount Sinai; the book is considered to be entirely from the P source. The Book of Numbers continues the narrative of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after their exit from Egypt.

Deuteronomy describes a series of laws supposedly promulgated just before Israel’s entry into the Cisjordan and is followed by a lengthy and unified “Deuteronomistic history” (Joshua-2 Kings, excluding Ruth) heavily influenced by the content of Deuteronomy. The author of the mostly late seventh century BC Deuteronomy (see 2 Kings 22) was familiar with E and some J narratives, but was not familiar with P narratives (see Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch, p. 133), though the author of the succeeding “Deuteronomistic history”, written during the exile (as its ending suggests) certainly was familiar with all the main Pentateuchal sources. The Book of Joshua describes the Conquest of Canaan, including the destruction of Jericho (actually destroyed during the sixteenth century BC crisis in Palestine). The Book of Judges describes the anarchy that existed in Israel before the establishment of the Kingdom of Saul. The Books of Samuel describe the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Saul and the rise of the kingdom of David. Most of the first book of Kings (which describes Israelite events from the early tenth to mid-ninth centuries BC, including the Solomonic and most of the Elijah narrative) is still outside history -though the Israelite king Ahab actually is mentioned by the Assyrians at the Battle of Qarqar (held today by the Syrian rebels and not mentioned in the Bible) as having a substantial number of horses. 2 Kings is finally where true history begins, as we could guess by the number of inscriptions discovered in archaeological excavations for each century. It describes the Aramean war in the late ninth century BC, the resurgence of Israel in the eighth century BC, and the Assyrian and Babylonian takeovers. The book of Ruth is a later, Hellenistic addition.

The rest of the Bible is mostly filled with the recorded sayings of prophets. The prophets emphasize the holiness of God and guide the people of Judah against idolatry. The major prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah (also responsible for the book of Lamentations) and Ezekiel are early sixth century BC (though Isaiah also has some late eighth century BC components; the prophet Isaiah himself lived during the late eighth century BC). The book of Daniel is an outlier and the character of the prophecies in it demonstrate it was written c. 165 BC. Of the minor prophets, Hosea, Micah and Amos are all ostensibly eighth century BC, Nahum and Zephaniah are seventh century BC, and Joel, Obadiah, and Habakkuk are early sixth century BC. The book of Jonah is an outlier in its content and is probably sixth century BC (or later, though this is notably by far the most productive period for biblical texts) in date. As mentioned above, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi all date to the earliest decades of the Persian period. None of the minor prophets seem to postdate 500 BC; none predate 800 BC.

The wisdom books (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) are difficult to categorize. They consist variously of Hellenistic love poetry (Song of Songs), Hellenistic instructional material (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs), exilic discourses on the problem of evil (Job), and exilic poetry (Psalms).

The New Testament

The background behind the New Testament may be summarized as follows: in the first through fourth centuries AD, a doctrine proclaiming, based on an allegorical reading of the Old Testament, the revelation of the mystery of the resurrection of the Last Adam, called by the name Jesus (AKA Joshua) and of salvation of Jews and non-Jews from sin in the afterlife via belief in the good news of the resurrection of Jesus by God to a position in heaven as Lord of the dead and of the living at the right hand of God began to spread from appearances of Jesus to Cephas (Peter) and the twelve apostles in Palestine (according to an important notice in 1 Corinthians 15) to Syria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Spain, and other portions of the Roman Empire. In 312 AD, the Western Roman emperor was himself converted to the doctrine, at a time when Christians grew to some 15% of the empire’s population. The New Testament was written during the early Roman imperial period (first and second centuries) and is our earliest and best source for earliest Christianity, which should tell us how truly atrocious the level of sourcing for earliest Christianity is, due to the very low number of literate Christians until the mid-third century AD -there is no evidence there were even as many as three thousand literate Christians until the second century AD. The gospels are the only information scholars consider remotely reliable about the life of Jesus, and the percentage of their historicity is completely unknown, due to the lack of independent sources (there’s no mid-first century Greek source telling us about what early Christians thought -the closest source to this is Pliny the Younger).

