First, however, we must consider the nature of the Hebrew Bible. It is political as well as spiritual, insofar as it deals with the worldly experiences of a small, weak, and beleaguered people with an intense concern for their own survival among powerful others. Its setting does not differ greatly from that of modern Israel. The coping behaviors of the biblical figures seem to foretell the skills of Israeli policymakers, while the intense criticisms of the Hebrew prophets sets the tone for much of contemporary Israeli discussion.
The Hebrew Bible provides a treasure of political material, but it does not yield easily to analysis in modern terms. It comes to us in 39 books.
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Most analysts conclude that they are compilations gathered from several oral and written sources. Portions of the text may have been written as early as the period of David and Solomon, several hundred years after the Israelites were said to have settled in the land. The material was added to, edited, and reedited during the next 1,000 years or so.
The diversity of politically relevant material in the Hebrew Bible says something about its composition. Some episodes seem to have been composed in order to make a regime look good by describing its ancestors in reverent terms or its actions as rooted in laws that came from the Almighty. Some biblical books express sentiments sharply at odds with those in other books. In certain cases, they reflect contrasting perspectives on controversial issues. Later books (Chronicles) represent revised versions of previous books (Samuel and Kings); they have been cleaned of elements viewed as undesirable, especially those concerned with the life of David. But the editors left for us both the original and the expurgated. How all of this came to be canonized as part of Holy Text is only one of the mysteries that the Hebr ew Bible offers for modern scholars.
[T]he material contained in the Hebrew Bible has been selected and edited according to specific and ideological criteria.… This fact must be borne in mind by anyone who wishes to use it for the purpose of historical reconstruction.3
The available studies of the Bible’s composition are speculative. They are not proven beyond the capacity of rival scholars to doubt the details.
To call the scholarship inspiring, rich, complex, and confusing only begins the inquiry. It is little wonder that schools of commentary are no less diverse than the Bible itself, and that some biblical scholars denounce one another in terms like the prophets’ condemnations of blasphemy.
Orthodox rabbinical commentators differ on numerous details. How- ever, they tend to agree on the following: the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) was provided to Moses by God; the Book of Joshua was composed largely by Joshua; the Books of Judges, Ruth, and Samuel were composed by Samuel and his students; the prophets or their students composed the books attributed to them by name; Jeremiah also composed Kings and Lamentations; Solomon composed Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs; the scribe Ezra composed the book that carries his name as well as the Book of Chronicles; and Nehemiah composed the book that carries his name.4
Secular scholars have struggled with detailed analysis of the text and artful hypotheses in order to identify who wrote or edited various books and passages.5 One critic of their work calls it an
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exercise in futility … detective ventures … kept going only by recourse to unwarranted assumptions, ad hoc epicycling, non sequiturs, and other offenses against logic and common sense that could provide matter for a textbook on fallacies.6
The timing of the final edition of the biblical canon is also a subject of dispute. According to one legend, the contents of the Bible were finally decided at a conference of rabbis at Yavneh in 90 C.E.7 Yet the Talmud (compiled after 300 C.E.) refers to later controversies about the inclusion of various books.8
Quarrels about the dating of various sections of the Bible and their historical accuracy complicate any effort to assert that the Bible provides reliable descriptions of what occurred in various periods. In other words, historical Israel is not the Israel of the Hebrew Bible. Historical Israel produced biblical Israel.9 Among the questions derived from this is whether a scholar should use the biblical material to portray the politics of the time when it seems to have been composed or compiled, or of the earlier period being described.
Attorneys and political scientists who know the problems of discerning the intentions of the men who wrote the United States Constitution should appreciate this point about the meaning of biblical phrases. The authors of the Bible were ten or more times distant from us than the authors of the Constitution. Moreover, the identities of the biblical authors are not known for sure, and they were not inclined to articulate views about political institutions with anything like the clarity that is available in the records of the Constitutional Convention and other writings of the framers.
Political events portrayed in the Bible reveal different and shifting goals, tactics, and moral values without an explicit ordering of priorities.
The biblical text jumps back and forth between episodes that are out of sequence. It mixes stories of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness between long sections that proclaim God’s law. Similar provisions of the law appear in several places with differences in their formulation. Many of the laws said to be proclaimed during the Exodus seem more suited for a situation of settled agriculture.
The Bible includes descriptions of ancient social and political condi- tions that have been accepted as credible reports of reality as well as fantastic tales that seem no more reliable than those of Odysseus.10 There are numerous gaps and contradictions in its reports of ancient history.
