The phrase “under the sun” describes something that exists in this world, on the face of the earth. As such, when people respond to something by saying there is “nothing new” under the sun, they mean that the thing is hardly unique or unexpected. This saying is usually used for phenomena and social circumstances rather than material things or inventions: “Teachers being underpaid? Nothing new under the sun!” In its original, biblical context, however, the phrase has a more complex meaning.

The expression famously appears in the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes (Hebrew: Qoheleth), where the author uses it in his pessimistic description of this world and the pointlessness of human toil. In his view, people mostly fail to understand their own condition and the meaning of life. What is happening, even if it may seem new to them, happened before and will happen again: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9). This verse and the entire opening of Ecclesiastes describes the futility and senselessness of human effort. No matter what we do, nothing ever changes. That means that there is no escape from our present condition, because no human labors and exertions can bring about an improvement.

The one light of hope in this pessimistic view may be in the earth’s permanence: While human life is not stable or permanent, insinuates Ecclesiastes, the natural world is. Even here, however, the biblical writers likely could not foresee the many natural and manmade threats that imperil our planet’s survival today.

ACTIVE MUSEUM / ACTIVE ART / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Apocryphal stories about the childhood of Jesus made headlines this year. Although unfamiliar to most readers of the New Testament, such childhood stories can be found in an early Christian text known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This past spring, two scholars, Lajos Berkes and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo, published an ancient manuscript of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (see “Early Infancy Gospel Discovered”). This fragmentary manuscript contains several lines of text that align closely with other, much later manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (henceforth, Infancy Gospel). Lamentably, the provenance of the manuscript remains a mystery, but Berkes and Macedo believe it is an authentic artifact. They date the fragment to the late fourth or early fifth century.

The publication of the manuscript is important for at least two reasons. First, the language is Greek, and second, the date of the fragment makes it the earliest copy of the Infancy Gospel in any language. The language of the manuscript corroborates the scholarly consensus that the Infancy Gospel was written originally in Greek, while its date lends support to the view that the Infancy Gospel was in circulation prior to the fourth century. It seems likely, in fact, that the Infancy Gospel was written as early as the second century, when allusions to a childhood story about Jesus and a teacher crop up in the work of Irenaeus as well as in the anonymous Epistle of the Apostles. This evidence puts the Infancy Gospel within shouting distance, chronologically speaking, of the New Testament Gospels.

A first encounter with the stories in the Infancy Gospel can be unsettling. In one episode, a five-year-old Jesus curses another child, who promptly falls over dead. Understandably, more than one religious commentator went online to respond to the news about the ancient manuscript of the Infancy Gospel, denouncing it as unbiblical and heretical.

Authoritative statements about the Christian Bible and Christian theology, however, do not emerge until long after the year 150, the likely date of the gospel’s composition. From that vantage point, no ancient Christian could have foreseen a canon of the “New Testament” like the one found in most Christian Bibles today. I do not make this point to argue for the historical reliability of the Infancy Gospel. I do not know of any scholar who believes that its childhood stories about Jesus are historically reliable. Nor do I mean to suggest that all early Christians welcomed childhood stories about Jesus; clearly some authorities rejected such stories. No, the point is that the Infancy Gospel, like every other ancient Christian source—whether it is ultimately included in the biblical canon or not—is precious evidence of what mattered to at least some early Christians.

If some early Christians told childhood stories about Jesus, they must have had reasons to do so. Why? One reason has to do with demonstrations of power. The newly published fragment contains a section of the first episode in the Infancy Gospel. In it, a five-year-old Jesus plays by a stream and shapes figures from the mud. The clay toys are sparrows, which Jesus suddenly brings to life, clapping his hands and shouting “Fly away!” Dirt models one moment, living creatures the next—if readers see shades of the creation of Adam in Genesis, it’s not a fluke.

Now, not all of Jesus’s wonders cast a good light on his childhood. On the same day of Jesus’s miracle of the birds, he curses and harms another boy for draining a nearby pool of water. And in a later episode, Jesus causes members of his village to go blind, only later showing mercy and restoring their sight.

