1.A 02. The Starting-Point of Scripture
The Starting-Point of Scripture
It is just here that we are fortunate enough to have a fixed date which is a starting-point for, of sacred Scripture. It is to be understood that what follows is a reconstruction of events, as we think that they happened, and, although in our narrative we state the events as facts, we are none the less well aware that it is reconstruction and not indubitable history which we are presenting. In the year 621 B.C. a book which can only have been the Book of juterpiTLomy wajjdiscovered in thg^gy^ (2 Kings 22:8-20). At the time the young Josiah was king, and he was a good king, and a true seeker after God. This book which had been discovered was accepted as the word of God, and was deliberately taken as nothing less than the law of the nation (2 Kings 23:3). Here is the beginning of the whole process. A book has been accepted as the revealed word of God, and it has been openly and deliberately and publicly taken as the law of the nation and of the individual. "For the first time in the history of mankind," says Pfeiffer, "a book was canonized as sacred scripture." But we must follow the process further. The publication of Deuteronomy very naturally stimulated the interest in written books, and there was another great book lying ready to hand. This was a great epic story which told of the history of Israel down to the death of David, and which was itself a compilation, which had been made somewhere about 650 B.C. To this document has been given the name of JE, because it is formed by the coming together of two documents called respectively JLaiid EL These documents have been given these identifying initials 1 because one of them calls God by the name Jehovah right from the beginning, while the other calls God by the name Elohim, which is the general Hebrew word for God, down until the revelation of the name of Jehovah to Moses in Exodus 3:11-18. It is precisely because these two documents have been put together that there were the discrepancies which exist in certain sections of the Pentateuch.