Praise God!
This translation of the Bible, the Wholly English Translation (WET), is put side by side the KJV for easy comparison and authentication. It can also be said to be “self-explanatory” in that many words that make the KJV and other translations uneasy to understand are made easier to understand. It explains ALL that pose difficulties to Bible readers, maximizing the use of parentheses. Added to that, it has some unique characteristics.
UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS
- Revelation of the author/compiler of all the First Testament books but one (We prefer to use “First Testament” instead of “Old Testament” and “Final Testament” instead of “New Testament”): Peculiar to this translation is the revelation of the authors/compilers of all the books of the First Testament, except “the Psalms,” which, prior to this translation, has been shrouded in mystery. Both the church of God and the Jews (though all descendants of Jacob are presently called Jews, the term was originally coined for the people of Judah, the southern of the two kingdoms that resulted after the division of the original nation of Israel) have searched fruitlessly for the authors of the books of the First Testament. Several theories have been propounded for Moses’ authorship of the first five books that were given the name, Torah, in Hebrew, meaning “five books” and in Greek, Pentateuch, but all the theories do not, and can never, hold water because they do not pass the test of common, spiritual or grammatical sense; they are knocked out by the third-person pronoun employed to report events involving Moses and over 600 speeches ascribed to him, coupled with the last chapter of Deuteronomy which reports his death. Besides, neither the five books nor any of the components, is qualified to be called Book, in that only the first, Genesis, has beginning, others do not, and none of them has an ending. Also, the theory that Joshua wrote the book named after him is debunked by the third-person pronoun employed to report his actions from the beginning of the book to the end plus the report of his death in the last chapter of the book. The unfounded theory that Samuel wrote Judges, Ruth and 1 Samuel is also debunked by the third-person pronouns employed to report activities and events involving him, even his birth, in the book named after him as well as the report of his death in the 25th Chapter of 1 Samuel. Finally, the assumption that David completed the last part of 1 Samuel and wrote 2 Samuel met a brick wall by the third-person pronoun employed to report activities of David from his childhood and events involving him, in so many instances, as well as the knowledge that 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings are regarded as one book by the same hand(s). Who were responsible for the books of the First Testament? We will begin from the known to the unknown.
THE KNOWN
Though the author(s) of the books of the Bible, from Genesis, is shrouded in mystery, majority of Bible students all over the world – members of the church and the nation of Israel – are of the opinion that Ezra wrote 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles with the piece titled, Ezra. What they do not know till today is what was responsible for the reproduction of 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 in Ezra 1:1-4. The reason was that Ezra suspended the historical narration he began in 1 Chronicles 1:1 at 2 Chronicles 36:21 to incorporate some writings of kings, singers, prophets and wise men. Accordingly, he incorporated Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Lamentation, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Ezekiel, Job and Daniel (Daniel 7-12), arranging them chronologically and slotting in some historical narrations along the line. He introduced Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum and Zephaniah into the book, each with a superscription; Jeremiah and Lamentation with one superscription, Lamentation being an addendum to Jeremiah; Habakkuk and Obadiah, each with a superscription; and Ezekiel and Job with one superscription, Job being an addendum to Ezekiel. He progressed with the narration in Daniel 1 to 6, after which he incorporated the visions shown to Daniel in Daniel 7 to 12 with a superscription - In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream – a mental perception or something that came up in the head – on his bed which he wrote down as follows.
Ezra resumed the narration in Ezra 1 and progressed till he revealed his identity in Ezra 7:1-7. Continuing from there, he began to employ first-person pronouns (Ezra 7:28; 8:15-32; 9:1-15) until he rounded off in Ezra 9:15. The writer’s first signature in any book is the first-person pronoun. Chapter 10 might have been added after Ezra’s demise or when he could no longer write, and the one responsible for the addition must have continued the narration in Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. As expected, Ezra revealed the books he contacted to bring about his history as the history books of the sister kingdom (Israel), and of Judah, which he referred to as the book of the kings of Israel (1 Chr. 9:1) and the book of the kings of Judah (2 Chr. 16:11) respectively; “the book of Samuel the Seer;” “the book of Nathan the prophet;” “the book of Gad the Seer;” “the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite;” “the visions of Iddo the Seer against Jeroboam, the son of Nebat;” “the book of Shemaiah the prophet;” “the book of Iddo the Seer concerning genealogies;” and “the book of Jehu the son of Hanani” (1 Chr. 29:29; 2 Chr. 9:29; 12:15 and 20:34). Accordingly, twenty-three of the thirty-nine books of the First Testament are adequately fixed, leaving sixteen books. One thing that unifies the books is that all the writers were people of Judah, the southern kingdom, except Agur the son of Jakeh (Prov. 30:1 – KJV) and King Lemuel’s mother (Prov. 31:1 – KJV) whose identities are unknown. This accounts for why they were within the reach of Ezra. Read more about the authorship of the books in the Introduction to the Book of Generations of Adam by Ezra and Introduction to the Book of Ezra. That it contains the writings of the prophets is the reason the book was called in the Final Testament, “the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12; Mark 1:2; Luke 24:44) or “the Book of the Prophets” (Acts 7:42), being abridged form of the “Book Containing the Writings of the Prophets.” The Book Containing the Writings of the Prophets is the first of the three First Testament books revealed in the Final Testament, the remaining two being the Book Containing the Law of Moses, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). That the piece titled “Isaiah” is referred to in Psalm 40:7 as a volume of a book attests to the fact that it is a volume of this book – the Book Containing the Writings of the Prophets.
