WHO WROTE THE BIBLE AND WHEN DID THEY DO IT?

the following info is from wikipedia:

1. book = Torah - (Pentateuch, Books of Moses, i.e., Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers)

Author according to tradition = Moses, c 1300 BC

Author according to scholarship = Documentary hypothesis: Four independent documents (the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and the Priestly source), composed between 900-550 BC, redacted c 450 BC, possibly by Ezra
Supplementary models (e.g. John Van Seters):

Torah composed as a series of authorial expansions of an original source document, usually identified as J or P, largely during the 7th and 6th centuries BC, final form achieved c. 450 BC.

2. book = Joshua

Author according to tradition = Joshua with a portion by Phinehas or Eleazar

Author according to
scholarship = Deuteronomist using material from the Jahwist and Elohist


3. book: Psalms = Author according to tradition = Mainly David and also Asaph, sons of Korah, Moses, Heman the Ezrahite, Ethan the Ezrahite and Solomon

Author according to scholarship = Various authors recording oral tradition. Portions from 1000BC to 200BC.

4. book = Proverbs

Author according to tradition =
Solomon, Agur son of Jakeh, Lemuel and other wise men.

Author according to
scholarship =
An editor compiling from various sources well after the time of Solomon.

My abiding interest has been in the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and his cult of monotheism (Aten). I even visited Karnak (modern day Mina) but there is very little to see. I suspect the defeat and dispersal of Akhenaten's followers was the key event that spread the worship of one God in parts of Africa and Middle East and later the rest of the world as the norm. Otherwise such practice was considered an aberration in most of the world for much of known history.

What interests me most is that in the region of central and eastern Africa most of the tribes subscribed to monotheism long before the arrival of Christianity and Islam. Did this practice come after the dispersal of Akhenaten's cult of the Aten or before?

I strongly suspect the later although I am yet to collect sufficient evidence. But some of the pointers are intriguing. For instance the names of God given by tribes around Mt Kenya and Mt Killimanjaro, the one with which I am familiar - Ra, for the Chaga, Enkai - Maasai and Gikuyu etc refer back to deities that existed at the beginning of the Egyptian civilization or before. I have seen no reference to Aten. In fact Enkai (Enki) was a Sumerian god, part of a dual pantheon that predated Egypt by over 5000 years.

According to Sumerian mythology Enki was one of the founders of the first civilization around the Euphrates and Tigrates. Later he and his brother Enril disagreed and Enki left to set up a new colony in Southern Africa, where he was worshiped as a God.

The later migration of Bantu speaking people from the South and Center to the north and East of Africa carried not only iron smelting technology but a belief in the one God which was to find a powerful proponent in Akenaten, and whose rejectin in Egypt was the precursor to the Judeo-Christian belief system which was later adopted by Islam.

The rest, as they say, is history...

Love these ads...

Jesus and Tom Cruise and his Scientologists Interesting combination indeed.

The story of Noah is similar to this Hindu story [the Hindu Religion is almost a carbon copy of the religion of ancient Egypt]

Genesis 7

1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

2 Take with you seven [a] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

compare this passage with this story about the Hindu god Matsya -

Matsya the fish - one of The 10 Incarnations of Lord Vishnu:

a king named Manu was performing severe penance for thousands of years. One day as he was performing ablutions with river water, a small fish came into his hands and just as he was about to throw the fish back into the river, the fish requested the king to save its life.

Heeding its request, the king put the fish into a jar of water but the fish started growing and the jar was not big enough for it. Then the king threw it into the river, but it soon it outgrew the river and the king then threw it into Ganges and then into the ocean. The king realised that it was Lord Vishnu himself and then the lord made an appearance and made a special request to the king.

It predicted that the world would come to an end by a huge flood in seven days and requested the king to build a huge boat and take the seven sages(hermits), seeds of all plants, one animal of each type and told him that he would appear as a fish to propel the boat to Mount Himavan for surviving the flood to the next yuga(eon).

True to his word, after seven days the Lord appeared and the king tied the boat to the fish by using the royal serpent Vasuki and the fish took all of them to Mt Himavan and kept them there till the flood was over and in the new era, the king started procreation a for the new era.