Jump to content

Talk:Documentary hypothesis/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

I have added a brief paragraph outlining the views of some of the Christian literalists. Please feel free to edit as appropriate. In an article of this length and nature their views should be at least noted. Chris H

I have made this page more neutral. Some changes that I would make, I didn't make because I couldn't figure out how to do them. Ezra Wax

This is getting particular offensive to me. I can understand and appreciate how people do not accept documentary hypothesis. Nevertheless, I would expect that people writing a critique of it actually know something about the subject, know the sources, know how to read a primary text and interpretative materials on it (both emedieval and contemporary). I would expect them to have a good working knowledge of the history of the books and the period they describe, comparative literature and religion, language, and everything else that goes into biblical scholarship. Simply countering something because it makes someone feel uncomfortable is not intellectually sound--I woudl go so far as to say that it is intellectually dishonest. Arguing that "other rabbis disagree" does not add to the discourse; it simply intensifies the discomfort that is felt. Arguing from internal sources (religious texts and religious commentaries on those texts) while ignoring all of the serious multidisciplinary scholarship in the field does not help anyone gain a better understanding of the subject. It simply promotes ideologies. Danny

Nor do I like the fact that this article has become entirely Judeo-centric and that it ignores textual and content-based discrepancies between various editions of the Bible (Hebrew, Samaritan, Septuagint, etc.). Jews do not have a monopoly on the Bible (and I say that as a Jew). Danny

Perhaps Ezra Wax's energies could for the moment be directed more constructively to articles on Pilpul and PaRDeS? Slrubenstein

One comment about this article. It really isn't about the "Documentary Hypothesis" per se, but rather on the more general subject of the authorship question (which the Documentary Hypothesis offers an answer to). In fact, there is a whole section with just the title "Documentary Hypothesis"--in other words, we have a subsection with the same name as the article title!. The article clearly covers more than what the title suggests. I haven't been following the history of how this got put together, but I presume it was somehow patched together at some point so that it covers more than its original intention. soulpatch

I was hoping that the article would cover the history of the documentary hypothesis, as well as its findings, which it currently does. However we don't have enough on its findings, enough on modern day scholarship, nor do we have enough information on the various Christian perspectives. These are the areas I believe that the article currently needs the most contributions on. RK

Can someone tell me who the original author of the article is? I need it for a reference on a bibliography page. dixievargo@msn.com

Wikipedia does not have a notion of "author", so you should cite it as any other anonymous encyclopedia article (but with an on-line address). Stephen C. Carlson 00:53 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

If the user Corey doesn't stop raping the Documentary Hypothesis page, it will be useless but to a Christian zealot Dwmyers 19:35, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

There is no "raping" going on where there is an addition of facts. I filled out the evolution of the theory and added the other side of the issue. If you call knowledge "raping", then you have to call Wikipedia, and any encyclopedia for that matter, an orgy of rapists. -- Corey 19:39, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If the material you were adding were accurate or scholarly, I wouldn't care. Some of what you're adding is just sheer trash. The whole part about the hypothesis and whether the bible is inspired has to have been written by a half wit. Item 1 in the list can be summarized as "anything can happen." and is the exact opposite of Occam's razor. Hardly logical. Item 3 is just silly, because if Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then the Documentary hypothesis is false, and can't be used to prove anything. It's *this* kind of pseudo-logic you're shoving down people's throats that I object to. Why don't you think for once about the crap you write and then see if it makes sense to add it. Dwmyers 20:04, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

First of all, before I noted your reply here, I was going to say, and still make the promise, that I have been doing a lot of editing on this page, contrary to the direction of the wikipedia page. So I will refrain from doing so much editing and start doing all of my editing in NotePad.

Secondly, to reply to Dwmyers, I will demonstrate the logic of my defense.

Before I begin, let me say that the defense I gave in the article was against saying that JEPD "proves" that the Bible is uninspired, not against JEPD per se.

  • The abundance of possibilities is not admissable as proof against one possibility.

Regarding this statement, it is most certainly true that one cannot disprove a possibility with a possibility. They can only disprove a possibility with facts.

  • Moses may have, and most likely, compiled his writing from other sources, not making it any less inspired.

I think where you have the problem with this is in how positive the statement is in asserting Moses' authorship. I will consede to this. Instead, it should state: "The posibility of Moses being the redactor and editing author is still acceptable without the assertion that Ezra was the sole redactor. It is just as possible that later redactors re-edited the material. Because there is no exacting proof to either conclusion, as no one today was alive back then, and all suppositions are conjectural, the JEPD Theory cannot be taken as fact, and therefore cannot be used as proof for anything but that other possibilities exist."

If you still disagree with this, then please state your objection more logically without attacking my argument or my person with hypebole. This hardly makes you look any less the half wit. I suggest, too, that you add your own research. -- Corey 20:20, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Corey, let me get more to the point. The Documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis about authorship, and is totally neutral on the question of inspiration. Therefore, the whole insert serves no purpose in the main text other than as a kind of bizarre interpolation, because the documentary hypothesis is not about the divinity of the text. I think that section of text should be removed from the main body and placed in the Talk: section. I'll say as well that a list of references that only include people who despise and dislike the documentary hypothesis is a total disservice to this article as a source of knowledge about the hypothesis. Is it asking too much of you to read (or at least reference) perhaps, Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? (A man who studied with Professor Cross of Harvard and is therefore an authority on the subject) as opposed to Joshua McDowell, who isn't a documentary hypothesis scholar but rather an evangelist who targets college freshmen, and has a less than stellar critical reputation?

Further, and this also has to be said, why are you so worried about the documentary hypothesis and inspiration, when a battery of Christian denominations accept it as compatible with the Bible in the first place? For one, I bought my copy of Friedman's book at an Episcopal book store. Dwmyers 20:55, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is the section of text I removed, for reasons I have given above: Dwmyers 21:53, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Some use the Documentary Hypothesis as reason for claiming that the Bible is uninspired. However, this arguments fails on these points:

  1. The abundance of possibilities is not admissable as proof against one possibility.
  2. Additions and edits by later authors does not disprove authenticity of the Bible as the inspired word of God, as they could have been equally inspired.
  3. Moses may have, and most likely, compiled his writing from other sources, not making it any less inspired.

I just want to voice my support for Dwmeyers' edits and discussion. RK 22:05, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I do not wholely disagree with it's removal, seeing as it's removal has support. However, once again I point out that some have attempted to use it as proof against inspiration. And once again I state that I was not using this as proof against the theory. Additionally, I was not aware of McDowell's reputation as such. However, McDowell is not where I got this defense. Actually, those first three references I actually used to fill out the history of those who contributed to the JEDP Theory. Since none of their works are in print today, it is only by the word of other scholars (excepting their repution be reputable for doctering such facts) that such information may be compiled. If, however, you object to anything Mr. McDowell has ever written on the grounds that he doctors all facts or even just the types of facts concerning historical persons and their contributions to particular subjects, then I would most gladly remove the information and get it from a more reputable source. Is Mr. McDowell of that sort that you know of? Or is it just the fact that he tries to manipulate? If it is simply manipulation that is his crime, then I can hardly say that's enough to say that he invents facts about historical personages. -- Corey 22:48, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

P.S. I put the first three references in the article because I did get good information that helped to flesh out the article a little more. I think I can say that a substantial bite of this article as it appears now, came from my research. If you can provide information contrary to anything in the article, I would be glad to remove those portions.

Also, I wish to point out that I am really undecided on the subject of JEDP Theory, myself. I came across this subject in doing research for another page on this site. I put those points in there because I felt it important to help the reader understand the issues involed in JEDP Theory. It was not my intention to weigh it in one direction or the other, except that I wanted to balance the weight away from JEDP blind acceptance, as the article was originally slanted. Now it contains multiple views and points to other issues involved. For me, it doesn't matter one way or the other.

In addition, the statement made in the article that "Wellhausen argued that the Bible is an important source for historians, but cannot be taken literally," shows that the idea of this theory disproving the Bible's inspiration is indeed introduced, and therefore needs address. Conversely, to accept the JEDP theory as proposed by Wellhausen, one would have to reject the Bible as truthful, as it claims that the "institutionalized religion" of the Jews had developed over time, and by suggesting that some of the law was not introduced until the post-exilic period, thus claiming that it is a lie for that portion to have been injected there if it was never stated in the original law. I'd say the issue is important. -- Corey 23:11, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

By the way, as far as the accusation left in my e-mail box about deleting information that should probably stay, what information are you talking about? The only thing I did was reword the opening paragraph to free it up from two restrictive interpretation as having been originally postulated by Wellhausen, when in fact all Wellhausen did was narrow the field, restate other's theories, inject some unsupported claims of his own, and give it all a name. Outside of this, there were a couple of statements that I moved, not deleted, in order to properly attribute them. -- Corey 23:40, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In terms of deletion, you did delete a sentence or two to the effect that most Talmudic scholars no longer believed that Moses was the sole author of the Torah. Now, I have no great knowledge of Talmudic scholars, but I rather doubt that you do either. In which case I have to ask, did you delete it because you found the statement to be untrue and had proof it was wrong, or did you delete it because it offended some sensibility you had about the Bible and regarded it as wrong, proof or no?

Continuing: calling the documentary hypothesis JEDP theory seems odd to me, as most proponents of this kind of rationale don't use those terms. Maybe it's popular in Joe's Bible College, I don't know. But it seems insulting, or at least narrowing.