This is generally the way things go in the Infancy Gospel. The child Jesus blesses and curses. And this brings us to a second reason for why childhood stories about Jesus mattered to early Christians. It is because they place this strange child at the center of family life.¹ Readers of the New Testament may recall that there is only one childhood story about Jesus in the entire Christian Bible, and it too is a story of household tension. In it, Mary and Joseph lose track of their 12-year-old son. They eventually find him in the Temple, amazing the teachers there with his understanding (Luke 2:41–52). Note Mary’s reproachful words to the youth: “Child, why have you treated us like this?” (2:48). Jesus’s reply about being “in my Father’s house” leaves the parents perplexed: “But they did not understand what he said to them” (2:49–50). Is this the episode that inspired early Christians to spin more childhood tales?

Interestingly, this same episode is retold with minor differences as the conclusion to the Infancy Gospel. Between the opening avian miracle and the conclusion in the Temple, the gospel’s stories time and again focus on the relationships between Jesus and members of his household. When a poisonous snake bites his brother, James, Jesus heals him. When Mary sends Jesus to the well, the water jar breaks, but Jesus spreads out his cloak and miraculously collects the water. He returns to Mary with the water and she is amazed by what Jesus has done.

Perhaps most striking is how the Infancy Gospel raises the profile of Joseph. In a poignant moment, Jesus helps Joseph with his work as a carpenter, miraculously lengthening a wooden board. But Jesus and Joseph also fall into conflict. Much of the tension comes from Joseph’s persistence in seeking out an education for his son. The “schoolhouse” stories depict the child Jesus as an obstreperous pupil. Jesus, like a juvenile Mr. Spock, overwhelms one teacher with his superior intellect. In a different episode, Jesus curses another teacher after suffering corporal punishment. Joseph must deal with the fallout. He instructs Mary not to let Jesus leave the house because of his temper. Joseph even pinches Jesus’s ear in frustration and receives in return a stern warning from Jesus. Joseph finally finds a teacher who seems to have picked up on how to “teach” the extraordinary child—he doesn’t. The teacher instead yields the floor and praises the wisdom of the boy, emerging unscathed.

All these stories showcase the life of Christianity’s “first family.” The early Christians who told and listened to such stories wondered what it was like for Mary and Joseph to parent an extraordinary child. In imagining these scenes, I wonder whether early Christians may have seen a dim reflection of their own experience. Family members and friends do not have to wield supernatural power to leave us at a loss. Why is it that the people to whom we are closest, the ones we think we know best, can nevertheless say or do things that utterly confound us? How often do our most intimate relationships leave us perplexed? If these questions animate the stories of the Infancy Gospel, then the text is not only about the household of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It is also about the restless hearts and minds of early Christians.

DAN PORGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Among the Hebrew Bible’s most obscure, perhaps even alien concepts is the notion of impurity. Modern readers may wonder what is to be gained from the detailed instructions pertaining to the pollution (ṭum’ah) caused by genital emissions, disease, corpses, and creepy-crawly creatures (Leviticus 11–15; Numbers 19). Why are we so reluctant to think about—let alone discuss—these aspects of our embodied experience? And why does the Bible cast a spotlight on these topics that are so often conveniently hidden from public view?

The British anthropologist Mary Douglas took an important step in confronting biblical purity laws in her classic treatise Purity and Danger (Routledge, 1966). In this work, Douglas famously equated pollution with “dirt,” which she then defined abstractly as “matter out of place.” From this premise, she sought to decode the symbolic systems manifested in purity laws. Although this approach has been remarkably influential on biblical studies, scholars in recent years have begun to question its tendency to recast the gory details of purity laws as representing abstract social or intellectual categories rather than addressing actual pollution.

An important step forward in understanding pollution came with the upsurge of interest in evolutionary psychological approaches to disgust over the past 30 years. These studies argued that the items that arouse our disgust (which are often the same ones associated with impurity) often pose dangers when ingested or touched. Along similar lines, recent psychological studies have focused on the perception that certain items cause “contagion,” the transfer of an unwanted invisible influence. This contagion can take multiple forms. Just as study respondents were reluctant to wear a sweater previously worn by a hepatitis patient, so too they were less than enthusiastic if the previous owner was a serial killer. These psychological studies can go a long way toward illuminating why the same sources arouse a fear of dangerous contagion (impurity) in cultures around the world. Moreover, they suggest that this seemingly “religious” concept may actually be rooted in our biological nature.

