(19 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
Loading...On to something different! I want to move to a new blog topic for a while. I’ve been talking about my new book – still being written! – about the Christianization of the empire – for a while, and it’s obviously the topic near and dear to me just now. But variety is the spice of life.
Several readers have responded to me about my response to the question of the sources behind the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, also called, collectively, the “Torah” or the “Law” of Moses). I thought it might be refreshing to say a few more things about these books and the question of who actually wrote them. I had discussed some of this on the blog three years ago, when I was writing my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. Here I will lift a few sections from the book dealing with this fascinating and important topic.
The question: Who wrote the Pentateuch? Historically, it was always said (as it is still often said by avid Bible readers today) that they were written by Moses, the great leader of the Israelites in the 13th century BCE, and main figure of all the books of the Pentateuch, except Genesis (the story of his birth is given at the opening of Exodus, and much of the rest of the Pentateuch is about him). But scholars came to doubt it. That’s what these posts will be about. Why doubt such a solid tradition of authorship?
Here’s how I begin answering the question in my textbook.
*********************************************************************
Periodically over the course of history, during the Middle Ages, there were readers, students, and scholars of the Torah who raised significant questions about whether Moses did, or could have, written these five books. The questions increased among European scholars during the seventeenth century; the questions came to be raised systematically in the eighteenth century; and they came to a head in the nineteenth century, when an entirely different view of authorship came be expressed and popularized, so much so that it now dominates scholarship. This is the view that …
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What evidence do we have for dating when the Philistines or the city of Beersheba came into existence? Is there evidence for actual foundings/beginnings, or is there a lack of evidence before a certain and suddenly evidence after such and such date?
If the latter, I could imagine some fundamentalists complaining that this is an argument from ignorance and pointing back to the commonly used example of “scholars once said the Hittites were made up by the bible and no such group could have existed because there is no evidence, then boom, we found evidence confirming their existence”. Any possibility that the Philistines or Beersheba existed before but we don’t have any evidence that survived?
Ah, good question. I’ll give a post on this, probably tomorrow.
Hi Bart. This is a fascinating subject. I recommend two books: ‘Who Wrote the Bible,’ by Richard Elliott Friedman and a remarkable 19th century analysis by a CofE bishop, John William Colenso, called ‘Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined.’ Are you familiar with these and, if so, what is your view of their propositions?
I don’t know the Colenso, but the Friedman is terrific and I frequently recommend it.
Dr. Ehrman, when someone asks when I think the Torah was written, I first attempt to make a distinction between being “written” versus being compiled or redacted. The legends, tales and laws within the Torah may come from old sources — maybe sources that even go as far back 1300 BCE, but the actual Torah itself, as we have it today in the Masoretic Text, could not have possibly been composed ca. 1300 BCE.
That’s why when someone asks me I prefer to talk about when the Torah was compiled or redacted. And for that date I usually refer to what I consider the two most significant bits of evidence. For starters, if one simply sits down and reads the Bible starting at Genesis chapter one, verse one, and continues reading it, as if it’s a novel, one will notice something. The Bible has a very clear through-narrative starting with the creation of the universe all the way past Moses’ death in Deuteronomy, picking up in the Prophets with the Book of Joshua, through the history of the Israelites, all the way up to the end of 2 Kings chapter 25, verse 30. After that point, starting with the rest of the Prophets, the narrative essentially stops, and the entire book becomes unorganized and unstructured. It’s patently obvious that one person is — or one group of people are — responsible for this entire through-narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings. That is to say, whoever “wrote” (i.e. compiled or redacted) the Torah part also “wrote” the so-called Deuteronomic history that ends at 2 Kings chapter 25, verse 30 (or maybe even 2 Chronicles verse 23). That’s a pretty significant clue right there as to when the Torah itself was “written”. Just look at where 2 Kings ends and the date of composition must be after that date. As it turns out 2 Kings ends in the middle of the Babylonian Exile (2 Chronicles ends with Cyrus the Great conquering Babylon not long afterwards) ca. 600 to 400 BCE. This is our first clue.
