Summary:
There really is no such thing as “The Bible.”
The Bible doesn’t mention a Bible. The Book of Deuteronomy mentions a Torah
(Pentateuch), but it’s not really clear that this actually refers to what are
called the Five Books of Moses. Elsewhere in those five books, we hear of the
Ten Utterances, the Book of the Covenant, the Tablets of the Covenant and other
designations of sacred writings, but nowhere, for instance, in the Former Prophets
(Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) do we hear of a Torah or any other collection
of sacred writings with which we might be familiar. In fact, many things happen
in these works that seem to contradict the model of covenant community
expressed in the Torah. The gathering together of writings that emerged out of
the civilization of ancient Israel took place as part of a secondary formation
following the Babylonian exile and the return of the exiled Judeans to their
homeland. Therefore, the notion of a “Bible” is unbiblical.
