Page "Book of Judges" Paragraph 20

The basic source for Judges was a collection of loosely connected stories about tribal heroes who saved the people in battle.

This original " book of saviours ," made up of the stories of Ehud, Jael and parts of Gideon, had already been enlarged and transformed into " wars of Yahweh " before being given the final Deuteronomistic revision.

In the 20th century the first part of the prologue ( chapters 1: 1-2: 5 ) and the two parts of the epilogue ( 17-21 ) were commonly seen as miscellaneous collections of fragments tacked on to the main text, and the second part of the prologue ( 2: 6-3: 6 ) as an introduction composed expressly for the book ; this view has been challenged in the latter decades of the century, and there is an increasing willingness to see Judges as the work of a single individual, working by carefully selecting, reworking and positioning his source material to introduce and conclude his themes.

A statement repeated throughout the book, " In those days there was no king in Israel ; every man did that which was right in his own eyes ," implies a monarchist redaction.

The epilogue, in which Judah is assigned a leadership role twice, implies pro-Judah political leanings on the part of the author.