Third: I don't consider Wellhausen the be-all and end-all of this kind of research, which is ongoing (there are statements in the article now that suggest any research in this area ended with Wellhausen, which seem to be to be plain wrong). Wellhausen was a late 19th century German, with all the academic conceits of his era. To the extent you want to attack his extra-literary speculations about the nature of literacy and sophistication of the society of Biblical Palestine, be my guest. But to the extent this article is an anti-Wellhausen polemic, I do think that this article is being narrowed and is becoming unsuitable to the disinterested reader.

Fourth: outside of Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?, the most common text the lay reader is going to encounter the Documentary Hypothesis in any form is through Joseph Campbell's book Occidental Mythology in which a whole chapter, the Gods of the Levant, is devoted to his explanation of W. M. L. de Wette's version of the Biblical texts. Why aren't either of these mentioned? I'd much prefer texts that devote many pages to these ideas than a few one page references from Christian apologists who are opposed to the theory in general.

Fifth: my understanding is that this whole area is a part of a broader area of criticism called historical-literary criticism. There is no article in the wikipedia that talks of this, perhaps because as a literary theory, it's passe in the days of queer theory and deconstructionism. Maybe that ought to be alleviated, so that specific elements of Biblical historical-literary criticism, such as Wellhausen's views, can be separated from the others and those Christians who want to take swings at his 120 year old views of the world of Palestine can do so. Dwmyers 14:19, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I want to register my agreement with all of Dwmeyers' points. I think such an article would be very worthwhile. RK 15:39, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Minor point, but is Baruch Spinoza a "Classical Christian"? Obviously a man excommunicated from the Jewish community is not a "good" Jew, but his religious treatise was banned by the Catholics as well. What to do with him? Dwmyers 14:06, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

All of these things are great! Include them if you like. As to the assumption that I had anything to do with "narrowing" the article, is rediculous. The article seemed to be plenty narrow in the first place, and from all the literature I've read, it seems to end with Wellhausen's "JEDP Theory." If you have this much to add, then feel free to add it. We would love to have your input and research. I'm certainly not stopping you.

In regard to the part you claim that I deleted, I don't recall. If I did delete it, it likely had to do with some other reason, not having to do with my own sensabilities. Perhaps I meant to edit it into a more sensable and historical statement, and simply forgot. You will have to refresh my memory with the exact statement.

I changed the statement just now about "Orthodox Judaism and Christianity in general", because, while "the majority" rejects the JEDP Theory, which is apparently in much dispute among historians, but generally accepted among higher critics (which seems to be the source of much of its support), I felt that statement to be inaccurate, and disputes for accepting JEDP and documentary hypothesis as one and the same, when JEDP is simply a version of the other. It is JEDP that is disputed, not documentary hypothesis.

P.S. Whoever did the additions to the references, thank you, it looks great. Also, the points that I made above, for including the other side of the issue, appears to still be unaddressed. -- Corey 14:24, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Also: The documentary hypothesis is NOT disputed by most orthodox Jews and Christians. It is actually widely accepted. Only JEDP Theory is widely rejected by Jews and Christians. And I assume that by your admission, you too agree that even historians reject JEDP Theory. Judging by your own statements in the article, and by all the information I've come accross, it would appear that only higher critics have supported the view. Higher critics, since the 19th century, have been more concerned with trying to disprove the Bible than find facts. Their mistakes have become so common place and so well known that they are no longer being taken seriously by little more than hard-core atheists (some of them coming from the Jewish and Christian community itself!).

By the way, the reason my argument at the end of the article looked nonsensable was because someone bulleted and reworded the part that was supposed to lead into the other points. I have corrected this. Also, one of the points is missing. -- Corey 14:48, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ok, a couple points. I've removed the parts I found objectionable, the rest of your additions are an attack against versions of analysis that postulate illiteracy in the times of Moses. These are the (among others) views of one Hermann Gunkel, who proposed in 1901 that Genesis was a product of an oral tradition, that originally it was a kind of epic saga, much like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Since some of what you're objecting to may not originate with Wellhausen, lumping all of your criticism of Mosaic illiteracy under the umbrella of "JEDP Theory" just seems sloppy. Lets see if we can't put names and faces to specific scholars and specific ideas and then deal with each in turn.

I'm in the process of rereading Blenkinsopp's book "The Pentateuch", the first chapter of which is titled "Two Centuries of Pentateuchal Scholarship". My brain is hurting as a consequence (The book is part of the Anchor Bible series, with all that implies in terms of densely written careful scholarship). If the stuff I'm reading is correct, we'll have to rewrite much of this. By about the 1970s, we start getting other scholars with divergent points of view, the documentary hypothesis (as stated by Wellhausen) as an intellectual hegemony breaks around then. The section marked "rejection" needs to be rewritten so that scholars who have markedly different readings of the Hebrew Bible can get some space. For example, there is one modern scholar, for example, who thinks "it's all D and nothing else".

Finally, as other modes of criticism are used to analyze the Pentateuch and Hexateuch and have become important in terms of all this (the Finklestein reference isn't a literary criticism per se, it's archeology applied to these issues), when I get time, I'm probably going to create an entry called "Biblical criticism" or the like, so that we can deal with literary criticism and archeological evidence, and other modes of literary analysis, such as form criticism. Perhaps RK can find a term for the criticism of the "Hebrew Bible" that wouldn't imply anything special in terms of a Christian or Jewish bias. Understand, that in the first half of the 20th century, there was considerable skepticism in Jewish circles of Wellhausen's synthesis. In that time, one Solomon Schlecter characterized "the higher criticism" as "the higher antisemitism" and we really need to avoid that. Dwmyers 16:10, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I removed the following sections from the text, for now, and would like to explain why: RK 21:18, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Many Christians object to the JEDP theory's a priori rejection of such internal evidence as stated authorship and purpose of the Torah. They object further to the extirpation of the Creation and Flood accounts, et al., as authoritative Scripture. They have a more literal interpretation based on P. J. Wisemans work that the book of Genesis consists of sections, each of which was written by a separate historical author. Genesis was merely compiled by Moses. This is also called the Tablet theory.—"Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis" P.J. Wiseman. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1985
I doubt that most fundamentalist Christians know of the work of Wisemans; could you clarify who holds this view? The way it was written it was presented as a mainstream view in the Christian world, but that is not accurate. RK 21:18, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)
They claim that the JEDP Theory presupposes that religion in Israel went through a continual evolutionary process, as mentioned above. It is assumed that such complex religious ideas could not have been developed by Moses in 1400 B.C.E. or earlier. Attempting to further such an idea, archeologists, sociologists, and some liberal theologians also thought that writing could not have been an established practice in 2000 B.C. Instead, they viewed writing as having developed late in human history. However, archaeology has shown otherwise
This is confused. The paragraph starts off by arguing one point (sophisticated theological and religious ideas) but ends up only talking about writing letters. This makes no sense. Is this an accurate rendering of the actual arguments made by fundamentalists? RK 21:18, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It is agreed upon by most scholarship that Egyptian history is at least dated to 3000 B.C.E. and the earliest Egyptian writings are dated to 2800-2700 B.C.E. Ancient Egypt hieroglyphics contained 24 consonants, and it was simplified to the hieratic form by 1300 B.C.E. The demotic form became highly popular by 400-100 B.C.E. Akkadians (c.2000 B.C.E.) used nearly 300 characters to form the syllabic characters of their language.
Again, I don't follow this. Some people learned how to write letters many thousands of years ago. How does this prove that Moses wrote the entire Torah (or nearly all of it), and how does this disprove the vast amount of evidence for the documentary hypothesis? This "argument" is making the fundamentalists look incoherent. RK 21:18, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)
My interpretation: The sources Corey was using probably objected to the "oral heritage" strain of Pentateuchal scholarship, which postulates that J and E (perhaps the others as well) are oral narratives, and that a redactor later wove these oral traditions together. These scholars have tended to postulate that the Israelis were largely illiterate people. This can be countered a number of ways, not the least of which, if Moses was historical and raised in Egypt around 1300-1400 BCE, then if he knew nothing else, he easily could have learned the Egyptian form of writing, which was well developed at the time. Also, the article in the Wikipedia on Hebrew notes that archeology has dated the earliest known examples of Hebrew to the 10th century, contemporary with David and Solomon, and within the periods most conservative scholars date the J document. However, those arguments probably either belong in The Bible and history, or they belong in articles linked to that topic.

One of the issues we will encounter as we work on this article is that a myriad of people from different disciplines and degrees of faith have used the literary-critical method to analyze the Torah. It's hard to satisfy everyone when people from faithful scholars to lay believers to lay skeptics to historians to anthropologists to folklorists to mythologists have looked at the Torah to pursue an extra-literary agenda unattached to the narrative at hand. Dwmyers 00:17, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

On that last comment, it only proves that it was possible, not that he actually did. It was meant to rebut the argument that Moses didn't write the pentateuch because, as is claimed by the earlier proponant, that I believe Dwmyers mentioned in the article. I think you should reread the article with that comment back it belongs so that you can understand it better. But you are right, I think, those other two paragraphs should be rewritten to clarify them; but I think wholesale removal of them is unwarrented, because, though confused, they are not entirely confusing. I think most people have the brains to untangle the mess. Since those two paragraphs belong to DW, I beleive, then I'll leave it to him to rewrite.