Refuting the Unfounded Theory of One-authorship of Kings and Chronicles
Stated below are five clear proofs that 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles were not authored by the same individual; they are volumes of two different books written by different authors:
- The two books contain the same accounts, and in many instances, word for word. Read few of them: 1 Chr. 1:39 versus Gen. 36:22; 1 Chr. 1:40 versus Gen. 36:23; 1 Chr. 1:43-54 versus Gen. 36:31-43; 1 Chr. 2:3 versus Num. 26:19-20; 1 Chr. 2:5 versus Num. 26:21; 1 Chr. 2:11 versus Ruth 4:21; 1 Chr. 2:20 versus Ex. 31:2; 1 Chr. 4:28 versus Josh. 19:2; 1 Chr. 6:61 versus Josh. 21:5; 1 Chr. 6:78 versus Josh. 20:8; 1 Chr. 10:1-12 versus 1 Sam. 31:1-13; 1 Chr. 11:1-3 versus 2 Sam. 5:1-3; 1 Chr. 11:1-3 versus 2 Sam. 5:1-3; 1 Chr. 11:4-7 versus 2 Sam. 5:6-10; 1 Chr. 11:10-47 versus 2 Sam. 23:8-39; 1 Chr. 17:1-27 versus 2 Sam. 7:1-29; 1 Chr. 18:1-17 versus 2 Samuel 8:1-18; 1 Chr. 19:1-19 versus 2 Samuel 10:1-19; 1 Chr. 21:1-30 versus 2 Samuel 24:1-25; 2 Chr. 1:3-12 versus 1 Kings 3:2-13; 2 Chr. 1:14-17 versus 1 Kings 10:26-29; 2 Chr. 2:3-18 versus 1 Kings 5:2-18; 2 Chr. 3:1-4:22 versus 1 Kings 6:1-38; 2 Chr. 5:2-7:22 versus 1 Kings 8:1-9; 2 Chr. 25:18 versus 2 Kings 14:9; 2 Chr. 34:22 versus 2 Kings 22:14; and 2 Chr. 36:9-21 versus 2 Kings 24:8-17. If Ezra wrote the two, it would mean that one is an updated version. That means the first must be discarded. Not only that, many of the proper and abstract nouns are spelt differently. No one in his right senses will write two books repeating himself!
- Chronicles begins with the first man created, Adam, so, it is abnormal for it to follow the account of the deportation of the people of Judah to Babylon with which 2nd Kings ends. Also, it will be wrong to place 1st Kings after Chronicles; 1st Kings opens with the reign of Solomon son of David; so, it is illogical for it to follow 2 Chronicles which ends with the deportation of Judah to Babylon. It will be putting the cart before the horse!
- The first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles is a compacted but misarranged account of the record from Genesis to 1st Samuel 28. It is improbable for one to write such a book if the other was on ground, except he wrote Chronicles first. If he did, then Genesis to 2 Kings becomes the updated version, and so, Chronicles must be discarded.
- While the writer of 1st and 2nd Kings wrote “the book of Chronicles of the kings” of Israel or Judah to refer readers to the source of his information, the writer of 1st and 2nd Chronicles wrote “the books of the kings” of Israel or Judah.
- While the writer of 1st and 2nd Kings reported the reigns of the kings in the two kingdoms – Israel and Judah – which resulted after their division alternately, the writer of 1st and 2nd Chronicles reported the reign of the kings of Judah only.
As long as these cannot be disputed, the theory that Moses wrote the first five books in the current arrangement of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – called “Torah” in Hebrew and “Pentateuch” in Greek, becomes untenable, in that 1st and 2nd Kings are evidently continuations of a book which begins uninterruptedly from Genesis and 1st Chronicles is the beginning of another history book, by another person entirely, which progresses till it was suspended in 2 Chr. 36:21. What Moses wrote are clearly stated in the Bible — the Law as given by God [the Self-existent] when He visited with Israel on Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:2 – 23:33; 25:2 - 31:17), and a song (Deut. 32:1-43), nothing more, nothing less.
