The Redaction of the Hebrew Bible: its Achaemenid Persian Setting

Gregorio of del Olmo Lete IPOA, Universidad de Barcelona

The Cylinder of Cyrus is a foundation inscription and so its tone is commemorative and
propagandistic ad maiorem Regis gloriam. It tells us of that Kings decision, inspired by
Marduk, to restore the sanctuaries of Sumer and Akkad, return the statues that had been removed
to Babylon and allow the peoples to go back to their ancient dwellings, around those sanctuaries
(ANET 1955:316). It mentions neither the sanctuary of Jerusalem nor the Jewish people. They
did not belong to the political horizon of this inscription (re-)founding the walls of Babylon. Nor
was it required by the insignificance of this tiny kingdom, destroyed 50 years earlier and
probably incorporated by the Neo-Babylonian administration into the province of Samara
(Bright 1960:311, 324).
However, in this social and political context, the rebuilding of the Temple of the God of
Heaven (Yahweh) in Jerusalem and the return of the Jewish people to their land have remained
in history as the most paradigmatic. This is due to the Persian politics of tolerating and
absorbing the various ethnic groups and cults into the political unity of the Achaemenid Empire.
It is the fruit of the detailed formulation of the event that the Bible has preserved for us and its
resulting significance for the Jewish-Christian religion, the religion of the West. Today we
would call it a triumph of the media, the result of the relevant information it provides about itself.
The Edict of Cyrus, which is cited in the Bible, is nothing more than a translation of that
political attitude into Aramaic (Ezra 6:2, 3-5[, 6-12]) and Hebrew (Ezra 1:2-4[+7-11, cf. 2 Kgs
25:13-17] and 2 Chr 36:23) and its application to the Jewish people. It is not even necessary to
suppose that such an edict ever actually existed.1 The memory of the return claims to make us
believe that it took place immediately after the capture of Babylon, as the result of official
political intervention (Ezra 1:5-6). However, the panorama that unfolded from the later account
of the events indicates that the process was very much slower, more painful and more defective
than that first impulse seems to suggest2. In itself, such an immediate return seems highly
unlikely, both for the physical difficulty (distance, deserts and ruins) and especially for the
change in religious attitude that the exiles had experienced in those years of being uprooted. At
all events, it was an undertaking that would not go beyond rebuilding the altar and reviving the
cult in the open air, which those who had remained in Judah had already achieved (Bright
1960:325)3.

1
Was it administratively necessary to issue an edict for each people or was the general edict enough? It is very
unlikely, on the other hand, that in the central archive of Ecbatana there was an edict of Cyrus dated in the first year
of his reign, evidently counted from the conquest of Babylon; see Ezra 5:13: In the first year of his reign, Cyrus of
Babylon .... On this see Briant 2002:34: the chronology of the reign of Cyrus remains uncertain, to say the least.
One would have expected a date from the conquest of Ecbatana.
2
Ezra 6:14 seems to suppose that until the reign of Artaxerxes, the building of the temple was not completed. Even
though it could be a later gloss (cf. Myers 1965:53; Gunneweg 1985:112f.), it is possible that it is an exact reflection of
reality, as we shall see below.
3
On the other hand, the first leader of the return expedition, Sheshbazzar, vanishes without trace (Ezra
1:8; cf. Ezra 5:14-16), to be replaced by a second prince of Judah , his nephew Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:2; 3:2
...), now flanked by the priest Jeshu, about whom nothing was said in the copy and execution of the Edict
of Cyrus that speaks of the return presided over by (Ezra 1:11). The laying of the foundations of the temple
is attributed to both (Ezra 3:8ff; 5:16).
 Was there a temple to rebuild? What was the Law of the God of Heaven that was to govern
his cult? It is possible that a small group dreamt of a simple restoration of its memory of the past,
that their parents had told them about (none of them had ever been to the old temple), with a
nostalgia even for political restoration supported by a representative of the dynasty. However,
the dynasty had already broken up, not only biologically but also as a model of national
restoration. In this respect, the evidence of II Isaiah is decisive (Is 55:3).4 On the other hand,
such a restoration was neither contemplated nor would it have been tolerated within the well-
regulated Persian safeguard of the ethnic and religious peculiarities of the conquered and
liberated peoples. Without a clear national and cultic restoration programme, the return did not
have much attraction for such a community. This was because, unlike all the other cults, it had
discovered, from their prophets (based on which they had largely managed to survive) that their
God did not require a temple in Jerusalem, which he had abandoned to set up his dwelling among
them in Babylonia itself5. To this effect, the words of III Isaiah ring out as a declaration of
principle: Thus said the Lord: The heaven is my throne and the earth my footstool. What
temple could you build for me or what place for my rest? (Is 66:1). Now the emphasis falls on
the word rather than on the cult: On this shall I set my eyes: on the humble and the
disheartened who trembles before my words (v. 2). This reflects the most heartfelt description
of the spiritual state of an exile who has preserved and renewed his faith in Yahweh.
Therefore, too rebuild the temple without a Law6 to govern it according to the new
religious demands did not appear feasible. Thus, we can suppose that the first return was a failure
because it had neither a rule nor a determinative text to guide its way forward. The Jewish
colony of Elephantine, the origin of which goes back to those years (the reign of Cambyses), or
even further if we have to set it in the time of Artaxerxes I, provided a good example of what
building a temple without a Law entailed. The mere claim was illegal according to the new
Law and, of course, its cult illegitimate. It regressed to customs before Josiahs Reform (it even
accepted worship of other deities: Bethel, Anath). At all events, this episode shows the various
forms of Yahwism that had existed before it became official.
In fact, the restoration worked when the Persian administration took account of it
themselves and became involved in it. This was first under Darius (Ezra 6) and then under
Artaxerxes (Neh 2), according to the biblical evidence. And the Persian administration did this
probably when it concerned them for reasons of geography and strategy (Edelman 2005:8f., but
see Briant 2002:586). Above all, this was not before a cultic and social Law was available to
determine the function of the Temple and the community that would support its cult, now
converted into a fiscal unity.
In this sense, from the new situation created by the conquest of Cyrus (and perhaps

4
On this Seybold comments: ... erweist sich Deuterojesaja als Erbe seiner prophetischen Vorgnger,
die den zeitgenssischen Regenten aus dem Davidhaus die Wrde eines Gesalbten abgesprochen hatten
...vermochte Deuterojesaja in der Exilgemeinde die Grsse zu sehen, welche die Funktionen jenes Amtes
an den Fremdvlkern bernehmen sollte (Seybold 1972:161f.; see also pp. 153ff.). And more generally:
So ist die Kontinuitt der?? Geltung des Davidbundes nach prophetischen Auffassung unterbrochen durch
das Interim gttlicher Strafe ... Darum entreissen sie den Gesalbten ihre knigliche Wrde ... (Seybold
1972:168, 173; Coppens 1968:89ff.: Les oracles messianiques la veille et au lendemain de lExil
babylonien).
5
On the presence see Clemens 1965:63ff.; and on the vision of Ezekiel 8-11, ibid. pp. 103f.; Zimmerli I
1969:187-253.
6
The presence of the Jews in Elephatine may even go back to the beginning of the 6th century BCE,
under the pharaohs of the XXVI dynasty, at the same time that the Jews fled from Egypt after the
assassination of Godololiah; cf. Bright 1960:327; Porten et al.1996.
 earlier)7, those in charge of the Jewish people who had not been absorbed into the new
Babylonian situation and had preserved their faith in Yahweh as the only God, undertook their
return to the past to salvage it, understand it and make it speak, to transcribe it and so make it
definitive. After years without a cultic function, the priests took on with redoubled zeal their
function of repositories of the Law, according to which they belong to the Torah ( and the
priest will remain without Torah, Ez 7:26; ask the priests for Torah , Hag 2:11)8. The
change had been prepared by that priestly class which at the end of the monarchy took on the
prophetic function, the most conspicuous examples of which are Jeremiah and especially
Ezekiel. They united the Law and the Word, peculiar to the prophet (I placed my word in
your mouth, Is 51:16; and passim: the word of the Lord came to ). The next transition
would consist of making the Law into the Word (which it already is: the Word to Moses
) definitive, that is, indelible, permanent, written, the priest becoming a scribe, a priest with
legal expertise in a new cult, the cult of the definitive word, the written word, the new Torah,
not mere instruction, but text. This new Torah would ultimately replace priests and prophets.
This is exactly how the Bible defines Ezra: priest-scribe, priest and expert in law (Ezra 7:6:
w h spr mhr betrat meh; 11-12: hakkhn spr dibr miwt yhwh; 12, 21: khan
e

