SPENTA MAINYU
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront."
	YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.
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There is no Hebrew hand-written version of the Old Testament available. The Old Testament texts we have today do not go back further than 10th. century BC. Greek and Latin translations are older. The Syriac translation - Peschitto / Peshitta (original text) also is older than the Hebrew texts. The oldest firmly dated copy of any Old Testament manuscript in any language is a Peshitta manuscript of the Pentateuch of 442 AD. The writing down of the main translation is thought to have started after 2nd. century BC. There have always been more than one version of the Old Testament since the beginning. There were at least three Hebrew versions towards 3rd. century BC.: The Masoretic / Massorethique text; the Greek translation mainly from the Masoretic text; and the Samarian text.

 Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls, a papyrus from the 2nd. century BC. containing the Ten Commandments which does not conform to the classical text, and the Geniza / Genizeh - Cairo pieces of the 5th. century BC., the oldest known part of the Old Testament was written in the 9th. century BC. The first Greek translation is known as the Septuagint. The translation is said to have done by the Jews of Alexandria. This was accepted as the authoritative version until 7th. century AD. St. Jerome made a Latin translation based on the Hebrew texts. This was called the Vulgate and was sent to various places around the world until the 7th. century BC. There is an Aramaic translation as well.

In its general framework the Old Testament is the story of God's dealings with Israel as His chosen people. This 'chosenness' of Israel is conceived by reference to the ultimate redemption of all mankind. But this 'chosenness' is not peculiar to Israel. Sumerians also have written in their clay tablets that they were a superior people chosen by the Gods. In addition to being the 'chosen people' of YHWH in the Old Testament, Al-lah in Qoran also elevated Israel to a higher level, but when Mohamed was unable to pull Israel to his side Qoran adopted a ciritical attitude towards them. Mohamed acted as expected: To by-pass the Judaism and Christianity (both of which he accused of deviating from the original revelation) and establish a link with the 'initiator' - prophet Abraham. Mohamed declared himself of a confessor of the true religion of Abraham. Since, as declared by the Arab prophet, God chose Arabs as a nation, and Quraysh as the tribe for His final revelation, Arabs and Quraysh tribe became the last 'chosen' people of the God.

1. The Hexateuch (The Pentateuch+The Book of Joshua) : The account of how Israel became a nation and how it invaded and possessed the Promised Land.

2. The Prophets : The story of Israel in the Promised Land; the establishment and development of the Monarchy; messages of Prophets to the people.

3. The Hagiographa or 'Writings': Speculation on the place of evil and death in the design and working of things (Job and Ecclesiastes); the poetical works; and some additional historical books. The Apocrypha of the Old Testament includes various types of literature, the purpose of which seem to be to fill in some of the gaps left by the canonical books and to carry the history of Israel to the 2nd century BC.

Extensive studies going on for about 200 years on the Old Testament made clear that the first five books of the Old testament - the Torah / the Pentateuch / the five Books of Moses - were written by four sources. If we are to go by what we are told, Moses must be the fifth writer, because supposedly he had written his own death (this is too much!). These sources may be individuals or a group of persons, we do not know. All those written down were brought together in 500 BC. and the Torah / Pentateuch came into being. Pentateuch or Torah ('Law') gives the record of the action of the 'supreme being' and the legislation underlying its entire subsequent account. When the events told in the Pentateuch reaches a conclusion, the end of Israel's captivity in Egypt and its wanderings come to an end, and we find Israel ready to enter the 'Promised Land.' The Pentateuch in reality is the account of Israel's beginnings. The belief that the first five books of the Old Testament was God's revelation and was written by Moses himself is obligatory for Jews. There are things which Jews excluded from these five books. These are the works of the Hellenicised Jews of Alexandria.

Here we begin with the Old Testament. Some say it is primarily a prophecy. A religious message. A religious message in reported speech; revealed with the means available at the time of its origin; and told in a style and language in line with the intellectual level of those days. Some others say that there is nothing divine in this book, it is just a history of a people, written over a period of hundreds of years by various authors.

There are various styles in it. It was edited many many times; it was summarized; it was 'cleansed'; it was re-written etc. The conclusion: In the light of the research done on it there is no doubt that it was invented, imagined, thought and written by human beings. There is nothing divine in it. It is mainly a compilation of the regional myths and legends of various peoples, and adoption of certain aspects of the regional religions, gathered and edited to facilitate the progress of a certain group of people into nationhood. For example what we know as the Song of Miriam is thought to have originated in the Late Bronze period - 13th century BC. (Check the chronology in this page).

If we, for a second, take Bible as a whole, the nearest section to our time, second Epistle of Peter is thought to have been written not earlier than the second quarter of the 2nd century AD. In short the book called Bible was written over a period of hundreds of years. Majority of the Biblical works are thought to have been brought together as the Bible (biblios - the Old Testament+the New Testament) between the 6th century BC. and 1st century AD.