Few nonbiblical sources corroborate the biblical record. Serious scholars concede that they must speculate about important points. They work to reconstruct the biblical materials in order to make sense chronologically or thematically. There are many missing details. Some read into what is missing from the Bible from what is known about other ancient societies.
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The text invites hypothetical extrapolations. The more complete a record that a scholar can produce with interpolations or extrapolations, the less will be its conformity with the Bible, without assuring historical accuracy.11 Some commentators rely for important conclusions on what they describe as common sense.
We cannot know any of these things, but it lies within the realm of the possible … from what we were able to piece together.12 This passage refers to the period of the exodus from Egypt, which is especially problematic due to the absence of sources independent of the Bible. There are more sources for later periods, but even these leave a great deal to the interpolations and interpretations of modern writers.
A modern historian writes that “the study of Israelite antiquity [is] … a cross fire … a cacophony of historical approaches, a scramble to make an end run around the problem of interpreting text.” The scholar quoted here makes his own heroic effort to find credibility in biblical stories. With respect to some episodes, he makes the modest claim that “Proof that the narrative is historical cannot be adduced. But evidence that it is historical can.”13
Nonetheless, previous assessments of the Bible as myth or the distor- tions of Jewish editors have been replaced by modern views that it contains much that is useful to a professional historian.
Something in us rebels … at the notion that the materials … are not history. The material seems too specific in factors of person- ality and locale … by its concern for chronology; its interest in political and military events … in the wielding of power and the conditions of justice; by its … claim … to historical witness; by the realism and sobriety of its narrative style.14
Alongside its problematic description of historical incidents, the literary character of the Hebrew Bible also stands in the way of systematic analysis.
This feature troubles any who would assess the Holy Book’s treatment of God or other heroes as well as biblical equivalents of such modern political ideas as leadership, authority, regime, or justice. The Bible makes its points with a variety of episodes that show no concern for doctrinal clarity.15 H.
Mark Roelofs contrasts Hebrew existentialism with Greek rationalism and Roman legalism.16 He describes a lack of what modern academics schooled in Greek- and Roman-orientations would describe as systematic discus- sions of abstract concepts or the institutions of political regimes.
Problems of interpreting the Bible are made even more difficult by the efforts of some ancient authors to obscure the meaning of their work in order to protect themselves and their listeners from retribution. The Book
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of Daniel is said to employ a setting in Persia three or four centuries before the book’s composition in order to write about contemporary conditions.17 Chapter 6 in Daniel tells about intrigues among the advisors of the king to concoct a situation in which Daniel will be killed on account of following Judaic rituals. The story ends by showing the weakness of worldly politicians against the influence of God.18
This story seems to be making a point about a foreign government like that of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Those who created the story of Daniel might have suffered at the hands of the regime if the story had been written with contemporary details. (Commentators on the New Testament make a similar point about the parables of Jesus: that he provided his lessons by means of veiled stories to foil the efforts of Jewish or Roman authorities who might accuse him of fomenting rebellion.19)
Some stories of the Hebrew Bible are not overtly masked, but written in an ironic style. They carry a meaning that is either greater or lesser than the explicit words. They add to the literary quality of the Bible without making it easier to understand. In the story of David and Bathsheba, for example, the point is made that the king known as a brave warrior was home in the palace while Uriah and other soldiers were off in battle. It then tells that the king’s beautiful neighbor was bathing on her roof in sight of the king’s residence. What are we to believe about the king’s bravery or the intentions of Bathsheba? In an episode set several decades later, we see a complete picture of Bathsheba’s cunning when she plotted to put her son Solomon on the throne in place of his older half-brother Adonijah.20
Another trait of the Bible that complicates modern understanding is its tendency to hyperbole. Perhaps the intention was to give an impression of greatness for the Lord’s power, the totality of defeats suffered by his enemies, or the extent of the Israelites’ losses when he punished them.
Whatever the reason, a number of extreme descriptions contradict other biblical materials or fly in the face of credibility.