By the way, DW, you're doing a commendable job. It was never my intention to stir things up, and especially not to make things appear biased. I wanted only to fill in the gaps that the article was clearly missing. As I said earlier, I'm new to this subject, so I believe it better left to you, as you have more materials on the subject at your disposal. When you are done sprucing up the article I'll be glad to read it in the confidence that a competent researcher has contributed to its construction.

P.S. Just a friendly reply to a past comment: I am a Christian, but as far as calling me a zealot, that is a matter of viewpoint. I am very interested in allowing all voices to be heard, no matter what one's belief system, even atheist. But when I know someone is being unduely authoritarian or absolutist (regarding the article, not you) I have to put the brakes on and step in to provide the other side. I belong to a religion that strongly believes in allowing others to have their say, and encourages facts, not conjecture. Also, if there appeared to be any bias in the things I contributed, it was just because I was going in order of the things I found in a Google search. I'm sure I would have soon come across the higher critic stuff, and somewhere I would have found the more unbiased information on some site and been privileged to use it. But now I hand it to you. I rest knowing that this page is in capable hands. -- Corey 21:49, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A large part of my reaction to your work, Corey, was a kind of panic, because as quickly as you were writing and changing things, I feared a total meltdown of the article. The majority of the product you created seems pretty innocuous after the fact.

I'll state as well that I'm not a researcher in this field, just a lay person with an interest. I never did "get" the Bible anyway in its unanalyzed form. But viewed through the lens of critical analysis, I don't think it loses anything and gains a lot, in terms of consistency and depth, to a skeptical guy like me. Dwmyers 00:17, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your candidness. Though, before, this article did put a lot of undue credit to Wellhausen for the documentary hypothesis, which he had no responsibility for in the first place, while completely ignoring the history from Astruc on, which I had filled in (noting, not bragging).

Even if you don't have special knowledge on this subject, you do certainly seem to have the right tools at your disposal, which I do not. This in itself makes you more qualified to make the corrections.

As regards the Bible, if you'd like, I can tell you (by e-mail or other such forum of discussion, as this isn't the place) why I found the Bible to be of interest for more than just on the grounds of faith, but on reason (I study logic regularly as a result of Romans 12:1 (don't associate the quote with the link in the article; I'm not associated with them) which says to "Render sacred service with...your power of reason", and also because of my Bible teacher), and even to atheists and agnostics, as I and others I know have met a few who read it for interest in historical details as well as the abundance of good advice and examples found therein. A person doesn't have to believe in God to get a good benefit out of it. I can also show you how the Bible isn't all about war, hellfire and strange concepts of God as have been painted by some of Christendom's denominations. Actually, my Bible teacher had told me to reason on everything in the Bible, and never rationalize (that is, not to force preconceived ideas into the reading, but to get out of the reading what is actually there, using its context and the context of the Bible as a whole). -- Corey 01:55, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ok, without taking anything away from other original thinkers, Wellhausen was the guy who broke up the text into J,E,D,P and the redactor, and he did it with such a degree of academic brilliance that his interpretation was accepted rapidly and it *still* remains the dominant framework that people work with (or contend with). In other words, he did such a bang-up job of synthesis that other scholars simply say, "There hasn't been a Wellhausen in the 20th century". The problem for the conservative believer is that Wellhausen interpreted it as a historian, as opposed to a theologan (so much so that Wellhausen gave up a chair as a professor of Theology because he no longer felt suited to teach the religious). Most issues, imo, with conservative Jewish or Christian belief and any particular breakdown of the Hebrew Bible is that if scholars start making interpretations about the historical nature of different people or events, they get into trouble. It's not the breakdown that might be contentious, it's the post-narrative interpretation. I think a lot of that however is inevitable, especially wrt comparative folklorists. Dwmyers 03:27, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from, and I agree to a large extent. The problem is in the post-narrative interpretation. Interpretation is always speculative, and it is that speculation that should be neutrally handled, instead of insisted upon. If one can achieve that, then one makes one's self a valuable encyclopedic contributor. — Corey

Issues regarding this page: Baruch Spinoza problem is not resolved (i.e. calling him a Christian is a bit of a stretch). Would the fix to change the title of that section and the previous section to ones based on date? All of the rabbinical quotes prior to the "Christian" section are 15th century or earlier and all in the "Christian" section date to the 16th century or later.

Egads. That needs to be changed. Spinoza is not a hellbound Christian heretic. He is a hellbound Jewish heretic. ;-) RK

Next issue I have is that Josh McDowell's publisher, I don't have a publisher location. Where is "Here's Life Publishers" located anyway? I'm trying to be anal about the bibliography here in case people outside the United States would be interested in these books.

Third, there is a scholar named R. N. Whybray who considers the Pentateuch a historiographical book in the same mold as Herodotus's History. It's not a widely held viewpoint but as he's taken to be a serious scholar by Blenkinsopp and his views discused in depth, I'd be appreciative if anyone else has any information on him. How to explain his views still confuses me at present. Dwmyers 19:19, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Due to a specific request, I will be considering continuation on this site. However, my participation on this page is done. I have removed my comments about scientists, etc., and all replies to it, to stop any further comments.

P.S. Please desist on the Christian fanatic talk. I'm neither a fanatic, neither did I add half the stuff that seems to be alludingly attributed to me. If participants wish to be taken seriously they should desist from arguments against the man and actually start some real intellectual discussion. Attacking individuals ideologies is neither scientific nor intellectually stimulating. — Corey 23:02, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Corey, I'd rather you stick around (even if you don't write, comment on the article). We've all had our share of oops moments here where we misunderstood the other guy and the article has seemed to survive okay. This article, like all good articles, is a work in progress and I'd be happier if it served everyone from liberal to traditional. Besides, maybe you know what happened to "Here's Life Publishers" :> Dwmyers 00:24, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I think that you are looking for one of the publishing ministries of Campus Crusade for Christ International. Many of the older titles have been taken up by Nelson Publishers. I hope that's a clue. Mkmcconn 00:54, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Cool. I notice Mr McDowell has a new edition of his book, the reference being McDowell, Josh The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict Fully Updated To Answer The Questions Challenging Christians Today, dated 1999 and it is indeed Nelson Reference. Now we (well, I'd like to know) need to know if we can move the McDowell reference from the old book to the new one. I probably will not read this book myself. Dwmyers 17:25, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ty, Dw. Sounds like Mk has the low down. See you in another forum. By the way, the article looks great.— Corey

I am new to Wikipedia, and I'm therefore fairly unfamiliar with Wikipedia procedures, so feel free to advise me if I should be posting this comment differently.

I added a link to this article, to add the later book by Richard Elliott Friedman, which I think is a significant book for this topic.

I have also added several sentences to the section of the article talking about modern attributions to the 4 authors, summarizing Friedman's theories regarding same, as stated in both books now included among the links.

I was careful not to state Friedman's opinions as facts, and I also corrected the stated chronology of what he wrote and what Bloom wrote.

I heartily commend Friedman's books to those of you who haven't read them. Even if you disagree with his conclusions, he seems to be a very careful scholar, who cites all his evidence with great specificity.

Friedman and Baruch Halpern are among the most accessible of Frank Cross's Harvard students. I certainly recommend Friedman myself. I've added a bit of Blenkinsopp's speculation about the reason for the redaction in this article. It has to be regarded as speculation, but it's very tempting stuff, and so much so I think it adds value to the article.

When I first touched on this article, there was a tendency to see the documentary hypothesis as sterile and barren intellectual ground from Wellhausen on. That, I knew from my reading, is the opposite of the actual situation. It will be hard to suggest the ongoing intellectual fertility without discussing some of the spectrum of ideas that surround this topic. Hopefully the new Blenkinsopp material can help accomplish that. Dwmyers 14:52, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Would You be so kind as to write kind of a profile of each author (J, E, P), identifing the specific concerns and points of view of each?

The four sources

J - Jahweh, Jehovah'

One of the two epic sources, the name is taken from the name of God, YHVH, used exclusively by this source. The letter 'J' comes from the erroneous German Christian rendering of Yod-He-Vav-He, the name of God, as Jehovah. This source emerged from Judah, the southern Kingdom. It emerged after the civil war in which Israel split into two kingdoms; Israel in the north, and Judea in the south.

E - Elohim, Elohist'

The second epic source, its stories always refer to God by the name 'Elohim'. This collection emerged from the northern kingdom of Israel, and is generally more concerned with general stories than individuals. At some time in pre-exilic history around 650 B.C.E., J and E were combined by a Judean editors. This combined version is known as "JE".

P - Priestly writings, Priesterschrift

Warning! Thiis section is excerpted from, with minor adaptations, from Professor Baruch Levine's Jewish Publication Torah commentary on Leviticus. It is, as such not public domain. It does represent a mainstream current view of Biblical scholars on the subject (including research by Christians, Jews, and others) , although it is by no means the last word.

The P source focuses on the formal relations between God and society, including the genealogies which document the chain of transmission of God's message and authority from Creation to Moses. "P" uses both Elohim and El Shaddai as names of God. The book of Leviticus is solely composed of P. Leviticus emerged from centers of priestly administration in biblical Israel such as Jerusalem. It is linked by language and subject matter to other priestly materials preserved in other books of the Torah. As such, it would be profitable to discuss in some depth the history and development of P.

