When was the Torah written?

Divine Right? An AI art image by Doug X

The idea of when was the bible written begs the question, which bible? Or if we narrow it down to the Old Testament or the Jewish bible, we have to ask which Jewish bible?

If you’re a casual student of bible history, or even less familiar with the subject this might be ‘All Greek to you.’ That’s something of an inside joke because the oldest intact edition of the Hebrew bible is actually a Greek translation called the Septuagint.

There are, I think, self evident problems with our oldest edition being a translation when it comes to having knowledge of what the original text said. A friend of mine used to reference a quote about translations, that a translation is like a woman, if it’s beautiful it’s unfaithful.

But going back to having a casual knowledge of the world around 2000 years ago. A different friend, very intelligent, lawyer, member of Mensa, we were talking about the three wise men coming to see Jesus in the New Testament. And he said they had to be from Israel. And I said they weren’t they were from the East, like from Persia. And my friend said “Persia, but everybody was either Roman or Jewish back then.”

So I don’t think everybody has a clear idea of the geography and countries that existed at the time. So here’s a link to a map of the time. And all the gospel of Matthew tells us about the wise men is that they came from the east though later tradition identifies one as a King of Persia. Persia itself, known in modern times as Iran, was known as the Parthian empire around the time of 30 BCE, in case you looked at the map and didn’t see Persia.

Going back to the non expert but interested amateur I only recently learned that there was a Northern Kingdom of Israel and a Southern Kingdom Judea and that the unified monarchy of both in the times of David and Solomon is probably mythical ie. without historical basis. And Samaria was the Northern kingdom (modern Palestine) and Samaritans remain a separate sect of Judaism that only acknowledges the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch (penta for five) as scripture. So there is a Samaritan version of the Hebrew bible, separate from that of the one we know today.

This when the bible was written question is pretty complicated and we haven’t even begun to talk dates.

So let’s talk centuries. The archeological finds show literary development around the 9th century BCE show capability of writing the pentateuch. And we have evidence based on the Dead Sea Scrolls that the text was relatively stable by the 2nd century BCE. So we have a range of approximately 700 years. It’s important to understand that the text describes events from around the 15th century BCE and so at earliest, the writings are some 600 years after some of the events (the mythical Exodus) it is describing, aided by oral traditions.

To understand how fragile this type of understanding is, try writing everything you know about the events in Europe from 1400 to 1500 CE without consulting any written materials, just from what you remember hearing from teachers and friends.

Assuming you tried my little thought experiment did you include the battle of Agincourt, the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake, or the invention of the printing press?

It is not great that we don’t know the dates of the formation of the bible with greater precision but scholarship is a work in progress. We do know that the Hebrew bible wasn’t central to the Jewish religion as practiced until after the destruction of the 1st temple