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| Samaritan high priest with and Old Pentateuch, 1905 |
Supplementary Materials VC
Sectional Outline
Section IV. Second Temple Consolidation and Scribalization (450–200 BCE)
The return from the Babylonian exile and the subsequent rule of the Persian Empire inaugurated a radically new phase in Israel’s religious life:
- Theologically, the exile had shattered earlier assumptions about divine protection, but it also catalyzed new conceptions of God’s universality and sovereignty.
- Institutionally, however, the post-exilic period reshaped Israel in a manner no less significant: it drew the community toward a firmer interiority of an expressed religious beliefs and experience based upon scribal textuality, leadership, and a transformed sense of identity grounded not in monarchy or territory but in the authoritative interpretation of written tradition.
The Persian imperial policy of local autonomy, religious restoration, and administrative codification created an environment in which the Judean community could reconstruct its religious world around the Torah. Persian provinces were expected to maintain law codes, administer their internal affairs through local texts, and organize civic life around written norms. Israel’s evolving literary corpus fit neatly within this framework, but the relationship was reciprocal: Persian administrative expectations stimulated Israel’s shift toward textual consolidation.
The figure of Ezra stands at the symbolic center of this shift. Whether as historical individual or literary ideal, Ezra encapsulates the transformation of Israel into a text-centered people. Described as a sofer mahir, a “skilled scribe in the law of Moses,” he represents a new form of authority - neither king nor prophet, but a legal-theological specialist whose mastery of written Torah confers legitimacy upon his reforms. His public reading of the Torah (Nehemiah 8), accompanied by interpretation, marks the emergence of what would later become the Jewish liturgical–educational pattern: Scripture read aloud, explained, and applied communally.
The rebuilt temple, completed in 515 BCE, reestablished sacrificial worship, yet it did so within a changed conceptual landscape. In the First Temple period, the temple had been the physical locus of divine presence, kingship, and national identity. In the Second Temple period, however, the temple functioned more as a ritual complement to a larger textual authority. Torah now defined the shape of covenant life, while temple service expressed and reinforced textual norms. Text came to mediate divine will in ways previously assigned to monarchy, priesthood, and prophetic charisma.
This period also witnessed the expansion and institutionalization of scribal guilds, whose influence reached far beyond technical copying. These guilds developed standardized scripts, established systems of textual preservation, cultivated interpretive traditions, and produced commentarial activity that foreshadowed later rabbinic modes of thought. The scribes did not merely transmit earlier documents - they curated them, harmonized divergent traditions, crafted connective tissue between narratives, and provided theological coherence to inherited material. This then is where today's scholarly critiques come in asking "What is truth in light of cultic Scribal redactions?"
The Pentateuch reached its near-final literary form under Persian rule. Earlier sources - J, E, D, and P (see diagrams in Section III) - were organized into a compositional unity that preserved internal diversity while providing a comprehensive historical and theological framework. The editors’ choice not to erase differences but to canonize them reflects a profound (semi-)hermeneutical openness: Israel’s identity was large enough to house multiple memories, voices, and theological emphases. This principle of “unity without uniformity” became foundational for Judaism’s later interpretive tradition. [There is still the problem of limited historical memory, lack of written resources, and the newer developments within today's present archaeological research, all of which cast questions upon the Hebrew Bible's "openness".]
The prophetic corpus also underwent systematic organization. Books such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Twelve were shaped into coherent anthologies, combining earlier prophetic utterance with later expansions, interpretive additions, and historically contextualized reframings. The move from oral, situational prophecy to written, canonical prophecy reflects a broader cultural shift: revelation increasingly became understood as a textual inheritance rather than a primarily oral phenomenon.
Wisdom literature expanded during this period as well. Texts such as Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and many psalms reveal engagement with an international intellectual tradition. Israel no longer stood apart from the wider world; instead, its sages participated in trans-cultural conversations about suffering, justice, meaning, and the nature of divine order. The canon’s wisdom books thus embody an outward-facing, cosmopolitan form of theological reflection.
By the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods, a plurality of textual traditions existed: proto-Masoretic Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. This plurality reveals that the canon was not yet closed but in active development, shaped by regional communities with distinct theological priorities. Diversity in textual form reflects diversity in memory and practice.
