Christopher Dost’s book, Jesus’ Bible: A Concise History of the Hebrew Scriptures, is an excellent introduction to the history of the transmission of the Bible. Dost’s book is not lengthy but not shallow in context, guiding the readers through complex yet sensitive realities of how the Bible came to be from antiquity. The book is approachable, and can be read by people in any religious background or any level of education. Dost’s approach and his careful usage of vocabulary invites all who may be interested in the history of the book of the Bible, and what the Bible would have looked like at the time of Jesus. Dost’s book attempts to trace the “development of the biblical texts from their inception onward.”(30) by searching through hints in Scripture and other text to recover some of its history behind it.
Starting from the very first chapter, Dost’s book brings readers to face the historic reality of the imperfection of the widely used Masoretic Hebrew biblical text, that is generally regarded as authoritative for both Jews and Christians. Dost explains that the final form of the Hebrew Bible came from the Tiberian Masoretic Text, where the Aleppo Codex and the
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) was drawn.
In Jesus’ day, the Bible did not exist in its form today. Now if the Bible did not exist, which version of Scripture did Jesus read from? Dost writes, “there was no Hebrew Bible, just sacred texts circulating in scrolls, only some of which would become part of the Jewish Bible or become part of one of the Christian Old Testament canons.” Chapters two to five deals with the four types of evidence that had aided scholars in their investigation of the Hebrew Bible’s historical development. (31)
In chapter two, Dost writes about clues that are found in the language of the texts themselves. The Hebrew language has developed for about a thousand years during the “biblical period.” There are four different phases of Hebrew that can be seen within the Scriptures. These are divided as: Archaic (Old), Standard (Classical), Transitional, and Late Biblical Hebrew. Most texts of the Hebrew Bible can be identified with these four forms, but although it may be helpful for dating when it was written, there are other factors that makes it not as reliable. For example, for ABH, many characteristics of this form of Hebrew is also found in the second phase of Hebrew, the SBH. Because of this, the ABH has been regarded as another style of Hebrew rather than a marking evidence that the text has been written in an earlier date. Another component mentioned to consider is the distinctive usage of spoken Hebrew among different regions (Judges 12:5-6). Dost also explains how texts that use Aramic could distinguish the text to a certain time period.
Chapter three deals with reading the Hebrew Bible as ancient historiography rather than history. Unlike modern day historians, in the ancient Near East, the aim of the historiographers were not to record events accurately for future purposes. They had a different aim, and Dost explains that it is “not safe to assume that any particular biblical narrative is historical, in the modern sense of the word.” (45)
Chapter four explains the “Hebrew Bible as ancient Near Eastern Literature”, its similarity to several other scripts in the ancient Near Eastern arena of texts. “Numerous parallels between the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature has given rise to what is often called “the comparative approach” to biblical interpretation.” (53) Biblical scripture was written by human beings, surrounded by different cultures and understandings, and these preunderstandings are used within the biblical text to communicate its message.
Chapter 5 then explains the ancient Israelite scribal culture and the effects it may have had on the Hebrew Bible. Although the act of “writing” has been developed and used dating back “to as early as the latter half of the fourth millennium BCE,”(65) people who were literate in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world including Israel, were a rarity. Even military officials were not always literate according to contents written on the draft letters found in Lachish, Israel, estimated to be written around 588-587 BCE. This suggests that literacy were limited mostly to those in the elite status, “who were likely well connected with the palace and/or the temple,”(71) in ancient Israel. Like other cultures of the ancient Near East, Israel was predominantly an oral society. According to Sumerian evidences, texts were not meant to be preserved, and was written from memory.
Among many discrepancies of parallel texts found throughout the Old Testament, there must have been several that resulted from “misremembering and mishearing orally circulates and orally transmitted texts”(69), among other errors such as copying errors. In the ancient Near Eastern culture, scribes would memorize much of the classic literary texts, and this would have been probably similar for the “ancient Israelite scribal training” as well. Other scribal cultures that may have influenced the writing of the Biblical text in ancient Israel are the practice of pseudepigraphy, or the “practice of writing a text in another’s name” (70), or leaving the text anonymous. They were usually written in communities rather than individuals, and texts were fluid. Among the surrounding cultures, there are evidence of texts such as the Gligamesh and Huwawa epic that has evolved throughout 1500-2000 years.
Chapter six takes a deeper look into the authorship of the Scripture. Dost unwraps clues within the texts of the Psalter, Isaiah, and the Torah themselves and explains how the books could not have been fully written by David, Isaiah and Moses.
For example, in the Psalter, although it is commonly known as having been written by David, on Psalms 72:20 the text says, “the prayer of David son of Jesse are ended.” Psalms such as Psalm 137 clearly indicates that the psalm was written in a post-exilic time of Israel’s history, hundreds of years after David was alive. The “Elohistic Psalter” from Psalms 42-83 also pose an issue, because its characteristic of calling God Elohim instead of Yahweh, or the custom of refraining from calling God by his name, was customary to the post-exilic period. Psalm had also been found to have five different arrangements from chapter 91 and onward in the dead sea scrolls found in Qumran. There seems to have been several editors and authors who have participated in writing and arranging the Psalms. Through these past four chapters, Dost trims down different issues that blocks readers from correctly approaching the Bible.