The ancient Near Eastern evidence fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the historical process by which our ideas about purity developed. As it turns out, for human societies that had yet to discover microscopic germs, notions of pollution played a vital function in pathogen avoidance. Letters from the Syrian city of Mari in the early 18th century BCE provide us with the earliest unambiguous evidence of how they understood and responded to infectious disease. For example, one letter that I have translated reads:

The god is striking in the upper district, so I without delay took a bypass. Furthermore, my lord should give orders that the residents of the cities that have been touched [laptūtu] not enter cities that are not touched, lest they touch [ulappatū] the whole land. And if there will be a campaign of my lord to the upper district, my lord must stop in Terqa. He must not move on to Saggaratum. The land is “touched” (i.e., infected).¹

Even as the people of Mari interpreted the epidemics that devastated the region as expressions of divine anger, their public policy was much more down to earth, focusing on the quarantining of infected people and cities. These measures may seem all too familiar to us in the wake of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Even the peculiar idiom “touched” (Akkadian lapātu) used in regard to the infected cities is in fact an exact semantic parallel of the word “contagion,” from Latin com-tangere (“touched with”). Semantic parallels can also be found in biblical Hebrew ng‘ and ancient Greek epaphe, both with the concrete meaning “touch” used to describe the spread of disease. These parallels reveal the commonality in the way pre-modern cultures understood the experience of infectious disease.

Additional letters from Mari show how an awareness of contagion influenced domestic life. One letter from Queen Shibtum to King Zimri-Lim relates that her infected servant was placed in an isolated dwelling where she would eat her meals separately from the rest of the palace servants: “No one will approach her bed or chair.” In a letter from Zimri-Lim to Shibtum, the king expresses concern regarding another infected servant who had been freely interacting with the personnel: “Now command that no one will drink from a cup that she drinks from, nor sit in a chair in which she sits, nor sleep on a bed in which she sleeps!” This awareness also finds expression in rituals from the early first millennium BCE. For example, the Mesopotamian Shurpu (“burning”) incantation refers to contracting a “curse” by means of touching furniture or consuming food or drink touched by a “cursed” (tamû) person.

These sources provide crucial background for understanding the biblical laws of impurity. Two of the most severe sources of ṭum’ah, requiring banishment and elaborate sacrificial rituals, pertain to skin disease (Leviticus 13) and uncontrollable genital flows (Leviticus 15). Each type of pollution bears unique characteristics that determine how it is transmitted and how it is to be purified. For example, the impurity of genital flows is spread by means of furniture upon which the infected person has sat or lain, creating an invisible stain on these objects. On the other hand, corpse impurity spreads like a gas within a closed space (literally a “tent”), an understanding modeled after the spread of a decomposing corpse’s odor, which was associated with the release of the dead person’s soul (nefesh) from the corpse.

Yet, alongside these physiological sources, the Hebrew Bible also refers to pollution caused by certain types of transgression. Scholars have labeled these instances “moral impurity,” though it is important to recognize that nearly all of the relevant examples pertain to the domain of illicit sexual relations. Although it seems reasonable to view these examples, which appear primarily in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), as metaphorical, one should recognize that the association of impurity with sexuality is not arbitrary. As with genital emissions more generally, sexual violations are depicted as leaving a metaphysical stain that threatens the perpetrator—and even the community at large—with divine retribution. This metaphorical extension of purity language also finds analogies cross-culturally, not only among traditional cultures but even in modern Western society, where the topic of “moral disgust” has garnered considerable attention in recent years.

Taken together, these examples demonstrate how a supposedly religious idea such as impurity is deeply rooted in embodied experience. This recognition allows us to appreciate that the notion of pollution is based on psychological intuitions that have facilitated human survival from prehistoric times until the present day. Moreover, this embodied discourse provided a repertoire of images that could be used to express attitudes toward certain types of moral violations. In these ways, the repertoire of bodily experience provides the imagery for discussing the hidden causal forces that shape our physical and social realities.

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM / ART RESOURCE, NY

Do you recognize this portion of an illustration of a famous biblical scene?

