Were the Biblical Authors “Elites”?

...Biblical texts are invariably anonymous, undated and unprovenanced. If we do not know who wrote the text, and if we are unable to compellingly demonstrate when or where the text was written, it follows that we can hardly expect to know very much at all about the social position the author occupied in the community within which he was embedded

See also The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (Yale University Press, 2022).

By Yonatan Adler
Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology
Ariel University
July 2024

Were the authors of our Biblical texts influential, elite members of the societies within which they lived and wrote?[1] Both laymen and scholars alike often assume that ordinary people living at the time that the Biblical writers penned their texts would have known who these authors were and would have paid attention to what they had to say. The present essay aims to challenge this common but, to my mind, problematic view.

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          Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “elite” as: “(a) the choice part; (b) the best of a class; (c) the socially superior part of society.”[2] It also includes in its definition: “(d) a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence.” This last definition is important for our purposes, as in speaking of an author as a member of an “elite,” one would seem to imply that the writer wields a certain degree of influence upon the general society within which he or she lives and works.

          Elite status should not be judged as a binary—i.e., one either has it or not—but rather as falling along a broad continuum. To give some examples from a modern-day context of “elite” vs. “non-elite” writers, on either end of the spectrum of influence:

• A New York Times staff writer publishing a news item in this newspaper would be an “elite”; a random reader posting a comment below this item in the online edition of the newspaper would be a “non-elite.”
• A celebrity with 10 million followers posting on X/Twitter would be an “elite”; an individual with 10 followers posting on the same platform would be a “non-elite.”
• The spiritual head of a large, established religion delivering a televised sermon would be an “elite”; the leader of a small religious sect with only a few dozen adherents publishing a sermon on YouTube would be a “non-elite.”

While these examples describe very elite figures on one end of the continuum, and quite marginal figures on the other end, clearly there is a range of somewhat more and somewhat less influential individuals who lie along the entirety of this spectrum.

          Returning to the question at hand: where would the Biblical authors have landed along this “elite” vs. “non-elite” continuum in the contemporary societies within which they lived and penned their texts? Would the masses of ordinary Judeans or Israelites living at the time of these writers have known who they were? And would these contemporaries have known and/or cared about what these authors were putting into writing?

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          Before attempting to answer these questions, we must first contend with the fact that the term “Biblical authors” is itself quite problematic. What today we call “the Bible” is actually a collection of texts written, edited, and copied by numerous individuals over the course of several centuries. It consists of texts belonging to a broad array of genres, including historical narrative, law, prophecies, wisdom literature offering guidance for life, and liturgical and even erotic poetry. There is little which binds the “Biblical authors” as a coherent group aside from the fact that some of their writings happened to have survived within works which, for a variety of reasons, centuries later came to be regarded as part of our “Bible.” With this in mind, we shall need to consider the author of any particular Biblical text as an individual who may or may not have yielded much sway within his (or less likely her) own contemporary society. Any answer we arrive at for one author will have little ramifications for deciding about the elite status of another author.

          Having said this, we must also contend with the fact that any particular Biblical text as we have it today was not simply “authored” by a single individual. We have no surviving autographs of any Biblical texts which were penned by their original author. Rather, all of our Biblical texts have come down to us after having been copied, and often redacted, by numerous hands over the course of centuries and even millennia. In examining the possible elite status of the author of any particular Biblical text, we must consider the impact which all these hands have had on the text in question.

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          All of this brings us to the crux of the matter, which comes down to the simple fact that we do not know who the authors of any of our Biblical texts were. Unlike the familiar convention of publishing an author’s name on the cover of a book or in the byline of an article, the Biblical texts are largely without authorial attribution of any sort. Even when a text is written in the first person by a named individual (e.g., Jer 1:1; Ezek 1:1; Neh 1:1), evidence is required to show that the attribution is genuine and not pseudepigraphic.

          Not only do we not know the identities of the authors of our Biblical texts, for the most part we do not know when these texts were written. True, in some cases Biblical texts include information which allow us to determine its terminus post quem—the date after which the text must have been written. As an example, a text which includes the name of a known and well-dated historical figure certainly postdates the time of that individual. More rarely, we are able to identify clues which provide a convincing terminus ante quem—the date before which the text must have been written. Although it is common for scholars to posit more precise date ranges for Biblical texts, such hypotheses usually remain within the realm of educated conjecture. Without knowing the date when a text was written, it is difficult to say very much at all about the societal contexts within which the authors lived, or the social strata they may have occupied within the hierarchical structures of these societies.

