Sheba

CHAPTER THREE
Writing the Old Testament
T
he paradoxical idea that the Old Testament is an accurate document,
but that modern Israel is in the wrong place requires lengthy
explanation.
It is generally accepted that the Hebrew probably memorized an early form
of the Law of Moses as verse in a language now lost, and that Israelite
priests eventually wrote an expanded version in Canaanite hundreds of
years after Moses’ death.
Semitic writing was still in its infancy when Joshua reached the
Promised Land, and it seems no Semitic-speaking people adopted the
neighboring Egyptian hieroglyphic script. The first four books of the Old
Testament may have only been written down for the first time during
Solomon’s reign in order to fortify the position of the clan of the new high
priest, Zadok, and to imitate practices elsewhere in imperial Middle Eastern
states, such as Assyria and Babylon, where sacred texts were housed in a
temple. The Hebrew had already established a precedent by placing the
written Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant. Whatever they
wrote would have omitted vowels, as these were believed to be the sounds
of heaven. Hebrew scholars finally inserted vowels in the text of the Old
Testament between A.D. 500 and 950, long after spoken Hebrew had died
out around 400 B.C.E.
As mentioned earlier, Zadok was probably a Jebusite from Canaan, not
a Hebrew. The subsequent success of the Zadokite priests was largely
based on their possession and detailed knowledge of the Torah, and on
Zadok’s prestige as the incipient custodian of the Temple. As also
mentioned earlier, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land or even
by the time of Solomon’s reign, the Torah was almost certainly not as fully
developed as it is in its present form. The Zadokite priesthood must have
undertaken some of the work, including additions, but the extent of it is
unknown. Hilkiah most likely doctored Deuteronomy; and Ezra, in later