The reports that appear in the Book of Joshua for the total conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites is one example. Elsewhere in Joshua and Judges it is said that the conquest was partial.21 At another point, the Bible describes the army of Judah as slaying 500,000 warriors from Israel, at a time when it is estimated that the total population of the northern kingdom did not exceed 800,000.22 Also to be counted as hyperbole are extreme threats or commands attributed to the Lord. The injunction to eliminate all traces of the Amalekites, to the last man, woman, child, camel, and ass23 may be viewed as a surge of nationalist emotion by a writer who worked a millennium after the purported event instead of a serious plan of genocide. In the words of one modern commentator, this type of language no more stands in need of a political explanation than the bombast of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”24
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According to a Christian theologian, “The structure and style of Scrip- ture … [is] so unsystematic and various, and a style so figurative and indirect, that no one would presume at first sight to say what is in it and what is not.”25 What is written about biblical interpretations attributed to the apostle Paul can apply to many other readings by Jews and Christians.
“The … exegesis … have an air of freedom. We cannot be sure that if Paul had interpreted the same passage twice he would have interpreted it in the same way.”26
The Book of Isaiah is an archetype of biblical obscurity. It is a collection of what may be the work of two, three, or more authors.27 Different sections seem to have been written as early as the middle of the eighth century B.C.E. while Israel was under pressure from Assyria and as late as the latter part of the sixth century B.C.E. when Judean exiles had returned from Babylon. Some traditional Jewish commentators concede the multiple authorship of Isaiah, saying that an Isaiah school continued the perspective of the prophet over several generations. Others insist that the whole book was the work of the prophet himself, who forecast the Babylonian exile and the return of Judeans that was to occur more than 100 years after his death. These commentators have to deal with the Jewish perspective that the prophets spoke to their contemporaries about moral issues and were not concerned with predicting the distant future. (In the context of Isaiah, in particular, Jews who assert that the prophet predicted the distant future risk providing some legitimacy to Christians who find a prediction of Christ’s coming in that book.) Some traditional Jews try to deal with this problem by claiming that Isaiah did not reveal the latter part of his prophecy to the public but provided it to disciples who were to publicize it when it proved to be accurate.28 In contrast is the irreverent style of a modern commentator who refers to the Book of Isaiah as a “garbage can of prophecy” on account of its numerous authors and themes.29
Embellishing the stories of the Hebrew Bible is an ancient craft, practiced by all major religious groups that trace their heritage to it.
Christians and Muslims have read their own religious messages in Jewish history and changed some of the details when they wrote their holy books.
Perhaps the first Christians to misquote the Hebrew Bible were those who composed the New Testament.30 Writings not clearly Jewish or Christian but considered heretical in both traditions built ever more bizarre details onto the themes of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Quarreling church fathers of the second century said of one gr oup: “Every day everyone of them invents something new, and none of them is considered perfect unless he is productive in this way.”31
Christian sects have published edited versions of the Psalms and Prophets that include creative translations of the original Hebrew that remove all reference to their Judaic context and add references to Jesus.32
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The Mormons have an inspired translation of the Book of Genesis as revealed to Joseph Smith that begins with a conversation between God and Moses about Jesus.33 Muslims agree with the Jews that God revealed his word to Moses but contend that the Hebrew Bible does not record the word accurately. According to one story in the Koran, it was Ishmael (rather than Isaac) who was offered for sacrifice by Abraham. In the Muslim source, Abraham and Ishmael are said to have built the Kaaba in Mecca. This has modern political relevance with respect to Jewish claims of a biblical heritage.34
The diversity of political behaviors and norms apparent in the Hebrew Bible seem appropriate to the unenviable setting in which it was pro- duced. Its authors and compilers were preoccupied by their own survival amidst a chronic condition of invasion and foreign domination.35 Their Promised Land was small and poor, had a substantial foreign population, and was desired by nearby great powers.36 The Israelites aspired to rule themselves but were usually dominated by others. International relations were a constant preoccupation of Israelite leaders. Usually they paid tribute to an imperial capital. Occasionally they sought to play off one empire against another. This led to national disaster on more than one occasion. National heroes had to develop their capacity to think, express themselves, and behave flexibly. The demands of physical and cultural survival may have fostered a capacity to recognize and cope with numer- ous perspectives and severe threats. Simple ideas or rigid intellectual categories would not last for long as national guidance in the shifting and dangerous environment.
The composition and literary character of the Hebrew Bible complicate any clear linkages with public administration in the narrow sense of that profession concerned with the organization and management of govern- ment offices. Yet the same traits of the Hebrew Bible proclaim their relevance for public administration defined broadly as a concern for how a polity is governed. The nature of the Hebrew Bible expresses a tolerance for diversity in story telling, with nuances of meaning depending on interpretation, as well as a pragmatic concern to work in behalf of the community’s survival and its image as the people of the Almighty. Viewed in these terms, the Hebrew Bible is a primer for the student and practitioner of public administration.