An Atheist's Guide to the Bible

Redaction

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The process of compiling and editing a text. A person known as a redactor creates a new text by not simply copying a previous one, but instead introducing changes such as the following:

• Inserting explanations or interpretations of the original text
• Reorganising earlier material
• Merging two or more previous texts
• Making alterations with ideological, political or religious motives

Textual critics attempt to discover from clues in the text itself, and from its likely political and religious context, how best to reconstruct the history of its composition. Sometimes they have to rely on assumptions or theories which are more or less arguable. Like historians of any kind they often have highly technical disagreements with each other about how to interpret the evidence, and about what layers are present in a text and when they were put together.

Some important theories of the textual composition of the Bible:

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) - the predominant theory is that Mark wrote first and his gospel was used as a source by the authors of Matthew and Luke. These two also share a lot of material that is not in Mark, consisting mostly of Jesus' sayings, which has led to the supposition of a lost source which they both used, now known as Q or the Sayings Gospel. This is known as the Two-Source Hypothesis.

The Pentateuch - readers of Genesis and the other early books of the Old Testament will notice that many stories occur twice, but told slightly differently. Sometimes the two accounts come one after another, as for example the Creation stories (Gen. 1:1 - 2:3 & Gen. 2:4 - 3:24) while sometimes they are interwoven as in the Flood story, which can be broken down into two separate stories (Gen. 6:5 - 9:17). These and many other example throughout the Pentateuch have produced a widely held textual explanation resting on four sources, now known as J, E, P and D. The first two of these authors in particular are distinguished by the fact that they use different names for God.

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