A group of Israeli and international scholars has employed computer-assisted word-frequency analysis to pioneer a new method that may show who wrote the Bible and redacted it some 2,800 years ago.

Combining custom-built software with an algorithm developed in the field of statistics, the methodology is detailed in a groundbreaking study published on Tuesday in the leading academic journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers applied the new system to tackle longstanding debates over authorship in several contested passages, including the Book of Esther, the so-called “Ark Narrative” in the first and second books of Samuel, and stories about Abraham in the Book of Genesis.

While many people of faith view the Bible as the product of divine revelation, scholars typically regard it as a patchwork of distinct documents and traditions that were later compiled and edited.

“As far as I can judge, the earliest texts in the Bible were composed in the Kingdom of Israel in the first half of the 8th century BCE,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein, head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa and one of the PLOS ONE paper’s authors.

“Composition of texts intensified in the 7th century [BCE] in Judah, mainly in the days of King Josiah,” he told The Times of Israel via email. “The latest texts were put in writing around the 2nd century BCE.”

Yet, when and how the different parts of the Bible were redacted is often disputed among scholars.

According to Thomas Römer, a renowned biblical expert from the Collège de France and another author of the PLOS ONE study, it is essential to remember that no single individual can be considered the sole author of biblical texts.

“There are no authors of the Bible in the modern sense,” Römer told The Times of Israel via email. “The original versions of the scrolls were continuously reworked and rewritten by redactors who added, altered and sometimes also omitted parts of the former texts.”

The PLOS ONE paper focused on three schools of writers, the so-called Deuteronomy, Deuteronomist History, and Priestly Writings.

“Deuteronomy refers to the last book of the Torah/Pentateuch,” Römer explained. “There is a wide consensus that the first version of this scroll was written down in the 7th century BCE. The core of this first version was the laws that stipulate that the God of Israel had chosen only one place [Jerusalem] for the sacrificial........

© The Times of Israel