The most recent parts of the Old Testament were probably written about 100 B.C.; the oldest parts may be ascribed to 1200 or 1100 B.C., but oral tradition reaches back for many centuries before these dates, and overlaps into the period of written records. In a culture where most of the people are illiterate and writing materials are a luxury, oral tradition will remain important. Even the written word is unlikely to remain entirely unchanged; as the scribes made copies of earlier material, they sometimes modified it to meet the changing needs of the later generation.
The chart sets out the relationships between the various parts of the Old Testament and the way in which the material developed during the period. At the centre of the nation's life were the traditions handed down from the time of the Patriarchs and the period spent in Egypt. The Exodus from Egypt and the Covenant made during the journey through the desert became the key to the earlier traditions and to the whole of the nation's subsequent history. Much of this later experience is absorbed into the accounts of the Exodus and Covenant, and the legal material contained in the first five books of the Old Testament, for they did not reach their final form until seven centuries after the events they describe.
The strands of tradition have been separated in the chart into historical, legal and liturgical material, but these distinctions would be deeply misleading if they suggested that they were separate elements in the nation's life. The people who were involved in lawsuits or argued about the village cases, were the same people who worshipped at the local sanctuaries or the temple, and were inspired by the stories of the nation's past. The tradition developed as a unified whole, differentiated only by local variations, in which the principles of the Covenant controlled every aspect.
The prophetic writings can be seen as a separate entity with more reason, but here again there is a firm relationship with the central tradition, if only to correct mistaken attitudes towards it. More surprisingly, the historical writings are closely associated with the central tradition, mainly through the Deuteronomic and Priestly schools of theology. The Psalms, whatever their origin may have been, became an inseparable part of the centralised sacrificial cult of the temple in Jerusalem, at least after King Josiah's reform. The 'wisdom' writings, traditionally ascribed to Solomon, seem the most detached section of Old Testament literature, together with some of the late apocalyptic material and historical stories.
Rectangular boxes represent written material or books: J and E represent early forms of the historical traditions in the transition from oral to written form, and JE their conflation into a single narrative; D represents Deuteronomy. The two 'sunbursts' on the 622 B.C. line represent the intense legal and liturgical activity associated with King Josiah's reform.
(I am grateful to Sheed & Ward for permission to develop this chart from an earlier form of it in The Beginnings of a People. J.R.)