The second bit of evidence is from a completely different source. The Rabbis compiling the Talmud had a tough question to answer. Why was it that the Torah, being written in the Hebrew language, was not actually written in the Hebrew alphabet? Google the paleo-Hebrew alphabet and you’ll notice right away that it looks nothing like the modern Hebrew alphabet. That’s because modern Hebrew is based on Biblical Hebrew, and Biblical Hebrew is written in the ancient Aramaic alphabet! That is, while the Hebrew Bible is in the Hebrew language, it’s written in the Aramaic alphabet. How is that possible? What really flummoxed the Rabbis who believed the Torah was completely unaltered from the day Moses (purportedly) composed it (ca. 1300 BCE) up until the time of the Talmud (ca. 400 CE) is this question: why would Moses write it in Aramaic letters? Well, obviously Moses didn’t — the Rabbis conjectured. The Rabbis’ answer to this puzzle was that the actual written Torah, written by Moses in the Sinai, was written in the original (paleo-)Hebrew letters, but that written document was lost during the Babylonian Exile. And only after the Exiles returned to Jerusalem did the Scribe Ezra (yes, that Ezra!) supposedly re-wrote down the entire Torah from memory, in the Aramaic script. And that was the Rabbis’ explanation for why the Masoretic Text is in Aramaic letters instead of Hebrew letters.
Now, if that explanation seems a bit far-fetched, it’s because it is. That’s a completely ridiculous explanation. We’re supposed to believe a scribe dictated the entire Torah from memory (every jot and tittle), and, coincidentally, that scribe just so happened to be the most famous post-Exile scribe in Jewish history? It strains credulity. I think, however, that this legend hides a fact that the previous bit of evidence reinforces; namely, the fact that the entire Torah — not to mention the rest of the deuteronomic history up to 2 Kings — is the result of one person or one group of people who compiled and redacted the entire work post-Exile, using the script most common to both Judah and Babylon at that time, namely, the Aramaic script. That would place the final composition of the first half of the Hebrew Bible somewhere during the Persion period, ca. 500 to 400 BCE. And that, I believe, is when the Pentateuch was actually “written”.
Sources for the Rabbinic claim that Ezra re-wrote (from memory) the Torah in Aramaic/Assyrian script:
b. San. 21b http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_21.html
& b. San. 22a http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_22.html
Da’at Emet has a great article on the subject.
http://daatemet.org.il/articles/article.cfm?article_id=9
Can’t resist mentioning something funny that I read a few years ago.
Apparently, two books had been published at about the same time (though I never heard any more about them).
One claimed that the story of the Exodus had been written as a *novel*, and understood as that by its earliest readers. And one more point: it had been written by a woman.
The other claimed that the entire story of the Exodus was true…except for one teensy detail. Moses wasn’t a Jew: in fact, he was the rightful Pharaoh!
Fundamentalist Christian apologists must really have to wrap themselves in knots to explain away all the problems with the Pentateuch. I wonder how many semester hours in apologetics school are devoted to instructing the novice apologist how to handle this mess.
Ha! We covered it in several courses at Moody Bible Institute!
It doesn’t make sense that Moses would have been the author. I read somewhere that Ezra may have been responsible for writing the Pentateuch.
I have been reading about Mormonism, including the “Book of Mormon” and what I have learned so far connects to this blog in two ways:
1. First, Dr. Ehrman has blogged a lot about the “exaltation” of humans to gods, This was a new idea for me. Now, reading about Mormons, if I understand it correctly, Mormons believe that God is an “exalted” being having a wife, that Jesus was born human and was “exalted” into God, and that Mormons hope to be likewise exalted into gods. That is a lot of “exaltation.”
2. Second, Dr. Ehrman has blogged a lot about the “growth” of early Christianity. Mormons have had a similar “growth” and seem to have an amazing capacity/tendency to believe, through faith, extraordinary historical and theological claims. I wonder if early Christians had a similar capacity/tendency and whether this might account, to some extent for the growth of early Christianity. Finally, could such a tendency be less pronounced in cultures more influenced by science and historical scholarship than those of the first four centuries and the early 1800s in the case of Mormonism?.
Perhaps you’ll get to this later, but is the tradition from 2 Kings that Deuteronomy was “discovered/rediscovered” during the reign of Josiah believed to have any validity? I realize that 2 Kings just says it’s a book of the Law and not Deut. specifically.
