To understand the Old Testament, it is necessary to have some familiarity with the history of the people who wrote it. Judaism is a historical religion, which means that the ideas associated with it were disclosed to the Hebrew people through the concrete events that occurred in that part of the world where they lived during the centuries in which the Old Testament was in the making. A detailed account of the entire history of the Hebrew people would go far beyond the scope of this present study; however, a brief outline of some of the major high points in that history will be sufficient for our purpose.
While it is true that the books of the Old Testament begin with an account of the creation of the world, we must bear in mind that the narratives dealing with such topics as the Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Fall, the Great Flood, and other events related in the Book of Genesis were never intended to be regarded as an accurate historical account of the entire world process. None of these accounts appeared in written form until after the Hebrews had settled in the land of Canaan, west of the Jordan River, which did not take place prior to the ninth century B.C. Obviously, the stories that one finds in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, as well as those that have to do with the activities of the patriarchs, who were believed to have lived before the time of the Exodus from Egypt, were not written by eyewitnesses of the events that were recorded. Neither were they written by people who lived during the times about which they wrote. Not until after the men who eventually wrote the narratives had reflected on the events connected with the history of their people was any attempt made to record these events or to set forth their meanings. When this recording was done, the interpretations necessarily reflected the perspective from which they were written.