Deuteronomy ordains that all sacrificial worship and cultic activity be conducted at the one central Temple in Jerusalem. Such activities would be illegitimate if carried out at any other site. Deuteronomy, therefore, announces a new pattern of worship. In some way this doctrine is historically related to the edict of Josiah, King of Judah, issued in 622 B.C.E., and reported in 2 Kings 22-23. And so the question arises: Is the cultic legislation of Leviticus based on this Deuteronomic doctrine of centralized worship?

Some scholars, including Julius Wellhausen in the 19th century, interpreted Lev. 17 as indirectly endorsing the doctrine of cult centralization. More recently, H. L. Ginsberg has argued that the festival legislation of Lev.23 represents a response to the same Deuteronomic doctrine of centralized worship. Ginsberg, noting similarities of diction and doctrine between Hosea and Deuteronomy, traces the origin of the law of cult centralization (in Deut.) to the northern kingdom of Israel, in the period before the fall of Israel to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E. He proposes that Deuteronomic writings (though not the entire book of Deuteronomy) were then transmitted to Judah [the southern kingdom] and its capitol, Jerusalem. These ideas then influenced Judea's King Hezekiah, who endeavored to do away with the high places (2 Kings 18:4). This effort apparently failed. He was followed by King Manasseh. In the late 7th century B.C.E., King Josiah destroyed the major cult sites in use at the time and altered the role of the priesthood. In this view, P developed shortly thereafter in the early 6th century B.C.E.

Thus if Leviticus mirrors the doctrine of Deuteronomy, then it is most likely a product of the age of Josiah at the earliest, at least in its broad outline. However, other scholars dispute this historical reconstruction. They regard the priestly legislation of Leviticus as coming from an earlier time, before Josiah and before the Deuteronomic writings. Foremost among these scholars is Yehezkel Kaufmann. He argues that the priestly literature of the Torah emerged at an earlier period; more recent scholars who follow this chronology, date P to the early 7th century B.C.E.

Scholars also note many similarities in content and style between P and Ezekiel. Ezekiel, the priest-prophet, was a major spokesman of the priestly school of Jerusalem. He lived in the time of the destruction of the First Temple and went into exile to Babylonia. Some scholars, following Kaufmann and others, maintain that P served as a source for Ezekiel. However, others suspect the reverse - that Ezekiel introduced those themes that found their way into P. Prof. Ginsberg proposes that themes prominent in the Epilogue to Lev. 26 were drawn from Ezekiel. Historically this would mean that, at the very least, parts of this were written well into the Babylonian exile, 6th century B.C.E.

So when was the P literature developed ? The most prudent view would approximate that of the late E. A. Speiser: that priestly law and literature took form over a protracted period of time and that it would be inaccurate to assign all of their contents to a single period of ancient history. This approach helps to explain the presence of some relatively early material in Leviticus, while at the same time allowing for the inclusion of exilic and post-exilic creativity.

D - Dtr, Deuteronomist

Warning: This section is excerpted from, with minor adaptations, from Rabbi Prof. Jeffrey Tigay's JPS commentary on Deuteronomy. As such, it is not in the public domain. It does represent a mainstream current view of Biblical scholars on the subject (including research by Christians, Jews, and others), although it is by no means the last word.

The D source is the source of the book of Deuteronomy, and likely in addition, the books of Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. Generally speaking, the Deuteronomist emphasizes centralization of worship and governance in Jerusalem. Consider the book of the teaching - this was the book that was found in the Temple in 622 B.C.E. by the High Priest Hilkiah while the Temple was undergoing a renovation....Modern scholarship has argued convincingly that this book of the teaching was in fact Deuteronomy....Several of the Deuteronomic prescriptions that Josiah carried out were actually created for the first time shortly before he did so, in the late 8th and 7th centuries B.C.E....

The first attempt to centralize sacrifice was made about a century before Josiah by King Hezekiah (late 8th-early 7th centuries B.C.E.). Hosea (early-mid 8th century B.C.E.) was the first prophet who criticized the proliferation of altars. Earlier, no prophets or pious kings attacked or suppressed the practice, and no less a prophet than Elijah (9th century B.C.E.) built an altar and offered sacrifices on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18[1]). As for the united national Pesach sacrifice, Kings itself says that nothing of the sort had even been done since the days of the Chieftains. If these Deuteronomic prescriptions did not exist prior to the 8th-7th centuries [B.C.E.], than Deuteronomy itself could not have existed earlier." [p.xx]

....key aspects of Josiah's reform and of Deuteronomy - centralization of sacrifice, destruction of shrines other than the Temple, and destruction of cultic pillars and sacred posts - had already been undertaken a century earlier by Hezekiah. Since Hezekiah's short-lived reformation is not said to have been based on a book, we cannot be certain than Deuteronomy existed then, but the ideas that produced the book were clearly developing. It seems likely, then, that Deuteronomy was composed in the 8th-7th centuries B.C.E." [p.xxi]

...Many features of Deuteronomy, particularly its vigorous monotheism and fervent opposition to pagan practices in Israel, are very understandable as a reaction to conditions in the 8th-7th centuries....[many examples discussed] ....However there is much in the book that seems considerable older than this. The society reflected in Deuteronomy's laws is a good deal less advanced than that of 7th century Judah. It consists primarily of farmers and herders. There are no laws about merchants, artisans, professional soldiers or other processionals. There are none dealing with commerce, real estate, or written contracts, and none dealing with commercial loans...There is no mention of royal officials or the royal power to tax and confiscate property and draft citizens....But [it does] contain some later elements. Deuteronomy in particular reflects some conditions that developed in monarchic times.

....Combining all of these chronological clues, it appears that the civil laws of Deut. go back to a time in the United Monarchy or the early divided monarchy - the tenth and nine centuries B.C.E. - during the transition from the old tribal-agrarian society to a more urbanized, monarchic one. It is difficult to tell whether Deut, selected these laws individually or in groups, or whether they were already a collection... In any case, these laws were supplemented and partly revised during the Assyrian age, primarily for the purpose of centralizing sacrificial worship and countering the threat of pagan religious belief and practice to which Israel was exposed during that time period....These connections with the northern kingdom make it seem likely that the Deuteronomic ideology crystallized there as a reform program, partly inspired by Hosea, during the final years of the kingdom as a response to the assimilatory pressures of the Assyrian age and to the excesses of the northern monarchy.....

Warning: The above quotes are excerpted from, with minor adaptations, from the Jewish Publication Society commentary on the Torah. As such, this text is not in the public domain. It does represent a mainstream current view of Biblical scholars on the subject (including research by Christians, Jews, and others), although it is by no means the last word.
Thank You! I really appreciate Your help.

Untitled Discussion

I find the statement modern studies began in the 1800s to be arbitrary and therefore misleading. This study is centuries old. It's just in recent years the public as a whole has been less inclined to burn scholars at the stake. If I said, for example, that modern biochemistry began in the 1920s with the invention of the ultracentrifuge I might be able to defend the point, but as hemoglobins had been studied for decades earlier, I'd also be quite wrong. Dwmyers 22:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's a fair point. Maybe the article could say that Some critical study of the Bible began centuries before the modern era, but was sporadic and not generally accepted by the public at large. Modern critical study of the Bible began to be widely published and accepted in the 1800s. Or something like this. RK 02:45, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
More so, the recent partitioning by JeMa disturbs me. I know he excised material from the article on Dating the Bible which in my opinion belongs there. I ended up reverting the bulk of what I wrote that he edited. He's also divided the scholars into classes and in some cases gotten the classes wrong. For one, Rentdorff is not an oral traditionalist, but holds yet another view, and I'm not sure that JeMa's subdivisioning of scholars adds anything to this article.

In terms of scholastic division, this article still continues to suffer from identifying Baruch nee Benedict Spinoza as a Christian, as well.

Continuing on the problems of the latest revisions, the pre-JeMa orientation of this article had a clear historical narrative that bordered on "beautiful writing", and JeMa has changed that. History has been pushed to the rear of the article and the fact that people have been studying this problem for centuries is diminished as a result. It's as if the study is being "modernized" when that apparent modernization ignores the centuries of work others did.Dwmyers 15:13, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, my mistake. The moving of historical material "south" predates JeMa. But more to the point, the original orientation of this article had what amounts to an introduction and historical narrative, focused on Jewish scholars but still, you could watch the evolution of ideas through the time frame in the text. I think the article gave short shrift to people the original author didn't consider good Jews (this is why Spinoza has been lumped in with the Christians) but that could be fixed. What I think I'm going to do is remove the heading from the various scholars, and see if there isn't a way to show that Rentdorff isn't an oral traditionalist, because some editor thought he was... Dwmyers 15:30, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

One more point (nag, nag, nag, I know). The discussion of Bloom presents him as some kind of disciple of Friedman. It makes for a nicely told urban legend, but it diminshes Bloom and is probably factually incorrect. Harold Bloom isn't a biblical scholar, he's a highly regarded literary critic and I rather doubt he is one of Frank Cross's graduate students, as Friedman and Baruch Halpern are. Dwmyers 15:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Finally! I can enunciate the Spinoza problem more accurately. The problem is that the 2 paragraphs of text in Traditional Christian Scholarship aren't both about traditional Christian scholarship. The first paragraph is indeed about traditional Christian scholarship, but the second paragraph is more about 17th century scholastic views of the topic than about purely Christian views of the topic.