spar dt d-elh emayy), concerned with putting on record his genealogy up to Aaron
(Ezra 7:1-5), so that there would be no doubt of his character as such. He belonged to a second or
third generation of priests who had felt no urgency at all to come and fulfil their priestly function
in the temple already supposed to be rebuilt and in which they were obliged to be of service as
priests.9 For years, the new priesthood that had developed in Babylonia had been carrying out
another return, a return to the past, in order to make an efficient return to the new Jerusalem.
Even for Ezra, this operation seems so important that it does not seem that he would remain in
Jerusalem as a priest of the new temple and the new community, although no royal command
prevented him, as was the case for Nehemiah, who obtained a limited permit of absence. At all
events, he did not have the rank of High Priest even though he implanted the cultic and social
Law from a normative text of the Law. His new priestly function was rooted in drawing up this
text and safeguarding it. In any case, it was essential to rebuild Jerusalem and put into practice
the Law that had been codified in Babylon. In fact, this codification of the Law of the God of
Heaven is assumed by the Persian authorities and given the force of State Law for that
community: The king and his seven counsellors sent you to see how the Law of God, which
they have entrusted to you, is fulfilled in Judah and Jerusalem (Ezra 7:14).
At all events, it is not exceptional behaviour. We know that during the Achaemenid
Empire, the various legal systems of its regions were maintained. Under the Achaemenids,
Dandamaiev maintains, Babylonian law reached the zenith of its development. It was the model
for the legal principles of the Near East and began to be spread throughout the West (Dandamaiev
1991:193). The Neo-Babylonian Laws were compiled and the Code of Hammurapi continued to be
copied (ibid. p. 196). According to the documents preserved, the province of Samara had its own
rights up to a certain point (ibid. p. 198). As for Darius I, he was concerned with codifying the
Egyptian laws and putting them into effect, a codification that ended in 495 (ibid. 198). Diodorus
knew the tradition of this codification (I, 95, 4) and calls Darius I the sixth codifier (ibid. p. 199).
This Egyptian law exhibits very different characteristics from Babylonian law, for example, in
which the references are to family regulations. Phoenician cities also preserved their own code of

7
See below on Sacchis theory.
8
See my article Los persas y la Biblia, p. 10.
9
In Neh 12:1 an Ezra is mentioned who returns with Zerubbabel, but he does not appear in the list in
Ezra 2. It cannot be the same person; we are 40/50 years away, or are we to suppose that he returned to
Babylon (!); cf. Gunneweg 1987:151 n. 1: vielleicht = Asaja wie 10, 2; nicht gemeint ist natrlich Esra der
Schriftgelehrte.
law (ibid. p. 204). An example that shows this autonomy is the Jewish colony of Elephatine,
which we have mentioned, which was governed by its own laws, with possible influence from
cuniform law (ibd. pp. 200f.). Above all, it is the law of property and the family that is best known
to us from these various legislations, which is curiously the same as the legislation that Ezra and
Nehemiah put into effect in the new community of Jerusalem:
Ezra 9 [laws of marriage]; Neh 5: [social problems], 8:13ff. [festivals, sukkoth, yom kippur], 10:30ff.
[legal indictment as a sworn oath10: general, marriages, sabbath, sabbatical year, tithes, firstfruits and
other offerings in the temple: ensuring worship in the temple, the temple as a storehouse], 13:1ff. [removal
of foreigners, insistence on tithes and offerings, on the observance of the sabbath, mixed marriages].
It is our belief that from Cyrus (539) to Artaxerxes I (464-424) this return to the past is
devised: the Law of the God of Heaven is compiled as an imperial command that legitimises the
restoration and is established in Jerusalem. The elite of the deportees are concentrated in Babylon,
where the operation of compiling and interpreting the past is concentrated.
In the years of exile, from 587 to 539, that undertaking already had glorious individual
precedents. This is why there is a reference to the Law in the impossible code of the temple, the
so-called Torah of Ezekiel (Ez 40-49), focused specifically on the projection of the New Temple.
It is also why there is reference to History, in the biography that Baruch left us of his master
Jeremiah (cf. Jer 26-29, 32, 34-45), which is also a model for the collection of a prophetic tradition
by the disciples.
At this time, and in accordance with this compilation of Laws, the past is interpreted. In
addition, of course, memory and reinterpretation are contemporary and therefore the chronology of
the sources of the Bible is secondary.
It is against this background, then, of the general attitude of Persian politics, that we must
try to understand the compilation of the Law of the God of Heaven, which Ezra the priest-
scribe completed in Babylon, and in the new Jerusalem, Nehemiah, the legate, imposed on those
who had returned from exile. Apart from that external social and political but determinative
juncture, there is another essential internal perspective to explain the birth of the Bible. This is
the perspective opened by the prophets of the time, especially those collected in II and III Isaiah.
It is the perspective of the glorious restored Jerusalem, to which the old traditions of the Hebrew
people would be applied. The process of restoration as fulfilled prophecy is the foundation of the
faith in their own God, the only one, and in their city and temple, as the reference point for all
mankind (Is 60).
However, first of all we have to determine who in Babylon compiled the Law of the God
of Heaven, and how and what did they compile. Sacchi (2004:24-48) has suggested that the
great history of Israel, from the creation to 561 BCE, that as such includes the Law, a unit that
completely excludes Deuteronomy, was the work of a group of courtiers of king Jehoiakim (R1,
equivalent to the Yahwist+the deuteronomist+some other traditions), recently re-established in
his royal dignity by Awil-Marduk. The idea is attractive, but the material involved is too diverse
to be considered the work of a period when the politics of the Neo-Babylonian Empire would not
have been very favourable to such a revisionist attempt at regeneration.
However much his dignity had been re-established, information that sounds biased and
ideological, like a colophon to the general historical outlook, Jehoiakim continued to be a king in
hostage to a rebel kingdom. The restoration of that kingdom, even only cultic, would be neither
foreseen nor tolerated and the deportees were and felt themselves to be slaves (Ezra 9:9). The
kingdom of Judah had disappeared as a political reality (Bright 1960:324; also Finkelstein-
Silberman 2001:354f.). If there were a court around Jehoiakim, it was a modest affair and was

