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52-555: Modern scholars agree that separate sources underlie the Pentateuch, but there is much disagreement on how these sources were used by the authors to write the first five books of the Bible. The documentary hypothesis , that priestly editors wove several independent source narratives into the single text of the Pentateuch, dominated much of the 20th century, but the consensus surrounding this hypothesis has now broken down. Its critics give

104-492: A detailed synthesis of existing views on the origins of the first five books of the Bible , Wellhausen aimed at placing the development of these books into a historical and social context. The resulting argument, called the documentary hypothesis , became the dominant model for many biblical scholars and remained so for most of the 20th century. According to Alan Levenson , Wellhausen considered theological anti-Judaism , as well as antisemitism , to be normative. Wellhausen

156-879: A grouping which includes both pre-Priestly and post-Priestly material. The general trend in recent scholarship is to recognize the final form of the Torah as a literary and ideological unity, based on earlier sources, likely completed during the Persian period (539–333 BCE). A minority of scholars would place its final compilation somewhat later, however, in the Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). A revised neo-documentary hypothesis still has adherents, especially in North America and Israel. This distinguishes sources by means of plot and continuity rather than stylistic and linguistic concerns, and does not tie them to stages in

208-407: A much larger role to the redactors , whom they see as adding much material of their own rather than as simply passive combiners of documents. The simple form of the documentary hypothesis has been refined by its own adherents as well. The most notable revision in recent decades is to admit that the individual E and J documents are irrecoverable altogether, major parts of them having been scrapped by

260-585: A result, there has been a revival of interest in "fragmentary" and " supplementary " models, frequently in combination with each other and with a documentary model, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another. Modern scholars also have given up the classical Wellhausian dating of the sources, and generally see the completed Torah as a product of the time of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), although some would place its production as late as

312-431: A source, with its origin in the law-code produced at the court of Josiah as described by De Wette, subsequently given a frame during the exile (the speeches and descriptions at the front and back of the code) to identify it as the words of Moses. Most scholars also agree that some form of Priestly source existed, although its extent, especially its end-point, is uncertain. The remainder is called collectively non-Priestly,

364-598: A theologian because the scientific treatment of the Bible interested me; only gradually did I come to understand that a professor of theology also has the practical task of preparing the students for service in the Protestant Church, and that I am not adequate to this practical task, but that instead despite all caution on my own part I make my hearers unfit for their office. Since then my theological professorship has been weighing heavily on my conscience." He became professor extraordinarius of oriental languages in

416-567: Is also seen in Genesis 6:1–4 in the sexual union of the sons of God with human women: Yahweh declares this a transgression and limits the life span of their offspring. In Genesis 11:1–9 , the Tower of Babel seeks to rise into the divine sphere, but is prevented when Yahweh confuses mankind's language. A third theme is progressive corruption of humanity. God creates a world that is "very good", without predation or violence, but Eve 's disobedience

468-508: Is better known empirically as 'spurious results'. Regarding his sources, Wellhausen described Wilhelm de Wette as "the epoch-making opener of the historical criticism of the Pentateuch." In 1806, De Wette provided an early, coherent mapping of the Old Testament writings of the J, E, D, and P, authors. He was so far ahead of his time, however, that he was soon cast out of his university post. Young Julius Wellhausen largely continued

520-519: Is difficult to determine what portion of Exodus 1–15 is J and what is E; however, it is easy to see the parallel P strand, which also gives an account of Israel's bondage and the Exodus miracles of its own. After leaving Egypt, J gives its own account of releasing water from a rock and God raining Manna upon the Israelites. Thereafter, there is almost no J material in Exodus, except J's account of

572-562: Is followed by Cain 's murder of his brother Abel , until Yahweh resolves to destroy his corrupt creatures with the Flood . Corruption returns after the Flood, but God accepts that his creation is flawed. Julius Wellhausen , the 19th century German scholar responsible for the classical form of the documentary hypothesis, did not attempt to date J more precisely than the monarchical period of Israel's history . In 1938, Gerhard von Rad placed J at

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624-686: Is from P), this is followed by the Garden of Eden story, Cain and Abel , Cain's descendants, the Nephilim , a flood story (tightly intertwined with a parallel account from P), Noah 's descendants, the incest incident in Noah's tent from Genesis 6, the Table of Nations , and the Tower of Babel . These chapters make up the so-called Primeval History , the story of mankind prior to Abraham, and J and P provide roughly equal amounts of material. The Jahwist provides

676-523: Is one of the models used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah (or Pentateuch , the first five books of the Bible: Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy ). A version of the documentary hypothesis, frequently identified with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen , was almost universally accepted for most of the 20th century. It posited that

