almost all of these ancient hebrew writings were also oral tradition passed down verbally through the Temple
That's dubious.
Actually, let's go
full autism mode and go through all the Old Testament books, one by one.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers:
The first four books of the Pentateuch are a mess. According to the classic
Documentary Hypothesis, these are made up of three major sources: Yahwist (J), Elohist (E) and Priestly (P), with a redactor (R) stitching them together and adding some minor passages to have it make sense. However, there was never a strong consensus about the exact details of the DH. E was always a sticking point, because it seems to quietly fizzle out somewhere mid-Exodus, and the idea of identifying an entire potential source document based on not much more than a word choice is problematic. So J and E are often combined into one source (J). But even that is still not the whole picture. Certain passages in the Pentateuch seem to be relics of older texts (Song of the Sea), extracts from other sources (Book of the Wars of the Lord) or late, self-contained inserts (Joseph's story, Sodom & Gamora story). Other scholars point out that
most of the stories are pretty self-contained, so there are competing hypotheses saying that the text is actually a collection of compiled fragments. Take for example the Patriarchs: Abraham seems to be a Judean national hero, while Jacob seems to be an Israelite national hero (he literally
has his name changed to Israel), with Isaac being an unimportant insert created to link these two otherwise unrelated figures together (as a tangent to this tangent, it's actually possible that the Muslims have it right, and the Binding of Isaac was originally the Binding of Ishmael). In short,
we just don't know how any of it was composed.
But all that said, there's still
some truth to the DH and its variants, because the vast majority of scholars can still easily identify P, with its unique theology, themes and language. The final text we received simply must have been a combination of two or more
written sources, there are too many duplicates, too many contradictions, and there are also telltale signs of scribal merging and copying (the flood narrative is a good example).
Alright, so, who cares? It might have composed out of two texts or a hundred texts, but they're all just oral traditions put to writing, right? Well, no. The problem is that the P source is too cohesive to be based on simple oral tradition. It includes Leviticus, which is nothing but a massive law code in a Mesopotamian style (think Hammurabi), and all of its narratives flow too neatly and too coherently (at least when compared to everything around it) to be an amalgamation of oral tales.
Verdict:
Partially oral tradition. It's a mishmash of at least
some oral traditions with a priest(?)-composed set of laws and narratives.
Deuteronomy:
It's often speculated that Deuteronomy along with Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings all form a single collection of shared authorship. This is not to say all of these were composed by one person in one time, but they all seem to be hammering on the same themes, and have obvious late insertions to connect them all together, similar to R passages in the Pentateuch.
As for the book of Deuteronomy itself, its contents neatly gels with the religious reforms of king Josiah of Judah.
2 Kings 22 describes how Josiah's high priest Hilkiah "found" a "Book of the Law" in the temple, so it's assumed to be some early version of Deuteronomy, probably just the core of it without the Moses frame story. Despite being fifth in the traditional and narrative order, it actually holds the distinction of probably being the oldest in the Pentateuch.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition. Commissioned by king Josiah to justify his centralizing religious reforms.
Joshua:
Joshua is composed of two parts. The first half narrates the conquest of Canaan by the Hebrews. The second half is a tedious description of tribal allotments in the newly conquered land. The allotments described in it seem to be describing the situation as it was during the late kingdom period, perhaps also during the reign of Josiah; many of the places mentioned in Joshua have not even been occupied during the time period it describes.
As for the conquest narrative, it
might have preserved
some sort of earlier traditions, specifically in the destruction of Jericho, and the campaign against the Gibeonites. The conquest of Jerusalem is apparently a reworked version of the same story as it appears in a mysterious "Book of Jashar". But the vast majority of Joshua is made up out of whole cloth. Outside the conquest of Jericho and Ai, the campaigns within it are described very tersely. But more importantly: There
couldn't have been a oral tradition describing these events because
they simply didn't happen. There is absolutely no archeological evidence of the conquest as depicted in Joshua. The entire thing is a late composition meant to narratively bridge the Exodus story with the Judges/Kingdoms period, peppered with stories from other sources (Book of Jashar, and maybe some unrelated oral traditions transposed into a different context) to give the work a veneer of authenticity.
Verdict:
Partially oral tradition. An ideologically-driven fiction, with maybe a couple of orally-transmitted stories within.