Section 2.2, Internal Textual Evidence, has been turned into a kind of orphan with the new reorganization. It's clearly out of place. Dwmyers 16:26, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oral traditionalists

The recent edits which place Rolf Rentdorff among the "oral traditionalists", are simply incorrect. Rolf is nothing of the sort. He believes in a more extensive breakdown of documentary sources, and not in that the souces have an oral character. Any reading of Blenkinsopp's book will show that clearly. Harold Bloom, likewise, is clearly not a student of Friedmann's, though the text seems to suggest that. Bloom is a literary critic, Friedman is a scholar in the area. Dwmyers 16:26, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The thing about Bloom's work, while he dwells on some points that were obviously available from Friedmann, is that he elaborates on the contributions of documentary hypothesis to literature. Where Friedmann discussed the Shakespearean qualities of J, Bloom's agreement breaks into several essays on how the documentary theory provides us with access to vibrant ways of thinking about J and the characters (s)he offers us. Many of the theological and doctrinal discussions that crop up with the combined JEPD texts (or JEDP, depending on who you're with), just don't come up when reading J alone. The 'Humanities,' of which Bloom is professor at Yale, seem to come to the fore. In many ways, it seems that Bloom was trying to stake a claim for literary critics among those interested in DH. I read that he was encouraging scholars to take a literary critic's approach to other religious texts, such as the Book of Mormon, for which empirical evidence other than the text itself is conspicuously absent--where the historical approach to biblical studies may never be available. This emphasizes his literary roots as opposed to biblical studies roots. Because Bloom does not "come from" the tradition of source criticism or documentary theory, but from literary roots harking to Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke, perhaps an early link to literary criticism as one of the scholarly traditions involved would help organize things when it gets down to Friedmann and Bloom? The way I read it, Bloom is not a literary critic in the sense that biblical scholars seem to use the word--as a sub-heading of biblical studies--but a literary critic because he has a long-standing career in literature, who has expressed an interest in biblical texts. So I agree that he seems out of place under Friedmann's heading. Other thoughts? Jerekson 05:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Bible Source book out

Richard E Friedman has a new book out, called The Bible With Sources Revealed. The ISBN number is ISBN 0060530693. It just came on sale on the 25th of November, and those who like this kind of scholarship may be interested in the book. It's on my Amazon wish list, for one. Dwmyers 18:46, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Removed paragraph

I have removed this paragraph, which was contributed by an anonymou user:

The hypothesis also contains a number of tenets which do not coordinate with archaeology. Archaeology has found little evidence supporting the hypothesis, although between 1960 and 2000 archaeologists have made discoveries that contradict tenets of the hypothesis. Periodicals such as Near Eastern Archaeology should be studied before drawing conclusions. Also important is Umberto Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis and The Composition of the Pentateuch; Eight Lectures and his fuller work on all of Genesis.

These claims are untrue. The vast majority of archaeologists and modern biblical scholars do not believe this. In fact, it is disingenuous to present Umberto Cassuto as someone who rejects the documentary hypothesis without clarification, because he in fact rejects the traditional Jewish and Chrisitan views! Cassuto rejects the idea that Moses wrote all of the Torah. He accepts that the current text of the Torah was assembled from more than one early source, but our anonymous contributor left that fact out. In any case, Cassuto's primary work against the most accepted form of the documentary hypothesis is old and rejected: it was written in 1941, convinced nearly no one, and has long been bypassed. RK

one "individual"

Hi! I think this sentence really needs to be reshaped:

"..are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual" - I think it would be proper to put "...rather than authored by one individual(or God)" or something like it. The Torah is held be Jews to be in fact authored by Hashem(God), and letter-by-letter copied by Moses(which I think is also the way the Chistians belive the 5 Books of Moses were written)

Don't individuals sign and date their conrtibutions here? PiCo 10:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know what this means?

This is the last sentence in the article:

In this they are correct insofar as they see the challenge to the early dating for composition and the problematic control of documentary materials for which the literary evidence appears harder and harder to maintain.

If anyone can work out what it means, I'd be raetful if they could edit it in a way that makes that meaning clear. PiCo 10:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The Most Humble Man

The section "Background to the hypothesis" includes this: "In Num 12:3 Moses is described as the most humble man on the face of the earth, which would be remarkably hypocritical if Moses himself authored the statement." But it seems to me that no one claims Moses to have been the author of that statement - certainly not the supporters of the Documentary Hypothesis, and not even the supporters of the traditional view, which is that God dictated the text and Moses merely transcribed it. Therefore, this comment neither supports nor detracts from the hypothesis that there were multiple authors, and I propose removing this item from the list. --Keeves 13:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

That's actually supposed to be a support for non-mosaic authorship, per JDEP construction.Thanatosimii 17:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Vatican claim of 90% acceptance

I'm removing the "DH has wide acceptance" assertion from the opening intro, along with its "Vatican 90% support" claim. (see second paragraph of current version as of 2006-04-04) The intro should present the theory, not endorse it with superlatives. By doing so so early on in the article, it projects a strong slant. Statements about its acceptance should go in an appropriate section of the article, perhaps "History of the hypothesis / The modern era".

I'd add it to such a section now, if not for that the justification for the wide acceptance claim (i.e. Vatican 90%) has problems:

  • It lacks citation, despite the 2006-02-28 'needs citation' tag. I tried to find a support for this on the web, but could not. On the contrary, the best I could turn up was a quotation from the presumably Vatican-endorsed "Catholic Biblical Quarterly" (Jan. 1989, pp. 138-39 -- quoted by a GeoCities page) implying that such support was in fact waning: "It is widely known by now that the documentary hypothesis is in serious trouble, with no viable alternative yet in sight."
  • Even if the Vatican did say such a thing, consider the details of the statement, "90% of academics in the field of biblical scholarship support it." Of course! I would fully expect that academics in the field of biblical scholarship would largely accept the hypothesis (or some variant thereof), for the same reasons that I would expect traditional, religious theologians to be largely against it.-- Nmagedman 15:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
The old Catholic Encyclopedia appears to reject the documentary hypothesis in the article on the Pentateuch. Then in Biblical Criticism (Higher) it apparently expressly denies it:
In replying to the critical systems, conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant, re-enforce the argument from Jewish and Christian traditions by methods borrowed from their opponents; linguistic distinctions are countered by linguistic arguments, and the traditionists also employ the process of comparing the data of one book with another, in an endeavour to bring all into harmony. Not the methods so much as the conclusions of criticism are impugned. The difference is largely one of interpretation. However, the conservatives complain that the critics arbitrarily rule out as interpolations or late comments passages which are unfavourable to their hypotheses. The advocates of tradition also charge the opposite school with being swayed by purely subjective fancies, and in the case of the more advanced criticism, by philosophico-religious prejudices. Moreover, they assert that such a piecemeal formation of a book by successive strata, as is alleged for many parts of the O. T. is without analogy in the history of literature. The Catholic criticism of the O. T. will be described in a separate section of this article.
[. . .]
The Biblical Commission, whose decisions have now the force of acts of the Roman Congregations, declared, 13 February, 1905, that the fallibility of implicit citations in the Bible might be admitted, provided solid arguments prove that they are really citations, and that the sacred writer does not adopt them as his own. The Commission conceded on 23 June, 1905, that some passages may be historical in appearance only, always saving the sense and judgment of the Church. On 27 June, 1906, the commission declared that the arguments alleged by critics do not disprove the substantial authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses. This decision has necessarily modified the attitude of such Catholic writers and teachers as favoured in a greater or less degree the conclusions of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. The decree of the Inquisition "Lamentabili" (3 July, 1907) and the encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" (8 September, 1907) reasserted against the Modernists the sound, Catholic principles to be followed in the study of Sacred Scripture.
Now the that encyclopedia is older (c. 1913), and the "official" position may have changed, but I likewise could not find any indication that it has by a Google search. --MonkeeSage 07:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the 'Official' Vatican position is but The Interpretation Of The Bible In The Church may be a good starting place, it is an official Vatican document on the suject from 1993. My reading of it is that the documentary hypothesis could be useful when considered along with other approaches. --John Bracegirdle 10:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

informal request for comment

Would people who regularly follow/contribute to this article please look at Yahwism and the talk page, where I express my concerns? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

"hypothesis"?

