I. INTRODUCTION
        For many Christians the Hebrew Bible remains a mystery. While the lectionary contains readings from the HB for each Sunday of the year, congregations often have little more than an opportunity to hear (the first reading) or to sing (the responsorial psalm) the readings each week. Christianity has always regarded the books of the HB as part of its larger canon, and any serious attempt to study these books reveals that it is difficult, if not impossible to understand the Gospels, the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels and the developing expressions of Christianity without a comprehensive understanding of the HB.
        From the outset of this study we must remind ourselves that the HB is a central component in the congregational life of two faith communities -- Judaism and Christianity. For Judaism the HB is its bible, its canon of sacred texts. For Christianity, too, the HB is part of it's canon of sacred books. Christians understand Jesus as the fulfillment of the HB (the original covenant), and the NT serves as an introduction to and explanation of a new covenant, through Jesus, between God and the people.
        The Language and Text of the HB: For contemporary Western readers a glance at the text of the HB would be an exercise in futility. The writing of ancient Hebrew is strikingly beautiful, but totally unrecognizable to English speakers. The ancient Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 consonants. Vowels, essential in English, are not necessary in written Hebrew, and were added to the biblical texts at a much later date. All texts used for worship in Jewish communities are still hand-written by a scribe and preserved for use on scrolls. Printed versions of the texts for personal bible reading and for use by scholars are found in books.
        Hebrew is written from right to left on a line, the opposite of written English. Additionally, a book written in Hebrew will open from back to front. Among the books in the Pentateuch or Torah (first five books of the HB) the Hebrew name for each book is different than the name Christians know for the corresponding book. In the Torah a book is known by the first word that appears in the text, and that first word becomes the title for the book. The name Christians use for the same book is always a Greek term stemming from the Greek translation of the HB called the Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX).
        While the HB is composed of books written primarily in Hebrew, there are small portions written in Aramaic, a language in the same family as Hebrew that uses the same alphabet and grammatical system. Because U.S. Christian communities generally see, hear and read the Bible in English, it is important to step back and remember that the books we take for granted in our own language have a long and rich linguistic, textual, literary, religious and political history arising from a people who have their origins in places, times and languages quite different and removed from our own.
        Copies of anything in our contemporary world are easy to come by -- copy machines are everywhere, the PC allows us to copy anything into bytes and communicate those bytes through cyberspace, buy recorded VHS tapes, tape TV programs, CD's, other tapes and radio programs, etc. Such technology would be mysterious and magical to ancient peoples whose worlds and cultures were primarily oral. The fact that generations of storytellers, storytelling, shaping and reshaping oral traditions, eventually evolves into written materials is an amazing and complex process. The texts we call the Bible originated in a world long buried by both history and time. As a result, there is no book in the HB for which we have an "autograph," an original text. The texts that constitute our Bibles are all copies -- copies of copies, of copies. . . Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 the oldest copies of the HB were dated to the 7th century CE. Among the documents found in the caves near Qumran were copies of every book of the HB, with the exception of the Book of Esther. The careful study of these scrolls has provided a window on the biblical texts as they stood during the late 2nd-1st century BCE, the time to which scholars point in dating some of the scrolls.
        If anything, textual studies demonstrate that the books/texts that now make up the bible were fluid entities. We think of them as fixed, well-ordered, grammatically correct documents, and we assume that what we see, read, and hear in liturgy is the totality of their history. Such thinking is contemporary myopia. While the texts constituting the HB are much more regularized than those constituting the NT, the most we can say about the HB is that a "fixed" text has been a reality only since the 8th-11th centuries CE, the time of the Masoretes (a group of Jewish scholars, "interpreters"). The Masoretes put the vowels into the text and regularized the text which takes its name from them -- the Masoretic Text. This text became the standard Hebrew text because the words were "fixed" in a definite form. Having noted the historical point at which a "fixed" text becomes important, it is important to point out that contemporary scholarship does not hold the Masoretic text to be the final or only text used in either translation or scholarship. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other ancient Near Eastern documents provide a clearer window on the texts created, translated and interpreted from the 3d century BCE -- 5th century CE.
        While the Masoretic Text represents a point at which the community finds need for a "fixed" text, there is a history of various translations and versions that precedes a regularized text. As mentioned above, the SEPTUAGINT (LXX) was a Greek translation of the HB made in 3d century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt, home to a large Jewish community. Hebrew was no longer the language of Judaism, except in ritual. Depending on where Jews found themselves -- Israel, Egypt, the larger Mediterranean Basin -- their primary language was not Hebrew. The primary language of the Eastern Mediterranean was Greek, and the Jewish community needed its sacred books translated into the language of their world. The LXX was an original translation in many ways, and as a result, scholars can trace the textual history and development of the Hebrew text by comparing it with the Septuagint. In addition, such comparisons are also fruitful for NT scholars. Since many NT books contain quotations from the HB, it is illustrative to see if those quotations come from the LXX or a Hebrew text.
        Scholars have demonstrated that the common language in Israel among Jews in the first century CE was Aramaic, not Hebrew. As a result there was a need for Aramaic translations, particularly to understand what was read in the synagogues. The TARGUM (a translation and/or interpretation in Aramaic) developed as a loose "paraphrase" that could be read alongside the Hebrew readings in synagogue services.
        Christians in 2d-5th century CE in Syria produced Syriac translations called PESHITTA or PESHITTO. The terms mean "simple" or "common" and represent a sort of daily-use bible of the people. The translations sometimes support the Hebrew text and other times the LXX.
        The last thirty-five years have been marked by an enormous rise in religious publishing -- a rise that can be attributed in great measure too the abundance of new bible translations. Clearly, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the contributions by archaeology have something to do with the proliferation new translations and interest in the Bible. Nevertheless, contemporary Jews and Christians continue to use, reassess, translate and retranslate their sacred texts as did their ancestors in the faith. While some communities rely on translations from the sixteenth century (e.g., King James Version) to nourish their faith, others seek to translate and interpret the texts into their own vernacular. The idea of a "fixed" text is a comforting one, but one that seems to militate against the very dynamism and history of the texts and the people who read, study and pray with them.

From Bible to Canon: The term bible is a Greek term meaning "little books" (Gk. biblion). The term byblos (ta biblia, "the books"), meaning "papyrus" or "book", comes from the ancient city of Byblos. It was in this Phonecian city (and of course, in earlier times, in Egypt) that the papyrus plant was cut and sliced, and the strips dried and glued, producing a material suitable for writing. The Greek name for the literary works produced using this technology was taken directly from the city name, Byblos.
        The Jewish community has always kept its valuable and/or sacred books on scrolls hand-written by a scribe. Some scrolls were written on papyrus (although this material was less reliable because it became brittle with age), others on skins, still others on parchment (vellum). Scrolls were wound around a stick and frequently measured up to 35 ft. in length. The text was written in columns and the number of columns determined the length of the scroll. Because it was difficult to quickly find a portion of a text, particularly if it were in the middle of a work (which necessitated unrolling a substantial portion of the scroll) Christian communities prefered to write, keep, and store their valuable and/or sacred writings in codexes or books (beginning ca. 2d cent. CE).
        The scrolls or books that constitute the HB were determined, in large part, by the communities using them. We call this list of books/scrolls the canon of the HB: in Hebrew, qaneh refers to the norm or measurement by which something is judged, and in Greek, kanon literally means a "straight stick by which something is ruled or measured." The term refers to the "official" or "authoritative" list of books approved by a particular community. Because the HB is claimed as "authoritative" by two religions, Judaism and Christianity, a number of canons of the HB exist. Lists of books, or canons, that Jewish and Christian traditions claim as authoritative for use by their members follows:
        Among Jews the appropriate name for their holy books/scriptures is TANAK, not the names Christians generally use -- Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. TANAK is an acronym constructed of the first consonant from each of the three divisions of the HB. Remember, Hebrew is a language of consonants, and the vowels, the "a's", were added to the consonants to make the word pronouncable and writable. The TANAK consists of the Torah, the first five books (sometimes called the books of Moses; Christians refer to these five books using a Greek term, Pentateuch), the Nebi'im (Hebrew for "prophets") and includes both the "former" and "latter" prophets, and the Kethubim (Hebrew for "writings") includes those works that do not fit in either of the other two categories. The history of what books became part of the Tanak was a long and complicated process that had to do with tradition, community use, and political and religious realities. Scholars date the canonizing process to sometime in the 90's CE. Some twenty years after the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple to the Romans in the Jewish-Roman War (66-70 CE), Judaism was in an important period of transition, and the canon was established during this transition period. Among the books included are those that have a history or tradition of being written in Hebrew, generally eliminating those thought to have been originally written in Greek.
        Scholarship points to several distinct developmental stages in the canonization process. The time frames suggested are approximations, and speak to when the books gained authoritative status: (1) the Torah, ca. 400 BCE; (2) the Prophets, ca. 200 BCE; (3) there is some evidence that the first two sections are "fixed" by about 130 BCE. There is also evidence to suggest that disputes about books, whether those considered canonical or those of non-canonical status, continued until the canon was fixed ca. 90-100 CE.
        The two remaining columns list the canonical books in various Christian traditions. The differences between these lists concern the inclusion of seven books and portions of two others that are among the books accepted by both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Protestant Christianity, as part of the Reformation, adjusted its canonical list of books to bring it into line with the Jewish canon. The term "apocryphal" is used by Protestants to refer to the seven books and portions of books not included. "Apocryphal" is a Greek term meaning "hidden or secret writings" and was applied to these books because they were not included with the other books of the canon in printed or copied Protestant bibles. Therefore, they were apocryphal, or hidden.
        The seven books in question are all late in origin (ca. 3d-1st cent. BCE) and were probably written originally in Greek. This fact alone made them suspicious to the Jewish authorities determining suitability, authority and inspiration of the books.

Geography, Politics and Religion: Over twenty years ago Americans woke up to learn that gasoline was in short supply, and a fill-up required a long wait in a long line. Oil producing nations in the Middle East were maneuvering for higher prices and larger markets. Americans quickly learned that what happens halfway around the world in economics and politics does have an effect on life in the U.S. Almost over night a whole generation learned to locate Saudi Arabia on a map. Later in the 1970's President Carter facilitated a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that led to the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. A few years later Americans were taken hostage in Iran and surrendered after 440+ days. In the early 80's Lebanon experienced a civil war that seemed unending. Here more Westerners were taken hostage and hundreds of American soldiers were killed when their barracks was bombed. Shortly after that, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assasinated by Islamic fundamentalists. In 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, and in 1991 the U.S. and its allies went to war with Iraq, and the world watched the first televised war. With each incident, Middle Eastern countries, leaders, and cultures were daily visitors to American homes, compliments of the Media. If anything, Americans who witnessed these events ought to have an idea of the geography of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and the role geography plays in politics. economics and religion there. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. For most Americans, the geography, politics, and religious traditions of that part of the world remain a mystery, and appear too complex and interwoven to understand. But, what Americans can understand is that the age old Middle Eastern conflicts for land, power and religious identity continue.
        It is impossible to understand a religion, a culture, a people without understanding that place/land/geography are primary components that give definition to civilization. For the communities that gave rise to the books of the HB, two empires of the ancient world had lasting political, cultural, economic and religious influences -- Egypt and Mesopotamia. Of the two empires, Mesopotamia and the empires that arose from those lands (Assyria, Babylonia, Persians, Medes) had the greatest impact on Canaan (Israel).
        Life in the ancient world was governed by the dynamics of land and water, and rivers were symptomatic of civilization. Civilizations developed in areas that provided arable land and a stable source of water. The term "fertile crescent," used to describe Mesopotamia, indicates the land areas, apart from the ubiquitous deserts, suitable for human life and development.
Egyptian life was regulated by life along the Nile, a river relatively calm and predictable. Each year the floods came, renewing the lands and providing the nutrients for another growing season. The Nile served as a mirror of the civilization that grew along its banks. River and land proved to be the ecologic and geographic features that influenced every part of Egyptian life. As a result, Egyptian civilization continued unbroken for more than 2500 years (ca. 3000-500 BCE), and this optimistic and stable environment is most evident in Egyptian politics and religion. The Egyptian legacy is one of an enduring, sophisticated civilization whoses artifacts tell stories of its people: great monuments, rational rulers, peace, abundance and stability for its citizens, and elaborate concern for death rituals, the dead and an afterlife.
        Mesopotamian life was quite different from Egyptian life. The geography and ecology of the land is centered around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which run through the heart of Mesopotamia and provide the model for life in this area. In the fields and marshy areas between these rivers a civilization known as the Sumerians suddenly appeared. They built cities, initiated irrigation projects, invented writing and schools, collected wisdom sayings and proverbs, invented the cart wheel and potter's wheel, and worked in advanced mathematics. The Sumerian contributions of technology and goverance are tied to the rivers that define the area. Both rivers are wild, dangerous and unpredictable, and their floods were violent and destructive. This world was perceived as insecure, unstable, filled with threats to life. And, because the environment was so threatening, humans developed technologies to change the ecology (draining the marshes, etc.), enhance the human world (writing, art, practical tools) and establish governance to protect their future in an insecure world.