In chapter seven, Dost talks about the Aramaic Targums and an explanation of the complexity of change of culture and language that would have come along with Israel’s exile to Babylon/Persia. With the exile, the culture of the Jewish people would have been affected. Their temple worship has become synagogue worship, their sacrifice system has become substituted by prayer. They had to learn the language of Mesopotamia, Aramaic, and their usage of Hebrew would have decreased throughout the years. By the early Persian era, the administrative language of Judah, Israel, had become Aramaic as well, as it could be seen in Nehemiah 8:8. Ezra read the Torah to the people along with its translation (Aramaic) and explanation so that the people may understand what was being said.
The Targums are Hebrew Scriptures translated in Aramaic in a way that the meaning may be understood accurately. There are three Targums, the Targum Onquelos, Targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan. The Targum Onquelos uses a literal translation, whereas the Targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan is expansive. The expansiveness of the Targums preserve Jewish traditions which some suggest that it may be earlier than the tradition shown in the Gospels. Jesus may have been drawing his preaching on information that were in the Targums, like in Luke 6:36 and Isaiah 6:9-10. The Targum also contains a glimpse of how Jewish exegesis was done around the time of Jesus.
The last chapter of the book writes about the Septuagint, along with a brief history of when and how it came to be written. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Pentateuch, or Torah, written in the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. According to Jeremiah 43:1-7, in the 6th century BCE, there were Jews who had moved to Egypt because they feared Nebuchanezzar, the Babylonian King.(105) During the last half of the 4rth century “Alexander the Great conquered the Eastern Mediterranean world and began a program of Hellenization, which involved the promotion of Greek language and culture.” (106) As a result, the Jews were in need of a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The “The Letter of Aristeas” is a fictional letter that was produced around the 2nd century BCE that says that the Septuagint was written per request of King Ptolemy II during the 3rd century to be added to the library of Alexandria. According to this “fictional letter”, the Jewish High Priest, Eliezer, “sent six elders from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, thus seventy-two in all, to Egypt with a Hebrew Torah”(106) for this work to be done. The rest of the Old Testament Scriptures and some apocryphal books were later translated and added to the Septuagint, and the collection as a whole is generally regarded by scholars as the “Septuagint”.
The Septuagint’s writers worked from the “Hebrew Vorlage” which is different from the Masoretic text. This is useful in “recovering earlier stages of the Hebrew Scriptures,”(110) and filling in voids and complications found in the Masoretic text. Dost humorously points to 1 Samuel 13:1, that in the Masoretic text it says that “Saul was only one year old when he became king and was still a toddler when he died.” Although the Masoretic text says “Saul was one year old when he began to reign, and he reigned over Israel for two years.”(111) This script, is not present in the Septuagint. The Septuagint “was for all intents and purposes the Bible for many Jews in antiquity.”(113) In 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where Paul says that all scripture is inspired and profitable, this includes both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures especially since Paul draws much from the Septuagint. (113)
The historical reality is that there were not one single authoritative Old Testament during the time of the New Testament writers in the 1st century CE. There were different translations of the Jewish Bible in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew that differed and contradicted one another that were written in scrolls. The usage of scrolls may have added to the reason because a single scroll physically would not have been able to hold the entire Old Testament due to its size. This may have been the reason why there were not an authoritative version of the Old Testament at that time. Authoritative versions were produced once the codex (codices) were used. This means that Jesus and the New Testament writers had a bigger Old Testament that contained apocryphal books, which is referred to several times within the Scriptures.
This book challenges readers to re-assess modern day preunderstandings of the Bible. Dost brings into light important issues that must be taken into account to better understand the scripts of Biblical text(s).
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About the author
Jesus' Bible creates new awareness and collides with our worldviews!
As near-everyone is interested in the ancestry of their family’s DNA, Jesus’ Bible sets out on a quest to uncover the origins of our modern Bible. The author, Christopher Dost, carefully guides the reader on an eye-opening journey. Ironically, Dost's treats us to a fresh biblical perspective by training our eyes back to original ancient context! In reading Jesus’ Bible, we peer into the ancient Hebrew Bible. Dost hands us reading glasses with a lens that illuminates ancient culture and its context. Jesus’ Bible enables one to read scripture with awareness.As a seminary student, I have read the Bible’s passages many times and I learned something foundational immediately on page 1! It neatly discusses jots and tittles, what they were in the ancient language, why Jesus mentioned them, and what the ensuing spiritual ramifications are in this context! From the simplicity of jots and tittles, weightier foundational material is presented throughout Jesus’ Bible. The Hebrew Bible was composed over a millennium and Dost provides a summary of its origins from Abraham to the rebuilding of the Temple after foreign conquests.Jesus’ Bible covers several insightful topics! Historians find much to peruse throughout this work including the Masoretic Text (the Hebrew text of the Old Testament) and a look at Israel & Judah’s past. Additionally, Dost introduces Hebrew and Aramaic, the two languages comprising the Hebrew Bible. The Bible is examined as literature, Dost asks "who wrote the Bible?", and more!Jesus’s Bible is recommended for viewing scripture with a new perspective. Dost aims to teach in scholarly methods and objectivity while inviting the reader to think more critically while reading scripture. Ultimately, Jesus’ Bible enables readers to explore scripture along-side one’s faith commitment. Jesus’ Bible goes far beyond reading scripture, it creates an awareness and collides with our worldviews!
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