The external evidence suggests all the gospels were originally anonymous and the internal evidence does not describe the gospels’ authors or sources at all (the prominent mid-second century heretic Marcion wrongly considered the early second century Gospel of Luke to have been written by Paul). The very low level of knowledge second and third century Christian writers possessed outside the gospels, the heavy reliance of the gospels on the Old Testament, the rather free emendations the gospel authors make to each other’s works, the obvious and very heavy dependence of the gospel authors on each other, the low number of mentions of gospel-mentioned events in the epistles, and the relatively little truly historical information the gospels add to each other’s works all suggest the gospels’ historical content about the life of Jesus or early Christianity in general is truly minimal. Indeed, if one takes the Gospel of Mark, the first gospel, pericope by pericope, and asks a biblical scholar whether it each of these pericopes are historical, I doubt whether the typical biblical scholar will find even one genuinely historical pericope out of the several dozen in the gospel (even Jesus’s baptism is contaminated with supernatural elements, and Jesus’s crucifixion is placed in a quite impossible timing). The dialogue is hackneyed and clearly meant to speak to the later church (e.g., about the debates on adherence to Old Testament dietary laws). Few leading biblical scholars think the miracles and death and resurrection prophecies mentioned in the gospel really occurred, and miracles and death and resurrection prophecies are an outright majority of the acts of Jesus mentioned in Mark.

It has been admitted by virtually all recent scholarship, based on the most painstaking research, that Mark, which casts Jesus as a sort of new Elisha and a new Moses, was the first gospel. On the basis of Mark 13:2 and Mark 13:30, the gospel has generally been dated by scholars to between the years 70 and 100. It has been admitted by many scholars (though not obviously a majority) that the pattern of minor agreements, major agreements, and Mark-Q overlaps, as well as the extreme similarity between the contents of Matthew and Luke (birth narratives, sermons, resurrection appearances) and the bizarre nature of the reconstructed text of the hypothetical document “Q” (a source claimed by many scholars to have been used by both Matthew and Luke; seriously, read it -the whole thing has a very Markan feel) all suggest strongly Luke directly knew the gospel of Matthew (on this, see the extensive work of Mark Goodacre). If anything, the introduction to Luke strongly suggests this. “John” (whose text bears clear signs of editorial modification) obviously knew all the prior gospels (Goodacre has also written a book on this), as did the author of the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas (Goodacre has also written a book on this). There is also evidence (though arguable) for a potential fifth gospel in the exclusively Lukan material, based off the books of Kings (see Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 479). The gospels generally describe Jesus as a wandering miracle worker and preacher in Palestine who gets into conflict with the Jewish scribes over his teachings, is betrayed by one of his followers (Judas), is convicted of some crime (blasphemy?) by a Jewish court, and is executed by Roman authorities. The original gospel, the Gospel of Mark, has no resurrection appearances (its ends with women fleeing the empty tomb of Jesus and saying nothing to anyone, as they were afraid); Matthew, Luke, and John all have extensive resurrection appearances (John even has two versions).

On Acts, see Pervo’s works, e.g., The Mystery of Acts. It is a frustrating text written by the author of Luke that tells us very little about the history of early Christianity -but what it does tell us is valuable enough, though must be compared with and contrasted with what the epistles tell us.

Of the epistles (mostly first century, though some second century), they are worth quite a bit more than the gospels, as they are actually primary sources and do a much more thorough job of actually explaining early Christian theology. They mention very little of the content of the gospels and, as Richard Carrier suggested, can work perfectly fine without assuming they knew of any historical Jesus at all. The epistles by far most worth reading, as I’ve discovered, are Romans, 2 Corinthians, Hebrews, and James, as well as possibly 1 John (likely written as an anti-Marcionite reaction). Galatians and 1 Corinthians also contain some widely debated historical information. By far the most valuable of the epistles is Romans (listen at 2X speed), which should be the first thing in the New Testament one reads if one desires to read it. When Christians ask people “do you believe in the Bible?” other than the gospels, they truly mean “do you believe in the content of Paul’s epistle to the Romans?”.

There are many other second century Christian works outside the New Testament canon, and they should all be read for a taste of how Christians interpreted early Christianity and the various doctrines that arose around them. Tertullian, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Rome are some of the most important ones.

Needless to say, though Christianity is a vital part of post-300 Western civilization, it did not originate it. It’s a sort of kudzu that parasitized already highly developed Roman civilization and helped contribute to the destruction of much of it, with obvious parallels to leftism today. Though Christianity gets a lot of attention today, the works and practices of classical civilization -the ancient Greeks and pre-Christian Romans -are far more worthy of study, in my view.

A good bible tends to cost in the $30s (and you should definitely get a paper one, as well as listen to audio and go through a PDF if one wishes to get through the slog easier). The Bible version with the highest status is the New Oxford Annotated Bible. The ESV study bible, however, is said to have better notes.

Oh, and don’t forget,