Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

28. Ibid., page 16. Gordon and Rendsburg, Op. cit., pages 36ff.

29. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 19.

30. Ibid., page 21.

31. Ibid., pages 58–59. See Finkelstein and Silberman, Op. cit., pages 44–45, for the role of Abraham, the rise of Jerusalem and other consequences of the E and J versions. See also Thompson, Op. cit., pages 105ff for the world of Genesis.

32. Harold Bloom, the American scholar, has argued that in fact J is the earliest element of the Old Testament, the origin of the scriptures, and, moreover, that its author was a woman. Commenting on a new translation of the J elements, he argues that this tenth-century woman conceived Yahweh more as a Greek or Sumerian god – highly anthropomorphic: exuberant, mischievous, capricious, ‘an outrageous personality’. Bloom conceives the Old Testament as an amalgam analogous to a mixture of Homer and Hesiod. This all adds to the concept of the evolution of God, discussed in the previous chapter. David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom, The Book Of J, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990, page 294.

33. Johnson, Op. cit., page 91.

34. Punton, Op. cit., page 83.

35. Ibid., page 209.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001/2002, page 38.

39. Punton, Op. cit., page 102.

40. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 123. See also: R H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913.

41. Punton, Op. cit., page 217.

42. A final element in the scriptures was the Oral Torah. This arose because, for all its authority, the written Torah did not – could not – account for all situations. For example, it allowed for divorce but did not specify what form divorce should take, nor how it should be arranged. Interpretation and explanation of the law thus proliferated and with it developed an oral tradition. In time, this oral tradition became as canonical as the written Torah and scholars with phenomenal memories devoted their lives to memorising and passing on this tradition (these men were called Tannaʾim). Eventually, however, this body of tradition became so unwieldy that it, too, had to be written down. It was a move also provoked by two disasters that had befallen the Jews – the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70, and the failed revolt against Rome in AD 131–135. After the failed revolt, the Jews were so shattered, and so dispersed, that it seemed the oral tradition might be lost. In these circumstances Judah the Prince, a rabbi, decided to make it his life’s work to record and organise all the important oral traditions. He and his colleagues completed the work by AD 200 and this work is called the Mishnah. It covers the food laws, ritual purity, festivals and Temple practice, marriage and divorce, adultery and civil rights. Punton, Op. cit., page 20.

43. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 167ff.

44. Davies, Op. cit., page 176; Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 200. See also: F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1952.

45. Johnson, Op. cit., page 93.

46. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 402.

47. Ibid., page 410.

48. Ibid., page 412. See Gordon and Rendsburg, Op. cit., page 78, for another way Job is special – its division into prose and poetry, and the significance of this.

49. Punton, Op. cit., page 192.

50. Johnson, Op. cit., page 99.

51. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation, London: BBC, 1969, page 19.

52. Johnson, Op. cit., page 102.

53. Ibid., page 106.

54. Paula Fredericksen, From Jesus to Christ, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988, page 87.

55. Colleen McDannell and Barnhard Lang, Heaven: A History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988, pages 12–13.

56. Frederiksen, Op. cit., pages 88–89.

57. Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins, London: SPCK, 1985/1997, pages 72–73.

58. Rowland, Op. cit., page 73; Frederiksen, Op. cit., page 89.

59. Rowland, Op. cit., page 88.

60. Frederiksen, Op. cit., page 82.

61. Ibid., page 93.

62. Gordon and Rendsburg, Op. cit., page 265.

63. Rowland, Op. cit., page 94.

64. Frederiksen, Op. cit., page 77. The Apocryphal Testaments of Levi and Reuben speak of a priestly as well as a Davidic Messiah, and this is confirmed in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

65. Frederiksen, Op. cit., page 78.

66. Johnson, Op. cit., page 111.

67. Ibid. But see Finkelstein and Silberman, Op. cit., page 316 for the power of the Bible in unifying the disparate Israelites.