728-460: Is taken from the soil [ Adamah in Hebrew]." Initially, man lives in harmony with the soil, but after man eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , Yahweh curses the soil, condemning man to toil for his food and to return into the soil upon death. Later, Cain is a tiller of the soil ( adamah ), and after murdering his brother, Cain is cursed from the ground . The harmony between man and

780-594: The Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE), or the late monarchic period at the earliest. Van Seters also sharply criticized the idea of a substantial Elohist source, arguing that E extends at most to two short passages in Genesis. Some scholars, following Rendtorff, have come to espouse a fragmentary hypothesis, in which the Pentateuch is seen as a compilation of short, independent narratives, which were gradually brought together into larger units in two editorial phases:

832-454: The Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE), after the conquests of Alexander the Great . The Torah (or Pentateuch) is collectively the first five books of the Bible: Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy . According to tradition, they were dictated by God to Moses, but when modern critical scholarship began to be applied to the Bible, it was discovered that the Pentateuch

884-686: The Ten Commandments, also known as the Ritual Decalogue . J is generally not focused on law. The vast majority of scholars attribute almost the entirety of Leviticus to P. J begins with Numbers 10–14 , the departure from Sinai , the story of the spies who are afraid of the giants in Canaan , and the refusal of the Israelites to enter the Promised Land —which then brings on the wrath of Yahweh, who condemns them to wander in

936-461: The "E" Joseph narrative with more lineage details assumed important to post-exilic authors for the purpose of rebuilding the nation in the second temple period. Scholars argue regarding how much of Exodus is attributable to J and how much to E, as beginning in Exodus 3 the E source also refers to God as Yahweh. J provides much of the material of Exodus 1–5 but is closely intertwined with E. Thus, it

988-619: The Deuteronomic and the Priestly phases. By contrast, scholars such as John Van Seters advocate a supplementary hypothesis , which posits that the Torah is the result of two major additions—Yahwist and Priestly—to an existing corpus of work. Some scholars use these newer hypotheses in combination with each other and with a documentary model, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another. The majority of scholars today continue to recognise Deuteronomy as

1040-585: The Hexateuch') of 1876–77, and sections on the "historical books" (Judges–Kings) in his 1878 edition of Friedrich Bleek 's Einleitung in das Alte Testament ('Introduction to the Old Testament'). Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis owed little to Wellhausen himself but was mainly the work of Hupfeld, Eduard Eugène Reuss , Graf, and others, who in turn had built on earlier scholarship. He accepted Hupfeld's four sources and, in agreement with Graf, placed

1092-523: The Old Testament, not least because many have concluded that the Hebrew Bible is not a reliable witness to the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, representing instead the beliefs of only a small segment of the ancient Israelite community centered in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive worship of the god Yahweh . Julius Wellhausen Julius Wellhausen (17 May 1844 – 7 January 1918)

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1144-517: The Pentateuch is a compilation of four originally independent documents: the Jahwist , Elohist , Deuteronomist , and Priestly sources, frequently referred to by their initials. The first of these, J, was dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE). E was dated somewhat later, in the 9th century BCE, and D was dated just before the reign of King Josiah , in the 7th or 8th century BCE. Finally, P

1196-455: The Pentateuch") by Rolf Rendtorff . These three authors shared many of the same criticisms of the documentary hypothesis, but were not in agreement about what paradigm ought to replace it. Van Seters and Schmid both forcefully argued that the Yahwist source could not be dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE) as posited by the documentary hypothesis. They instead dated J to the period of

1248-400: The Priestly work last. J was the earliest document, a product of the 10th century BCE and the court of Solomon ; E was from the 9th century BCE in the northern Kingdom of Israel , and had been combined by a redactor (editor) with J to form a document JE; D, the third source, was a product of the 7th century BCE, by 620 BCE, during the reign of King Josiah ; P (what Wellhausen first named "Q")

1300-682: The Torah, and the number was later expanded to three when Wilhelm de Wette identified the Deuteronomist as an additional source found only in Deuteronomy ("D"). Later still the Elohist was split into Elohist and Priestly ("P") sources, increasing the number to four. These documentary approaches were in competition with two other models, the fragmentary and the supplementary . The fragmentary hypothesis argued that fragments of varying lengths, rather than continuous documents, lay behind

1352-624: The Torah. In 1780, Johann Eichhorn , building on the work of the French doctor and exegete Jean Astruc 's "Conjectures" and others, formulated the "older documentary hypothesis": the idea that Genesis was composed by combining two identifiable sources, the Jehovist ("J"; also called the Yahwist) and the Elohist ("E"). These sources were subsequently found to run through the first four books of

