Understanding the human element in the origin of Biblical Books

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

6 August 2011

One of the first things a believer learns, is that the book he is going to read, actually reads him/her and for that matter was written under the supervision and editorship of the Holy Spirit. Thoughts and ideas targets the readers heart and decision making. The process in which the book was written can be seen in the Bible. The Holy Spirit prompted someone to write down and compose a book. The book is full of hapax legomena, loanwords, bilingualisms, grammatical surprises, neologismes, but actually the writer intended not to play tricks. He was using sources and these sources he wanted to reproduce as faithful as he could. Scientific validity of his day required absolute faithfulness to the text he is using as source and sometimes just the genre of the content can give us a hint that he is using a namelist or a recipe, or annals from a war, or his own diary, or a hymnbook etc.

One thing is for sure, the concept of oral traditions handed from generation to generation, like that which was suggested by De Wette in the Victorian Period is not a workable theory. Firstly, no text in the Bible give that impression that they wrote on the basis of having long conversations with grandfathers around a campfire. Secondly, no one remembers long lists of names. I have 61 cousins and although I know many of them by name, my father wrote me down one time a paper with the list. One needs a namelist. De Wette's theory is unpractical to say the least. So for the origin of any book of the Old or New Testament, a long tradition of oral transmission is out of the picture. Oral witnessing only was operative shortly after the event and in the form of dictation to a scribe, who jotted down every single word like a dictograph, in order not to loose authenticity. Their standards were high. Chronologies were carefully presented. If we in modern times have problems, it is not them but us that is the problem.

Textual criticism the way it is done conventionally, is working with oral traditions that they try to investigate with literary criticism inventing all kinds of redactors. However, Textual Analysis follows the diagram supplied here and literary analysis follows the life and works of the author under discussion. If it is the book of Numbers it is Moses and the period is 1448-1412 BCE. His age, his ageing process, his reliance on dictation and a scribe dictated to, as a method would be understandable. One needs to keep an eye out for hints in that direction. Style changes etc. should be explained from this angle, namely that a geronty is trying to stay scientific without repeating too much, without going off on long footnotes in memory lane before returning. The scribe is a dictograph and has to follow his master faithfully through all this. Surprises in the text should be solved within the life of the writer and his history under discussion. That is true literary analysis and there is no place for literary criticism in the modern sense of the word.