When is torah written

The landmark set in the ninth and eighth century B. At this time, Israel begins to be perceived by its neighbors as a state. That is, not only internal changes in the development of writing, but also external, contemporaneous perceptions hint that Israel and Judah had reached a level of cultural development in the eighth—ninth centuries to enable literary text production.

King Asarhaddon and his subdues, Victory Stele of Esarhaddon, ca. A good example are the Assyrian inscriptions from the mid-ninth century B. The Black Obelisk even displays Jehu in a picture bowing in front of the Assyrian king , being the oldest extant image of an Israelite. Based on these observations about the development of a scribal culture in ancient Israel, we can assume that the earliest texts in the Pentateuch may have originated as literary pieces from the ninth and eighth centuries B.

But to repeat: This chronological claim pertains only to their literary shape, whereas the oral traditions behind them could be much older, perhaps at times reaching back into the second millennium B.

When was the Pentateuch finished? On this matter, three areas of evidence should be named. First, there is the translation into Greek, the so-called Septuagint, which can be dated to the mid-second century B.

Secondly, the books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, which probably date to the fourth century B. It is not clear whether this denotes an already completed Pentateuch, but it at least points in this direction.

The loss of this political order was accompanied by numerous questions. Especially in Prophetic literature, this event was interpreted as a cosmic judgment. But in the Pentateuch, no text seems to allude to the event directly or indirectly.

Therefore, the Pentateuch seems basically to be a pre-Hellenistic text, pre-dating Alexander the Great and the Hellenization of the East. However, there are a few exceptions to the pre-Hellenistic origins of the Pentateuch.

This text seems to allude to the battles between Alexander and the Persians, as some scholars have suggested. But these exceptions are minor. The substance of the Pentateuch seems to be pre-Hellenistic. If we can assume with some probability that the Pentateuch was written between the ninth and the fourth centuries B. We should begin by introducing a very general observation.

Ancient Israel is part of the ancient Near East. Ancient Israel was a small political entitiy surrounded by greater, and much older, empires in Egpyt and Mesopotamia. An extraordinary piece of evidence of cultural transfer is a fragment of the Gilgamesh epic dating to the fourteenth century B. The fragment proves that Mesopotamian literature was known and read in the Levant.

Of course, there are indigenous traditions in ancient Israel that are not paralleled in other ancient Near Eastern material. Addressing this topic exhaustively is not possible at the moment.

That does not mean that the Bible is not an original text. The first example of how the ancient Near East shaped the Pentateuch has to do with the Neo-Assyrian empire, the preeminent power in the ancient world of the ninth—seventh centuries B. The Assyrians secured their power through treaties with their vassals. These treaties are usually have a three-part structure, containing an introduction, a corpus of stipulations, and a concluding section with blessings and curses.

It is noteworthy that the book of Deuteronomy exhibits this same structure, apparently having been shaped according to the model of an Assyrian vassal treaty. But there is one big difference: The function of Assyrian vassal treaties was to oblige subdued people to the Assyrian king in terms of absolute loyalty. The book of Deuteronomy likewise demands absolute loyalty from the people of Israel, but to God, not to the Assyrian king.

So the book of Deuteronomy seems to take up both the structure and the basic concept of an Assyrian vassal treaty, while at the same time reinterpreting it.

A second example of how the ancient Near East shaped the Pentateuch has to do with the Persian empire. In B. Persian rule was perceived by many peoples in the Levant as peaceful, with the era seen as a quiet one, where various peoples could live according to their own culture, language, and religion.

In the Hebrew Bible, nearly every foreign nation is addressed with very harsh curses except for the Persians, probably due to their tolerant policy towards those whom they subdued. In the Pentateuch, we can locate some indications of Persian imperial ideology.

This is usually a cow. It can take up to 18 months to complete the whole process from the complex preparation of the animal skins to the writing of the final words. Great accuracy is needed when the sofer writes the scroll. If he makes any mistakes it can make the whole scroll pasul invalid. The completed scroll is known as a Sefer Torah from sefer which is the Hebrew for book. A Sefer Torah is so sacred to Jews it is said that if one is accidentally dropped in the synagogue the whole congregation must fast for 40 days.