Judges:
This is an easy one. The book of judges is literally nothing but old folk tales about Israelite heroes, inserted into a crude and repetitive frame story. In fact, because it's so old (the stories all date back to before the Assyrian conquest), it preserves some interesting historical tidbits. For example, the story of Samson is probably a reworded version of myths surrounding the Canaanite sun god Shemesh.
Verdict:
Oral tradition put into writing. Albeit with some editorializing.
Ruth:
This is our first real cohesive work with no signs of major reworkings. It doesn't appear to be compiled out of fragmentary earlier texts, or have the sort of clumsy plot tangents that characterize gathered oral traditions. It's also fairly short, so that makes sense. Ruth is also unlikely to be an early oral tradition, because:
- It's a very banal story. Not the sort of thing that would captivate audiences gathered around a campfire.
- It has very obvious thematic underpinnings. It's a book with a clear ideological message.
To elaborate on the second point, Ruth is appears to be a counterpoint to Ezra's gentile-exclusionary message. The entire point of the story is the fact that Ruth, a hated Moabite woman, is able to join the Hebrew community, and even becomes a direct ancestor of king David himself. It also includes some theological ruminations.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition. Woke pro-racemixing pozzed historical revisionist propaganda written by a 5th century BC beta cuck.
Samuel:
Now this is a fun one. Samuel went through so much editing it's become a garbled mess. There are a lot of scribal errors, misplaced passages and nonsense grammar in it. Its Masoretic and LXX versions differ heavily in parts, meaning it has still not fully solidified even as late as the 3rd century BC. Like Joshua, it includes a reference to the Book of Jashar. It also contains a fuckload of weird little historical tangents and contradictory information on many key points (how many champions did David have? Why do so many of them have similar-sounding names? What is David's actual origin story? Which of Saul's daughters did he marry?). It's easy to spot how it tries to preserve oral traditions, which have been garbled over centuries of editorial meddling. It preserves the importance of Shiloh in the early Iron Age, for example. But whatever older truths it may contain has been buried under a mountain of revisions. The story of the birth of Samuel was originally the story king Saul's birth. David killing Goliath is a late reworking of an earlier tradition of some other guy killing a Philistine giant.
So are parts of it based on oral histories? Yeah. Unfortunately all that tradition has been pushed through a woodchipper.
Verdict:
Oral tradition put into writing. Too bad it's been mangled by so much ideologically/theologically-driven revisionism.
Kings:
The book of Kings is actually quite open about it sources. It cites the annals and other books (e.g. Acts of Solomon) it gets its information from. It's possible that some of it is gathered oral histories, but the amount of detail and lack of grandiosity or mythologizing for most of it makes it rather unlikely. Whoever composed Kings was working closely with written royal records. This is not to say that its history is 100% TRUE and HONEST - there's a lot of editorializing going on, and everything to do with Solomon and the United Kingdom is questionable at best - but it's based in other written records, which might have had their own agendas.
As a side note, it's really funny how the most favorably depicted kings have been some of the weakest in the real world, often nothing more than puppet rulers imposed by Egypt or Babylon. Meanwhile, the most wicked kings in the book of Kings, like Omri and Manasseh, are also some of the most capable rulers Israel and Judah ever had.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition. Just editorialized history.
Chronicles:
Nobody gives a shit about Chronicles. It's a very late composition, so it probably just copied stuff from all the books mentioned above. That said, it includes interesting little story fragments not mentioned in other books. Maybe a few of those are based on gathered oral tradition? Probably not. More likely, the Chronicler had access to some of the same (or similar) source materials as the authors of Joshua and Kings had. Shame that the Chronicler is even less shy about editorializing and revising history to makes his point.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition. Also, very boring.
Ezra & Nehemiah:
The two are two parts of a single work. Both of these seem to have been written very close to the events they depict, and then undergone extensive editing and expansion (most notably by the Chronicler). Because they are so close to the events they discuss, with the real possibility that Ezra himself wrote the core of his titular book, one can't really say they are based on an "oral tradition".
Verdict:
Not oral tradition.
Esther and Song of Songs:
Esther is a cute little folk story. Song of Songs is a raunchy love poem. Curiously, the two are the only two books in the entire bible with no mention of God whatsoever. It's hard to tell whether they're based on an older tradition or did they each have a single author who just made it up, but one may presume they were included in the canon just because they were extremely popular around the turn of the millennium. If so, they were probably storytime favorites even for Judea's illiterates.