1. Ascension of Elijah
by Juan de Valdés Leal

2. The Last Judgment
by Hans Memling

3. Ascension of Christ
by Gregorio Lopez

4. Transfiguration of Christ
by Raphael

5. Jacob’s Ladder
by William Blake

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM / ART RESOURCE, NY

Answer: (5) Jacob’s Ladder

Using pen and gray ink and watercolor, William Blake (1757–1827) prepared this illustration, known as Jacob’s Ladder or Jacob’s Dream, for Thomas Butts, a senior official in Britain’s civil service. In the foreground, the biblical patriarch Jacob lies dreaming (Genesis 28). Behind him rises the vision from his dream, here imagined as a spiral staircase ascending through the starry night sky to the golden rays above. At the foot of the staircase stand three women carrying trays and urns, and other figures are moving up and down the stairs.

This painting is one of about 80 biblical works commissioned by Butts, which Blake produced over the course of almost a decade at the start of the 19th century. The Bible was an important influence on Blake’s artistic career, and this collection represents the bulk of his watercolor illustrations. His depictions of scenes from the Hebrew Bible explore the interaction between the human and the divine. His New Testament scenes mostly revolve around the life of Jesus, with a handful of scenes from outside the Gospels. Revelation emerges as a key theme, with scenes like Jacob’s Ladder and the New Testament Conversion of Saul holding prominent place in the collection. A number of illustrations from the Book of Revelation further extend this theme into the “apocalyptic sublime.”

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST OF LILLIE P. BLISS, 1931; PUBLIC DOMAIN

For millennia, the camel has been an indispensable companion for various peoples throughout the lands of the Bible. Historically, the region has been home to the one-humped Arabian camel, or dromedary (Camelus dromedarius), although the two-humped Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus), native to central Asia, also occasionally appears in ancient art and literature.

The lucrative trade in precious commodities from Arabia, including frankincense, myrrh, saffron, and cinnamon, fully depended on these sturdy beasts so perfectly adapted to the rough and arid conditions of the desert environment. These ships of the desert can walk up to 25 miles a day and can go weeks without drinking and months without eating. Their thick-lined mouths allow them to eat even thorny bushes, and their eyes are lidded with a nearly transparent membrane that protects against blowing dust and sand. Camels can carry up to 500 pounds on their backs and are a valued source of milk, wool, and leather. Their dried dung is used as fuel. However, the story of their domestication in the ancient Near East is complicated.

In the Hebrew Bible, camels first appear in the stories of Abraham (Genesis 12 and 24), who allegedly owned and rode camels. But because the patriarchal episodes are generally dated to around 2000 BCE, and the camel (gamal, in Hebrew) was not domesticated in the Levant until about 1000 BCE, some scholars believe these references are anachronistic. However, if we consider Abraham’s Mesopotamian or Syrian origins, where archaeological and textual sources indicate much earlier domestication, it is not inconceivable that the biblical Abraham did, indeed, own camels.^a

Camels then appear in biblical traditions about the United Monarchy: King David appoints an overseer of camels (1 Chronicles 27:30); and the Queen of Sheba uses camels as long-distance mounts to visit Jerusalem (1 Kings 10:2). Writing in the fifth century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus reminds us that camels were also important beasts of war: The Persian victory over the Lydians of Anatolia, in 546, was due to the Persians’ use of camels in confronting the Lydian cavalry, because “no horse can endure the sight or smell of a camel” (Histories 2.80).

By the turn of the Common Era, the camel was so common in the eastern Mediterranean that Jesus used its bulky body to illustrate the difficulty a rich man has in entering heaven, saying, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).

Postbiblical Christian tradition then inserted the camel in the Nativity scene as mounts for the “three kings of Orient,” who followed yonder star to bring the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn Jesus.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE, LATIN 5058, FF. 2V–3R

Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian personally involved in the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome. A former political leader and priest, he is our most important witness to Jewish life and history at the close of the biblical period (first century CE).

Josephus was born Yosef ben Mattityahu in 37 or 38 CE. He came from an aristocratic, priestly family in Jerusalem, receiving a largely Pharisaic education in Jewish law and the Bible. Following his official visit to Rome in 64, Josephus played a controversial role in the Jewish resistance movement and the ensuing war. He first was a commander of Judean forces in the Galilee, then surrendered to the Romans during their siege of Yodfat, and finally advised the Romans while trying to convince Jerusalem’s defenders of the impracticality of resistance. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70, he moved to Rome, where he was granted citizenship and the emperor’s former residence, taking the imperial family name Flavius. He died sometime after 100.

