Who Wrote the Nevi'im? (Prophets)

Buy the summary chart:

Complete series in one video:

Individual episodes:

Recommended Reading:
* Alter, Robert (2011). The Art of Biblical Narrative. Basic Books.
* Baden, Joel (2012). The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. Yale University Press.
* Coogan, Michael (2001) The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford University Press
* Finkelstein, Israel & Neil Asher Silberman (2001). The Bible Unearthed. Free Press.
* Kugel, James (2007). How to Read the Bible. Free Press.
* Stein, Robert H. (2001). Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation. Baker Academic.

Credits:
Charts & Narration by Matt Baker, PhD
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio by Jack Rackam

[itarry]

Mate honestly how you've taken a channel about what's basically graphs and made it so bloody interesting and worth watching I'm stunned to understand.

[MatthewSamson]

The one thing that is so often sorely missing from a standard university Biblical lit class is a nice bird's eye view (I guess, they just figure they can throw you into the weeds and you can construct one yourself???). This series (along with your several other videos on the Bible) is just absolutely excellent. Rock on!

[janMelantu]

Never been more excited for a Useful Charts video. It’s a lot easier to find information on the Torah/Pentateuch than on the Prophets

[kameelffarag]

You are an artist, a historian, and a scholar, yet delightful deliverer

[PvtPuplovski]

You're doing amazing work, Matt. Thank you so much for these looks into the past! As an ex-Christian, I still have a nagging interest in the history of the Bible and the people who wrote it, and with every video I get more bits to ponder and research further. You and Religion For Breakfast (including the Patheos channel) have almost solely opened my mind up for history and past anthropological studies. I just want to say thank you for a very scientific and broad look into these topics. Even for myself, its easy to be biased and say "Blah! This didnt happen!"; but being able to distinguish factual from folklore-ish writing while giving the benefit of the doubt in some places really helps to understand the world and people around me. Keep it up, and reach out or say if you ever need assistance or a break, I can tell some of these take a lot of time and energy!

[iwersonsch]

1:09 In German they're called the 1st to 5th book Moses. Those individual names also exist in the German bible but instead of "Exodus 25" we often say "2. Mose 25"

[stllr_]

"it's up to you how you want to interpret those scriptures, but please know that there several options available."
wonderfully said. a very tricky topic to navigate but you did so very elegantly.

[laslooo]

As someone who loves biblical textual criticism (yay, Ehrman!) and the historical and literary analysis of the bible, this was awesome. So incredibly well done! I love the chart, timeline, and history section around 11:28 ! MORE! MORE!

[treekangaroo.]

The bible's history is pretty interesting

[fuzzybeatle]

As an ex-evangelical, I am actually most excited about when you tackle revelations. As a kid, revelations always sort of frightened me. Cant wait to hear the historical approach behind who wrote it and when!

[Weebusaurus]

YOOO I just rewatched part one last night, woke up and opened my sub box to see this "uploaded 48 seconds ago". LOSING IT RIGHT NOW

Please keep it up, I hope you'll tackle the New Testament when the Tanakh is done with! Lord knows authorship of the Gospels alone could be its own series.

[Mithrs]

These are 2 seperate books which, although having the same content, have different ordering and prioritizations. And you still manage to explain these two books in the same videos and still make it so understandable and structured. Job well done! I can only imagine the effort you've put into these videos and still offer this content without ads.

[gideonjudges]

Taught OT for the first time this year to 6th Graders (7th, NT; 8th Church History), and it is really helpful to teach with essentially this understanding of the history. Seeing how the history of the Jews during XYZ period really helped us understand why various books were written (for example: seeing the debate between different parties of Jews during the resettlement of Judah after the Exile: Ezra-Nehemiah being against Gentile marriage/what they saw as the corruption of the people; Malachi arguing that the people needed to stay faithful to their marriage vows [Do we not all have one Father?...I hate divorce, etc]; Tobit extolling marriage within the people/faithfulness to the Torah; Ruth and Esther showing the benefits of Gentile marriage [no Jews married to Gentiles, no David!]; and Jonah showing a Jewish prophet angry at God's mercy toward the Gentiles--all of them are wrestling with those same themes: how do we stay faithful Jews under Gentile rule? How do the Gentiles fit into the plan?)

The definitely is a way to learn the critical method that is unhelpful (just figuring out when something was written to know when it was written), but knowing what the authors are really getting at based on what issues they were dealing with was an excellent way to get the kids engaged.

Thanks for all the work you put into this!

[ahmadmarwanhadid]

I love how people just having a nice discussion and conversation in your comment section even tho we're having different religion and background. Nice videos as always.

[LangThoughts]

Note that nobody claims Samuel was written by Samuel, since he dies in the middle of the part Xtians call I Samuel. The traditional view is that it was a written by The Prophet Nathan, though he was commanded to edit in sections by the Prophets Gad and Samuel. It is called Samuel because it begins with the nativity of Samuel, and everything in was set in motion by Samuel, besides the fact that Gad and Nathan were close disciples of Samuel.

[secdef]

Your videos are so calming to watch. Thank you for your hard work and scholarly explanations! I appreciate you looking at this from both a religious and historical standpoint

[reubenmckay]

That timeline was absolutely fantastic! A very useful and insightful way of presenting the information that really helped put things in place.

[galaxybounce]

Thanks so much for this episode! I really appreciate how much time you must spend tweaking your delivery in order to not offend all the different groups watching

[dgpsf]

I am LOVING this series. Something that would be an interesting modified chart would be one that attempted to also place the books on a timeline of the events that they describe rather than their actual dates of writings. And perhaps on a continuum ranging from "mostly historical" to "mostly myth/legend" I feel like one of your previous videos discussed that aspect a little, too. Anyway this series is AMAZING and makes me want to pick up a Bible to read critically.

[Jakeup]

easily one of the best youtubers in education. Thank you so much for these videos Matt