10
The new Israel of the return commits itself with a kind of renewed oath of the covenant as on Sina
(cf. Gunneweg 1987:131f.), endorsed by a document that is legal in nature (cf. Myers 1965:175). Its
contents refer to social and cultic regulations of the Law/Pentateuch, of particular importance in the new
situation, intended to distinguish the new community of Yahweh from the surrounding peoples.
completely controlled (Schniedewind 2004:149ff.). On the other hand, we do not have any
documentary evidence to support that proposal. And what is more decisive, if such a General
History were composed in those circumstances, and we do not even know how long it lasted,
how can we explain that the first people to return from the exile knew nothing about it and have
to wait for Ezra to bring it and impose it fifty or sixty years later. The idea seems completely
valid to me, as an indication of an attitude that began form in certain circles, even before the date
indicated, but whose documentary form had to await a better opportunity.
This appeared in the context mentioned above of the compilation of legal systems
encouraged by the Persian administration. It was under the direction of the priestly class which,
now imbued with the prophetic preaching of the priests-prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel and
with the exaltation of the moment proclaimed by Isaian circles, made its own the thesis of the
restoration of Israel and the triumph of Yahweh, the only God, who had spoken and fulfilled his
word. It was necessary to collect, listen to and observe this with total care as a guarantee of
survival in this new stage of the history of Israel that had now opened up. The exile had been
only a severe purifying corrective that had made clear the existence of Yahweh as the Lord of
History and his unyielding requirement to obey his words.

A) Who [were the compilers?]

In this task, various circles collaborated, heirs of as many other traditional ways of
living the religion of Yahweh and interpreting the new situation. The documentary theory
speculated widely about what these centres of interest were, trying to find the Sitz im Leben (und
in der Geschichte) of its sources11. These, which in their basic lines result from a collection of
literary data independent of their chronology, must find their own original place in the new exilic
perspective, of necessity synchronic in nature, once the historical diachronic dialectic had been
broken that the Wellhausen theory had invented, (there is no better word for it). From this
perspective, the sources become traditions redacted at the same time and dynamically
involved in a revision of the past in which they claim to set and also shape it. They provide their
data and their language, at the same time that they cancel each other out. Whether the data
were merely oral in character or already written down is relatively unimportant for the genesis of
the general overall summary as a single standard text, the Law of the God of Heaven, which
now claims to be successful.
In this sense, the situation that Sacchi speculates as the framework for the genesis of the
HB is very attractive and can even extend to the reign of Josiah. This was a time when the
various trends of Yahwism, traditionally discredited by power and society, were concentrated
in Jerusalem and acquired official protection by the reformer king12. It is normal that they all
wished to hear their own voice as an expression of facets or perspectives of acknowledged
orthodoxy.
In principle, then, we have to suppose in that context a group that represented the vision
of Yahwism supported by royalty, the group of the kings men. It would correspond to the so-
called Yahwist + Deuteronomy + Isaian groups of the exile. Another group would come from
nebiism, historically repressed and socially ignored, now triumphant in its interpretation of the
past and therefore the shape of future Judaism. It would be the group of men without the king,
enlightened and traditionally critical of the monarchy, its ranks swollen by the disciples of the
prophets and reactivated at this time by the critical message of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It would
correspond to the Elohist + the traditional deuteronomist, whose narrative have been noted
often. Finally, another group would originate from the sphere of the temple and its cult, as a

11
See also the classic summary by Kraus 1969:255ff.. Also, Knight 1975:55ff.; Whybray 1987:20ff.
For a restatement of the problem, but without a satisfactory solution, see Campbell-OBrien 2005.
12
On this see the view of Finkelstein-Silberman 2002:275ff. For a different view of Josiahs reform,
also from the archaeological point of view, see Fried 2002:437-465.
religious emblematic symbol, namely, the group of the men of cultic-law, corresponding to the
classical Priestly source. Alongside these groups of Yahwistic tradition, at this time the
function of the scribe is modernised. As scribes of the Law, they appear and act as collectors
and interpreters of the text. Usually they come from the priestly class (documents break away
from the function of the court scribe) which has already adopted the deuteronomistic and
prophetic vision.
The result is a collection of perspectives and interested visions. Each contributes its own
but undeniably Yahwistic elements, which he hopes will be incorporated in a single standard
collection. This operation of compilation and combination is what Persian politics claimed to
motivate and the new religious sensitivity of Yahwism demanded, having been saved from
national catastrophe. It had united the remnant of the shipwreck in a new and radical, faith, and
now they had to fnd and construct the suitable expression of that faith that would best salvage its
various contributions.
Analysing these groups in more detail, first of all we can count on the group of those
faithful to the Messianic and Zionist ideology. It probably had its best moment in the action of
the unfortunate king Josiah, with his ideal of a united Israel and of the purification of the
Yahwistic cult and his reorganisation of the nation under the rules of the code of the
Deuteronomy. The traditional monarchical ideology was prepared to revise history and find in it
the cause of its past and present evils (a thesis that the deuteronomist would develop later). Out
of this would come the first to be moved by the spirit, impatient to return and restore the
temple of their God, and under his protection and the guidance of those left of the House of
David, begin the new stage in the History of the Israel. The great exaltation of the return felt
when Cyrus appeared on the political stage (II Isaiah) nourished this trend and imbued it with
enthusiasm for the New Jerusalem (III Isaiah). Of course, classical monarchical ideology, which
had not revised its attitudes, had been abolished for the harshness of its acts and possibly was
dissolved in the Babylonian marasmus, for lack of hope. Ezekiel still had to face it, as of course
did Jeremiah. It is possible to trace this royal-Yahwist movement, its modalities and its imprint,
in the text of the HB (cf. infra).
In this circle (more or less the R1 supposed by Sacchi, grouped around a rehabilitated
Jehoiakim) there were no doubt the palace secretaries exiled with the king in the first deportation
(597). The more moderate nature of the process, as the result a surrender (2 Kgs 24:11-17),
makes one suppose that they were allowed to take with them at least part of the royal archives,
unless these were simply confiscated and taken to Babylon as part of the booty13. In any case,
this subgroup was familiar with their contents and therefore with the official history of the
kingdom, which it contributes as the basis of the revised reading. Whether this written material
was used to that effect, as the biblical text seems to insinuate by referring to the Chronicles of
the kings (Whoever wishes to know more should consult ), or whether a memorised version
of the past was contributed, as the historical incongruities seem to suggest, is not something that
we can decide. It is to this first circle or group that we owe, among other elements, the
development of the ideal Israel (David-Solomon) and the kings bible (cf. infra).
A second circle that had to contribute its own vision and stock of traditions was formed by
the inheritors and continuers of the prophetic tradition, the last of the bene nebiim. With the
doctrines of their masters they had also fashioned a vision of history, of its key moments
overseen by them, in which prophecy was the protagonist, a vision that is superimposed in the
final summary (Josh-Kgs) the standard scheme contributed by the first circle, the circle of the
palace scribes. To this group we owe the critical revision of the past, as can be seen, among

