Civilization #22: The Literary Genesis of the Yahwist

We've previously discussed King David of Israel and how he initiated the project of the Bible to create legitimacy and authority. We will continue along this theme today.

The Traditional Chronology of the Bible

In the beginning, there was God. In the Bible, his name is Yahweh. He created the world and then created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. People who take the Bible literally believe this was about 4,000 BC.

As we know, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed God. They had two sons, Cain and Abel, and their family began to populate the Earth. But then, humans started to misbehave; we went to war and were greedy, so God decided to destroy the world in what is called the Great Flood. This is the story of Noah's Ark. Noah was beloved by God, so God told him to build a great ship, and he would be able to live.

After Noah's Ark, a man named Abraham came along around 2,000 BC. Abraham was born in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia and was beloved by God because he was a righteous and decent man. God made a covenant with him. A covenant is a contract, a promise. The contract was this: if you, Abraham, swear allegiance to me, Yahweh, I will make you and your descendants the founders of a great nation called Israel that will stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates—the promised land. In return, as a mark of this covenant, Abraham and his descendants will engage in circumcision, where the foreskin of their penis will be surgically removed at birth.

Abraham had a son named Isaac, and Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob was the younger son of Isaac, so Esau should have inherited the birthright and the blessing from his father. But Jacob played a trick on Esau and stole the birthright. Esau was very angry, so Jacob had to run away and live with a relative for a couple of decades. While there, he married two sisters named Leah and Rachel. Together, they had 12 sons, who became the founders of the 12 tribes of Israel. God would rename Jacob as "Israel," so Jacob is really the founder of the nation of Israel.

Jacob's youngest son was named Joseph, and he was so beloved by Jacob that his brothers became jealous and sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph was also beloved by God and had a special gift for reading dreams. He became a special advisor to the Pharaoh and grew very wealthy. Meanwhile, back in the land of Israel, Jacob and his family were facing a massive famine. Joseph came and rescued them, and the entire nation of Israel moved down to Egypt, where they became very wealthy and prosperous. Because they had many children, they eventually became a threat to the establishment after a couple of decades. The new Pharaoh, who had no memory of Joseph's contributions, enslaved the Israelites. He wanted them to die, so he forbade them from having sons and sanctioned them as much as possible.

Eventually, a man named Moses was born to the Israelites in Egypt. Because he was a boy, he was supposed to be killed, so his mother put him in a basket that drifted down the Nile and into the hands of an Egyptian princess. Moses grew up as an Egyptian prince, but God eventually informed him of who he really was: the prophet who would deliver the Israelites back into the promised land.

The Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go. There was a major contest between Moses and the Pharaoh, and God sent down 10 plagues to force the Pharaoh to release the Israelites. As Moses was taking the Israelites into the promised land, the Pharaoh had a change of heart and wanted to destroy them before they could escape. The Pharaoh chased them, and Moses caused the sea to part. They crossed the valley, and when the Pharaoh and his army were about to enter, the sea closed in on them and drowned them.

When Moses and the Israelites were in the desert, Moses ascended a mountain to receive the law of God, which we call the Ten Commandments. But while Moses was away, the Israelites created an idol to celebrate Yahweh, and Yahweh hated this because he does not want to be represented on Earth. Yahweh sent them into a long exile in the desert and told Moses, "You will deliver the people from Egypt, and that is your mission. But you will not enter the promised land. You can see the promised land, but you will not enter it."

The mission then went to Joshua, Moses's disciple. Joshua and the Israelites started a massive military campaign into the land of Canaan, the promised land. Over the span of years, they massacred the people and created the nation of Israel. Then we enter the period called the Judges, who were 12 individuals who became the tribal leaders of Israel. At this time, Israel was at war with all its neighbors: the Moabites, the Philistines, the Canaanites. This period lasted for a long time until the Israelites picked a king named Saul to lead them. From King Saul would come David, who would usurp the throne and become the great king of Israel that we remember today. David is considered the real founder of the state of Israel as well as the Jewish faith.

History vs. Cosmology: Why the Bible Isn't a Historical Record

Because the Bible is written almost like a historical document, for most of human history, people believed it to be literally true. But in the past 300-400 years, many archaeologists have tried to prove the events in the Bible. For example, if there really was a flood for Noah's Ark, there would be a geological record, a ship, a memory of it. But we have never been able to find any concrete evidence to support Noah's Ark. What about the Garden of Eden? If it really existed, we could also find it, and we've never been able to.