Yes it is often thought that Josiah discovered something like our book of Deuteronomy. 2 Kings indicates he found “the Law,” but it’s not likely that he found a complete Pentateuch; and the reforms he adopts can be seen as coinciding with the requirements of Deuteronomy.
I hope you haven’t had to duck too many rotten tomatoes from people who are determined to believe the Pentateuch was written by Moses. Your arguments are convincing (to me, anyway).
Wow… takes a PHD to figure that out? Good Lawd you have a big head Bart!
I’m not sure what your point is!
hello Bart
Are there jewish scholars of the OT who question the authorship of the Pentateuch or just christian scholars do ?
Thanks
Jewish scholars as well. See Silverman and Finkelstein, Unearthing the Bible, for a brilliant exposition.
Terrific book. Also see Shlomo Sand’s various tomes. In contrast to Silberman and Finkelstein he doesn’t believe any of the Torah was written down pre-exile. When asked why, he simply says that there is no evidence.
The Bible Unearthed
Ah, right. Thanks.
Thanks Dr Ehrman,
I’ve got a question while we are at the DH:
The story of Aaron and the Golden Calf might at the first glance seem to be real, because it passes the criterion of embarrassment, but a deeper examination might reveal it to be a fictional account of a distinctly political nature.
As far as I understand, it comes from the Elohist source which was probably written in Shiloh. Shiloh was an old place or worship but then religious reforms made Jerusalem the only place where sacrifices could be made to Ha Shem, thus the priests at Shiloh were out of business and obviously hated Jerusalem and the Aaronic priesthood. Could it be that they made this story up to degrade Aaron and his priesthood?
Thanks
F. Riad
https://www.facebook.com/TheGospelofLie
I”m not sure. I generally don’t think we can know the specific place that a particular source was written.
Alright, location aside, do you believe the Golden Calf story is political in nature?
I’m not sure what you mean. Ancient Israelites did not think of “politics” as a separate sphere from “religion” (they didn’t actually have words meaning just one or the other). So yes, it was political. And it was religious. At the same time.
I have been reading up on Elaphantine and the letters Ananias wrote to the leaders of Samaria and Jerusalem. This was post Babylonian captivity, as Ananias was under direction from the Persian Emperor.
At the time, it seems that these people from Canaan, living on the southern edge of Egypt, had a polytheistic temple that included Yahweh. So it seems that as late as the time of the leaders of Jerusalem to Canaan, there was still no Judaism centralized around the Temple in Jerusalem. Some have even suggested that different interpretations of the Sabbath as well as the Festival of Weeks point to a time that was pre- Pentateuch. Or at least whatever sect of Yahwists eventually carried the Pentateuch to prominence had not yet risen to power.
I can only imagine a Jewish worldview based on the Pentateuch as a minority position in a land of polytheists who worshipped Yahweh as a primary god – in 500 BC!!
I found Christine Hayes open course on the Hebrew Bible really excellent for getting an understanding of these things. You can see it here: oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145
I now have a much better appreciation of the Hebrew Bible (even Job!)
I’m gonna check it out.
Also, why is the Pentateuch the Pentateuch. Why not a foursome of laws? I get that there is a rambling narrative of Moses’ life throughout the four books on law, and Genesis has a preceding narrative and Joshua has the narrative of post Moses Israel, but Genesis has no law in it.
Why not a Hexateuch, Heptateuch or Octateuch that would reach the narrative all the way to Ruth, the ancestor of David?
What about Genesis ties it so strongly to the four law books?
Is it literary criticism that ties Genesis to the four law books? A style of writing?
I do understand the idea that the Pentateuch was written from a variety of sources and edited into what we see today. What I do not understand is why the five books are treated as a whole, when one of them, Genesis, may have been written long after as a preamble to the law once it was consolidated together. The law code itself did not need Genesis in order to exist initially.
The word Pentateuch simply means “The Five Scrolls.” The collection was called this because they always circulated together, as a group, and were always seen as one unified narrative.
Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Deutoro(nomy), Leviticus, are all Greek. Now I am reading that it is supposed that Greek translators were the ones to divide these books up.