if applying textual criticism to the pentateuch is the "documentary hypothesis", what is the alternative view called? "ipse dixit hypothesis"? "Mosaic authorship hypothesis"? Much is made of the hypothetical nature of any conclusion drawn from textual criticism. To any philologist this goes without saying, therefore the term appears to be coined by whoever believes to own an a priori truth that cannot be inferred from the text. Since Mosaic authorship is not even claimed in the text itself, I would be rather interested in the origin and prevalence of this belief. Under "Traditional Jewish and Christian beliefs" we read about the belief that God revealed his will to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is of course taken directly from the text, and refers to the 10 commandments. It is unclear what this has to do with the question of authorship of the pentateuch, except of course for the passage detailing the 10 commandments themselves. Nowhere do we document the origin of the belief of Mosaic authorship, we only read about people doubting it. That makes it a complete strawman, a belief only postulated to be gloriously debunked, without evidence that any scholar ever even insisted on it. I have no doubt that there are some hinterland fundamentalist Christians or Jews who have this notion, but that hardly makes it something to be discussed as a hypothesis in a scholarly debate. Unless we can quote "traditional" scholars who argue for Mosaic authorship, this article should be rephrased as dealing straightforwardly with "pentateuch philology" and focus on J,E,P,D vs. other reconstructions rather than pretending that there is a controversy between two hypotheses. dab (ᛏ) 07:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Any scholars who disagree with a pet interpretation of an allegedly "neutral, driven-only-by-the-facts, having-no-biases" group of scholars are automatically "fringe-element" and not worthy of note because they are just making a priori judgments, not dealing with the facts (which of course require no interpretation and thus no prior judgments, because they are just "brute" facts that everyone knows [and this is not an a priori judgment about the nature of facts or rthe process of human knowing! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!]). Pshaw.
Is there any tradition or precedent for asserting Mosaic authorship as the "traditional" view?
The term "the book of Moses," found in II Chronicles 25:4; 35:12; Ezra 3:2; 6:18; and Nehemiah 8:1; 13:1, surely included the Book of Genesis and also testifies to a belief in Israelite circles in the fifth century B.C. that all five of the books were the work of Moses. Ben Sira (Ecclus. 24:23), Philo, Josephus, and the authors of the Gospels held that Moses was intimately related to the Pentateuch. Philo and Josephus even explicitly said that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34:5-12. Other writers of the New Testament tie the Pentateuch to Moses. The Jewish Talmud asserts that whoever denied Mosaic authorship would be excluded from Paradise. (H. G. Livingston, The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment [Baker, 1974], pp. 218-219).
Harrison, Kaiser, Gordon, Archer, Van Seters, Van Dyk, Wiseman, (G. F.) Wright, Allis, Orr, Merrill, Garrett, Livingston, Unger, and Kitchen (among others) have all argued either for Mosaic (or largly single-source) authorship/historical redaction, or against radical redactionist/form-and-source critical hypotheses like Graf-Wellhausen. These are significant, relevant views, and there is no reason to exclude them from Wikipedia. » MonkeeSage « 09:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

In the past few days the number of EL has grown. Do you think we can trim it back down again?Andrew c 00:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Some?

"some historians and academics"? It's probably closer to most. The Documentary Hypothesis appears to be the consensus even among competing historical and academic Biblical scholars.--LKS 5/29/06

The hypothesis was the consensus for a while, but it's falling quickly. I'm not an expert in the field, but apparently there's this problem with the five part suzerainity covenants used in the Bible, which would be 3 parts if it were composed in a post-assyrian timeframe.Thanatosimii 17:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

How Be'ersheba got its name

The article says that there are accounts on the Bible for:

  • the three strikingly similar narratives in Genesis about a wife confused for a sister;

(...)

  • three different versions of how the town of Be'ersheba got its name;

Two Beersheba naming versions actually come from the wife-sister tales involving Abimelech. The other tale, however, involves the Pharaoh, and does not include the naming of Beersheba. What is the third account for how this city got its name? If there IS a third record, it should be added to the Beersheba page, and if there isn't, I think this comment should be excluded from this page. --Chalom 14:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Delisted GA

This article did not go through the current GA nomination process. Looking at the article as is, it fails on criteria 2b of the GA quality standards in that it does not cite any sources. Most Good Articles use inline citations. I would recommend that this be fixed, to reexamine the article against the GA quality standards, and to submit the article through the nomination process. --RelHistBuff 09:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Multiple Authors - Try reading the bible properly

The assumptions on multiple authors and the flood are erroneous. In Gen 6:20 God makes statement that says 2 of every kind of animal will arrive before Noah, so he's got some sorting out to do. Gen 7:2 God says put 7 pairs of clean aniamls [kosher], and 1 pair of unclean animals (pair being male and female] on the ark. In Gen 8:20, Noah sacrifices some of the clean animals as an offering. More of the clean animals were needed otherwise they would now be extinct. It rained 40 days and 40 nights (Gen 7:17), and the flood waters rose. It took nearly a year (i.e. Gen 8:13 Noah is 601 years old , Gen 7:6 - Noah is 600 years old) for the waters to subside at the end of the 40 days. This is one account written by one person, NOT more than one author. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.95.238 (talk)

This is a good excuse to rehash some basics of DH. It is backward reasoning when doctrine that was born after the text gets used to explain the text's meaning or unity. This is among the key fallacies Wellhausen worked on so doggedly in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel[2]. The DH is based on the rational notion of temporal precedence--in cause and effect, the cause does not come after the effect. Since the traditionally attributed authors are rarely given in the text, but were added later, temporal precedence gives us other evidence than tradition and wild guesses as to when the authors lived. One of the key assertions of DH is that the text may tell us (between the lines) as much about who/when the writers were as it does about their religion. The fact that the Priestly source (who was often responsible for adding in calendar and genealogy passages) did not create blatant contradictions in dates and numbers in the story of Noah does mean he did not exist, it merely means he was not an idiot--he made sure his contributions made at least a rough fit with the earlier sources at hand. With all this in mind, kosher law was not likely in place during Noah's time. Jerekson 06:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
But at the end of the day DH belongs in the same league as astrology and phrenology :P Kuratowski's Ghost 08:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Or better yet, literary criticism.Jerekson 14:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
And astrology and phrenology belong in the same league as creationism. It seems to me that the scholarship under discussion here is attempting to collect evidence, and then to create a cogent theory that fits the evidence. Starting off with the conclusion (Mosaic authorship), and then disregarding all evidence to the contrary is not scholarship, it is faith. Which is fine. Just not really what we're doing here.

Kjdamrau 05:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)kdamrau

You're confusing personal belief with scientific significance. No one is saying you have to believe in a religion in order to find its study absolutely fascinating and of great scientific value. No Egyptologist has ever believed in any of the religions they study, the ancient Egyptian religions have been completely dead for centuries, but Egyptology is still a valid and important science because it sheds light on how modern society came to be. Biblical archaeology, which is what DH is in effect, is equally valid if not more so because the religions it deals with are still alive and extremely influential. All you actually need to be interested in the origins of the bible is an interest in history, but if you don't think history matters then you're doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Proper explanation

  • Moses' wife, though often identified as a Midianite (and hence Caucasian), appears in the tale of Snow-white Miriam as a "Cushite" (Ethiopian), and hence black;(however Rabbinical commentators state that the term "cushite" in this instance, refers to her beauty)

The information is on the Moses article. Flavius Josephus narrates Moses's expedition against Nubia and his marriage to a Nubian princess (Nubian=Cushite).

  • Numbers 25 describes the rebellion at Peor and refers to daughters of Moab, but the same chapter portrays one woman as a Midianite;

Read Flavius Josephus (available on Project Gutenberg); both Balak (a Moabite) and the Midianites were involved. It also explains why Balaam was killed by the Israelites in the war against the Midianites (he told Balak and the Midianites that if they wished to be victorious for a little while that the Israelites had to commit idolatry). This is also on the Moses page.

new note It's interesting that nowhere on the page is there mention that, as Cassuto states, the supporters of this notion change words in the Pentateuch to support their contentions. This amounts to falsification of data, a capital crime in scientific research. See the results of the discoveries that Poehlman and Sudbo falsified their data. There is also no discussion here of how the supporters deal with archaeological discoveries.

Hello,

Thank you for adding some information on Cassuto. Unfortunately, I haven't read Cassuto's work and am unfamiliar with his criticisms. Could you please flesh his arguments out a bit more in the article? For example, which supporters of the Documentary Hypothesis are charged with falsifying data? How often did this occur and is this a commonly held argument against the Hypothesis amoung detractors? We have two sentances on him now, but I found the sentances confusing because I haven't read the book; as it stands, it's a pretty serious, but very vague, allegation in the article.

As for the archaeological discoveries, which discoveries do you mean? Please feel free to add sentances (from NPOV, of course!) about these discoveries and their implications to the "controversies" section, if you think it will help represent another point of view about the Hypothesis.

Thanks, JKB 18:09 December 4 2006 (EST)

Also, please forgive my ignorance, but I'm unfamiliar with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, mentioned in the sentance: "In the same work Cassuto discusses the deconstruction of a parallel formation which disrupts a grammatical structure, a violation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." I assume it represents another criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis? Perhaps we could flesh out these two Cassuto sentances so they flow with the paragraphs above, instead of having them in seperate bullets. We could also describe the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis a little more, or even start a separate article on it? That way, we'll have an easy explanation handy for people (like myself) who are unfamiliar with it.

Thanks,JKB 18:49 December 4 2006 (EST)

Modern Era Section

In the modern era section, the following paragraphs appear:

"Some modern allegorical interpretations and historical readings lead to a hypothesis of significant authorship by a woman or women. In one such interpretation, the Genesis stories depict a powerful male God who does not substitute well for a mother/grand-mother figure.[citation needed] Other interpretations lead to the hypothesis that women initially told/wrote certain Genesis stories.[citation needed] For example, very few males would have initially supported the circumcision of young boys.

Historical readings alone can also lead to a hypothesis of female authorship. The Hebrew states functioned as a buffer zone, set between more powerful neighbors. Large armies would periodically invade such a buffer area, killing most of the male population, thus fostering matriarchal trends that could survive defeat and return to the Promised Land.[citation needed] According to this theory, surviving females experiencing slavery would find it difficult to maintain paternal lineage, and children of female slaves would benefit from patrilineal stories. Stories praising the wisdom and compassion of motherhood can appear without overtly challenging male authority and power. Citizenship would derive solely from the Mother."