What about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Again, there is no evidence that any of these individuals ever existed. What about Moses? We would think if Moses really did exist, there would be some records of him in Egyptian history. Ten plagues would be a travesty and a disaster for the Egyptian people, yet there is no record of that. The parting of the sea? No record. Joshua and the Judges? Nothing.

It is only when we get to David that we begin to see historical records and proof that he actually existed. Before that, nothing in the Bible has been proven to be historical. This is very confusing. If you see the Bible as a historical record, you will only get confused. If you see this as a chronology, it makes no sense. If you see this as a work of fiction, like many people do, it doesn't make much sense either, because when you read the Bible, these events aren't actually interconnected. David has no memory of Moses, for example. That's weird. Moses has no memory of Abraham. These stories are not interconnected.

So if this is not a historical record, and if this is not a work of pure fiction, what is it? This is not a chronology; this is a cosmology.

The Three Purposes of the Biblical Project

Kings in the ancient past sponsored writing projects for three major reasons:

1. To create legitimacy and authority.
2. To create a national identity and cohesion among the people.
3. To achieve differentiation—to tell people who they are not. "We're Israelites; we're not Egyptians, we're not Canaanites, we're not Philistines."

For the Israelites and for David, these three imperatives were particularly salient and necessary.

1. Legitimacy

Remember, David usurped the throne from Saul. Saul came from a noble family and was elected by the chieftains to be their king. David launched a rebellion and eventually took the throne, so he had a major legitimacy problem. As we discussed, the Bible solves this problem by presenting him as a poet king. This is a very important concept. There have been warrior kings who win legitimacy by defeating their enemies. There have been priest kings who are the head of a major religion. But David is the first poet king. He writes poetry, he sings songs, he's a sensitive soul. This explains his affair with Bathsheba and tells us he could never have possibly been ambitious enough to want to kill Saul.

Why is he king of Israel? Because God is the poet God. Yahweh is the poet God. This is a radical conception of divinity in the ancient world. Gods previously had been priests or warriors, but this is the first time in human history where God is presented as a poet. When you read the Bible, it's very interesting how he creates the world: he speaks, and things are created. He says, "Let there be light," "Let there be heaven and earth." He speaks, and a new world is created. Then he looks at this world and says, "And this is good." He's like a writer who speaks words and edits his words to create something more beautiful. He's a poet, and as a poet, he's very sensitive. He creates Adam and Eve because he's lonely; he wants friendship.

In other words, the Bible is fundamentally a story of friendship between two poets who are alone in the world and who find comfort in each other's existence. The way the Bible accomplishes this is through the idea of the covenant. There are four major covenants, or promises, in the Bible:

1. The Noahic Covenant: After Yahweh destroys the world, he feels tremendous remorse. He promises Noah that as long as humans are not too evil, he will not destroy the world again.
2. The Abrahamic Covenant: Yahweh says to Abraham, "If you and your descendants stay true to me, I will create a great nation out of you. I will give you the nation of Israel."
3. The Mosaic Covenant: If the Israelites follow the Ten Commandments and worship only Yahweh, then Yahweh will protect them as a nation and show them favor.
4. The Davidic Covenant: Something interesting happens here. The previous three covenants are what we call conditional covenants: "If you do this, then I will do this." But when we get to David, it's unconditional. "I, Yahweh, will promise that you, David, and your descendants will forever rule Israel. The House of David will forever rule Israel."

It's an unconditional covenant that shows his everlasting friendship with David. In other words, the Davidic Covenant marks the end of biblical history. Yahweh, this great poet God who has searched the universe for friendship, has now found his great friend in David. His search has ended, and biblical history has ended. This is a radical new idea in human history: how a king and a God can be poets, and how reality can be constructed through words. That's why in the Bible there's a very famous phrase, "In the beginning there was the Word," and that's why Jewish people are so literary. It's part of the tradition.