During his new life under imperial patronage, Josephus wrote extensively about his firsthand experience of the Great Revolt and on the history and culture of the Jews. Four of his works survive: Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, Life, and Against Apion.

Drawing on his own experience and firsthand reports, Josephus wrote Jewish War in the late 70s. An earlier version of the tragic history, in Josephus’s native Aramaic, was sent to the Jews of Mesopotamia to dissuade them from revolting against Rome, but only the Greek version survives. In seven volumes, it first recounts the Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE) and Judean history up to the Great Revolt (66–70 CE), which Josephus then chronicles in detail, ending with the Masada story and a Jewish revolt in North Africa. Josephus generally blames Jewish fanatics (Zealots and Sicarii) for the war and its tragic consequences, even suggesting that Israel’s God Yahweh was on Rome’s side.

Jewish Antiquities, published in 93 or 94, is Josephus’s magnum opus. In 20 volumes, the work provides a sweeping account of the history and culture of his people from creation to just before the revolt. For the first 11 books, Josephus depended on the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, while for later periods (Persian through Herodian), he cites works of Hellenistic literature, including 1 Maccabees and the Letter of Aristeas.

AKG-IMAGES

Life, published in three volumes as an appendix to Jewish Antiquities, is Josephus’s autobiography. In it, he defends his dishonorable conduct in Galilee at the very beginning of the revolt but also provides context for the preceding and following periods of his life. Unlike in Jewish War, where Josephus claims he was appointed to command Judean forces from the beginning, here he portrays himself as an advocate of reason trying to dissuade his more bellicose compatriots.

In Against Apion, Josephus offers a defense of his people against anti-Semitic Greek and Roman writers, including his contemporary, the Egyptian scholar Apion. Known also as On the Antiquity of the Jews, the work seeks to demonstrate, in two volumes, the antiquity and superiority of the Judean constitution in comparison with Greek culture.

Although Josephus wrote his surviving works in Greek, his mother tongue was Aramaic. In Jewish War (1.3), he explicitly says the work was translated from an earlier version composed in his vernacular (i.e., Aramaic). Josephus used literary assistants also for his later works but claims he had become well versed in Greek by the time he wrote Jewish Antiquities (20.263). His imperfect command of Greek and the involvement of multiple assistants resulted in difficult and often obscure language. Other textual problems might be the result of transcription errors and later editorial changes or of inconsistent use of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint.

The works of Josephus substantially aid our understanding of the beginnings of both Judaism and Christianity. Josephus’s descriptions of the Temple, priesthood, religious groups, political machinations, Jewish-Roman relations, Samaritan-Jewish hostility, and Judean topography have all become indispensable for the study of early Judaism and Christian origins. In particular, we learn about the three major sects of early Judaism, namely the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees (Jewish War 2.119–166), along with figures such as John the Baptist (Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119) and Jesus (Jewish Antiquities 18.63–64).

Arguably the most consequential ancient writings in the West after the Bible, Josephus’s work was preserved by the Christian church. It circulated in original Greek versions and in Latin translations and several other languages of medieval Europe. In the tenth century, an eclectic work called Sefer Yosippon eventually mediated Josephus in Hebrew.

A good introduction to the life and writings of Josephus is H. St. J. Thackeray’s book Josephus: The Man and the Historian (Jewish Institute of Religion Press, 1929). Josephus’s complete works, in original Greek with English translation, appeared in the Loeb Classical Library series (Harvard Univ. Press, 1926–1965). An international team has been producing a fresh translation, with comprehensive literary-historical commentary, under the title Flavius Josephus, Translation and Commentary (Brill, 1999). So far, nine out of the projected 19 volumes have appeared.

NAG HAMMADI ARCHIVE/CLAREMONT COLLEGES DIGITAL LIBRARY/THE CLAREMONT COLLEGES LIBRARY

What is a “codex”?

