Pentateuch and Pentateuchal Criticism

Question 1

Baruch Spinoza (Dutch)

Answer 1

His 1670 Theological-Political Treatise was one of the first critical appraisal of the Hebrew Bible. He observed numerous incongruities within the text that suggested to him that in the Pentateuch multiple authors were at work.

Question 2

H. B. Witter (German)

Answer 2

In 1711 he suggested that differences in style and content and the alternation of divine names in Genesis 1–3 indicated two separate pre-Mosaic sources.

Question 3

Jean Astruc (French)

Answer 3

In 1753 he identified two major sources and ten fragmentary sources from which Moses drew to compose Genesis. He based his work on the occurrences of the divine names, Elohim and Yhwh.

Question 4

After Astruc’s work (1753), what are the various source theories that developed?

Answer 4

The various theories are termed the Old Documentary Hypothesis, the Fragment Hypothesis, the Supplemental Hypothesis, and the New Documentary Hypothesis. The latter ascended to prominence among scholars, who understood four major sources underlying the Pentateuch.

Question 5

Wilhelm DeWette (German)

Answer 5

Proposed that the D source can be separated as an independent law book dated to Josiah’s reform. Based on this theory and the dating of D, scholars proceeded to date the J, E, and P sources relative to D.

Question 6

H. Hupfeld (German)

Answer 6

In 1853 he took the dominant view of his time that an Elohistic narrative was the oldest and most comprehensive Pentateuchal source and he extrapolated it to argue for two E sources, and early source and a late source, which he sequenced with a J and D source as EEELJD. Later, his early E source came to known as P, and thus the Pentateuch was seen as PEJD.

Question 7

Karl Heinrich Graf (German)

Answer 7

In 1866 and 1869, following the intuition of his teacher, Eduard Reuss, he argued that the P source, comprised of legal and cultic concerns, was the later of the four sources, thus EJDP, and that the Pentateuch was later than the Prophets.

Question 8

Abraham Kuenen (Dutch)

Answer 8

In 1869–70 he proposed a postexilic date for P.

Question 9

Julius Wellhausen (German)

Answer 9

In 1878, he synthesized all the source-critical work that preceded him and Vatke’s and Graf’s views on the evolutionary development of Israelite religion. His work proposed the source sequence of JEDP.

Question 10

According to Wellhausen’s articulation of the (New) Documentary Hypothesis, what is ‘J’?

Answer 10

J is the earliest of the four sources, was composed during the united Davidic monarchy, and provides the basic storyline for Genesis and Exodus.

Question 11

According to Wellhausen’s articulation of the (New) Documentary Hypothesis, what is ‘E’?

Answer 11

E is a more or less fragmentary source from the Northern Kingdom during the height of its power. Its work begins in Genesis 15.

Question 12

According to Wellhausen’s articulation of the (New) Documentary Hypothesis, what is ‘D’?

Answer 12

D reflects a Northern Kingdom provenance, either written just before the fall of Israel and then brought south to Judah by refugees, or written by refugees after they moved south, later to be discovered during Josiah’s reign. It is generally confined to Deuteronomy 12–26, with its emphasis on obedience to the law.

Question 13

According to Wellhausen’s articulation of the (New) Documentary Hypothesis, what is ‘P’?

Answer 13

P emerged during from priestly circles in Jerusalem during the period of the exile. It provides the chronological framework of the Pentateuch. The P source begins in Gen 1:1 and is intertwined with J and E throughout Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers. Leviticus is regarded as exclusively written by P.

Question 14

J. Van Seters (American)

Answer 14

In a series of volumes (1975, 1992, 1994), he completely reorders the classic documentary sequence. He argues that the JE material of a single writer, the Yahwist, was modelled on the prophets and written no earlier than the exile as an introduction to the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to Kings).

Question 15

Richard E. Friedman (American)

Answer 15

He posits a six-fold compositional history to the Pentateuch: J (9th-8th c. southern kingdom), E (coinciding with J, but in the northern kingdom), RJE (redactor who brought J and E together soon after fall of Israel in 722 BC), P (written shortly after RJE), D (Josiah’s reform), R (redactor who put all the above together to form the Pentateuch as we known it).

Question 16

Rolf Rendtorff (German)

Answer 16

A successor to form-critical scholars G. von Rad and M. Noth, in 1978, he moved completely away from the Newer Documentary Hypothesis by maintaining that individual traditions underwent a long process of development wherein smaller units grew into larger ones. These were combined into single continuous accounts, which in turn were combined into larger and larger continuous accounts, until the Pentateuch as we have it was formed, linked together and shaped by an early postexilic D redactor. Thus Rendtorff explains the formation of the Pentateuch not on the basis of the Newer Documentary Hypothesis but in opposition to it.

Question 17

E. Blum (German)

Answer 17

In 1984, Blum follows up the work of his mentor (Rendtorff) by observing a P layer following the D layer.

Question 18

R. N. Whybray

Answer 18

In 1987, he claimed that the documentary hypothesis is illogical and self-contradictory and fails to explain what it professes to explain. The source-critics must assume that the “sources” were noncontradictory and not repetitious, and that later Hebrew writers changed their approach by reveling in such “incongruities”; otherwise, the “sources” themselves also contained contradiction and repetition, which is not accounted for by source-critics, nor can they be. Whybray also calls Rendtorff’s and Blum’s work into question, regarding it as more speculative and even less convincing than traditional source-critical arguments. Whybray tends toward Van Seters’ view of a single, late writer of the Pentateuch, as he posits that the first edition of the Pentateuch could have likely been the final edition, a work composed by a single historian. Whybray also points out that others (Haran and Hurvitz) have argued a preexilic P material, which could have easily been a source of the writer of the Pentateuch.

Question 19

Gordon Wenham (English)

Answer 19

Wenham (1987, 1999) regards Whybray’s view of the Pentateuch’s composition as essentially correct: one major author using a variety of sources.