2. Cohesion

The second purpose is to create cohesion. After the Bronze Age collapsed, the land of Canaan was in complete chaos. You had all these different groups: nomads from the desert (the Bedouins), the hill people of Canaan, refugees from destroyed cities, Egyptian priests, foreign mercenaries, and now the Sea Peoples—Greeks and others coming into Canaan because they've lost their lands back home. You've got this very diverse group of people in competition with other groups like the Philistines. They need to create a national identity out of all this, and that's what the Bible is doing.

There's a very important concept called syncretism, which means bringing different religions together to create a new one. For example, if my god is Zeus and your god is Hera, and I conquer you, we might marry our gods to each other. Now Zeus is married to Hera, and they have children like Aphrodite and Athena. This is a way to smooth the process of conquest.

This is also true for genealogy and family history. Every tribe has a patriarch to tell the people, "We've been in this land the longest, and that's why we have legitimacy." When tribes get together, intermarry, and form alliances, their ancestors merge and become sons and fathers of each other, as though it's one family history. You take these different family histories and merge them into one line—the same process of syncretism.

In this instance, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent three major tribes of Israel coming together to form one family history. The most powerful family is that of Jacob, because Jacob (Israel) gives his name to the new nation. The second most important is Abraham, the progenitor of the family. The third is Isaac, who, in fact, receives the least amount of attention in the Bible.

This syncretism also helps us explain Moses. We've been looking for hundreds of years and have not found any evidence that Moses, or anyone like him, ever existed in Egypt. So what is the Moses story doing? It's explaining why there are Egyptian priests in the nation of Israel. Why are priests important? If you're David and you're now king, you want to centralize your power. The easiest way to do that back then was by centralizing religious ritual. He made Jerusalem his new capital and built the Temple of Jerusalem, which became the house of Yahweh. If you wanted to worship Yahweh, you had to come to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice, and who controlled the sacrifice process? Priests.

Why were Egyptian priests controlling this process? Because they were the ones, led by Moses, who brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and delivered them into freedom. "Moses" is an Egyptian name; it means "son of." For example, "Ramses" means "son of Ra," the sun god. Both Moses and his brother Aaron have Egyptian names. David was heavily reliant on these Egyptian priests to centralize authority. Also, the idea of circumcision is an ancient Egyptian practice that priests specialized in. If the new law is that to be an Israelite you must be circumcised, you're going to go to an Egyptian priest because they know how to do it. By making circumcision the major mark of what it means to be an Israelite, it gives authority and power to these Egyptian priests.

The Judges are believed to be local heroes that bring all the other tribes of Israel together. In other words, if you are a member of this new nation of Israel, you have a deity or an ancestor within the cosmology of the Bible. This explains why the history of Israel is so convoluted, contradictory, and complex: it's trying to create a national identity where everyone is able to contribute to the creation of the nation.

3. Differentiation

This is the most important point. You have Egyptian priests in Israel; how do we know they're loyal to Israel and not to Egypt? Because the Egyptian priests went to war with the Pharaoh. We have Canaanites within the state of Israel; how do we know they're loyal? Because they went to war with the Canaanites.

What's interesting when you read the Bible is that the Israelites, in their history, went to war with everyone: the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Canaanites. Why? Because they had members from every single geography and location in that area, and they needed to differentiate themselves. The best way to differentiate yourself is by going to war with them.

I have to warn you, when I use the word "nation," this is not in the modern sense. It's a loose political affiliation that is fluid. Today, if you're Chinese, you're stuck being Chinese. But back then, if you were an Israelite, you could walk across the street and become a Moabite. The idea of identity was extremely loose and fluid. The very idea of ethnicity, race, or group identity back then was basically non-existent. The idea of "Israel" is a literary creation; the idea of an "Israelite" is a political creation.

The Literary Genius of the Yahwist

This explains why the Bible is structured the way it is. But then the question is, why do we have a Bible today and not other texts from Egypt or Mesopotamia? Why was the Bible able to conquer the world and capture the imagination of humanity? It was how it was written that made it so powerful.

The stories of David, like the Bathsheba story, were likely written by what we call the court historian. We have no idea who he is, but those stories are good propaganda and spin, not great literature. But the person who wrote the Bible, especially Genesis, was a unique literary genius on the stature of Homer, Plato, and Dante. We call her the Yahwist.

