Most of us who read the Bible with regularity consider its contents factually true. Because that’s the case, many readers are prone to assume that what they’re reading was written at the same time as the events described, or at least very close to the time of those events. Sometimes that assumption isn’t far from the reality, but in many instances, that isn’t the case.
For example, most scholars would place the earliest of the four Gospels within a few decades of Jesus’s life. The reason for that gap in time is clear from a close reading of the New Testament. The apostles thought that the Lord’s return was imminent (Rom. 13:11; 1 Peter 4:7; James 5:8; Heb. 10:25–27). When it became apparent that Jesus might not return in their lifetimes, there was a sense of urgency to put what they had experienced and heard during their time with Jesus into writing for posterity.
As it turned out, the entirety of the New Testament was written by roughly AD 100, just over a half century after the death and resurrection of Jesus. In comparison to other historical works of the ancient world, that’s a short span of time. According to the chronology that can be gleaned from the book of Acts, the epistles were written within a few months or years of Paul’s ministry in the congregations to which they were written.
When it comes to the Old Testament, things are different. Even if we presume Moses recorded the lives of the patriarchs in Genesis, he would have been writing several centuries after the fact. Many Old Testament books have unknown authors, which makes it difficult to align their events and their authorship. As we’ll see in later chapters, the books that detail Israel’s story from the exodus to the monarchy (e.g., Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua through 2 Kings) contain evidence that they were written several centuries after the events they describe.
The gaps between the event and its recording are no reason to assume inaccuracy. External sources and disciplines such as archaeology show that the contents of these books are coherent and in concert with the times they portray. Ancient societies had strong oral historical traditions. Present day historians who study oral cultures tell us that the people of these cultures can memorize prodigious amounts of material with exactitude. Modern cultures that adopt writing have no need for this discipline. So despite our unfamiliarity with oral history, it would have been commonplace in distant antiquity. Finally, the fact that parts of Israel’s history hadn’t yet been written in a book doesn’t mean that it wasn’t written elsewhere. We know Old Testament writers had sources. The absence of one doesn’t require the absence of the other.
When it comes to understanding Scripture, we need to educate ourselves on both timelines—the events portrayed and the time of writing. Understanding both will help us recover the perspective of both the biblical characters and the writers.