Verdict:
Maybe? Who knows. My money's on Song of Song being an actual folk poem passed down like some Greek epic.
Job and Ecclesiastes:
Both are coherent works obviously written by a single author with a message in mind. They may have been edited later (Ecclesiastes in particular has a sharp change in tone near the end), but there's no two ways about it.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition.
Psalms:
Just like Job and Ecclesiastes are obvious works of a single author, Psalms is obviously a collection of hymns which were passed down for generations. Some psalms are positively
ancient, and are strong contenders for some of the oldest passages in the bible. Some of them might even be adapted from hymns to Ba'al!
Verdict:
Oral tradition put into writing.
Proverbs:
What it says on the tin, it's a big book of proverbs. It's actually a combined collection of different proverb lists. How many of these were invented by the authors? How many were compiled from other sources, or from what the authors heard from their grandparents? Some? All? None? Who knows. But probably most have been collected from the people of the land. Or old priests who tried really hard to sound profound.
Verdict:
Probably oral tradition put into writing.
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel:
All three are (probably) the authentic works of their namesakes, although all three have been expanded and edited by successors. Whatever the case, these are cohesive works of literate authors, not random old wives' tales put into writing by some priest-scribe.
Verdict:
Not oral tradition.
Lamentations:
This is a collection of very dreary poems, compiled sometime during the Babylonian exile. It's unknown whether all poems were written by one author, but considering their contents, it's more likely the book is an all-star compilation of Judea's greatest hits at the time. Whichever the case, it's clear the author(s) were literate, and this is not oral "tradition".
Verdict:
Not oral tradition. Just some angsty poetry.
Daniel:
One of only two apocalypses in the bible. Unlike the other major prophets, this one was not written by an actual guy called Daniel. The original Hebrew is very late compared with the rest of the OT, and it's actually a strong contender for being the latest books included in the canon before Jesus and the gospels. It's a very peculiar book. The language shifts seemingly at random from third person to first person, and it even has sections written in Aramaic instead of Hebrew for no discernable reason. Like Samuel, there are substantial differences between the Hebrew/Aramaic version and the Greek.
The book can be divided into two: The first half is, at its core, a collection of folk tales about a guy called Daniel and his pals in the court of a Persian king. That's where we get all the fun stories about the fiery furnace and the lions' den. The second half of the book is much more looney. After the lion's den we get a bunch of cryptic visions, dreams and prophecies as befitting the apocalyptic genre. The entire sequence is a schizo retelling of the history of the Middle East (from the perspective of Judea) from the fall of Babylon (6th century BC) to the cusp of the Maccabean Revolt (mid 2nd century BC).
So is it based on oral tradition? The insane imagery of the "prophecies" definitely isn't, but the cute tales about Daniel the man may as well be.
Verdict:
Partially oral tradition. And a whole lot of lunacy.
Twelve Minor Prophets Speedrun:
- Hosea: One of the oldest books in the bible. Explicitly attributed to one guy actually called Hosea. It's dubious whether he actually did all the stuff he wrote about, but it's not oral tradition.
- Joel: Anonymous, but seems pretty cohesive. Not oral tradition.
- Amos: See Hosea. Very old book, but explicitly attributed to Amos the prophet. Not oral tradition.
- Obadiah: Explicitly attributed to Obadiah. Seems like Obadiah was a right-wing chud, because his book is just 21 verses of pure anti-Edomite racism. Not oral tradition.
- Jonah: As lovely as the story about the fish is, it's hard to say whether it's an old oral tale, because the book itself is a self-contained little thing with a moral in the end. Still, it's pretty weird, so it might be based on older traditions. Possibly based on a reworked orally-transmitted tale.
- Micah: Another one explicitly attributed to an author. Not oral tradition.
- Nahum: Ditto.
- Habakkuk: Ditto. Although this one is interesting, because turns very psalm-like in the third chapter. Habakkuk 3 is weird in general, because it seems to preserve some very old traditions and borders on outright polytheism. So I'm gonna say it's partially oral tradition.
- Zephaniah: Explicitly attributed to an author, a time and a place. Not oral tradition.
- Haggai: Ditto. This is another interesting one, though, because it seems to be a piece of propaganda for Zerubabbel. Look up Zerubabbel if you have the time, one of the more enigmatic figures of the Old Testament.
- Zechariah: Ditto.
- Malachi: Ditto.
And I'm done.
Insert jigsaw pieces below.