Why do we call her the Yahwist? It's just a convention because she uses "Yahweh" as the name of God, whereas other writers do not. We are fairly certain it's a "she" because she focuses not on war or conflict, but on domestic tragedy and affairs: childbirth, marriage, love. This is unique in human history.

There are many who believe she was of the court of David. What she writes is very favorable to David's court. Also, back then, only aristocratic women had the privilege of reading and writing. She clearly had access to the mythology of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia; she had a great education. I will go further and make the argument that she must be either the daughter or the granddaughter of King David. The reason is that what she wrote was so controversial, unique, and imaginative that the priesthood could not possibly have accepted it if she were of low birth. She must have been someone of high authority.

There is a precedent for this. Around 2000 BC, Sargon of Akkad, the first great empire builder, appointed his daughter, Enheduanna, to be the high priestess of their religion. What's interesting about her is that she was a poet and is the first named author in human history. So there is a history of kings appointing their daughters to be the official poet of their nation.

But honestly, we'll never know, and it's not important. We just have to know she was an exceptional literary genius who made the Bible what it is today.

Re-reading Genesis: The Stories of Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel

You think you know the story of Adam and Eve, but I guarantee you it's wrong. The mainstream understanding is that God told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because it was poison. They disobeyed, and God banished them for this first act of disobedience, our original sin. That story is completely and utterly wrong. That's not what it says in the Bible.

God says to Adam and Eve, "Don't eat that fruit." They are curious. Eve meets a serpent, and they talk. Eve says they can't eat the fruit because it's poisonous. The serpent says, "No, it's not poisonous. You're being lied to. The reason Yahweh doesn't want you to eat from the fruit is that once you eat it, you'll become like God. Your eyes will open, and you will have the knowledge of good and evil."

Eve gets angry because she feels manipulated and convinces Adam to eat the fruit as well. They eat it, and their eyes are opened. Yahweh visits them and discovers they're hiding. He sees right away they're embarrassed about their nakedness and knows they've eaten the fruit. Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent. Yahweh decides to punish all three. He tells the serpent it will slither on the ground and be hunted by men. He tells Eve she and her descendants will suffer the pains of childbirth. And he tells Adam that from now on, life will be hardship, toil, and suffering; he must sweat to grow food.

And then he does this. This is where the Bible demonstrates its genius.

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”

This is where the Bible is genius because it's telling us why God is banishing them. It's because there's another tree God didn't mention: the Tree of Life, which allows you to live forever. There are two things that differentiate God from humans: God has knowledge of good and evil, and God lives forever. That's it. If Adam and Eve now know good and evil, and if they eat from the Tree of Life, they can live forever. God is afraid we will become like God. Therefore, to protect the Tree of Life, he has to banish us from the garden.

What is "knowledge of good and evil"?

This doesn't mean you know God and you know Satan. It means you know what's good for you and what's bad for you. Before I knew good and evil, if I hit this table, I would feel pain. I'd wonder, "What is that? Is that good or bad?" I wouldn't know, so I'd do it again. I couldn't learn from my mistakes because I couldn't differentiate. But now that I know good and evil, I hit the table, feel pain, and think, "That's evil. I shouldn't do it again." Knowing good and evil means you have the capacity to learn and grow through self-reflection. If you can do this forever, you become God because your knowledge becomes infinite.

The key line is, "And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them." This is right after he punishes them. This is God pitying them and giving them a present. It's paradoxical. Why would God do this? I think this is God showing remorse and regret. This is a radical idea, but this is God saying to Adam and Eve, "I'm sorry for this."

What did God do wrong? God lied to Adam and Eve. He said, "Do not eat from this tree because it's poisonous." Imagine you're my two young daughters and you see me drinking whiskey at night. You ask what it is, and I say, "It's poison." You ask why I'm drinking it, and I say, "Because I'm older. When you're my age, you can drink this poison." You're curious. Your uncle visits, and you ask him if alcohol is poisonous. He says, "Of course not." So you break into the liquor cabinet, drink whiskey, get happy, and throw up. I come home and yell at you. Then, after you've been crying in your room, I come knocking and ask if you want to go to McDonald's. You understand the story? I know I'm wrong. I shouldn't have told you alcohol was poisonous. I was a bad parent.