When Jewish communities have suffered persecution, great efforts would be made to preserve these scrolls. This demonstrates just how symbolically and physically important the Torah is to Jews. Alongside the written law Jews believe God also told Moses the spoken or oral law. The letter Pei as well as being the Hebrew word for mouth is the 17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Pei has a numerical value of 80 which Jews believe is the age that Moses was when he led them out from slavery in Egypt. Although given at the same time this law was to be passed down orally from generation to generation.

It is the information Jews need to practise fully the commandments in the written law. It was codified in the 2nd Century C. Search term:. Read more. Whatever the case, it was shortly after this destruction that the two texts, the Yahwist and the Elohist, were merged by scribes into a single book. The next portion of the Torah to be written is Deuteronomy, and this time we have a lot more information on its author. We even know his name: Shaphan though some think the author was the prophet Jeremiah.

This scribe may have single-handedly changed the entire course of history by leading the king to profoundly change Jewish worship. While the Yahwist-Elohic scripts take no issue with polytheism and people worshiping God or even several gods in temples and other cultic sites throughout the land, the ideology of Deuteronomy is clearly one God, one temple. Its composition evidently coincides with the unification of the Judaic cult and exclusion of other gods, which happened during the reign of King Josiah starting in BCE.

The account, possibly written by Shaphan himself, goes as follows: "And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.

Scholars generally agree that this "book of the law" was an early version of Deuteronomy. Shaphan claimed that the book had been found in the Temple while the priests were cleaning up the storeroom.

Josiah's reforms centralized the Jewish cult in Jerusalem and banned its practice anywhere else. It created a powerful oligarchy of temple priests, which took over and became the cultural elite of Judah from then on. It is these Judean temple priests and their descendents who are the Priestly Source.

Theirs is not only by far the largest portion of the bible but was the last added — which doesn't mean the texts were added to the "end". For example, the first account of creation that opens the bible was written by these priests. Possibly the priests felt uncomfortable erasing ancient texts that came before theirs. They may have feared a force would punish them for editing of early text. While the Israelite priests saw themselves as descendants of the great Moses, the temple priests believed they descended from Zadok, the first High Priest to serve in King Solomon's Temple.

Put otherwise, the temple priests — the "priestly writer" — are suspected of adding Aaron to the story of Moses in order to legitimize their standing in society. And we don't know which one. So this will be a base for another question.

Jim, the southern kingdom Judah was conquered by Assyria. Perhaps you meant the northern kingdom, Israel, which was, in , and it is true that some refugees fled south to Judah, but this was prior to the Torah.

So the kingdom split first and then Torah is written where both sides have different copies. Is that what you think? Jim, this is your answer, so I prefer not to insert my view into it.

I have already had that opportunity in my own answer. All I sought to do in my comment is to clarify a fact of objective history, which I notice you took on board. Since your answer does not hold to the tradition that Moses wrote the Torah, it is reasonable for me to add that the Torah was written over a period of centuries, with little input from the north mainly the Elohist and taken from Judah to Samaria.

The United Monarchy, if there was one, certainly preceded this process. I am sorry. I am just trying to understand. Did I misrepresent your view? That somehow the samaritan and the judah torah share common source and somehow it "splits" — user How would you like me to change the answer? I just want to make a summary — user Mark B Mark B 1 1 1 bronze badge.

We are glad you are here. If you haven't done so already, check out the site tour and read how this site is a little different than others. This answer does not show its work which is a requirement on this site and does not meet our community's academic standards. You may improve this answer by editing it to add scholarly sources commentators, historians, archeologists or other historical sources supporting this answer. This is generally what we are seeking in good answers.

Also worth noting is that Dr. Gordon J. Wenham makes a very good case for a late circa BCE redaction in "Story as Torah" as do many other scholars. Particularly, They note the similarities between Babylonian creation myths and Genesis 1 and believe it to be an exilic addition setting a final redaction date during the exile. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown.

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