          Furthermore, as a rule we do not know where any particular Biblical text was written. Although scholars often conjecture that this or that text was likely to have been written in Jerusalem, in Samaria, or in Babylon, the actual evidence to support any such conjectures is usually quite thin.

          To summarize, Biblical texts are invariably anonymous, undated and unprovenanced. If we do not know who wrote the text, and if we are unable to compellingly demonstrate when or where the text was written, it follows that we can hardly expect to know very much at all about the social position the author occupied in the community within which he was embedded.

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          I would venture that the common notion that the Biblical authors must have been influential elites in their own times stems primarily from the fact that their writings were eventually canonized within what later came to be known as our “Bible”—arguably the most influential body of literature in Western civilization. If these texts have enjoyed such a dominant position over the past two millennia, so the thinking goes, certainly their authors must have been influential figures in their own day and age. While understandable, this way of thinking is simply mistaken. The fact that a body of texts later came to be regarded as authoritative says absolutely nothing about the status of these texts—or of their authors—when they were first put into writing.

          Indeed, Reinhard Kratz has suggested that it was only in the Hasmonean period, from the mid-second century BCE and onward, that the texts which comprise what he calls “the Biblical tradition” gained any degree of widespread recognition within ancient Jewish society.[3] Prior to this time, he argued, the Biblical tradition probably circulated among only limited and marginal circles of intellectuals, perhaps associated with small scribal schools. According to Kratz, hundreds of years would have passed between when most of the texts which make up our Bible were first penned—and when they first came to be widely known and regarded as authoritative among ancient Jews. If he is correct, there would be little reason to think that the Biblical authors themselves might have been influential figures in their own time.

          In my recent book The Origins of Judaism, I similarly argued that there is no evidence to suggest that the laws of the Torah were regarded as authoritative—or even widely known—any time before the Hasmonean period.[4] There I showed that it is only from the middle of the second century BCE and onward that we begin to find archaeological and textual evidence indicating that ordinary Jews knew of the Torah and were putting its laws into practice. Prior to this time, there is little reason to think that the notion of a Mosaic Torah might have been circulating among anything more than limited circles of Jewish intellectuals or pietists. Again, such a scenario would hardly lead us to conclude that the Biblical authors were themselves influential elites in their own day and age.

          What would it take for a text to survive in obscurity for generations, coming into prominence and achieving authoritative status only centuries after it was first written down? Not much, it seems. It is easy to imagine an arcane manuscript being tucked away on a shelf in some archive, like a temple library, and gathering dust there for decades or even centuries before it is rediscovered and publicized widely. The fact that precisely such a scenario is described in the narrative about the high priest Hilkiah discovering a long-forgotten scroll “in the house of YHWH” (2 Kgs 22:8; 2 Chr 34:15) suggests that ancient storytellers did not regard such a storyline as a farfetched possibility. Alternatively, one might imagine a small cadre originally receiving the text, and then passing it on to subsequent generations of the group before it eventually earns widespread recognition and authoritative status among the general public. The modern-day example of the teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) is somewhat illustrative of such a scenario, as these circulated among only a small sect of devotees for close to two centuries before they finally achieved renown within the larger Jewish world toward the end of the 20th century.[5]

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          What are the ramifications for the case I am making here? If we were to take seriously the possibility that any given Biblical text was authored by a marginal figure—and that the text probably remained largely unknown for centuries afterward—how would this affect the way that we understand and ultimately value this text?

          From an historical perspective, the implications are quite significant. Biblical texts present valuable data about the time and place of their authors precisely if they are interpreted as being filtered through the very subjective lenses of these writers. It matters very much whether we understand these authors as elite actors situated at the front and center stage of their society, or as marginal figures living and working along the fringes of this society.

          But from the perspective of value-laden texts which we share as members of a faith community and which we pass down as a tradition to our children, I see little reason why it should matter how we understand the social position of the Biblical authors. If we regard a text as imparting sacred wisdom, beauty, and timeless truths, then the possibility that the author of such a text was little known in his own time should hardly imply that the text is any less sacred, wise, beautiful or true. To the contrary, I find it incredibly inspiring to consider that our Biblical writers may very well have been regarded as marginal in their own day and age, only to eventually win the day as the cherished individuals who came to define Western civilization itself.