Well! Could the Bible be proven as a document of faith? Faith is a kind of belief. Belief begins where knowledge, evidence, and proof cease to exist. The believer does not need a proof or evidence. Any evidence or proof which contradicts the belief of the individual is rejected. HE JUST BELIEVES. That's all! In what, in whom, and why? It does not make the slightest difference at all! In the light of this statement and what Spenta Mainyu will tell you, you may try to answer the question.

Back to the Old Testament.. It is an account of a people and their God. The Old Testament is not a neutral or objective story of events. On the contrary, it is very much biased. The Old Testament has its roots in the ancient ages and its own times. There are treatises, thrillers, sermons, legal texts, hymns and love songs in it. One can find in this Book, historiography, novel, legends, anecdotes, and folk-tales. What a mixture! The result: Historians and archaeologists give more weight to some books as opposed the other ones which are considered 'literary.' 'Most assignment of occurrences in the Old Testament to corresponding dates in Egyptian, Persian, Syrian and Greek Calendars are arbitrary and hypothetical. A chronology of the Old Testament is impossible on the basis of the materials in the Book. This impossibility leaves us with the fundamental conclusion that these materials were intended not primarily as a chronicle but as a testimony of faith. A faith which had the central aim of creating a nation. This purpose dominates both the form and the content of the Old Testament and is built into the structure of its several parts. When we look at the Book from that angle this is the verdict: The Old Testament is a collection of various materials, the worst part of which is the 'crude' editing that shows.

Different accounts of Creation and Flood is taken as an evidence of different authors. Furthermore there are contradictions within the Book. A few paragraphs ago Spenta Mainyu related the results of the research done on how many authors were involved in the writing of the Old testament: Four.. So, let us deal with these different authors first. Of these four authors, two are thought to have written the sections of Genesis and Exodus probably around 800 BC. or earlier according to some others. One of these authors was called 'J' and the other 'E', because 'J' called his God Jahweh (YHWH) and 'E' called his God Elohim. In fact there are those who claim that Yahwists (those, who, like writer'J' called their God Yahweh) were not a group of people but generations of peoples who never stopped writing about YHWH, and that is why we have versions of the same stories over and over again in the Old Testament. The stories of Creation, of Adam and Eve (Original Sin), of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel are all their products. The most optimistic datings of 'J's work extend to c. 950 BC, but even then, more than three hundred years would have passed since the supposed dates for the Exodus, so writes Robin Lane Fox (The Unauthorized Version) 'These narratives were composed from unwritten stories whose status as true history is non-existent.' 'J' was writing in the southern kingdom of Judah, and 'E' came from the northern kingdom of Israel. There is 'D' who wrote the Deuteronomy and 'P' who belongs to the Priestly tradition - thus 'P'. According to Genesis YHWH formed the man (adãm) from the dust of the earth (adãmah) and blew into his nose the breath of life. Thus man came to life. The writer 'J' instead of getting involved with the creation of the world and the mythological pre-history was interested in the familiar historical periods. Israel's curiosity on the matter of creation has started around 600 BC., and when the writer 'P' was writing the Creation chapter of Genesis, writer 'J' was not certain if YHWH was the only creator of heaven and earth. But 'J' was pointing out the distinction between God and mankind. Man was not composed of the divine stuff as God. Man (adãm) belonged to the earth (adãmah). The saparation and distancing between man and his God has begun. The writer 'J' speeds through the events in pre-history until the end of the mythical period, which includes the stories like the Flood and the Tower of Babel, and arrives suddenly at the start of the history of the Sons of Israel (beginning of the story of Abraham). Abraham gets the command from his God. He must leave his people and go to Canaan. Who was Abraham's God? YHWH? Rabb? 'J' says that mankind worshipped YHWH since the time of Adam's grandson. While 'P's account on the other hand seems to be hinting that Sons of Israel had never heard of YHWH until He became visible to Moses in the 'Burning Bush.' The writer 'P' has YHWH say to Moses that He was really the same God as the God of Abraham. The fact that 'P' felt the need to have this explanation in his account suggests a controversy in those days on this matter. YHWH tells Moses that Abraham knew him as El Shaddai and did not know the name YHWH. We are told that Isaac's God was called 'Fear' or 'Kinsman', and Jacob's God was called the 'Mighty One'. Of course, we should keep in mind that the perception of 'God' in those days was very different than today. Could anybody have a sensible answer to the question: If all these Gods were the one and the same God why did this God made Himself known under four different names? Since a sensible answer is impossible we will only say that these Gods were the personal Gods of the persons concerned, there was not a 'sole' God... and move on.

Abraham sat down and ate (!) with his God at Mamre, Hebron; Jacob wrestled with his God El until daybreak. This early concept of an anthropomorphic (human-like) God (of writer 'J') wandering among mankind and appearing to them would become an anathema for the Israel later on; when 'E' takes up the matter and starts writing down his account he makes clear by his approach that he considers the intimacy between divine(!) and mankind unseemly. He amends the old legends and makes God speak to Abraham through an angel (of course, communication between a divine being and the man could only be possible via an 'interface') thus makes those old stories less anthropomorphic.

Old Testament page 2