Just when you thought we’d be out of tedious regulations and into some exciting storylines, we’ve got one more week engrossed in the various facts and figures of Numbers 1-9

But I want to look at this all from a completely different angle now and use this short passage as a springboard for exploring more generally how we should understand the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and it’s various contributors.

It’s long been a tradition of the church that Moses himself wrote the Pentateuch, or at least the bulk of it (it includes the story of his death!). There are various references in both Old and New Testament to indicate that these writings are indeed his work. However, during the 20th Century, biblical scholars were wrestling with a theory put forward by a German bloke called Julius Wellhausen. Basically, Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was compiled from four primary sources. These he called J, E, D & P.

Now if you’re thinking that this is probably going to be the most irrelevant thing you’ve ever read, please bear with me, because I believe exploring this gives us a much richer understanding of the bible.

What Wellhausen said has subsequently been shown to have many flaws, so I won’t really go into it, but essentially his theory has stuck, albeit with some significant modifications. So nowadays, the majority of biblical scholars would accept that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses alone, but rather was compiled and arranged over a long period of time, rather like an Edited Highlights, by various ‘editors’ from different traditions.

This isn’t too difficult to imagine. In the Christian church we have many different traditions, as diverse as Roman Catholic, Dutch Reformed, Eastern Orthodox and American Pentecostal. If we were to try and get a summary of the whole of Christian history we would want to have input from each of these traditions, knowing full well that they would each see things very differently.

So the four sources, J, E, D & P, each represent a different tradition within Israel. It is likely (though we can never know these things for certain) that the Pentateuch as we know it was compiled some time around the 6th Century B.C., during, or immediately after, the Babylonian Exile. These four sources, then, would have had their own versions of the stories of Israel, passed down either orally or in written form over the eight hundred year period from Moses till the Exile. Let me briefly explain what each source represents.

The J source is the Yahwhist tradition (‘J’ being the German translation of the Hebrew letter ‘Y’, which is the first letter of the exclusively Hebrew name for God, YHWH) This is often associated with the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the traditions of King David’s monarchy. Mot of the J material is epic narrative, e.g. the calling of Moses from the burning bush and the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

The E source is similar to J, except that it was stronger in the Northern Kingdom of Israel (though it is almost certainly considerably older than the monarchy). E stands for ‘Elohim’ which is a term that means, roughly, ‘the only god that counts’. El was the chief god of the Canaanites and it is likely that this was whom Abram understood himself to be worshipping before being called to leave Haran. The Elohist tradition was also one of epic narrative, although it is clear that there is some clear difference between the very fierce and ‘holy’ God of J and the quieter, more ‘angelic’ god of E (for example the J tradition expressed in Exodus 19 at Sinai and the E tradition in Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles with God).

The D source is from the Deuteronomic tradition. Not that surprisingly, the book of Deuteronomy is among the credits, but it finds its way into other books as well. D material reflects a concern for obedience to Torah within the context of Covenant with God.

P stands for the Priestly tradition, which emphasised the recording of technical information regarding sacrifices, regulations, genealogies etc. It’s predominantly P that we’ve been reading since mid-February when we got caught up in measurements for the Tabernacle. P has taken us through the mazes of Leviticus and into the Censuses of this week’s Numbers readings. P is almost certainly the latest of these four traditions to come to the fore in Jewish thought, as the Priests only really got significant power after the return from exile.

These days, scholars tend to bundle J & E together as they can’t agree what texts draw from which of the two (as texts with Elohist references are clearly Yahwhist and visa versa) and their epic narrative styles make them extremely similar in genre and sets them apart from both D & P.

So what on earth does this mean to us, and how can it possibly be useful information for an average non-biblical-scholar-type?

Well, firstly, it gives us a totally different perspective on the Pentateuch if we understand it as something that grew into being over several hundred years, than if we think it was shoved together over about forty! I personally find it makes the reading experience far richer as I’m entering into a dynamic collage of experiences and perspectives rather than just the thoughts of one man.

It also gives us an understanding of the process of God’s self-revelation from Abraham onwards. God reveals himself to Abraham as El-Shaddai, literally ‘God of the Mountain’, and later as El Elyon, ‘The Most High God’. These are the names of a famous pagan god! So a large part of Israel’s tradition traces its roots back to before a clearly monotheistic belief in ‘Yahweh’, to a quasi-polytheist faith, where their El Elyon became their Elohim, the only God they would take seriously. Then at the Burning Bush, God reveals himself to Moses as Yahweh and a more uniquely Israelite God emerges. Over time Yahweh is understood to be the true identity of Israel’s Elohim. Of course the identity of Yahweh evolves and grows in Israelite understanding until God reveals himself in a human called Jesus and the story goes on. So it’s worth noting again that Israel’s faith did not appear in isolation, but was an important collaboration of divine revelation and human theological creativity within their early pagan context.

Finally, all this diversity of opinion provides an inspiration to look beyond my own traditions and small world and listen to others within our Christian story who I might find it so hard to identify with, but who may well have something very valuable to contribute to my life and faith.

Think how depressingly boring the Pentateuch would be without the exciting narratives of J and E. But by what would we evaluate this narrative if we didn’t know the covenant laws of D? And even P, despite its brain-aching attention to detail (not to mention obsession with repetition!?), brings such sociological texture to the Israelite story that we cannot fail to appreciate it.

If the Eastern Orthodox church hadn’t preserved it’s love of mystery, if Methodists hadn’t kept mission and social action in tandem, if Roman Catholics hadn’t refused to bow to Enlightenment thinking, if American Evangelicals hadn’t defended the authority of Scripture, if all sorts of varying Christian expressions hadn’t made their valuable contribution, the Christian church would be so much the poorer.

And, what would we do without fun-loving jokesters, hard-nosed executives, sensitive touchy-feelies or bookish nerds? The beauty of diversity is that unity does not depend on doing everything the same, on agreeing, or even on following the same objectives. Unity is found through deep respect of differences and a commitment to something bigger than ourselves. If Numbers 1-9 teaches us nothing, let its twelve diverse tribes at least inspire us to remember the wonderful weaving of Israelite tradition into what we now call the Scriptures.

Questions for reflection:

1. How do I feel when people express lots of conflicting viewpoints? Do I value the questions and the diversity?

2. Do I value the contribution of people who do things very differently from me? Am I taking time to understand what motivates them?

For more information on the sources of the Pentateuch see this really helpful page at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis