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THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION 235

iii. The Sources of the Torah

A. JEWISH SOURCES
Just as it remains fashionable to search for the influence of ulterior sources
in the Qur'an (a subject I will tackle later),35 Western scholars have busied
themselves in the past with finding sources for the Torah.Julius Wellhausen
(1844-1918) points out four basicorigins:](theYahwistic Prophetic narrative,
c. 850B.C.); E(the Elohistic Prophetic narrative, c. 750s.c.);D (Deuteronomy
and Deuteronomic notes elsewhere, c. 600 B.C.); and P(the Priestly Code,
represented especially in Leviticus and in reformations elsewhere, c. 400
B.C.).36 Other sources have also been found, all supposedlyJewish.

B. NON-JEWISH SOURCES
The greatest dilemma we face however is the discovery of similar writings
in non-jewish sources - some preceding the O'T by at least five centuries.
According to Ex 20, God verbally proclaimed the Ten Commandments
and wrote them on two stone tablets, presenting these to Moses on Mount
Sinai.

The most famous parallel corpus is,of course, the Code of Hammurabi
... (dated at c. 1700 B.C.). SO striking is the similarity that atfirst statements
were made to the effiet that the Covenant Code was taken or borrowed from
Hammurabi's laws. Now it is understood that both codes stem from a
common background of wide-spread legislation. Though the Hebrew
code is later in date, it is in some ways simpler and more primitive in
character than that of Hammurabi.. Y

34 - cont. The director of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of
California, Dr. Zuckermann, travelled to the spot to take detailed pictures of the
inscription D.N. Wilford, "Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier
Date for Origin of the Alphabet", TheNew York Times, Nov. 13, 1999]. As the words
Semitic and anti-Semitic are nowadays reserved exclusivelyforJews (rather than Arabs
or Arameans), so now it appears that the credit for inventing the alphabet may
gradually be taken away from the Phoenicians and given to the ancestors of theJews.
35 See Chapter 18.
36 Dictionary ofthe Bible, p. 104.
37 ibid, p. 568; italicsadded. The Book of the Covenant or Covenant Code is roughly
Ex 20:22-23:19 [ibid, p. 568). Fredrick Delitzsch, the founding father of Assyriology,
in his works Babel andBible and Die Grosse Tiiusehung has shown that the sources for
Israelite faith, religion and society were mainly derived from Babylonian sources. [See
S. Bunimovitz, "How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up", Biblical
Archaeology Review, MarchiApril 1995, vol. 21, no. 2, p. 61].