        When the short life of the Sumerian Empire gave way to the Akkadians, Mesopotamia began to develop into several distinct areas -- Assyria and Babylon -- each of which brings its own contributions to the world stage, and each of which will occupy Canaan (Israel/Palestine) at some time in its history.
        Both the politics and religions of Mesopotamia reflect the danger and unpredictability of life -- culture and the religion were frequently portrayed in conflict with nature. Power was the commodity that could protect and amass more power and land, so there is little surprise that governance was based a feudal system where might made right. Religiously, the gods and myths reflect the culture -- the wars waged among the gods and between the gods and humans reflect the unbridled violence and power struggles of the Mesopotamian world. There is little doubt that each Mesopotamian empire had an effect on the literature, religion and politics of Canaan. Whether it was the Gilgamesh Epic, the political strategies of Assyria's governing of Israel, the exile of Judah ordered by the Babylonians, or the influence of Persian dualism and belief in an afterlife, Israel's history, literature, and religion show the impact of their neighbors to the East.
        Sitting between Egypt and Mesopotamia, Canaan (Israel/Palestine) found itself frequently under siege by these two dominant empires. The major North-South trade routes ran through Canaan, and whoever controlled the land controlled the trade routes and the economics of the Middle East.
        The geography of Canaan is understood in terms of its boundaries and its geologic features. East and West boundaries are established by water: the Jordan River connects the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and serves as the Eastern boundary, and the Mediterranean serves as the Western boundary. At the Northern boundary was Phenicia (present-day Lebanon) and the Southern (and Southwest) boundary was marked by the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt.
        The geologic features of the land determined how Israel was settled and how wars were fought. The major feature of the land is the central mountain range that is the backbone of the land. The hill country or shephelah serves as a bridge between the coastal plain and the mountains. The hill country runs, from North to South, along the Western ridge of the central mountain range, linking the coastal plain to the interior of the land. The mountains and the hill country dictate how wars were fought in this land. Guerilla wars were the most practical kind of warfare, since it was impossible to drag the heavy machinery of war through the mountains and effectively use it in either the hill country or the mountains.
        Both the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley provide the only low-lands or flat areas in the country. Although the Mediterranean runs the length of the country, Israel never built a port (or ports) there and never took advantage of trade, fishing, etc. from the coast. Portions of the Jordan Valley are so far below sea-level that they are the lowest areas on earth. The river that defines this area loops and curves so that the Jordan River is a 200 mile river in a sixty mile stretch from the Sea of Galilee in the North to the Dead Sea in the South.
        While geologic features are described in vertical terms, the horizontal divisions of the land have played a role in Israel's cultural, religious and political history. The major divisions of the Galilee, Samaria and Judah (Judea) describe three distinct cultural, religious and political expressions of life in ancient Israel and will be discussed further in the articles in this series.
The emphasis on land in the HB speaks to the only real power in the ancient world. If one had land, one had power. Ironically, Israel understood its primary revelation and its fate tied to a land that its neighbors coveted and passed from empire to empire. The contemporary battles in the Middle East still have to do with land and power, and now the focus has broadened to include what is under the land (oil). From its inception Israel was a tiny buffer of difference separating major empires. Today the place is the same, only the names have changed.

II. HOW PEOPLE HAVE STUDIED THE HEBREW BIBLE
        Common to every culture and the religions that arise in those cultures is telling stories. When people gather they tell stories, and the stories they tell reveal what is important to them and how they make sense of their world. In a recent children's book, the Pulitzer Prize winning nature writer Barry Lopez writes about story in a way that illustrates how stories work and why they are so important to every civilization.

"Remember only this one thing," said Badger. "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves." (from Crow and Weasel)

Stories Told and Retold -- The Documentary Hypothesis: Perhaps the best way to understand the movement from oral tradition, to written story, to book, to HB is to study the development and editing of the Torah or Pentateuch.