It seems that there is a contradiction here in the traditional idea that there were five scrolls and the idea that the Greeks were the ones that divided up on large story and made it into five different scrolls.
Were there Hebrew names for these books before the Greeks named them?
Yes, in Jewish tradition they go by their Hebrew names. They are the “five books” because they fit on five scrolls.
Jews make a distinction between all five “books” on one scroll — written in Hebrew — that they call the Sefer Torah (“Torah Book”), as distinct from a collection of each individual “book” or volume, in either separate scrolls or codices, that they call the Chumash — a Chumash meaning one-fifth or one of five parts (chamesh is the Hebrew word for “five”). Each individual “book” has a traditional Hebrew name — Genesis is Bareshit (“In the beginning…”) in Hebrew; Exodus is “Sh’mot” (“Names”); Leviticus is “WaYiqra” (“And he exclaimed…”); Numbers is “BaMidbar” (“In the wilderness”); and Deuteronomy is “D’vrim” (“Words”). Hope that helps.
Yes and no. I have to wonder if there is any evidence of Jews naming these books before the Greek naming, or after. It seems there was a strong determination to revive the Hebrew nature of Judaism in the first century AD, perhaps as a result of the destruction of the Temple. And of course there have been several revivals of Hebrew throughout time, with the rise of Zionism being another example.
Also, it still seems awful convenient that what was split into five books was originally one item that happened to fit on five scrolls.
Am I just being confused by the fact it was translated and we tend to use the Greek nomenclature? It is hard to approach these puzzles with a clean slate.
I believed for years that – in part because of the Pentateuch authors’ knowledge of how some things were done in Egypt – it was considered likely that a significant number of Jews had migrated to Egypt long ago, and centuries later, at least some of their descendants had migrated back to Canaan. With the migrants, in both cases, fleeing famine in whichever region they were leaving.
I also believed the Jews/”Hebrews” had never actually been “enslaved” in Egypt – because Egypt didn’t have “slavery” as such! They *conscripted* their own peasant class to perform hard labor (e.g., construction of pyramids), and they would have conscripted the Jews/”Hebrews” as well. (“Conscription” probably being distinguishable from “slavery” by its being for set periods of time.)
And I’d read somewhere that the term “Hebrews” originally meant “people who hired themselves out by the day.”
I *think* you may have told me, at some point, that *all* of that was wrong. If so, could you explain it again?
We don’t know what the word Hebrew may have originally meant. And I’m afraid we have no definitive evidence that the ancient Israelites were ever in Egypt — no archaeological record of them, or of the Exodus, e.g. There is a lot written on all this. You might look at the books by William Dever for starters. (E.g., “Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From?)
I can add that the word Hebrew in Hebrew itself — ‘ivrit (עברית) — is related to the Hebrew root for “to cross” or “to traverse” — ayin-bet-resh (עבר) — as in to cross a river, for example. Now, the question is, if this is the actual origin of the name of Hebrew language, the Hebrew people and the Hebrew culture, which came first, the tradition that the Hebrews crossed the Jordan, as recounted in the Book of Joshua? Or did the tradition that the Israelites crossed the Jordon lead to their language and culture being called Hebrew? It’s a chicken-and-egg question.
My sense is that there exists so many dualities within the Israelite/Hebrew culture that it’s awfully suspicious — the distinction between Israelite and Hebrew being one of such dualities. Are “Hebrew” and “Israelite” synonymous? Other examples are God being refered, seemingly interchangeably, as to both El/Elohim and YHWH. Another example is how Jacob has two names: Jacob and Israel. You’ll also notice that Isaac’s son Esau is the father of the nation of Edom, and that Edom is called both Esau and Edom, as if they’re both viable names for the founding patriarch/ethnonym for the Edomites. You’ll find these kinds of dualities all throughout the Hebrew Bible, and they all point, suspiciously, to a possible assimilation of one desert-dwelling semitic peoples (the Hebrews) into a population of Canaanite peoples (the so-called Israelite confederation) at some point in ancient history — possibly some time between the collapse of the Canaanite nation-states of the early 2nd millenium BCE and the rise of the Israelite “tribes” in the late 2nd millenium BCE. Read Finkelstein’s “The Bible Unearthed” for a great overview of this theory.