1. The ancient Greek word for a sacred text
2. A cylindrical scroll case
3. A prayer read or recited on church holidays
4. The precursor to the modern book
5. A merchant’s ledger

Answer: (4) The precursor to the modern book

A codex (plural: codices) was a series of manuscript pages stitched together along one edge to form a book-like object. Usually, it also had a protective cover made from some thicker material. Unlike modern books, which have paper pages, a codex was made with sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus.

In the Mediterranean world, the codex was first introduced by the Romans. Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) may have been the first to convert scrolls into bound pages as a kind of notebook. By the first century CE, a similar kind of notebook called a pugillares membranei was in common use throughout the empire. The poet Martial (c. 40–103 CE) mentions codices explicitly in his works.

Gradually, the codex replaced the scroll as the dominant form of written documentation in the ancient and medieval worlds. The codex had numerous advantages: its shape made for easier storage and transport; the writing surface could be used on both sides; and when one wished to locate a specific place in a long manuscript, one could simply flip to the appropriate page, rather than unrolling an entire scroll until the desired place was reached. The codex was especially favored in early Christian communities in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Italy that valued its distinctive form, especially for their sacred texts.

© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM/ART RESOURCE, NY

This carved cedarwood panel depicting the Baptism and Annunciation of Jesus is one of a set of ten impressive iconographic panels from a door at the Holy Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, also known as the Hanging Church, in Cairo, Egypt. Using a motif frequently employed in medieval Eastern Orthodox art, the top scene shows a bearded Jesus waist-deep in the Jordan River, with John the Baptist extending his arm over Jesus and three angels holding garments on the opposite side. In the lower register, an angel approaches the Virgin Mary to announce Jesus’s coming birth.

The door panels, which are now on display in the British Museum, were carved around 1300, but the history of the church goes back much further. Among the oldest churches in Cairo, the Hanging Church was built atop two bastions of an earlier Roman fortress (enigmatically known as the Babylon fortress) that was established during the time of Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305 CE). The church likely dates to the fourth century, but its origin remains a mystery, since restoration work in the sixth century obscured evidence of its earliest phase. After a brief conversion to a mosque, the church was reconsecrated in the tenth century and has remained a center of Coptic Christianity ever since, even serving as the see of the Coptic patriarchate in the 11th–13th centuries.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM/ART RESOURCE, NY

In its best-known formulation, the Documentary Hypothesis is the theory that the Pentateuch comprises four originally independent works—identified by the sigla J (for J/Yahwistic), E (for Elohistic), D (for Deuteronomic), and P (for the Priestly source)—that were subsequently interwoven.^a It was developed to explain the Pentateuch’s various contradictions, discontinuities, and duplications that stand alongside cohesive ties that connect discontinuous parts of the text with each other.

Many of the Pentateuch’s discrepancies are well known. For example, if the world and its inhabitants were created in Genesis 1, why were they created anew in Genesis 2? Did Noah bring a single pair of each type of animal on the ark, or seven pairs of pure animals and single pairs of impure ones (cf. Genesis 6:20 and 7:2)? Is the mountain of revelation Sinai or Horeb (cf. Exodus 19:2 and Deuteronomy 1:19)? These discrepancies—and many more like them found across the Pentateuch—are persistent challenges to those attempting to make sense of the text.

At its core, the Documentary Hypothesis seeks to address these challenges by positing that the text of the Pentateuch is a patchwork, with multiple source documents combined into a single continuous narrative. Accordingly, discrepancies in the text, while challenging on the surface, are explained simply as points of dissimilarity between the sources, and thus do not represent intractable historical or literary problems.

The pentateuchal sources were written to be independent literary works; their authors did not anticipate their combination. To aid our examination, the sidebar provides a helpful illustration of the disentanglement of sources in the blood plague story from the Book of Exodus (7:14–25).

While continuing to acknowledge the literary problems to which it responds, scholars over the last century have raised serious questions about the viability of parts of the Documentary Hypothesis. Some have even declared the whole theory’s demise. Questions were extended to almost every aspect of the documentary theory: Was P originally an independent work or simply the result of a later editor? Is a J source actually identifiable?

In the face of such criticism, a number of scholars have advanced a modified version of the Documentary Hypothesis that has been dubbed “Neodocumentary.” This revised and streamlined version of the Documentary Hypothesis is both part of, and a response to, the critique that has been leveled against earlier forms of the theory.