        For centuries Jews and Christians argued that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, despite the fact that such an argument meant that Moses had written the account of his own death. Over a period of seven centuries scholars challenged Mosaic authorship, at first quietly and then outright. By the late 19th century Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch found little support and a number of scholars were struggling to understand the Pentateuch's puzzles: among the more famous were Hobbs, Spinoza, Simon, Astruc, Eichorn, Graff, DeWette, and Wellhausen. The publication in 1878 of Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the History of Israel gave classical expression to the working hypothesis that the Pentateuch contained material combined from four different sources and edited, over time, by sophisticated hands.
        Wellhausen's argument is called the Documentary Hypothesis, and while it continues to weather contemporary challenges, the hypothesis has been the starting point for research for over one hundred years. The Documentary Hypothesis has been modified, particularly by modern critical methods (discussed below), but remains intact and still stands at the center of our understanding of the construction of the Pentateuch.
        The basic argument of this hypothesis is that the Pentateuch is a composite work in which several traditions were blended together over a number of centuries, with a document emerging ca. 400+ BCE. The "seams" in this literary mosaic are evident in the repetition of stories, linguistic and content inconsistencies, and stylistic differences which reflect the ways in which the story was told and re-told, reworked, and interpreted at different periods.
        The Documentary Hypothesis is an evolutionary model that argues that the stories of the HB developed from oral traditions into written documents. The four literary sources evident in the Pentateuch are named using alphabetic symbols that come from their proper names:

Yahwist (J) source ca. 950 BCE Southern
Elohist (E) source ca. 850 BCE Northern
Deuteronomic (D) source ca. 650 BCE Southern
Priestly (P) source ca. 400 BCE Southern

Methodologies and Interpretations: Whether we read, study, or pray with the HB we presume a context for these books. Each book has a particular historical, cultural, religious, and political context. Just as we would not read The Canterbury Tales without attention to Chaucer's world, to remove the biblical texts from their contexts is to rip them from their social location -- the world in which they developed.
        Today scholars use a number of critical methods to study the HB in an attempt to understand and interpret the biblical texts accurately and objectively. In general and specific ways, historical critical methods are used by most scholars. This approach understands that the more we know about the ancient world -- language, literary forms, customs, politics, economics, ecology, gender relations, religious beliefs and practices -- the better equipped we are to understand and appreciate the environment in which these texts were produced.
        Form Criticism recognized that ancient texts were composed of smaller individual units that function as literary building blocks for a larger work: wisdom sayings, songs, novellas, sayings, speeches, mythic material, lists, legal material, etc. The form critic was interested in both the oral circulation of these units as well as the incorporation of these loosely bound "building blocks" into a larger, written work, and in discovering the life settings from which these oral traditions arose.
Redaction Criticism (from the German redaktion, meaning "editing") stresses the role of the "editor," as the one who assembled, arranged, and edited traditional materials (written, oral, editorial additions) into larger units. In this way the editor also serves as author and brings a particular theological viewpoint to the task that is event in the way materials are edited, arranged, and added.
        Literary Criticism studies the Bible as literature, examining both the story ("what" is told) and the discourse ("how" it is told). Literary criticism understands any work as a dynamic interaction between editor/author, text, and reader. Even though the biblical communities were first distinguished as a community of storytellers, contemporary Jewish and Christian communities have long since become a "community of readers." Cultural anthropologists warn that reading is never done without a context, so the social location of the reader (age, race, religion, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, education, family, etc.) effects how one reads and understands. Since it is impossible to reconstruct the origins of a particular text or the intentions of its author, scholars have turned their attention to the reader and the ways in which he/she reads and interprets. It was the hearers and reader of antiquity that preserved and passed on these texts, and as contemporary readers we continue to participate in this dynamic process of interpretation.
        Social World Criticism understands that texts arise in socio-cultural contexts and are tied to how life is lived in a particular community and from a particular perspective. Social world critics study designated locations, examining any material remains (archaeological remains) economic, political, anthropological, ecological, sociological, philosophical, literary, and religious features and relationships that yield information about life in antiquity.
        Feminist Hermeneutics (interpretation) provides a critique of the oppressive structures of society, particular hierarchy and patriarchy and makes explicit the interconnections between all systems of oppression. Gender issues are plentiful in the HB, and feminist hermeneutics examines texts about women as well as the larger corpus of texts, analyzing the socio-cultural and religious presuppositions underlying the biblical texts and the effects these texts have in our contemporary world.