Eyewitnesses are our best sources for the truth about any historical event. Genesis from chapter 12 onwards is filled with the reports of eyewitnesses, plus lot of retrospective historical accounts and “moralising stories.” Yet it is relatively easy to separate out the eyewitness reports. The eyewitness accounts are often entirely appropriate, revealing an appropriate knowledge of the times in which the story is set: they also help us to understand these times. The fact of Genesis including eyewitness testimony seems to be ignored by most commentators, whether so-called “liberals” or so-called “fundamentalists.” In the case of the former, it is a case of not seeing what they are not looking for; in the case of the latter, it is the failure to see the necessary divide between eyewitness testimony, retrospective historical writings and moralising stories. I hope that this web site can help both “sides” to adopt a more realistic attitude and, in the process, see how the Biblical account can illuminate our understanding of the history of Israel.

Documentary Hypothesis

Julius Wellhausen, in 1883, published his Prolegomena to the History of Ancient History, in which he set out his analysis of the authorship of Genesis and other subsequent books. In regard to Genesis he perceived that there were a number of distinguishable sources, based on the literary style of each part of this work. Others, such as Richard Friedman, have also examined the matter and arrived at a similar approach. (His work used here is The Bible with Sources Revealed, 2005.)

Based on Friedman’s work, the following “sources” have been identified in the Pentateuch (the five books) from the Old Testament / Tanakh):

  • ‘P’ Priestly source – here the Hebrew of the text is close to that found in other texts dated to a late stage in the Judean kingdom, around 7th century BC.
  • ‘J’ Jahveh source – where Jahveh is used as God’s name even before Moses’ encounter with the angel of God in Midian.
  • ‘E’ Elohim source – where Elohim is always used as God’s name before Moses and sometime after this.
  • ‘D’ Deuteronomy – which has been divided by Friedman into three separate components. This will make an interesting study in its own right.
  • Other sources, which includes the story of the encounter of Abram with Melchizedek.

The Documentary Hypothesis goes a certain way towards a better understanding of this text, but even Wellhausen came to realise that his approach did not build confidence in the written account in the Pentateuch. The missing link from his approach was the recognition that, if eyewitness testimony has survived, it had to be written down in cuneiform and then translated into Hebrew script. Yet this can be demonstrated. If this is accepted, then we can also track the ‘P’, ‘J’ and ‘E’ sources from Egypt (and the Exodus journey) to Canaan, as described below:

  • ‘P’ source contains text written in cuneiform that was not translated into Hebrew until the 7th century, plus text that was created in Jerusalem also around the 7th century.
  • ‘J’ source represents the text carried across to southern Israel from Egypt but not included in the text taken to the temple of Shiloh in northern Israel. It also includes text that was created in Hebron reflecting on what had been learnt to date.
  • ‘E’ source represents the text carried across to northern Israel from Egypt. It also includes any text that was created in northern Israel, reflecting on their own experiences and what had been learnt to date.

Whatever was carried forward into northern Israel from the ‘P’ and the ‘J’ sources is not separately represented in the text that has come down to us. This is the case even though it was likely to be represented in the documents that originally contained those sources. When reconstructing the early ‘P’ and ‘J’ sources it is necessary to make an assessment of which parts are likely to have been taken over into the ‘E’ source and add them into the hypothetical ‘P’ and ‘J’ sources.

The situation in northern Israel was different from that in southern Israel. The tribe of Judah (in the south) operated fairly independently of the northern tribes. So it is not surprising that the northern stories (‘E’ source) in Genesis have a different focus to that popularised in Judah, with the Genesis stories of the northern tribes having a greater emphasis on family matters relating to their own tribal history, and the southern stories (‘J’ source) in Genesis have a particular focus on the actions of that tribe’s ancestors.

Eyewitness Testimony

We can follow the idea of the Old Testament being based on eyewitness testimony, to a greater or less extent, in each book dealing with the history of Israel. It is planned to do this progressively as each book is examined in detail, starting with Genesis.

Genesis

Joseph was probably the first eyewitness to write down, or have written down, an account of his family and ancestry, with the clear intention of showing the high status and the inherent nobility of his lineage to the Egyptian nobles amongst whom he moved. He also wrote down, or had written down, the account of the burial of Jacob back in Canaan.

Judah, possibly through his sons of his old age, Perez and Zerah, told Jacob’s story starting with Abraham. Judah was the fourth son of Jacob, but appears to have become his favourite after Reuben had had sex with Jacob’s concubine and Simeon and Levi had acted violently against the men of Shechem in defiance of the treaty that Jacob had organized with that city.

Reuben, possibly through Joseph’s sons or grandsons, told the story of Jacob’s sojourn in Aram and their flight back to Canaan. Reuben’s story is found in the ‘E’ source.

Joseph’s sons or grandsons (probably Machir) told the story of the rest of Joseph’s life. This is also found in the ‘E’ source.

A late addition to the ‘E’ source is the contribution that can be attributed to Esau’s descendants, giving a second version of the relationship between Jacob and Esau, this time from Esau’s point of view.

Not everything in Genesis is eyewitness testimony. The challenge is to find those parts that belong to direct or indirect eyewitness testimony, and to treat the other parts as secondary or tertiary sources. As such, they are of less value in a historical analysis of the early times, even though they can be quite important in understanding the thinking of the people in later times and often contain important spiritual lessons. We should not take them out of context, and we also should not ignore them.