Finally, the rise of apocalyptic literature - particularly in the book of Daniel - signaled an important late development: history became increasingly viewed as a cosmic drama of oppression and deliverance. Apocalypticism reinterpreted Israel’s experience of empire within a symbolic universe of angels, visions, and divine intervention. It offered a new hermeneutic for understanding national suffering and divine sovereignty, further enriching the biblical tradition. [It is also posited that Jesus became highly motivated by eschatologic-apocalypticism in his later ministry 200+ years later: That "God's Kingdom was Coming" during his lifetime... (as it did through Jesus' Person and Work of Redemption.]
By ca. 200 BCE, Judaism had emerged as a textual, interpretive, covenantal community, unified by Torah, shaped by scribal reading practices, and sustained by a canon in the making. Political power was gone; textual authority had taken its place. This transformation would prove decisive for both Judaism and Christianity in the centuries that followed.
By the 2nd century BCE, the Torah had long held pride of place as the foundational text of Jewish life. Reverence for the Pentateuch was widespread across Judea, Samaria, and the diaspora. Its textual form had begun to stabilize into what later tradition would call the Proto-Masoretic Text, although significant variants also circulated. The authority of the Torah was uncontested; it functioned as law, narrative, theological anchor, and communal identity marker.
However, the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Ketuvim) did not enjoy the same early unanimity. Prophetic scrolls were widely used, but their precise arrangement and inclusion varied. The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings - shaped by Deuteronomistic editors - were already functioning as a unified narrative complex. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel circulated in distinct editorial forms. The Book of the Twelve (sic, the so-called Minor Propherts) was emerging as a single scroll, but its internal sequence was not yet fixed.
The Writings remained the most fluid collection. Psalms were cherished liturgically, yet the Psalter’s internal organization was not finalized. Wisdom books, such as Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, circulated broadly but without canonical homogeneity. Daniel, composed in the 2nd century BCE, was recognized as authoritative by many communities, but its placement varied (Prophets in the Christian canon, Writings in the Jewish canon). Books such as Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs underwent intense debate, with their sacred status affirmed only gradually through exegetical framing and liturgical integration.
The Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora, especially in Alexandria, contributed significantly to the canon’s development. The Septuagint (LXX) translation became the sacred text for Hellenistic Jews, incorporating books they used and valued but would not become part of the later Hebrew canon for "regular" Jews living in the land of Israel (e.g., Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees). The LXX reveals a textual world in which the borders of Scripture were porous, shaped by communal usage rather than institutional regulation. It should be remembered that the Jews in Egyptian Alexandria had a far broader, and vaster, library of sacred texts. Whereas Judean scribes (latera Pharisaic and Rabbinic schools) moved toward a narrower canon of Jewish Scripture. And that other sectarian groups such as the Essenes used yet another set of different texts.
By contrast, Judean scribal groups - particularly the proto-Pharisaic circles of the late Second Temple period - gravitated toward a more conservative, narrower canon, centered on the mainline Hebrew textual tradition (of Ezra). These groups likely contributed to the stabilization of what would become the tripartite canon: Torah, Prophets, and Writings. The emergence of this tripartite structure is evident in the prologue to Ben Sira (ca. 132 BCE), which refers to “the Law, the Prophets, and the other books,” indicating both a fixed core and a fluid periphery.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (3rd century BCE - 1st century CE) provide unparalleled insight into this transitional period. They attest to:
- multiple textual forms of many biblical books;
- competing editions of Jeremiah and Samuel;
- variant psalm collections;
- texts not included in the later canon but used as Scripture (e.g., Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Temple Scroll);
- interpretive traditions (pesharim) treating prophecy as ongoing revelation.
The scrolls reveal that canonization was not a matter of eliminating diversity but selecting a stable core from within a diverse textual ecosystem.
The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE accelerated the movement toward textual consolidation. With the loss of temple-centered ritual, the Jewish community turned increasingly to Scripture, interpretation, and synagogue-based study. The embryonic rabbinic movement preserved and transmitted the Hebrew textual tradition, eventually leading to the Masoretic codices of the early medieval period.