Does anyone know where these ideas came from, so we can cite them? Also, I find the 2 last sentances confusing. What does "citizenship would derive solely from the Mother" mean in the context of the Documentary Hypothesis? Is there any research that would support this line of reasoning? Any ideas on how to rewrite this to sound more encyclopedic?

Thanks, JKB November 7 2006 (EST)

Hi again everyone,

I'm concerned that the first two paragraphs of the "female authorship" section represents original research. Broad statements such as "Large armies would periodically invade such a buffer area, killing most of the male population, thus fostering matriarchal trends" are made without citation. Although at first glance it seems intuitive that a society beset by war would foster matriarchal trends, I can think of several societies where this did not take place; citing a source showing that this happened in ancient Israel would make me feel better.

Other sentances, such as "the Genesis stories depict a powerful male God who does not substitute well for a mother/grand-mother figure" puzzle me; the statement might be true, but I'm not sure how that represents evidence for female authorship. Finally, I think we need a few more examples of "Stories praising the wisdom and compassion of motherhood" in the Bible, as well as evidence that they were written by a woman. If we're going to make the argument that women-centered stories may reflect female authorship, we might want to mention the opposing hypothesis that the many men-centered stories may reflect male authorship too.

I'm going to do some digging to see if I can find any citations for these ideas. If I can't, and if no one objects, I'm going to temporarily remove these two paragraphs until we figure out the sources.

I'm actually a supporter of the theory that women may have written parts of the Bible, by the by. I'm just troubled by not citing sources or counter-arguments in an Encyclopedia; it's not NPOV. Please add your thoughts, especially if you have sources for these ideas and cited counterarguments! Thanks, JKB 18:09 December 4 2006 (EST)

You're right to be troubled, there's nothing wrong with female authorship theories but encyclopedias are about supporting evidence, and the passages have nothing but half-baked theory. From the way they were written I get the feeling the passages were added with a political agenda in mind, rather than scholarship. There's absolutely nothing in the texts to exclude female or male authorship, but at the end of the day there's not really anything at all to indicate the gender of the writers. We just don't really know enough to make any assumptions. Even stories written from a female or male point of view aren't really evidence, talented writers can do both points of view convincingly (Shakespeare, for example).
If the authors regarded themselves as historians trying to record what they have been told is true, it gets even more complicated. If you read a biography of Elizabeth I, that would technically be from a strong female point of view but it wouldn't necessarily tell you anything about the gender of the author.
I think to be honest it's a fruitless line of enquiry to concentrate on the nature of the individual authors of these texts, as there's no real hope of ever pinning them down to individuals. Even if you could, edited folk tales put down on paper aren't really works by that individual, they're more like a compilation of oral history which has many different roots in myth and history. The best we can do is just study the style and the factual content of the texts and compare them with other texts, as they're the only things we have solid evidence about.
If you really want to discuss gender in the bible, it's probably best to just stick to what the texts actually say and imply about gender rather than guessing the genders of the actual authors.

G for Grundlage

I read when I took an academic class on Biblical Source Criticism about a combination of J and E called G, Grundlage, meaning foundation in German. Anyone know anything more about this? Valley2city 03:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Cassuto

I deleted this sentence: "In the same work Cassuto discusses the deconstruction of a parallel formation which disrupts a grammatical structure, a violation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." My erason is that put here in isolation it makes it look as if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a foundation stone of modern linguistics, accepted by all in the field. But in fact SW is highly controversial, as the wiki article on the subject makes clear. PiCo 03:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Stephen C. Carlson 04:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Good call. Does anyone know anything about the sentance before that, about Cassuto and the alleged scientific misconduct? I've never read the book, and in isolation it confuses me. Has anyone else read it? Is there anyway to tie that sentance into the preceding paragraphs? JKB 22:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
If you have access to a library - I don't - please read the book and see if you can improve that point, or else delete it. (Merry Christmas).PiCo 07:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I have the work, I've read it, and I can include the relevant quotes later. --Taiwan boi (talk) 08:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why Sapir-Whorf should be controversial, it makes sense to me after 35 years of studying a dozen languages and seeing what crazy things come out of ignoring cultural influence on language and grammar when doing translations. If you translate Milton's buxom into Russian the way you would translate Georgette Heyer's, you come out with "pleasingly plump air." Or read the translation of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse available from Project Gutenberg, which talks about "vehicles" and "conductors" when the American culture dictates that the real meaning is cars and drivers. Or Cassuto's case where the Hypothesis deconstructs two uses of vehineh...veatah in Genesis 27 into different putative source documents when the same structure appears in Exodus 32 and Samuel I 18, proving that it is a grammatic feature of Hebrew and not restricted to Genesis.

Revision to Introduction

I ervised the Introduction to make it more comprehensible to the ordinary reader who might be consulting Wikipedia to find out what the DH is. My aim was to outline the DH in its contemporary form, giving the main outlines of what it says about the authorship and dating and background of the Torah's five books. I tried to get away from the emphasis on defending the DH, and just sate, as simply but comprehensively as I could, what it is. (I also made a small ervision to the top of the next section - this was largely so that I could save some useful material from the existing Introduction which I felt didn't quite belong but shouldn't be lost). For comment. PiCo 07:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Consistent date notation

Currently the article uses both BC and BCE notations. Per WP:MOSDATE, I am going to make the date notation consistent. Since it talks about Jewish religious matters, I hope there is not objection to use denomination-neutral BCE. Thanks. ←Humus sapiens ну? 00:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Confusing sentence

Does anyone know what this sentence means: "The hypothesis may further postulate the combination of the sources into their current form by an editor known as R (for Redactor) who also made small additions"? SlimVirgin (talk) 16:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I think a plain English translation is: "In addition to adding material from sources other than the P Source, the J Source,The E Source, and the D Source, the Redactor also edited stories so that the Heptetude speaks with a unified voice. This editing clears up several objections to the Documentary Hypothesis, without nullifying any part of the hypothesis."67.136.147.115 20:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what the word "may" is doing in there - the DH does indeed postulate a Rerdactor, two of them in fact, one for JE, another for the final combined book. Just take out the "may" and say the DH postulates a redactor (or two). As for User:67.136.147.115's suggestion, I don't like it - the redactor was clearing up objections to the DH? I don't think so. PiCo 04:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Deleted section on Rabbinical criticism of the Torah

I deleted this section because, although every word it says is true, it's only very, very tengentially connected to the DH. If we were writing a book and had 500 pages to play with, we could well have a whole page on this subject, but we only have a few thousand words at most, and we need to keep tightly focussed on the story of the DH. PiCo 05:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Re-write of the intro, for your consideration

This is what comes of having too much time on one's hands - one gets involved in Wikipedia-edits. Anyway, I hope this re-write covers more of the essence of the DH - my aim was to give an overview of the subject to the reader who might not go any further into the article. PiCo 07:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Re-wrote the background section

Ok, I made a big edit and big edits should be explained, but I'm tierd and can't think very well. ISo I'll be brief. I re-cast this section using the Intro to Friedman's 'Bible with Sources Revealed', as this represents the modern version of the DH. Seems more logical. But the Background also needs to explain the Wellhausen hypothesis. So more needs to be done. Maybe tomorrow. PiCo 09:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Deleting "Opponents of the hypothesis" section

I deleted this very long section because: (a) it's just too long! Surely it would be simpler and better to note briefly the opposition and use wikilinks to lead people to the main articles on the opponents - that's what they're for; and (b) it seems to have been hijacked by believers in the idea that the Torah had a single author, probably Moses - definitely a fringe belief and hardly worth a mention at all if we follow the usual practice of due weight. PiCo 04:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll add a third reason: the real opponents of the DH aren't those who argue that Moses was the author, it's the minimalists of the Copenhagen School - for some reason they're treated in this article as a variant of the DH, which is quite wrong: the DH is the four-author thesis put forward in the 19th century, synthesised by Wellhausen, and recently updated by Friedman and others. The challenge to this is the recent tendency to see more and more authors at work, and to date them later and later. The article needs to be corrected to reflect this. PiCo 04:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I restored the major portion of text from this section because I believe PiCo's deletion of it was unwarranted and appeared to be motivated by his personal bias on the subject. The section is not very long by Wikipedia standards. In deleting the section, PiCo eliminated the divergent views of this topic based on his personal belief that opposition to DH is fringe belief. Such maverick deletion of information should be frowned upon by this community.Big Mac 13:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I've deleted your section again because I think you haven't really looked at the section immediately above it, titled "After Wellhausen". Please read it, as you'll see it's largely about opponents of the hypothesis. Many of the names you mention in your section are already mentioned there - Albright, Gunkel, and others. Some of the names you include are not mentioned, and some names are mentioned that you've missed - that's inevitable, we can't have everyone. But that section shows that the Wellhausian documentary hypothesis is regrded as highly doubtful by modern scholars - it mentions Whybray, Van Seters, Rendtorff, and I think Wenham. Where your section is weak is that it doesn't put these and the other names in a historical context. You treat Albright as if Dever never existed, Gunkel as if Van Seters never wrote. Scholarship doesn't stand still, it moves onwards constantly, and while Gunkel and Albright were seminal figures, their work has been critiqued by later scholars and their successors have moved on - and beyond doubt, today's scholars will also be critiqued and superceded. But we need a sense of history. PiCo 15:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Now you're using a completely different rationale from the one you provided originally for deleting this section - that it lacks a "sense of history." I never saw a rule that required content to be written within the constraints of timelines related to the subject. It seems to me that having relevant content available is a more important goal than constraining said content to particular presentation scheme, such as an historical one. Moreover, the fact that you've changed your reasoning suggests to me once again that you're simply coming up with excuses to delete content that you don't agree with. If that standard were used by all editors, there would be no content on controversial subjects to be found at all. However, given that you now seem to object principally to the information in this section that deals with secularist critiques of the hypothesis (because you claim that aspect has already been covered in the previous section), I propose that the section be renamed "Religious opposition to the hypothesis" and contain only critiques from the religious side. Big Mac 20:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry but I have to leave for the airport in a few minutes and don't have time for a proper answer. I'll be back in a bit over a week (I hope), and we can continue then. All best. PiCo 23:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