13
The documents written in Hebrew (archives and libraries) were loose papyri; this was what the
chronicles of the kings were made of, corresponding to the material that archaeology has preserved for us
(tablets, prisms, papyri, obelisks); Schniedewind 2004: pp. 149ff.; Teixidor 1984:129-140. Summaries
would be made from outside the system, after the exile.
other texts, in the Chronicle of Davids succession, in the Account of the schism, and
especially in the deuteronomstic thesis of the sin and punishment of the monarchy. To the same
group, of course, we owe the illumination of the future and its hope. At that key moment, their
faith and their proselytism were decisive for forming the religious change and ensuring the new
and inflexible orthodoxy of Yahweh alone that they had always defended14. This moment of
complete national disaster means the moment of its triumph, which was so great that they would
die of it and the prophets would disappear from the social scene once their word had been
condensed into a Book.
Besides collecting the earlier tradition of their master, the Isaian circle has bequeathed to
us an important amount of prophecy (II and III Isaiah) that Sacchi dates to the years after the
Edict of Cyrus (Sacchi 2002:22). In fact, its composition or promulgation in earlier years, under,
Babylonian rule, seems very unlikely, given its liberal tone that was contrary to the political and
religious situation of the ruler. Rather, the activity of this group was determinative in the
restoration and rebuilding of the Temple, as it was the motor that drove them (Haggai, Zechariah;
cf. Ezra 5:1-2: encouraged by the prophets of God).
The third circle, the most important in the genesis of the Torah, in both its strict and wider
senses, was undoubtedly the circle of the priest-prophets, mentioned above, recycled as scribes
expert in law, repositories of the cultic and legal traditions of Yahwism. This circle compiled
successive legislations. We can suppose that the priests deported together with king Jehoiakim
took with them at least the temple archives, cultic and legal material. In any case, they knew this
thoroughly, as required by liturgical practice and the indoctrinating function recommended to
them. From them and therefore from their professional concern, the legal document began to
take shape, the Law of the God of Heaven. It is what the Persian authorities required to
guarantee the cult and the reorganisation of the corresponding ethnic and religious community.
In the empire, the nations were organised by their cults and their gods. It was of primary
national interest to guarantee the satisfaction and protection of them all. For this circle, political
restoration shifted to a second term. It even emerged in the idea, already planned by Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, its mentors, that the figure of the messiah-king had lost validity, or at least
importance, in its classical formulation. Ezekiel, for example, does not even consider a king
(Sacchi 2002:11), not even in his future temple (he speaks only of the prnce). God is
accessible directly, he is among the exiles, is to be met in his commandments and these are held
by the priests.
The role of the priesthood as the guide of the community was stated forcefully, at the
beginning in parallel with the Messiah-prince and then alone, as was ultimately imposed in
post-exilic, hierocratic Israel. Here also a revision of the past would be completed, but in it the
ideal of the united Israel was to be abandoned for the simple historical reality feasible at the
time, the Persian province of Yehud (Chronicles). The rest could no longer be recovered or rather
it could be discarded (the Samaritans). From this circle, as may be supposed, came the larger
contingent of the first return undertaken with the intention of rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem
and restoring the cult according to the Law of Moses (Ezra 6:18). It was still to be made official,
but they knew it well through the family tradition of that group.
As we have noted, we may suppose a fourth group that we will call technical. It is the
group of scribes, whether priests or not, who at the time appeared as putting into order the
material contributed by other traditions. They would be the famous and slippery redactors on
which any operation of literary criticism of the Old Testament has to rely.

B) How [was the compilation made?]

We must now ask how these groups operated in compiling the Law. At the time when
Cyrus conquered Babylon, no kind of social or even religious structure at all was available to the

14
Cf. Smith 1984:46ff., 123ff.
Jewish people. Even the symbolic figure of the deported king, now no longer on the scene,
never had any jurisdiction at all over his deported subjects. Not even the Yahwistic cult was
functioning: a temple of Yahweh in Babylon was unthinkable. Faith, where it survived, remained
recommended to personal or at most family loyalty to tradition. The people, as a political and
religious unit, were reduced to the group of faithful who were not assimilated. From among
them, a relatively small number felt roused (Ezra 1:5) to return to Jerusalem, whereas the
majority15 no longer felt the Zionist link of their belief in a single God as obligatory.
It was dependence on a common religious tradition, although seen from various
viewpoints, that united its members. Authority over the group as a whole was thus thwarted and
could only be affirmed by recourse to a higher power accepted by everyone. To reconstruct that
power, the vital rebuilding, they now turned to the obligation of Jews more involved in the
triumph of their faith. In this sense, we can understand the study of the Law of the Lord to
which Ezra devoted himself (Ezra 7:10) that made him into a doctor of the Law of the God of
Heaven (Ezra 7:12, 21), acknowledged as such by the Persian court, but presumably not the
only one. Study translates Hebrew search (hkn lebb lidr et-trat yhwh). Ezra is not a
new Moses who receives the Law from the mouth of God. He has to inquire after it, search for
it, to discover the laws and rules to observe them and teach them (Ezra 7:10).
However, this could only be attained by a careful and exhaustive collection of all the
traditions, all the words of Yahweh, according to which the Yahwistic faith had developed.
Only in this way would the various groups see their faith suitably reflected in this single instance,
by consensus. This search for and compilation of divine words, wherever they came from, would
be The Law of heaven, the Book (the Bible), The book of the Law of Moses, which appears
passim in Ezra-Neh. By its very original conditioning, the result had to be a heterogeneous
whole, of juxtaposition rather than revision, the result of memory rather than of intelligence (this
would remain to be elaborated later, as wisdom). In fact, this is how the Bible came to exist.
The great work of the scribes, experts in law, at the time consisted basically in arranging
according to patterns of historical and logical sequence, the contributions from the various
traditions. Something that the history of the sources and biblical traditions had already
discovered, some obvious at first glance: the anthological nature of biblical literature. In it,
growth by juxtaposition or inclusion is evident at all levels.
The need, then, for religious affirmation and the imperial command of compiling their own
Law led to the appearance of a kind of virtual Academy of Babylon. This Academy was
arranging a text in which all the traditions were felt to be reflected, recognised and accepted as
the expression of all the words of Yahweh. He was the definitive prophet, made official by
imperial authority as the basis for the restoration of the cult and the return to the place and way
of life of the people Jewish. That Academy can be understood as an instance or delegation of the
Council of the elders, the only social structure that governed the community according to the
well-attested custom in the Neo-Babylonian period (ibutu URU, puhur ummni) (Dandamayev
1982:1). Likewise, the census of the return is presented (Ezra 2; Neh 7) as grouped by family
under the name of their proto-relative or elder and distributed between secular (an cam) and
levite-priests (kohanm-lewiyym). On this Dandamayev commented: In some cases the Elders
made their decision together with the principal temple officials and governors of the cities. Some
decisions of the Elders were directly connected with temple affairs (for instance, the collection of
the temple tithe) Elders acted before the king as representatives of their own cities
(Dandamayev 1982:4).16 The Academy, then, as the particular moment of the community