1404-419: The Torah; this approach accounted for the Torah's diversity but could not account for its structural consistency, particularly regarding chronology. The supplementary hypothesis was better able to explain this unity: it maintained that the Torah was made up of a central core document, the Elohist, supplemented by fragments taken from many sources. The supplementary approach was dominant by the early 1860s, but it

1456-408: The bulk of the remainder of Genesis, the material concerning Abraham, Isaac , Jacob and Joseph . Those following the classical documentary hypothesis today describe the J text spanning Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 35 with the end of the renaming of Jacob as Israel and the completion of the patriarchs of the twelve tribes. The Joseph narrative seems to be an addition from a northern "E" narrative due to

1508-413: The court of Solomon , c. 950 BCE, and argued that his purpose in writing was to provide a theological justification for the unified state created by Solomon's father, David . This was generally accepted until a crucial 1976 study by H. H. Schmid , Der sogenannte Jahwist ("The So-called Yahwist"), argued that J knew the prophetic books of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, while the prophets did not know

1560-522: The disaster" when dissuaded by Moses. J has a particular concern with Judah , including its relationship with its rival and neighbor, Edom ; on Judahite cities such as Jerusalem ; and strongly supports of the legitimacy of the Davidic monarchy . J is also critical of the other tribes of Israel , suggesting that the Northern Kingdom 's capital of Shechem was established after a massacre of

1612-568: The evolution of Israel's religious history. Its resurrection of an E source is probably the element most often criticised by other scholars, as it is rarely distinguishable from the classical J source and European scholars have largely rejected it as fragmentary or non-existent. Wellhausen used the sources of the Torah as evidence of changes in the history of Israelite religion as it moved (in his opinion) from free, simple and natural to fixed, formal and institutional. Modern scholars of Israel's religion have become much more circumspect in how they use

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1664-570: The faculty of philology at Halle , was elected professor ordinarius at Marburg in 1885 and was transferred to Göttingen in 1892, where he stayed until his death. Among theologians and biblical scholars, he is best known for his book, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ( Prolegomena to the History of Israel ); his work in Arabic studies (specifically, the magisterial work entitled The Arab Kingdom and its Fall ) remains celebrated, as well. After

1716-485: The first JE redactor; or that the E document was never independent, but rather was a part of the J document. In J, Yahweh is an anthropomorphic figure both physically ( Genesis 3:8 , Genesis 11:5 , Exodus 17:7 ) and in personality, as when Abraham bargained with Yahweh for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah ; or during the exodus when Yahweh threatened to destroy the unfaithful Israelites and raise Moses ' descendants instead, but "relented and did not bring on his people

1768-711: The first verses of the Heresy of Baal Peor . The majority of Deuteronomy was composed during the era of Josiah's reforms by the Deuteronomist, or D, writer. However, when Deuteronomy was incorporated into the completed Pentateuch by the Redactor, the events of Moses's death were moved from the end of Numbers to Deuteronomy. Thus, one of the accounts of Moses's death in Deuteronomy is attributable to J, although scholars debate which verses this includes. Documentary hypothesis The documentary hypothesis ( DH )

1820-425: The influence of the prophets and the development of an ethical outlook, which he felt represented the pinnacle of Jewish religion; and the Priestly source reflected the rigid, ritualistic world of the priest-dominated, post-exilic period. His work, notable for its detailed and wide-ranging scholarship and close argument, entrenched the "new documentary hypothesis" as the dominant explanation of Pentateuchal origins from

1872-483: The late 19th to the late 20th centuries. In the mid to late 20th century, new criticism of the documentary hypothesis formed. Three major publications of the 1970s caused scholars to reevaluate the assumptions of the documentary hypothesis: Abraham in History and Tradition by John Van Seters , Der sogenannte Jahwist ("The So-Called Yahwist") by Hans Heinrich Schmid , and Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch ("The Tradition-Historical Problem of

1924-479: The latest, while Wilhelm Vatke linked the four to an evolutionary framework: the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law. In 1878, Julius Wellhausen published Geschichte Israels, Bd 1 ('History of Israel, Vol 1'). The second edition

1976-425: The more ethereal, pro-active, and prophetic nature of God compared to the reactive and anthropomorphic God of the J text. The latest additions of the P text frame the J narratives. P text "glue" can be perceived in Genesis 1 (framing the book), Genesis 5 recounts Genesis 1 and provides a characteristic priestly lineage detail for Adam and, amongst other locations, Genesis 35, bridging the J text patriarchal narratives to