(reducing indent) I've looked again at the two sections, the present "After Wellhausen" and the previous/restored "Opponents", and I still can't do anything more than restate what I said previously: "After Wellhausen" is a study of the opponents of Wellhausen's thesis, and it treats many of the names mentioned in "Opponents." What's more, it puts the opponents in the context of developments in biblical criticism through the the 20th century, from Gunkel and Albright to the minimalists. "Opponents," on the other hand, has no such context, but simply takes arguments from here and there, with the result that the reader isn't aware that there has been a scholarly debate going on, in which Gunkel (form criticism, tradition history) and Albright (Biblical archaeology) and others first expanded on the DH so that by mid-century it had become a consensus; then Van Seters, Thompson, Devers and Whybray undermined the foundations of the consensus by showing up the faults in the methodologies of its three pillars, namely source criticism, tradition history and Biblical archaeology, with the result that there are now competing hypotheses from each of the three possible models of Pentateuchal origins (documentary, supplementary and fragmentary). If you disagree with my feeling that this is the better way to present changing approaches to the DH over the last century and a quarter, please tell me why. (Note that I'm not saying the present "After wellhausen" section can't be improved, but our argument here is over which of two appraoches to use). PiCo 03:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Reference to "SD text" comes out of nowhere

In the fourth full paragraph, which begins "The theory was first proposed in 1886 by Julius Wellhausen", a reference is made to "the SD text" without any prior mention (See text portion, "Wellhausen's proposals on the order and dating of the P and SD texts". Is this a typo for simply "D"? An alternate name for "Dtr2"? -- WHOEVER KNOWS, PLEASE EITHER CORRECT "SD text" OR *DEFINE* IT SOMEWHERE ABOVE THIS UNDEFINED REFERENCE TO IT. DThrax 19:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated Etymology under "The modern hypothesis"

Under "The modern hypothesis", we read:

"E — the Elohist. E describes a human-like God initially called El (which sometimes appears as Elohim according to the rules of Hebrew grammar)". -->WHILE IT IS TRUE that there is a well-known a special use of the plural suffix -im, which when affixed to singular eloh '[a] god', derives this well-known semantically non-plural name of G-d (not shown, btw, at the Hebrew grammar article), whoever has made the above statement is skipping an important step: There is no grammatical rule of derivation which takes us the down first leg of the alleged journey, from the ancient Canaanite name for the chief god, El and relates it to the generic word for 'a god', eloh. Brown, Driver & Briggs' Hebrew and English Lexicon indicates that אלה is assumed as the root of אל, but that "[the] question [is] intricate, & [the] conclusions dub[ious]." THE UPSHOT IS, while there is a grammatical rule deriving Elohim from eloh, there is no grammatical rule deriving אלהים Elohim from אל El; this is pure conjecture. DThrax 21:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

So please make an edit to the article. (The "SD" you mention above is an error for D). PiCo 02:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Criticism and scope of the documentary hypothesis

Much of the criticisms I have read in this article that don't come from religious sources are addressing the view that four, and only four, sources existed. I will admit I have not read extensive amounts on the topic, but I am generally familiar with it. Is anyone who accepts multiple authors and redactors of the Torah disagreeing that there was a final redactor, R, who brought together at least JE, P, and D? And further, that there was a redactor who brought together J and E? Further, that P used JE as a source but had a very different agenda, and the same with D using P and/or JE? What I see the argument as is the idea that these are the only sources, that J and E are completely original works. I have never seen that argued, and what I have read of Friedman, he brings in a variety of other sources besides JEPD. He claims the Book of Records, Genesis 14, the Ten Commandments, the Holiness Code, and various other sections are not from the four sources. So, is this a criticism of the documentary hypothesis, or is this an expansion of it, and what do the people making claims of additional authors and redactors identify with? abexy 20:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Views

Could someone expand this section, perhaps someone who subscribes to the traditional belief in Mosaic authorship? As it is the section is mostly just more criticism of the traditional view and doesn't offer much of a competing perspective at all. How have traditionalist scholars answered the specific questions raised by the D.H.? I would have liked to read about that here.Yonderboy 04:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Adherence and Doug Beaumont

Java7837, I'm afraid I have to agree with other editors that Doug Beaumont is not a notable source. (I suggest, incidentally, that you change your page for him to this: apparently his home page these days. He getshardly any hits on Google, and while I know notability isn't a popularity contest and can't really be settled by toting up Google-hits, it's significant that he's so unknown - no scholarly publications, no citations, no books, nothing much at all. It seems he's a teacher at a small US bible colege - in other words, doesn't hold a high-profile position in the biblical studies profession. So, while I'd agree that the DH has come under a lot of criticism in the last 30 years, Doug Beaumont isn't the man to cite. PiCo 06:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Evangelical Criticisms

I really don't mean to be rude, but whoever wrote that Evangelical Criticisms section should be embarrassed. Not only was it carelessly typed, but the actual arguments presented demonstrate a truly childish logic. I suspect that section was written by an Evangelical. Are these really the best criticisms that the Evangelicals have to offer? Because no one has made an effort to separate the gospels into separate original documents, the same can't be done for other sections of this large compilation of religious texts? Passages that claim that god said stuff to Moses indicate that Moses was the author? In what way? If I wrote a book that said that Elvis Presley claimed I was God, does that mean Elvis must have written that passage in the book? The documentary hypothesis "disagrees" with Occam's Razor, therefore it must be invalid? Again, I mean no offense at all, but sir or madam, you ought to be ashamed.

I know it's not the business of the author of an encyclopedia article to judge the opposing views documented, but can we get another evangelical to present some more... impressive... arguments, if any exist? - L. Fitz, 6/28/2007 6:03 AM

I agree that the section is extremely poor. The problem is not just that the arguments are bad (though they are), but that they aren't attributed to any published source, which makes them original research. It adds nothing worth to the following section worth maintaining, so I've gone ahead and removed it. EALacey 13:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention that the DH is about the Torah, not the NT. PiCo 16:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It was on topic it saying if you split the torah because the Creator is called god and lord why not split the gospels based off the fact that the protagonist is called both jesus and christ and some of it was sourced --Java7837 23:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It does disagree with Occam's razor i don't think my book was made of several unknown docs. For example what type of idiot would think Moby Dick was made of 4 documents which in turn was made of even more documents--Java7837 00:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The "Evangelical Criticisms" section was actually arguing for Mosaic authorship., So far as I can tell, Wiki currently lacks an article on this subject. Perhaps Java might like to start it - it would be much easier to link from here to such an article than to try to present the MA in full as a sub-section of the DH article. PiCo 01:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Four sources of the On the Origin of Species

Please help me on this i don't believe Darwin was so smart as to write such a wonderful document (and actually boring as a side note) i think his document so great and so impressive i don't think it come from 1 author but came from the work of many authors which was then harmonized into 1 text yes i must come up with a conspiracy theory to explain its origin this is what your DH sounds like to me to be honest to you when u think what it entails for DH to be true you'd expect evangelicals to be preaching it it makes the 1st 5 books of the bible one of the most impressive documents in history there is just 1 problem it is a conspiracy theory i have heard many anti-semites use it as though it makes the torah less impressive but it makes it one of the greatest documents ever written there is just 1 problem it isn't true one of the early supporters didn't believe the torah could have been written by a jew (that is how europe was back then) so he joined the school of thought because he found the torah too impressive fine you guys are mega-monotheists but seriously even the holocaust deniers believe the whole thing was faked why? because they think it was a plot by the jews to get israel any fool can rationalize stupidity --Java7837 01:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Java, please calm down. I would actually agree that the DH is no longer the universally dominant critical view that it was between the late 19th century and the last quarter of the 20th century, but the "evangelical arguments" section just didn't cover the current position. Have a look at this overview by Gordon Wenham, who is a respected scholar. He covers the entire history of the DH and critical studies from the Mosaic tradition to today. See also if you can get hold of Richard Elliott Friedman's "Bible with Sources Revealed", the Introduction to which gives a modern overview of the arguments in favour of the DH (you can't assess the criticisms of the DH unless you understand the reasons why scholars entertained it). PiCo 01:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
PiCo, I hope you don't mind --- I fixed up the URL for your Wenham citation. It's correct, but it actually goes to a footnote, not the top of the page. CammoBlammo 05:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Documentary_hypothesis/Archive_1&oldid=1273533494"