15
Cf. Del Olmo Lete 2002-2203:273-287.
16
In some cases the aliens in Babylon were settled in considerable numbers in separate and distinct
settlements. Such strangers could establish their own self-government, that is, a popular assembly
Biblical authors mention Elders of the Jews in Babylonian captivity (Ez 8:1; 14:1, 20:1: ziqn yehdh)
(Dandamayev 1982:4).
assembly, had external and internal legitimacy, and acted through delegation, although
technical direction, in this case scribal, corresponds to the priestly class, as repositories of the
Law.
If we wish to specify more closely the actual method according to which this compilation
of historical memory was formed, we can fix on the various patterns that literary criticism
thought up to explain the origin of the Pentateuch, the principal element at work here. However,
we must remember that from the aspect of biblical redaction, the Law, History and Prophecy
are contemporary. During the period from Cyrus (539) to Artaxerxes (464-424), the three
parameters of religious tradition are combined in the process of compilation. If the Law was
closed earlier, that is due to the original significance that it has for all that constitutive period,
never to be repeated, which defines the personality of Moses as the original legislator, once the
codes of the various religious traditions, including the recent Dt, had been incorporated into it.
Although in principle history continues, in practice it ended with king Jehoiakims code of
restoration (2 Kgs 25:27-30). Prophecy continues, but at a decreasing pace, now replaced by the
complete Prophet, the Law-Book, and the new function of written literature, no longer as a
compilation of divine words but as the human word the fruit of their experience as the word of
God made fruitful, reincarnated in the correct understanding and practice of divine Law. It is the
moment, in principle open without limits, of the Wisdom of Israel (study and song, reflection and
poetry).
Therefore, the HB is born by a process of compiling traditions that originally were oral.
Wellhausen linked that process to a specific moment of history that best fitted his dialectical
theory and the social, political, religious and institutional development of ancient Israel, as
documented by its own written sources17. This historical and literary attribution has been
obsolete for some time and today the way has been open, in a generalised way, to the view that
the compilation began in the final years of the kingdom of Judah. It was strengthened in the
Babylonian Exile and culminated over the following four centuries18. This is a more appropriate
perspective, if we remember how much the Exile meant a break with the past and a revision of
the religious and national awareness of the new community that arose from it. It is beyond doubt
that the HB in its original significance as a normative interpretation of the past and a generator of
the new cult of the word was born at this time. In this way, a Judaism was born in parallel with
cultic Judaism, which ultimately it displaced.
At all events, both perspectives agree that the process of compilation was not unitary.
Instead, it was progressive or discontinuous (at the level of the paradigm or at the diachronic
level) and composite and parallel (at the level of the syntagm or at the synchronic level), in the
final instance subject to arrangement and combination that undid the previous combinatory levels
and created its own historical process. In other words, oral tradition (memory and its
interpretative experience) progressively became text and from various centres of interest for its
delivery, preservation and meaning, ultimately became a single normative text.
In this connection, in the 19th century, within the attempts of that time to define the model
that would explain the documentary genesis of the Pentateuch, the so-called complementary
theory was formulated (Kraus 1969:157ff; Eissfeldt 2000:287f.). That theory provided a model
of concentric growth of the text from an original essential nucleus that led to successive
complements, in the manner of narrative circles traced around it and intended to found their
historical importance and their increasing universal projection.
This model was replaced by the formidable Wellhausian documentary construct
(mentioned already), above all, in virtue of its ideological foundation and the consistency of its
literary analysis. Even so, that theory has valid elements and gives a much more efficacious

17
Cf. Wellhausen 1927; Kraus 1969:260ff.
18
Cf. supra n. 13. See most recently Kim 2005; M. Leuchter 2005.
dynamic model, to show as correct the sociological and historical origin of the literature of
tradition. It is to be preferred to the model of a simple combination of vertical or continuous
independent sources, without an original catalytic impulse, which supposes a much more
developed cultural context, an interest in the general and organic?, that historically today would
be unacceptable exactly as Wellhausens chronology supposed. This has had to be abandoned
and the whole process is now synchronised in a late period, as we stated above19. Thus, the
Wellhausen model loses its historical and evolutionary perspective and is transformed into a
model of active complementarity, in which can be determined a nucleus of interest that guided
the redaction/compilation of the religious tradition and its hermeneutic meaning, to justify the
present situation, the Exile. In this way, it coincides to some extent with the complementary
approach. This nucleus of interest, marking the rule of compilation, can only be the will of
Yahweh (the Law) and its fulfilment (History), marginal to the documentary or merely oral
nature of the tradition, which has to be saved through a new interpretation/coordination.
Basically, this is the model that would dominate the compilation of the second tradition,
the Mishnaic-Talmudic model. Only that in this case, History vanishes in the very fulfilment of
the rule. It ceases to look at the past, already closed and adopted20, to become absorbed in the
present of the community as executing that regulation. In this way, history is transformed into
midrash, into permanent anecdote, evidence of the constant effort of the community to create a
present that will obliterate the fateful past.
Historically, the process in its biblical redactional phase began to function, as we noted
above, from the model by Sacchi and others, of the Synagogue or Academy reunited around
the exiled and re-established king Jehoiachin in Babylon (Sacchi 2002:1, 19ff.). This first
Academy is established as such and remains permanently active throughout the whole Persian
and Hellenistic periods, ceding leadership during the latter period to the Palestinian synagogue
the main compiler of the Mishnah21, to resume it in the Parthian period, from the 2nd century CE,
when the conditions of Palestinian Judaism become more precarious. Thus, the Babylonian
Academies of Sura, Pumbedita and Nahardea are included along the same line as the first
Academy of the Exile and in parallel with the Academies of Palestine. This is in accordance
with the historical and social bipolarity that Judaism underwent at this time, with the birth of the
diaspora. Evidence of its importance, in terms of number and social significance comes from
the many personal names and texts of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods22.
The Exilic/Post-Exilic Academy and the later academies of the Diaspora develop two
related and at the same time deeply different models or work strategies, in accordance with the
historical development of the model. The first model tries to recapture the past whereas the
second tries to make it present (to fulfil it in the smallest proportion) and so recreate their
present, two dimensions that increasingly move away from each other in time and in the social
and cultural circumstances. Apparently, the first model establishes its system of compilation (the
Bible) in memory, the second (Mishnah) in interpretation, with their respective extensions in
the Targum, on the one hand, and in the Talmud, on the other. However, this dichotomy, in its
absolute and opposed form, is deceptive, as both works of compilations ended in the Midrash

