User:Ltwin/Sandbox 21

Book of Genesis

Composition
Not in article: Many theories have been proposed for why these separate sources were compiled into a single document.

As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However, the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.

According to the documentary hypothesis, the sources were dated to the following: * J = 10th–9th century BC * E = 8th century BC * D = 7th century BC (Josiah's reforms, ca. 625 BC) * P = 5th century BC (postexilic, Ezra) Van Seters proposes the following dates: * D = ca. 625 BC * J = ca. 540 BC (exilic) * P = ca. 400 BC (postexilic)

Adherents of the documentary hypothesis generally ascribed portions of Genesis as follows: * Chapters 1–11 are from J (2:4b–4:26, 6:1–8, 7:1–5;