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How Scripture Came to Be
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The Tradition as an Outgrowth of Experience

The Hebrew tradition grew out of the experience of a people, not individual persons.

The primary social structure in the nomadic ancient Near East was tribal. Abraham was the leader of a tribe. This became more explicit in the story of Jacob (Israel), who became the father of twelve sons, each the leader of a tribe. It is important to remember that although blood relationship was somewhat significant, it was not essential for membership in the tribe. Others could be adopted/incorporated into the tribe. Sometimes this happened when captives were taken, enslaved, and over a generation or two, became full members of the tribe. (Slavery was not the permanent, inherited condition that we associate with the ante-bellum South.)



Each tribe had a god or gods. The descendants of Abraham knew that YHWH had chosen them. I will be your God and you will be my people.



Their original idea of God was not that there were no other gods. Each people / tribe / nation had their own. But YHWH was their god, and more powerful than all of the others. Over time (a lot of time) this evolved into our idea of monotheism - there is only one God.



The events of the Exodus did two things:



Solidified the idea that this was a people. There is some historical evidence that miscellaneous nomadic groups joined together to form the Hebrew people.



Solidified the idea that YHWH was a powerful, saving God. The escape from Egypt is the formative experience of the Hebrew people. They were a people because they had a god who had made good on the promises of salvation. The formation of the Mosaic covenant in the desert was a natural response to the experience of this event.

The beginnings of the oral tradition described these events: the formation of the people and the discovery of their relationship to YHWH. The tradition was a reflection, in faith, of these formative experiences.



They reflected on the experience, saw the action of God in their experience, and told the story. The story was not as concerned with the factual who and what, but the all-important why and how. How did they become a people? How did they get saved from Egypt? How did they conquer Canaan? The answer in the Hebrew tradition was Through the action of YHWH in human history.



This process is also found in the formation of the Christian Scriptures. The gospel stories were originally preaching told by believers to encourage other believers. There was a strong group identity, reinforced by a common baptism, which enabled them to share in the death and resurrection of the Lord.



In both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the following sequence can be found:



The experience of the event;

The event forms a community;

The community reflects on the event;

The oral tradition transmits the reflection by telling the story.

The Earliest Pieces of the Oral Tradition
and its Transition into Scripture

In an oral tradition, the easiest things to remember are songs. Considered among the oldest are the Song of Miriam in Exodus 15 and the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 (commemorating an event of about 1125 BCE). (Interestingly, in a highly patriarchal tradition, these earliest pieces are both in the voices of women, one a prophet and the other a judge.)



Some early writing of the Law may have happened during the period before they entered Canaan. (They were coming from a literate culture in Egypt; also, they had contact with the Canannites, otherwise known to us as the Phoenicians, who developed the first alphabet.)



In the period of the monarchy, (when a previously nomadic people built a temple and a city around it) some "official documents", e.g. historical writings, began to be collected. Also, the "Yahwist" account of the foundation of the people began to be written. Pieces of the temple liturgy began to be collected, which eventually became the foundation for the Psalms.



After the division into the northern and southern kingdoms, about the 9th century BCE, the Elohist writer also told the foundational story, concentrating on the relationship of the covenant.



Prior to the Exile, the Priestly and Deuteronomic traditions were written down.



Prophetic preaching was transcribed and collected by disciples of the prophets.

Bibliography:

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary

McKenzies Dictionary of the Bible

The Catholic Study Bible, 2^nd edition, by Scott Hahn

"Faith Facts", Catholics United for The Faith (CUF)

Office for Catechesis of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, Chicago Catholic Scripture School, The Formation of Scripture, Pages 1-4