19
Several scholars even support the idea that the Bible is a work from the Hellenistic period; cf. Barstal
2002: 129-151; H.-P. Mathys 2002; for a critique of this view see Schniedewind 2004:165ff.
20
In this process, Chronicles and sapiential commemorative historiography (Neh 9; Eccl 44-50; Wis 11;
16-19), as well as thehistorical psalms (Pss 78, 105, 106, 135, 136) represent so many more attempts at
revising the historical framework that enwraps and frames the new development of the norm: from cultic
religion to new wise morality.
21
Cf. Neusner 1989:1ff.; Stermberger 1977:69ff. In this regard commenting on the regulations found
in the Damascus Documents G. Vermes (1981) says: With their systematic ordering of the laws they
announce the Mishnah, the Tosephta, the Talmud, namely, the rabbinic codes compiled between 200 qne
500 a.C.
22
Cf. Zadok 1979; Zadok 2000
(internal and independent). The Bible-Targum, the line of apparent textual continuity, is deeply
midrashic and interpretative, just as the whole of the Mishnah-Talmud, both midrashic and
commemorative (commentary), is the collection of the line of apparent discontinuity. Standard
Jewish religious literature thus constitutes a continuum as a project for controlling the
community by the text23 and its method of execution.
In this sense, the Bible as a canonical whole can also be considered as a Talmudisation in
that it is a process (from the 7th to the 1st centuries BCE) of self-understanding and discussion of
its own tradition along two lines: the line of principle and the line of events, Law and History.
Therefore, we can say that the combination of Law and History is the first Talmudic model.
Without being a completely identical genetic model, both redaction processes, of the Bible and
of the Mishnah-Talmud, represent two stages of a single historical and religious continuum,
with the same social base and similar heuristic and hermeneutic principles. It is a model inherent
to the very essence of a revelation in and through History, exactly as presented by the religion of
Yahweh in its prophetic version, which is the one that ultimately imposed itself. In fact, the
priest-scribes of the virtual Academy of Babylon are the first Talmudists. Their distinctive
feature is that they collect anonymous and traditional material, which cannot be attributed to
anyone specific, outside the protagonists of the texts.
Therefore, we can suppose that the groups function like an Academy, based on the
provision and incorporation of data. Thus, the Bible is composed in the same way that the
Mishnah, the Gospel or even the Quran was composed. The Persian period provided the least
suitable climate for the project, whereas the Hellenistic period accelerated it, either favouring it
(the Lagides) or hindering it (the Seleucids).
The model is dynamic: the community of the wise men is a respected nucleus of
permanent renewal. This is the peculiar process that the Jewish people experienced in the
compilation, interpretation and application of its tradition: the acceptance of diversity as the
interpretation of unity. Thus, the Bible arises as an Act of Parliament, just as the Talmud would
later as its continuation. It is the process of the cohesion of the one faith in its various
expressions. Faced with the need to guide itself, but lacking a guide, Judaism needed to
amass/agglutinate its diversity. We cannot imagine the community of the exiled, especially the
priesthood, leading a passive existence on the banks of the Euphrates. The assimilated ones
devotexc themselves to their affairs, the poor to earning a living through amnual labour. The
nationalists, especially the most motivated among the them, sought to understand the situation
and to plan the future. We can imagine them sharing opinions, proposing solutions and
expressing their hopes. This is what I call a Virtual Academy: a setting in which the data of the
historical past were analysed and assessed; the tradition of the prophetic figures. Now
triumphant, were compiled, and the corpus of doctrines and rules of behaviour were recorded.
The most lucid and religiuously motivated interpreted the present and sought to foresee the
immediate future. The human and religious drama was enacted and began to be commited to
wiriting as a strategy of salvation. Other peoples did not have this urgency and writing did not
make them authoritative.
On the other hand, the Bible emerges in Babylon, as an attempt to retrieve the exilic
'community' by means of canonising tradition, as the distillation of oriental religion, and as its
purification, overcoming it through a monotheism made aware of its superiority. This aspect
must be taken into account and includes possible elements - either accepted or rejected - that
come from contact with official religions: the Babylonian religion and Persian Zoroastrianism
(see Babylonian wisdom literature, which is so like biblical wisdom literature).

23
Cf. Schniedewind 2004:96ff..
C) What [was compiled?]
The nucleus that catalysed the compilation is The Law/Sinai, the meeting with Yahweh,
the Covenant. This nucleus can be considered as already contextualised and put on parchment
or in personal memory in Babylon. It is not conceivable that the deported priestly class did not
know it in its various compilations (CA, PC, Dt: civil code, priestly code, code of the Reform),
whether in the form of tradition/memory or a written document. Its location in remote or
foundational time is already a mythological operation that creates religious history as a process
that reaches the exilic present. The Law is imposed and comes from outside the land, it is not
born from it, which is anti-Yahwistic (remember Elijah and Horeb, like Moses and Sinai).
Therefore, Israels affirmation is understood as an entry/conquest from an exit/liberation
(without excluding a certain historical nucleus, minimal and made absolute). This nucleus of the
Law also imposes the bad conscience created by prophetic preaching. The exilic redaction of
this large block of the Law can be seen at the end of the PC, Lv 26-27-38: I will scatter you
among the peoples 24. Consequently, the result of the process of compilation can be seen from
the Sinaitic nucleus, the original promulgation of the Law of the God of Heaven (Ex 19) from
heaven/the mountain, through Moses, the prophet without equal. It is composed of three blocks:
a summary code defining the demands and the being of the deity (Ex 20+21-23)25, the Law of the
sanctuary (Ex 25:1-31:18 //35-40+Nm 7-8) and the Law of sacrifices (Lv 1-10). Curiously, the
first block (CA) begins with the Law of the altar and ends with a list/description of the national
festivals. In fact, the calendar of the return follows this same rhythm: the altar is built (Ezra 3:1-
3), they celebrate Sukkoth (Ezra 3:4-5) and begin to offer sacrifices (Ezra 3:6). Next comes the
building of the temple (Ezra 4-6), with the delays imposed by lack of funds and the objections of
the neighbours. It is also accompanied by the offering of sacrifices and the celebration of the
Passover (Ezra 6:17-22), as the Law of Moses commands26. This allows us a glimpse of what
this Law consists of, in accordance with the programme of action that Ezra and Nehemiah
completed.
At all events, the rebuilding of the Temple is the basic element to which everything leads.
This applies to the viewpoint of the Persian authorities who require and command rebuilding the
Temple of the God who dwells in Jerusalem. It also applies to the Jews themselves, who see in
this rebuilding a return to meeting their God again and the sign of their resurrection as a people.
From now on, everything is a dream. The Law of the sanctuary is formulated according to the
well-known Canaanite pattern of command-fulfilment27, which highlights the theological
meaning of the operation. It is the same god who designs his dwelling, in this case inevitably in
the form of a tabernacle, in accordance with historical circumstances, but as a clear model of
the city temple, later. The translation was already known through the tradition of Solomon, the
builder of Yahwehs Temple (1 Kgs 6).

24
Note the mention of the sabbatical year of the land (Lv 26:34-35) which is also noted in Neh 10:32,
together with the cancellation of debts (cf. the Babylonian andurrum/mirum); cf. Del Olmo Lete
1990:130-134; Durand 1995:526ff.
25
The CA can be considered as a commentary on the decalogue, its Talmudic expansion; basic
legislation for the coexistenceof a community that starts from zero, of a transition in which the bases of the
social organisation of the community are to be set. Hence the importance of rules concerning property and
relationships between neighbours.
26
In this connection, Schniedewinds suggestion that neither the legal code of ancient Israel nor the
Decalogue was written on the famous two stone tablets; rather God had revealed the plans for his own
tabernacle and its facilities, as well as the Sabbath commandment to worship at the tabernacle
(Sniedewind 2004:129) is strange (?). The argument is not very convincing: foundation inscriptions were
also put in places where they could not be read.
27
See Del Olmo Lete 1982:58ff.; idem., Arquitecturas celestiales: del palacio de Baal a la Jerusaln
celeste (in the press).
 From this original nucleus, there is a twofold narrative projection, forwards and
backwards. Historical projection forwards was more meaningful for historical memory. It
corresponded to the moment when the group was founded, when it was forged as a nation in its
migration period, full of epic memories preserved in ancient romances of ancient battles, the
days of Yahweh (Nm 21, 22-24, 27-30, 31). At the same time, in this period fits the origin of the
social institutions that governed the community (---) and the various supplementary agendas
are collected that had not entered the codes that have traditionally ruled the development of
peoples lives. These supplements guarantee the Talmudic model of compilation that we have
suggested. The three groups supply their own traditions, but the cultic or ritual material
predominates, the contribution of the priestly tradition (Lv 11-15, 16, 27; Nm 3-4, 5-6, 9-10, 17-
19, 34-35, 36).
In this material, the admonition not to mix with the displaced or subject peoples (Ex 34:11-
16; 23:27f.; 32f.; Dt 7:1-6b) is prominent. Later, the same theme would become predominant,
almost monotonous, in the reorganisation of the post-exilic community by Ezra and Nehemiah,
as if (together with the observance of the Sabbath, linked with the cult of the temple) it were the
only decisive point of the promulgated Law (cf. Ezra 9:1ff., 10ff.; Neh 13:1-13, 23-28)28. It was
the way of stating sociologically their faith in the only God as against tolerant official
syncretism. As a consequence, mixed marriage is considered not only as an element of
idolatrous seduction, according to the old tradition, but as a profession of faith in the existence of
many gods29. The Jewish people do not fit in with other peoples, just as its faith does not fit in
with other beliefs. In fact, it declares them void.
Utter disorder rules in the collection of all this prescriptive material. All that has been
respected is the singularity of the code of the Dt and its paranetic frame, in spite of its repetitive
nature. It was the strong point of the royalist group as heirs of the triumphal concept, of the
order that could exist but did not, that would have saved them from disaster and have explained
it: the model of Israel that Josiah established30. It was already a closed corpus and protected by
the Mosaic connection of its presentation, which formulated the key dogma of the time, the
uniqueness of Yahwehs sanctuary. It also maintained hope of the Messianic restoration in the
figure of the ideal king who should have existed: the king has a copy of the Law and reads it
daily (Dt 17:14-20). The text is decisive for understanding the origin of the code of Deuteronomy
and its function as a written text at the time. At the same time, that code provided a more
advanced and humanitarian model of social order. Therefore, it was the last word, in both senses,
chronological and social. It was the expression of modernity, of the new Israel, the starting-point
of later Jewish humanism31.
The projection backwards - beyond the memory (at least of the levitical group) - of the
Egyptian adventure, which explained its departure from Sinai as a people, is recast as folklore
(the story of Joseph). Similarly, the projection backwards of their historical experiences with the
surrounding peoples is converted into etiological legends (Gn 12-50). These legends are arranged
according to the pattern of the causal genealogical unit, based on ancient tribal romances (Gn
49). Thus, history is lived as prefiguration, becomes prophecy, the old resort that post-exilic