THE UNKNOWN
Apart from the unbroken progression of the narration from Genesis to Nehemiah and the chronologicity of the events in the fifteen books from the creation of the first man, Adam, to the birth of the great ancestor of Israel, Jacob, up to the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt, their stay in Egypt, their departure from Egypt, their wanderings in the wilderness for forty years, their arrival at the promised land, the allocation of the land, their taking possession of the land, their life and time in the promised land, their deportation from the promised land, their life and time in the lands they were deported to, and their return to the promised land – the fact that the events from Genesis to Esther were written in third-person pronoun, makes it clear that one person or group was responsible for the fifteen volumes, and makes Nehemiah, the only one who employed first-person pronoun, the author or chief editor. (The writer’s first signature in any book is the first-person pronoun.)
Nehemiah returned to the habitation of prosperity - Jerusalem - from Shushan, the palace, as a governor to rebuild the walls of the habitation of prosperity - Jerusalem; this took place long after the decree of Cyrus that all Jews (people of Judah, the southern kingdom) in Babylon could return to the habitation of prosperity - Jerusalem - a decree which enabled Zerubbabel and Joshua to return with many Jews (people of Judah, the southern kingdom) as the first set of returnees, to build the sanctuary, and Ezra, with the second set, to restore the worship of the Self-existent. On his arrival, Nehemiah, also, seeing the need to put together a book for the returnees and the unborn generations to know their origin and how they got to where they were, decided to write one. Unlike Zerubbabel, Jeshua and Ezra, Nehemiah did not return with his people; he returned with Persian government officials (Neh. 2:9) in that he did not have many Israelis around him in Shushan, the palace, since his forefathers were not deported to the same place as the people of Judah, the southern kingdom, who were all deported to Babylon. His people were scattered to all the countries of the Medes (2 Kings 18:11).
As a governor, Nehemiah definitely did not have the time to write a history, so he likely could have employed the services of people to do it, and being of northern extraction, the people around him were people of Israel, the northern kingdom, one of whom was Hanani, whom he referred to as “one of my brethren” (Neh. 1:2 – KJV), and distinguished from the men of Judah, the southern kingdom. As a governor, however, Nehemiah had all the resources at his disposal to carry out research on their history.
Naturally, the people wrote from the point of view of a northerner. With the funds available to them, they were able to dig deep into their history which they titled, “The Book of the History of Adam” (Gen. 5:1 - WET). They began the history with Adam and graduated it to the birth of their ancestor, a descendant of Adam called Abraham; how he was called by God, away from his people, to an unknown land said to be the land of Canaan; and how, on getting there, he was promised to be given the land. They then recorded a prophecy that his descendants would be strangers in a strange land for four generations. Following that, they wrote how, after several years of waiting, he got a child named Isaac, how Isaac, after twenty years of waiting got twins – Esau and Jacob - through his wife, Rebeccah, and how Jacob, the last born, with his family, found himself in Egypt and lived there until he died (Genesis). They followed it with how the descendants of Jacob spent four hundred and thirty years in Egypt in fulfilment of the prophecy before God raised Moses, one of Jacob’s descendants, for them as a deliverer and how they came out of Egypt and spent forty years in the wilderness; how they got the law through Moses and how Moses died in the wilderness (Exodus to Deuteronomy). After reporting Moses’ demise, they reported their journey to the promised land under the leadership of Joshua who became an assistant to Moses in the wilderness, and how they possessed and allocated the land (Joshua). They progressed in Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel to Kings where they reported all that transpired in Israel before the division, giving more attention to events in the northern kingdom and revealing all the bad things David and Solomon did, which Ezra omitted, and showing that Solomon’s waywardness and the high-handedness of Rehoboam his son were responsible for their revolt. After reporting the division, unlike Ezra, they began to report events in the two resultant kingdoms alternately, but consciously putting their country, Israel (the northern kingdom) first until the captivity of Judah (the southern kingdom) in 2 Kings 25, having reported the deportation of Israel (the northern kingdom) in 2 Kings 17.
Following that, they brought in the story of Prophet Jonah who had gone to preach to their captors before their deportation. Then, they wrote about their God’s benevolence to His people in Shushan in Esther. The book was rounded off with the writings of Nehemiah which were introduced with the superscription – The Words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah (Neh. 1:1 - KJV) – in which we find Nehemiah, the editor-in-chief, writing in the first-person pronoun. Having completed the book, the prologue – Genesis 1 to 4 – was written and placed at the beginning.
Apart from the unbroken progression of the narration, one great unifier of the book by Nehemiah is that it concentrates majorly on events involving the northern kingdom from the time of their division during the reign of Rehoboam son of Solomon.
