Welcome to Biblical Criticism Online

Tzemah Yoreh received his first PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2004 and his second from the University of Toronto in 2019. He's taught Bible at many institutions. Most recently he's written multiple books in Kernel to Canon, a series of popular books on Biblical Critcism.

I would like to thank my teachers Israel Knohl, Baruch Schwartz, Alexander Rofe and many others for shaping the way I think about Biblical writing.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used according to copyright restrictions. All rights reserved.

Like beautifully layered rock formations lining the walls of a desert canyon, so is the Biblical text. Story is piled upon story until the foundations are invisible. Those foundations tell a different story-one that only a trained geologist can tease from the rock; one that only a Biblical philologist, trained in the dissection of literature, can find in the text. The Supplementary Hypothesis seeks to chart the accretive process of the composition of Biblical narrative. It pulls apart the canonical text and isolates the earliest storyline. It then attempts to draw out each of the stages of additions to this early storyline, culminating with the canonical text that we have today.

There used to be a story in the Bible in which Abraham killed his son Isaac. It is not there anymore.

Neither are many other stories that were once told. In the original Bible, Jacob was the first Patriarch, The Israelites were not slaves in Egypt. There were only seven commandments, no other laws, and Moses made it to the promised land instead of dying in the desert. This book tells these stories. It also explains how and why the Bible changed so radically into what we have today.