28
The reference to the sabbatical year in Neh 10:32 has a strong social resonance peculiar to the period
(cf. Meyers 1965:178) and refers to the ancient Babylonian practice of mirum/andurrum; cf. del Olmo
Lete 1990:130-134; Durand 1995:526-528.
29
Instead, mixed marriages were normal in the monarchic period and the prophets did not miss the
target in their reproaches; cf. Smith 1984:30ff.
30
For a general view of current studies on deuternomistic historiography see De Pury et al. 2000,
especially the contributions by Fr. Smyth and E.A, Knauf.
31
On the problem of the closure of the Pentateuch and its adoption by the Samaritans see Trebolle
1993:309-313,
literature will use in such an explicit way. Hence, this was a field fertilised by the groups of this
prophetic inspiration (J-E), whereas the priestly group only allowed itself some earlier details
(Gn 17). The royalist group also fixed some rules of legitimacy that were completed in the
forward projection. It also sketched a kind of Bible of the king (Gn 14, 38 [cf. Gn. 49/Dt
31/Nm 22/24]; 2 Sm 7 [cf. Pss 2, 110] that ends in Deuteronomy (Dt 17:14-20), would later be
reactivated with the saga/idyll of Ruth and takes its last refuge in the Chroniclers vision.
The history of origins (Gn 1-11) represents the reaction of the Jewish community to
Babylonian mythological concepts. Creation (Enuma Elish), the flood (Gilgamesh), the akitu
festival (Tower of Babel), completed by the genealogies and ethnological charts of the time,
reinterpreted, and probably Phoenician in origin (Sacchi 2002:19f. [R1])32. Both the priestly
group and the prophetic group were concerned with sketching the origins from a cultic and
cosmological perspective respectively or rather a moral and anthropological perspective.
The fruit of this twofold historical projection, the Torah and the I Prophets (Law and
History) can thus be considered the work of the Babylonian Academy (6th-5th centuries), which
was later taken to Judah. The Books of Chronicles were to be a later Judahite copy. In it, the
perspective of restoration induces two opposed points of view: a glorification and a critique
of the past. Hence the ambiguity about the meaning of history that is developed: a glorious
paradigm (the reign of David-Salomon) and an abominable antithesis (the history of the two
separated kingdoms).
At all events, Israel possessed a traditional pattern or model of its historical past, shaped
in its cultic credo: My father was a wandering Aramaean 33. It could be used as a rule to
arrange the various traditions and reformulations of the past. Also in the book of Ezra (Ezra 9:6-
37) we have a development of this pattern, already reinterpreted according to deuteronomistic
theology, in neither David nor Solomon is ever mentioned. It represents a later summary from
Gn-2 Kgs that had already been formed34. In fact it was these priest-scribes (khanm-sperm)
who would be entrusted with competing this arrangement of the material and the final redaction
of the Law, as the Persian king is aware when praising Ezra and showing his confidence in his
creation.
Once the traditions of the Pentateuch have been arranged, with the death of Moses, the

32
If biblical history did not originate in Mesopotamia, at least it has a clear Mesopotamian
model: the synchronic history of Assyria-Babylonia (ANET:272ff.), as a model of empirical history,
completed by a fictitious chronicle of David and Solomon. This creation of the united kingdom from
Jerusalem as the capital has a model in early Babylonia. It is the glorious Old Babylonian foundation epic
of its ancestor, king and prophet, Hammurapi, the founder of the dynasty, who receives the Law from
Shamash (both Moses and David), evoked in the Neo-Babylonian period. He also looked for his ancestors
in the Genealogy of the Dynasty of Hammurapi; cf. Finkelstein 1966:95-118. This is when his Code was
copied most; in the Bible, the Law (the Pentateuch) and Moses its mediator precede the conquest and its
later history. In any case, the relationship between Marduk and Babylonia is like the one between Yahweh
and Israel. This Babylonian model would later be joined with the Persian model, headed by the figure of
Cyrus, the Messiah of Israel, to whom Marduk delivers Babylon; cf. G. del Olmo Lete, Los persas y la
Biblia (in the press).
33
For a critical revision of this tradition see Teixidor 2003, who invalidates most of G. von Rads
classic thesis on the cultic credo.
34
The prayer supposes that the Jews are slaves and despoiled under the Persians (now; Neh 9:36-
37), which is unlikely in the mouth of Ezra, the legate of Artaxerxes. This is a later composition, from the
Hellenistic period, which interprets retrospectively and assumes that the Pentateuch and the Former
Prophets had already been compiled; cf. Gunneweg 1987:124-129: gehrt deshalb zweifellos zu den
jngsten Stcken des AT.
Law of the God of Heaven remains closed35. Now begins the deuteronomistic reinterpretation of
the historical past, histories where Israel is the protagonist, as opposed to history with Yahweh as
the protagonist, the period of deconstruction rather than construction. In the book of Joshua,
there is a mix of schematic formalism (the two great battles, the second of uncertain tradition)
with thematic content (spies, Jericho, Achans sin, renewal of the Covenant). Instead, in the
book of Judges, a series of tribal traditions is arranged according to the strictest deuteronomistic
criterion and framework. The interpretative fluctuation of the introduction (Jgs 2-3) is a clear
example of Talmudic construction, in which all that is missing is the personal attribution of the
opinions. Similarly, the fluctuation about the battle of the north (Josh/Jgs) is evidence of the
traditions of the various groups. Nonetheless, they are all included, without giving importance to
their incompatibility, as valid expressions of a national religious memory. The set of Samuel-
Saul-David-Solomon traditions, with an excessively long text, attests the importance of the topic
for the royalist group: it is a long saga of making the dynasty legitimate and of its
primitive/legendary splendour. Even here there is a clash of perspectives, especially in the
different views of the origins of the monarchical constitution (for and against) and of the figures
of Saul and David and their conflicts. Yet, in spite of the viewpoint of the royalist group, it
accepted the demythologising vision (the succession narrative) of the antimonarchical and
prophetic group (Nathans presence) of a David with his confused origin and behaviour. He was
the leader of a band36, a usurper, a hypocrite, lecherous , with a very complicated domestic
history and completely human. All this would be removed by later priestly vision, an indication
of the ideological tensions within the Academy37. With Solomon, the legend gets out of control
and he becomes a person of confused historicity38. A revision that is not part of the first historical
summary, the work of the hereditary priestly group priestly of the royal order, would expurgate
these scabrous aspects from the foundation saga and insist on its cultic aspect39.
The kings group completes its historical vision, mounted on archive material set in a rigid
deuteronomistic ideological frame, with the exaltation of Jehoiachin in Babylon. It leaves hope
in suspense and does not wish to continue it with the life of Ezra-Nehemiah, where there is no
place for the king, as the priestly Chronicler was to do later. It is a vision that we can imagine
began to be invented around the figure of the king in question, Jehoiakim. He was not yet a
reforming Josiah, but the confirmation and a symbol of failure and at the same time of hope, but
a reduced hope. It appears as the viewpoint of a circle that is on familiar terms with the powers
that be (Babylonian) and their own royal tradition of the Davidic monarchy, a perspective in
decline that would be replaced by a new prophetic vision: a shift from political power to moral
redemption (cf. the Servant of Yahweh in II Isaiah). It is supplanted from outside. From within
is lived the disillusion that leads to reducing the size of the glorious figures, brought by the
prophetic perspective, already since Nathan. The human and dishonest David appears as the
antitype of the new Messiah, Cyrus, and to him is transferred the promise of help and victory,