By the end of the 2nd century CE, a de facto canon had emerged: the Torah as foundational; the Prophets as authoritative witnesses to covenant history and divine will; and the Writings as a diverse but accepted collection of poetic, wisdom, and narrative texts. Yet it is crucial to recognize that the canon remained a living body, defined not by formal vote but by usage, tradition, and communal consensus. Scripture was not merely a closed set of books - it was an interpretive world of meaningful becoming for the living identifying with the Hebrew Scriptures.
Process-Theological Coda: The Bible as a Living Archive of Becoming
From a process-theological perspective, the formation of the Hebrew Bible embodies the deepest truths of relational, creative becoming. Scripture did not descend from heaven as a monolithic revelation; it grew out of the interactions between people and God, trauma and hope, tradition and innovation, memory and imagination. The Bible is not an interruption of historical process but a testimony to it.
Across centuries, Israel interpreted its experiences - the exodus, monarchy, exile, dispersion - through community reflection and creative reconfiguration. God’s presence is not static but emerges within the flux of historical life. Scripture is therefore a record of evolving divine-human encounter, shaped by:
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dialogue among communities;
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reinterpretation of inherited symbols;
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openness to new theological possibilities;
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the creative integration of multiple voices;
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the transformation of catastrophe into meaning.
The Bible is not the fossilization of an ancient faith; it is the crystallization of a dynamic process, a living archive of a people learning to understand God in changing worlds. Canon is not closure; it is continuity. What the canon preserves is not finality but the ongoing invitation to interpret, to discern, and to participate in the unfolding life of God in a pluralistic cosmos.
In this sense, the formation of Scripture mirrors the metaphysical patterns that process theology sees at work in all reality: relationality, creativity, the preservation of value, and the continual emergence of novel possibilities. The Bible is one of humanity’s great experiments in meaning-making - a testament to the enduring power of story, memory, and imagination to disclose the depths of the divine.
- Part I - Foundations: The Birth of the Sacred
- Essay 1 - Animism and the Living Cosmos
- Essay 2 - From Tribe to Totem
- Part II - The Age of Gods
- Essay 3 - The Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent
- Essay 4 - Egypt, Indus, and Minoa Sacred Cultures
- Essay 5 - From Polytheism to Henotheism
- Part III - Axial Awakenings
- Essay 6 - Ancient Israel, Persia, and Monotheism
- Essay 7 - India
- Essay 8 - Greece and the Birth of Reason
- Part IV - The Sacred Made Universal
- Essay 9 - The Age of Universal Religions
- Essay 10 - Modernity and the Eclipse of the Sacred
- Essay 11 - The Rebirth of the Sacred
- Part V - Supplementary Materials
- I - The Ancient History of Mesopotamia
- II - The History of Language in Ancient Mesopotamia
- III - The Ancient History of the Hebrew Language
- IV(A-C) How the Ancient Near East Gave Shape to Israel's God
- Why the ANE is Essential for Israel's Received Theology (I-II)
- Affecting Cultic Syncretism Across the Ancient Near East (III-V)
- Cultural Identity Formation & the Rejection of Syncretism (VI-IX)
- V (A-C) The History & Compilation of the Hebrew Bible
- From Oral Memory to Proto-Canon (I-II)
- Exile, Redaction, and the Birth of Scripture (III)
- Second Temple Scribalization to Canonization (IV-V)
- VI - The Unhelpful Oxymorons of "Biblical Authority" & "Inerrancy"
- VII - The Evolution of Inerrancy: From Ancient Plurality to Modern Certainty
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
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Dead Sea Scrolls (trans. Geza Vermes)
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Septuagint (Rahlfs-Hanhart edition)
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Samaritan Pentateuch (Tal & Florentin)
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Babylonian and Assyrian texts (ANET, COS)
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John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament
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Benjamin Sommer, Revelation and Authority
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Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God
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Mark S. Smith, God in Translation
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William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, The Context of Scripture
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Jack M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East
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Edward Greenstein, Essays on Biblical Method and Translation
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Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction
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Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
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David Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible
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Baruch Halpern, The First Historians
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Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
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Marvin Sweeney, Tanak: A Theological and Critical Introduction
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Lawrence Schiffman, From Text to Tradition
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James Kugel, The Bible as It Was
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Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
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John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
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Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
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Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
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Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity
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John Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology
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Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible
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Marjorie Suchocki, God-Christ-Church
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