What's remarkable about the story of Adam and Eve is that it's basically a domestic comedy. It's something we can all relate to. What's also powerful is that God is fallible. He made a terrible mistake. What's important is that God understands he's made a mistake, which is why he's showing remorse. Yahweh is a poet God, curious about the world. He wants friends, but he's inexperienced and naive. He's a new father, so he's going to make mistakes. Making mistakes is a process of growing up. What makes humans unique from animals is our capacity to make mistakes and learn from them, because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The story continues. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Abel is a shepherd, and Cain is a farmer. They both love God and want his respect, so they give him presents. Abel offers mutton, and Cain offers wheat or vegetables. God tastes both. He loves the mutton but says Cain's food sucks.

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry?... If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

Again, it's a domestic comedy. God is being a terrible parent. "You suck, man. The problem isn't me, the problem is you." Of course, Cain kills Abel. But what happens next is interesting. Yahweh finds out, banishes Cain, and Cain says, "If you banish me, people will know I committed wrong and will kill me." Then Yahweh says, "Okay, I will put a mark on you, the Mark of Cain, and if anyone touches you, I will punish that person." This is again God showing remorse and regret for what he's done, because he knows in his heart he's wrong. What allowed God to understand he was wrong is that Cain argued with him.

This is a radical conception of faith in the Hebrew Bible. Faith and love of God require you to argue with God, because it's only through the process of argument that God, who is fallible, will learn and grow. When you fight back, you're helping the other person grow.

The Power of Irony and Economy: The Story of Jacob and Rachel

The Yahwist is a literary genius, and two things make her stand out:

1. Economy: Using as few words as possible to express as much as possible.
2. Irony: She's funny. She's making fun of Yahweh, the highest authority in the Israelite faith. Again, that's why if she were not the daughter or granddaughter of David, there's no way this story would have gotten into the Bible.

The last story I will mention is that of Rachel and Jacob. Jacob runs away from his brother Esau and ends up with a relative named Laban, who has two daughters, Leah (the eldest) and Rachel (the younger). Jacob falls in love with Rachel and tells Laban, "I will work for you for free for seven years for your daughter Rachel's hand." Laban agrees.

Seven years pass, and there's a wedding. That night, Jacob has sex with a woman. He wakes up and sees it's not Rachel; it's Leah. He is now married to Leah. Jacob says to Laban, "You've tricked me!" Laban says, "It is the custom of our people to marry the firstborn first. If you continue to work for me for seven more years, I will give you Rachel as well." And Jacob agrees.

It's a very short story, but within it, there's a universe of ideas and emotions. We can discover that Rachel and Leah hate each other because Leah stole Jacob from Rachel. We can imagine that when Laban announced the engagement, Leah was jealous. For seven years, every night at dinner, Leah would cry and scream at her father, "How could you embarrass me like this?" We can imagine the family drama. Laban thinks, "If Jacob marries Rachel, they're going to run off, and I'm stuck with Leah screaming at me for the rest of my life." So he tricks Jacob.

We can also figure out that Rachel and Jacob love each other. Their love is the greatest love in the world because Jacob is willing to put up with this for another seven years, and Rachel is willing to wait for him. We imagine the entire family dynamic based on just a few sentences. That's the power of the Yahwist. She's writing about what it means to be human, what it means to have a family.

That's why the Bible endures. There are these powerful stories that reveal what it means to be human, to love, to forgive, to have a family. The Bible has inspired people for thousands of years because in these stories, you are part of the writing process. It's co-creation. Your meaning, your understanding, your interpretation is what gives life to these words.

Who do Christians believe wrote the Bible?

Christians believe God wrote it. In the Bible, there are people called prophets. A prophet might visit heaven or be visited by an angel, and in one scene, the angel or God takes a parchment and puts it into the mouth of the prophet. The prophet is then speaking the direct word of God, almost like a mailman.

So, there are people who believe God wrote every word. But this is a minority of Christians. Most Christians believe that whoever wrote the Bible was inspired by God. But if you actually try to read the Bible by yourself, it's impossible. It's been redacted so many times, with at least four different sources splashed together randomly and edited constantly over the centuries.

Honestly, no one reads the Bible in its entirety. Usually, people only read sections. Most people get their understanding of the Bible from preachers, who explain what these stories mean. What I'm offering you is not a scriptural interpretation of the Bible; I'm offering you a literary interpretation.