35
On the question of the Hexateuch and the exclusion of traditions about Joshua, see Eissfeldt 2000:
423ff. The question of the Samaritan Pentateuch and its acceptance by that community, which would fit
this period quite nicely, is very complex: cf. Trebolle 1993:218ff.
36
Cf. Bodner 2005; Finkelstein-Silberman 2006.
37
On the significance of the Chronicler, more a collective than an author, see the introduction by G.N.
Knoppers 2004:47-137
38
The confused relations between David and Hiram and the shift of the Aramaean wars, prove that the
author of I/II Kgs did not have any documents in front of him but wrote from memory. He did not take
the archival material (The book of the Chronicles of the Kings) to Babylon, although the scribes knew
it, perhaps by heart, from having read and copied it so often.
39
Later, the Chronicler, sofer-priest, used the sources of the return for himself, to present a new vision
of history in which the deuteronomistic aspect is moderate, in an operation on the fringes of the
Academy. However, he did gain a foothold in Judah because the priestly group there was so powerful.
without any reproach (cf. 2 Sam 7:9 // Is 45:1ff.). The essential of this concept would be saved:
lineage (Davdic) and function (Messianic). The final, almost desperate attempt to preserve this
movement is represented by Zerubbabel, the last refuge of hope. However, the controlling
Persian power frustrates it with its own cultic tolerance and the legitimation of God. Now the
successors of the messiah, Cyrus, are the Persian kings. Although the prophets no longer said so,
the imperial power was very clear about it. Toleration came to mean absorption (Fried 2004).
The only effective social power, the priesthood, would take charge of all these
viewpoints in a new hieratic arrangement. It was alien to the tradition of the Hebrew people and
very close to the political power that would ultimately codify it and usurp it in the Hasmonaean
period. The future as mapped out by Ezekiel would remain mere utopia.
On the other hand, this priestly group was projecting its vision of the national historical
process with its traditions based on the ark (1 Sam 5-7; 2 Sam 6 (?) and the temple (1 Kgs 6).
Instead, the prophetic group continued to insert their masters into key moments of the historical
process as determining the historical destiny of the people. As for the group itself, which was
already on the margins of History, it would be concerned with collecting and arranging the
oracles and teaching of its masters from a sense of the meaning of the word as absolute. The
operation would continue, already on the margins of the Academy. In this way, the prophetic
books were born also in the Exilic and post-Exilic periods. Each group collects or attributes to
its master, sayings about the future, about Exile and punishment, something that had already
happened. Above we have already mentioned that this prophetic literature is contemporaneous
with the other earlier blocks, quite apart from its arrangement into a single whole (the Bible) with
mixed criteria of historical chronology (from Creation to the Exile) and religious meaning as the
word of God.
With Jeroboam, we now enter fully verifiable history (Pharaoh Shishaq) and the
deuteronomstic framework includes dates chosen for their historical memory, in all likelihood
from archive documents (cf. supra), towards a thesis of the new Israel: a single people (under a
single king) with a single God and a single sanctuary, the ideal of Josiahs frustrated reform40.
This then closes the real work of the Academy of Babylon. As soon as the domain of the
written word and the book was opened, the religion of Israel overflowed, in the form of wisdom
and poetry, in a great production, an echo of its living faith, of the flourishing divine word, as we
have mentioned. To determine the moment of its redaction, between the 4th and 1st centuries
BCE, is the work of research into historical-literary criticism. Qoheleth assures us that in his
time (2nd cent. BCE) the circle was already closed. The rabbis and the scribes, now disengaged
from their priestly function, which had been focused on worship and power, would now be left
with discerning the divine echo of this experience and including it in the canon, leaving aside a
large amount of parallel works. The Bible emerged from a sea of feverish literary activity.

* * * * *

This view of the origin of the Bible is by no means new. Many scholars have
championed the exilic and post-exilic, even Hellenistic redaction of the Bible41. Instead, most
recently, Rendsburg (Rendsburg 2004) has proposed a different framework from which to
explain the origin of the Bible. This, in parallel to the origin of English literature in the
Elizabethan period, was born in the period of the recently confirmed united monarchy of David
and Solomon, which, like the Elizabethan period, was an era of triumph and splendour. It would
be carried out by a group of writers impregnated with the spirit of the time. They would even
choose, contrary to the custom of other peoples in their religious literature, a literary genre in
prose as the most suitable and distinctive of this type of Hebrew literature. Here we have a

40
See the revision of the classical thesis by Fried 2002:460ff. (supra n. 13).
41
See n. 19 above.
return to the most classical literary theory, which set in this context the work of the Yahwist,
generalised to include all the biblical texts that can be dated to before the Exile. It is a theory
that one would expect to hear expressed by Orthodox Judaism and probably also by conservative
Christianity.
I consider that, apart from the Anglo-Saxon chauvinism that it exudes, this theory has
little to recommend it and means abandoning and destroying decades of historical literary
criticism of the Hebrew Bible. I think that to imagine the origin of Hebrew literature as a
reflection of the English of the Elizabethan era as the result of a programme shaped and adopted
in an inn by a group of writers is a theory that should go back to the realm of fantasy from which
it came.
As for myself, I have only attempted to contextualise the genesis of the Hebrew Bible
from the history of the Jewish people and their biblical testimony, and to sketch out the method
or operative system (complementary and Talmudic) that completed it. This, then, provides a
maximal generic outline or framework which leaves room for every type of speculation about the
specific origin of this or that tradition, even about the arrangement and interaction of the
elements present in the final redaction. In this way, the Bible appears as the redemption of the
Israel that created it as the best indication of how efficient was the religious meaning of its
historical traditions. In the end, the turbulent history of Israel opened the way to an imperfect
future for this people in the shape of a text in which the presence of God in his History is
recognised and acknowledged, in its past and therefore in its future.