Jonah in the Garden of Eden

The Hebrew Bible has many authors. Modern Biblical scholars claim to have identified portions of the Bible which, they claim, were written at different times for different purposes. However, many of their "findings" are self-referential. For instance, they propose that most of the Book of Leviticus was written by a priest, whom they call P, during the time of the Second Temple to justify the animal sacrifices used there. Then, they find passages in Exodus and Numbers that describe many of the same sacrifices, so they claim that these passages are interpolations inserted by P to justify Leviticus.

There is a way to determine the authorship of written works without bringing in the context of the work. This is a statistical analysis of the use of non-contextual words, like "and", "if", "therefore". This book identifies 13 non-contextual Hebrew words that can be used to distinguish writers of post-Biblical Hebrew literature. It then describes a statistical analysis of all the books of the Hebrew Bible. Some of the conjectures of modern scholars hold up. Some do not. Some surprises emerge. The second creation story of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve, appears to have been written by the same authors as the Book of Jonah. Leviticus has two authors, not one.

This book has three parts. The first part is written for the general reader, who may be unfamiliar with the work of modern Biblical scholars and who has no knowledge of modern statistics. The second part is written for the Biblical scholars but assumes that they, too, have no knowledge of statistics. The third part is written for readers who are familiar with modern statistical analysis. This leads to some repetition, but it does not plunge the unprepared reader into the jargon of specialized scholars.