The Neodocumentarian approach is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it emphasizes that the Documentary Hypothesis is not properly a method but a solution to a particular problem—the incomprehensibility of the Pentateuch’s story. Accordingly, Neodocumentarians identify disparate sources only in response to problems of narration and characterization in the text. If no such problems present themselves, no delineation of sources is warranted.

Second, Neodocumentarians distinguish questions of the sources’ dating from the problem of their disentanglement. Pursuing questions of dating is crucial for understanding pentateuchal texts, but the sources’ dates do not affect how they are disentangled from each other and reconstructed. In the blood plague example, it does not matter at all whether the J or P text is considered older; neither does it matter if one or the other of these sources is from the eighth, seventh, or sixth century BCE.

Third, Neodocumentarians observe a single and consistent method of compilation across the Pentateuch. This method, easily observable in the blood plague, is characterized by three principles: (1) maximal preservation of the combined works; (2) minimal intervention by the compiler(s) during the compilation process; and (3) the creation of a single, chronologically ordered plotline in the Pentateuch based on the plotlines of the underlying sources. The consistency of this method suggests that a single compiler was responsible for the Pentateuch and that this compilation was accomplished during a single stage in the text’s history.

Fourth, the principles that guided the compiler’s work do not easily admit of a discernable theological motive. In the blood plague, it is hardly clear that the compiler preferred the J account, the P account, or had a different view altogether. The questions of who compiled the Pentateuch, when it was compiled, and why it was compiled are pressing ones, but given the available evidence, Neodocumentarians are most confident in describing how the text was assembled.

Those persuaded by the Neodocumentary Hypothesis often point to its economy, consistency, and comprehensiveness. Earlier articulations of the Documentary Hypothesis have sometimes given an impression of arbitrariness in their analysis. Many have operated with faulty assumptions—for example, that the sources included all the same episodes and basic details. Neodocumentarians seek a high level of consistency and defensibility in their analysis, both in distinguishing the pentateuchal sources from each other and in explaining how these sources were combined.

Recent developments in pentateuchal studies suggest the Documentary Hypothesis will continue to play an important role in scholarly conversations. And there is still work to do. A small number of difficult texts within the Pentateuch require refined source analysis, and there remains much to be investigated regarding the individual sources. Who compiled the Pentateuch and why also remain open questions, as do questions about historical details, language, and the Pentateuch’s religious outlook.

Across more than two centuries, the Documentary Hypothesis has proven to be a persuasive account of the Pentateuch’s many literary problems. The critiques leveled against it, as is so often the case in academic research, have aided scholars in their refinement of the theory. The result is an even better explanation of both the Pentateuch as a whole and its individual parts.

—–

Nefertiti
Nfrt-jjtj
Nfr.t = “the beautiful/perfect one” (fem.) | jj.tj = “she is come”

Nefertiti was the chief wife and queen of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (r. 1353–1336 BCE), who made the sun god Aten the supreme deity of ancient Egypt and changed his name to Akhenaten. Nefertiti’s full birth name, accordingly, celebrated the sun-disk by adding the name Nefer-nefru-aten (“Perfect/Beautiful is the perfection/beauty of Aten”). The translation of both Nefernefruaten and Nefertiti depends on the meaning of the first element—nfr. Tentatively vocalized as nefer, this word can mean both “beautiful” and “perfect,” hence the two possible meanings.

In the name Nefertiti, the adjective nfr is used as a noun meaning either “the beautiful one” or “the perfect one,” both with the feminine ending t. For a more precise reading, it is spelled out using four hieroglyphic signs that have these phonetic values: nfr, f, r, and t. The second element is the stative form of the verb jjj, “to come.” The stative is one of the most common Egyptian verb forms, one that Egyptian has in common with most of the Afro-Asiatic languages, including Akkadian and Hebrew. It is used to express a state of being, often as a result of a completed action (“to come” → “is come”), in which it is similar to the past participle in English. The pronominal suffix tj here indicates the feminine third-person singular. The name Nefertiti, then, translates as “the perfect/beautiful one is come.” Contemporary transcriptions in cuneiform indicate the name Nefertiti was pronounced something like Naftita.