Like Ezra, Nehemiah used the superscription - These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red Sea, between Paran and Tophel and Leban and Hazeroth and Dizahab, eleven days’ journey to Kadesh-barnea from Horeb by the way of the country of Seir. On the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, after he killed Sihon king of the Amorites who dwelt in Heshbon and Og king of Bashan who dwelt at Astaroth in Edrei, on this side of the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses spoke to the children of Israel, all that THE LORD instructed him (Deut. 1:1-5) – to incorporate the Law of Moses (Deut. 1:5 to 26:19) in his narration of the journey of the people to the land of Canaan, which led to his book being called “The Book of the Law of Moses” in the Final Testament (Matt. 7:12; Mark 1:2; Luke 24:44; Acts 7:42); being a short form of “The Book Containing the Law of Moses.”
The parallel passages showing many of the passages in Ezra’s book (1 Chronicles to Ezra) and Nehemiah’s book (Genesis to Nehemiah) recorded verbatim or near verbatim reveal that there were two separate books written by two distinct individuals or groups of individuals and that one of the writers copied from the other. That Nehemiah copied from Ezra is deducible from the fact that Ezra returned first, Nehemiah’s work is an expansion on Ezra’s work, and errors in dates, ages and names in Ezra’s work were corrected by Nehemiah. That his book is an expansion on Ezra’s is evident in that Ezra omitted the detail of the history from Adam to the death of Saul completely; he wrote only names. Also, that the written works of the prophets are in Ezra’s book reveals that Ezra, being the first to return, had made use of all the materials available.
The singleness of the books from Genesis to 2 Kings is attested to by Stephen and Paul in the Final Testament in Acts 7:1-47 and Acts 13:16-22 respectively. They both narrated the events recorded from Genesis to 2 Samuel in the progression shown in Nehemiah’s book. Added to that is Paul’s chronicle of heroes of faith in Hebrew 11 which began with Abel (Genesis) and ended with David/Samuel (2 Samuel). Therefore, this, definitely, is the book called “the Book of Moses” (Mark 12:26) “Moses” (Luke 16:29 and 31) and “the Law of Moses” (Luke 24:44; Acts 28:23), being short forms of “The Book Containing the Law of Moses.” If “the Prophets” (Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 22:40; Mark 1:2; Luke 16:31; 24:44; John 1:45 and 6:45) and “the Book of the Prophets” (Acts 7:42) are short forms of “the Book Containing the Writings of the Prophets”; and “the Psalms” (Luk 24:44; Eph. 5:19 and Col. 3:16) and “the Book of Psalms” (Luke 20:42; Acts 1:20) are the abridged forms of “the Book Containing the Psalms,” definitely, these must be short forms of “the Book Containing the Laws of Moses.” The book Jesus made reference to, according to Matt. 12:3-5, Mk 2:23-24 and Lk. 6:35, can be no other than this. Like Ezra, Nehemiah revealed some other history books apart from the history book of the sister kingdom – “the book of the wars of the Self-existent” (Num. 20:14), “the book of Jasher” (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18) and “the book of the acts of Solomon” (1 Kgs 11:41) which were consulted to bring out the history. If “the Book of the Wars of the Self-existent” (YHWH) was made reference to in Numbers, the book was on ground before Genesis to Deuteronomy (As far as the Bible is concerned, there is no such book as “the five books” given the names “Torah” and “Pentateuch” in Hebrew and Greek respectively) was written; and to have titled the book, “the Book of the Wars of the Self-existent” (YHWH), the author knew God by that identifier. If he had written the book before Genesis to Deuteronomy was written and Genesis to Deuteronomy is being ascribed to Moses, then the book was on ground before Israel left Egypt, and there couldn’t have been any book titled the Book of the Wars of the Self-existent (YHWH) before Israel left Egypt in that that identifier of God itself – the Self-exsting – employed for the title of the book was given to Moses about the time Israel left Egypt. These, coupled with the account of Moses’ death in Deuteronomy 34 and the presence of Aramaic in Gen. 31:47, are sufficient to preclude Moses from being the writer of the first five books. Aramaic began to be spoken around the 11th century BCE by the Arameans, who lived in what is now Syria and parts of the surrounding region. It became widespread during the Assyrian Empire, and was the official language of the Persian Empire from 559-330 BCE.
Anyone still in doubt about the nativity of Nehemiah should realize that if he was from Judah, the southern kingdom, he would not need to write another book. Finally, that it is revealed in 1 Chr. 9:1 that each of the two kingdoms had her own history book before their captivities, and both historians (Ezra and Nehemiah) made reference to the books all through, means, in all likelihood, there would be two history books after the captivities. Also, anyone still finding it difficult, or, not still comfortable, to believe these historical books should acknowledge that since the nation was dispersed as two kingdoms, there is every likelihood that there will be two histories written from each kingdom’s point of view, upon her return. To find two neatly packaged history books by descendants of an individual that were divided into two and take each of them as of one of them cannot be said to be out of place.