This may be a little simplistic for a learned discussion forum such as this, but I found this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5RfScpEcZ8
by Silverman and Finkelstein absolutely illuminating.
I recommend it, especially to those at my level!
Do you generally believe that Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Solomon, etc are all fictional characters for oral stories being passed down? (Or if any of them were historical people, the stories passed down were fictional)
I think Saul (probably) and David and Solomon (certainly) were actual people, though the stories told about them are highly legendary. The others I think are entirely lengendary.
I agree. But what makes Saul probably and David & Solomon certain?
We have an inscription that mentions David.
Could the inscription be due to the legend of David? Is there an inscription of Solomon?
You can read about it here: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/artifacts-and-the-bible/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/
I had heard about the inscription and this article is very interesting. Since the inscription is more than a century after David’s death, I am guessing that there is a chance that the inscription is due to legend. There is no mention of Solomon. Is there any reason to believe that Solomon existed other than what we find in the Bible?
It is referring to the “house” of David — that is, to the succession of kings from his line. But that of course does not *prove* he existed. Still…
Years ago, I looked at Amy-Jill Levine’s “Old Testament” course in the Great Courses. I remember her saying Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may have been tribal gods; after the tribes merged, their gods morphed into a human father, son, and grandson. Do you think that’s likely?
Yup, it’s possible. But I tend to think they are simply legendary figures, not originally divine beings.
I’ve read that post Seti, Ramses the Great had an older brother who ruled for 4 years prior to Ramses’ kingship in Egypt–I think that older and good king’s name has been erased or something from the limeston, so that it doesn’t appear on steles, we don’t know his name.. (But you do have for instance Thut Moses (Mosis) as a king around 1485/1464-1431 BCE with a name similar to Moses or Moshe in Hebrew.) The queens in Egypt had a palace in Sinai, and my guess has always been that the people in Goshen probably started going east from Thebes and Memphis when there was actually a crop failure or drought, plagues and pests around the Nile. (The Nile does turn red with bloom=unfit for crops possibly, or unfit to drink even, not sure.) (Maybe every 7 years or so?)
The first Hebrew writing is the Gezer Calendar, that is the old way Hebrew with only consonants I think like egyptian from 10th century BCE. 1050 BCE was the Phoenician language and proto-Caananite which grew into Aramaic and Greek over time 6th century BCE say–hard to pin these dates down, but by then the languages had “caught on.” (Correct me if this is erroneous–I saw a good post above on language.) I think books came along as scrolls and manuscripts around 400 BCE didn’t they? Linear A and B were earlier back to 1400 BCE. Stone tablets and clay tablets were popular but they usually were short and contained accounts and yes laws – but they would be heavy and/or fragile to transport. An ark was a table that a king sat on, with tablets under the seat – tablets that had debits on them and other contracts. When a contract was broken or a debit paid to the king, he broke the tablets on his knees or had them smashed. I guess they could have carried the stone tablets (small with some kind of hieroglyphs carved in) of Moses along into the Near East from Egypt. If Moses was the X-king of Egypt he would have had some scribes and servants with him, along with who ever followed along from Goshen. Maybe folks drifted East from Egypt over time through the desert lands, with Sinai as the jumping off point – possibly the king, Hebrew born or Egyptian born, really was seeking the one God. The Egyptians (documented historically, as I recall) called him “the God of Mercy” unlike the cruelty they sometimes experienced from their pantheon. We know of Ahknaton of course farther south in Egypt had his one god Aten, who rose with the sun in the East. A lot of Egyptian priests were exiled for their beliefs and or lack of them. They probably joined the God of Mercy party in search of better horizons.
