The Free Thinkers guide to the Bible

Part 1 Summary

Hopefully you have read all five of the Part one studies in order. I hope they were eye opening and answered some of your questions, and better yet, brought more questions to mind.

In part one; I provided you with examples of five distinct editing styles that merge the accounts/stories of two distinct writers. I will build on these accounts and others in further studies, as well as add many more examples to provide you with a preponderance of evidence.

If you continue the studies until the end, it is my hope and expectation that you will have fully removed the veil that has been placed over your eyes by the writers/editors of the first five books of the bible.

The five editing examples we covered in Part 1:

One occasion where two authors’ with similar stories that are cunningly intermixed – The Flood account in Genesis chapter six.

Two separate author’s accounts of the same story stitched together and appearing to be a continuous account. – In the Beginning/The Creation story - Genesis chapters one and two.

Two separate author’s accounts of the same event in two separate books – The Waters of Meribah in Exodus chapter seventeen and The Waters of Meribah in Numbers chapter twenty.

One account with two unrelated stories stitched together to look like one continuous story – The heresy at Peor in Numbers twenty-five.

One occasion where two authors’ with unrelated stories are intermixed to look like one continuous story - The Rebellion account in Numbers chapter sixteen. This account also includes the adding of the name of Korach in three places in the other writers story.

After completing Part one of the series you should be discerning writing patterns and beginning to distinguish between the two authors by their writing styles, stories context, key words and key people. As you have read in the examples, the editors/writers are clearly quite adept at their craft.