2028-466: The original inhabitants ( Genesis 34 ). Michael D. Coogan suggests three recurring themes in the Jahwist tradition: the relationship between humans and soil, separation between humans and God, and progressive human corruption. J is unique in emphasizing a close relationship between humans and the soil. This motif is first found in Genesis 2:4b–3:24 when "the first human is called Adam because he

2080-468: The soil is, seemingly, restored with Noah , a man of the soil who will bring surviving humanity relief from toil. Noah's drunkenness also links humans with the soil, its produce, and corruption. Another recurring theme is the boundary between the divine and human realms. In Genesis 3:22 , by eating the forbidden fruit , man and woman become like gods and are banished from the Garden of Eden , extinguishing their immortality and divine blessing. This theme

2132-436: The time of Moses , their traditional author . Wellhausen's hypothesis remained the dominant model for Pentateuchal studies until the last quarter of the 20th century, when it began to be advanced by other biblical scholars who saw more and more hands at work in the Torah and ascribed them to periods even later than Wellhausen had proposed. The emergence of conflicting answers which, by statistics, display certain similarities

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2184-456: The traditions of the Torah, meaning J could not be earlier than the 7th century. A minority of scholars place J even later, in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th–5th centuries BCE). The following is a record of the stories in the Bible that are generally accepted by the wider academic community as having been written by the J source: The Jahwist begins with the Genesis creation narrative at Genesis 2:4 (the creation story at Genesis 1

2236-429: The wilderness for the next forty years. J resumes at chapter 16, the story of the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram , which was spliced together with the account of Korah's rebellion from P by the Redactor. It is generally also believed that J provides large portions of chapters 21 to 24, covering the story of the bronze serpent, Balaam and his talking ass (although Friedman attributes this to E), and finally ending with

2288-480: Was a German biblical scholar and orientalist . In the course of his career, his research interest moved from Old Testament research through Islamic studies to New Testament scholarship. Wellhausen contributed to the composition history of the Pentateuch / Torah and studied the formative period of Islam. For the former, he is credited as one of the originators of the documentary hypothesis . Wellhausen

2340-451: Was a product of the priest-and-temple dominated world of the 6th century BCE; and the final redaction, when P was combined with JED to produce the Torah as we now know it. Wellhausen's explanation of the formation of the Torah was also an explanation of the religious history of Israel. The Yahwist and Elohist described a primitive, spontaneous, and personal world, in keeping with the earliest stage of Israel's history; in Deuteronomy, he saw

2392-587: Was born at Hamelin in the Kingdom of Hanover . The son of a Protestant pastor , he later studied theology at the University of Göttingen under Georg Heinrich August Ewald and became Privatdozent for Old Testament history there in 1870. In 1872, he was appointed professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Greifswald . However, he resigned from the faculty in 1882 for reasons of conscience, stating in his letter of resignation: "I became

2444-497: Was challenged by an important book published by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853, who argued that the Pentateuch was made up of four documentary sources, the Priestly, Yahwist, and Elohist intertwined in Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, and the stand-alone source of Deuteronomy. At around the same period, Karl Heinrich Graf argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source

2496-554: Was famous for his critical investigations into Old Testament history and the composition of the Hexateuch . He is perhaps best known for his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (1883, first published in 1878 as Geschichte Israels ) in which he advanced a definitive formulation of the documentary hypothesis. It argues that the Torah had its origins in a redaction of four originally-independent texts dating from several centuries after

2548-417: Was generally dated to the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE. The sources would have been joined at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors". The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now collapsed. This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters , Hans Heinrich Schmid , and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s, who argued that J

2600-495: Was not the unified text one would expect from a single author. As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah had been largely rejected by leading scholars by the 17th century, with many modern scholars viewing it as a product of a long evolutionary process. In the mid-18th century, some scholars started a critical study of doublets (parallel accounts of the same incidents), inconsistencies, and changes in style and vocabulary in

2652-476: Was printed as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel") in 1883, and the work is better known under that name. (The second volume, a synthetic history titled Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte ['Israelite and Jewish History'], did not appear until 1894 and remains untranslated.) Crucially, this historical portrait was based upon two earlier works of his technical analysis: "Die Composition des Hexateuchs" ('The Composition of

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2704-402: Was to be dated no earlier than the time of the Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE), and rejected the existence of a substantial E source. They also called into question the nature and extent of the three other sources. Van Seters, Schmid, and Rendtorff shared many of the same criticisms of the documentary hypothesis, but were not in complete agreement about what paradigm ought to replace it. As

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