I picked out some dates for Moses as 1393-1273, but this is just off Wiki, Jerome said he lived about 1592. Even in the days of Jesus/Yeshua – think of all that was being memorized such as the Psalms and the Proverbs, taught in synagog, maybe by Yeshua and Simon Kepha on the North/West shore of the lake in Galilee. I think both were smart and educated (Simon Bar Jonah has 12 servants that fished in his boat I read in the Apocrapha or Syrian stories, a large family with a healed mother, a wife that travelled with him, & Priscilla possibly his daughter in Rome). I think Yeshua and the others might/could have been well educated, studied Greek, Hebrew as well as Aramaic, maybe even Latin? I know that isn’t popular, but they did some great stuff – pretty amazing. I would think all these OT stories have true value, but they must have been passed down via memory until say 400BCE sometime, when they were jotted down at length? If they were lost but retrieved, possibly from the collective memory. We know Yeshua quoted psalms and things a lot – even on the cross apparently. It was what the kids were taught at “school.”
Moses and Joshua both must have been amazing, awesome, like our New Testament folks too. Over time a lot of writings get attributed to people who were so strong and had such a great effect on history, some probably worked in or even things deleted out. It’s fun to find the really early manuscripts – like the discoveries that come along from digs and see how things have changed with time and need and the perception of the age.
So many wicked smart people on this blog. How I wish the criminally insane Jesus-fied politicians in this country took the time to learn about this. I love this stuff not only because it’s so interesting but because it so frustrates the zombies for Jesus crowd.
Hello Dr. Ehrman, I have two questions for you.
1. Karen Armstrong’s book “A History of God” goes into some of this. Do you like this book and would you recommend it?
2. This question is far more complicated. The gist of the question being, how can you completely fabricate the existence of major figures to whom huge, important parts of history are ascribed, only for them to come out to be fake in the end?
By this I mean, how do you completely fabricate the Exodus, a character of Moses, the Ark of the Covenant, Abraham, the patriarchs and all of those people (who are seemingly central to the Jewish faith) and everyone in the era goes on believing them with 100% certainty and faith that they and the events they participated in were real? I get the impression that if I were to try and tell people that the Patriarch’s and Moses weren’t real people I would be saying an equivalent that George Washington never existed.
It’s very hard for me to imagine how something as important as Judaism could be made entirely on the premise of fairy tales and “campfire stories,” so to speak.
Thank you!
1. No, I haven’t read it.
2. I don’t think that these figures were “fabricated” in the sense that someone one day decided maliciously to just make them up. They evolved as stories were told and retold over years, decades, and centuries. That sort of thing happens all the time.
Huge Egyptian influence is found in the archeology of present day Israel. Moses is, from all I have read, an Egyptian name, yet was the most important law giver to Judaism.
How can this be? Greeks had mythology narratives and Law Codes, as did the Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians. But the genre of Bible book most often associated with Egyptian writings are the wisdom books like Proverbs and the songs in Psalms.
Egyptian influence in the Southern Levant stretches from prehistoric wine trade through Bar Kochba revolts, but there were times when Canaan was wrested away from Egyptian influence. Having just left the Egyptian sphere of influence could have inspired the writing of a Moses Exodus narrative at a couple of junctures in Canaanite history.
The Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greek Seleucids, and eventually Rome all pulled Canaan away from Egyptian influence as a primary trading partner and cultural influence in the Southern Levant.
Ideas such as a Covenant, Creation Story, Monotheism, and Law Code could have come from these incursions in works that later inspired much of the books of the Bible.
The Pentateuch is rare in ancient works in that it combines its narrative legend with the very important Law. The narrative of “leaving Egypt” to me signifies that Egyptian control has been mitigated (The Egyptians were not usually ones to impose religiously anyway). Though Egyptian control had been reduced periodically over a thousand years, it may have been the Seleucid Greeks invasion and then rejection whose legends of Solon’s laws inspired a collecting and editing of Moses’ Law from various sources to galvanize the Maccabean revolt.
(I am conceding a small Edition of Mosaic law, such as the Ten Commandments or the Holiness Code may have existed, but the law read by Ezra was only the Law because Ezra was a fiction written alongside Chronicles and the first part of Genesis as the Pentateuch was edited together in this late period as the Maccabean Revolt gathered steam.)
Also, this supplies an easy explanation of the chicken or the egg problem of why the Five Scrolls could have numbered five if it is thought that the Greeks were the ones who divided up the Pentateuch into five separate books in the first place. P lived in a Hellenist society. It was not the Greeks who found the large work and divided it into 5 books. It may have begun that way.