Subject: Re: Liberals vs conservatives
Date: 11 Nov 1999 02:42:48 GMT
From: Chris Ho-Stuart
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian,nz.soc.religion

Graeme Hunt < > wrote:
[snip]
> Oh Nigel, I know where you get this idea from. You have swallowed the
> documentary hypothesis hook, line and sinker. No respectable scholar
> believes that nonsense any more. It’s a load of garbage.  You’ve been
> sucked into it and prefer to take this as truth rather than all the
> evidence against it.
[snip]
It depends on what you mean by the documentary 
hypothesis.

The details of Wellhausen’s original dating 
scheme are indeed not well supported. On the 
other hand, that the Torah was placed in in 
present form well after the time of Moses, and 
was preceded by four major strands of writing, 
is solidly in the mainstream of academic biblical 
scholarship. One may dismiss this academic 
approach, of course, but it exists and remains 
the majority view within academia and theological 
seminaries that do not have a prior doctrinal 
commitment to Mosaic authorship.

The mainstream consensus is that the Torah 
retains evidence of earlier sources from which it 
is derived. These early sources were written 
during the monarchy from the time of David up to 
the exile, and combined into their present form 
as a single unified document possibly during or 
after the exile.

We will need to bear in mind several distinct 
positions. First, there is the classic JEPD 
model. In this model there are four sources 
pre-dating the current form of the Torah. J 
(Yahwehist) is the oldest, dating perhaps to the 
time of David or Solomon.  E dates from the 
later monarchy, possibly the time of Jeroboam, 
and quite possibly never existed as a distinct 
document from J.  The Priestly source (P) 
reflects concerns of a Priestly class in the 
later monarchy, and Deuteronomy (D) is a fourth 
document, possibly from the time of Josiah.

This model is often credited to Wellhausen, who 
was the most influential of a group of German 
scholars who first proposed this division in the 
nineteenth century, including Vatke, Reuss and 
Graf.  Wellhausen gave the most detailed 
exposition of the model, but his own original 
contribution was mostly concerned with dating 
the early sources; dates which are now 
generally considered much too late.
Within this academic mainstream we can roughly 
distinguish the clumpers and the splitters. 
Splitters may try to identify further divisions 
even within J, E, P and D, or try to reconstruct 
one of the four major strands from the present
 unified Torah.  Clumpers are more interested in 
the unified work we have today, and in the 
concerns of those who developed it in that 
unified form  ®.

The trend today is away from excessive splitting.

It is now widely considered that E never existed 
as an independent document: and we should speak 
of J followed later by the combined document JE.  
On the other hand, it is recognized that there 
was a wide body of traditions and sources in use, 
and that the major JEPD strands may incorporate 
material from older shared traditions. A trend 
to de-emphasize the splitting of the Torah into 
sources, and to focus on the entire edifice is 
sometimes mistaken as a return to the notion of 
a single author: care needs to be taken to 
distinguish an emphasis on cohesion and the 
hypothesis of single authorship: they do not 
necessarily go together.

Another area of ongoing dispute is the matter of 
dating of the sources.  It is not hard to find 
quotes from respected academics stating views 
such as “Wellhausen’s documentary 
hypothesis is dead”, or something of the 
sort. These statements usually refer to the 
details of Wellhausen’s formulation, 
especially his late dating scheme, which has 
indeed been superseded.

The existence of J, E, P and D strands 
representing four distinct writers at different 
times continues to be the general view for 
authorship of the Torah by the vast majority 
of academic scholars, Jewish scholars most 
definitely included.

It is not hard to find some fairly drastic 
criticism of the JEPD model. Names frequently 
cited in this respect include Jewish scholars 
Umberto Cassuto, Isaac Kikawada, Benno Jacob 
and others. These are all rather dated; I am 
hoping for some more modern references from 
others as this thread progresses. There are two 
important points to bear in mind. First, these 
scholars do argue against the documentary 
hypothesis, but they do not present Mosaic 
authorship as the alternative. None of them 
accept the simple tradition of Mosaic authorship, 
which is dead in the water as far as serious 
scholarship is concerned. Second, these scholars 
have not been persuasive. Time has not vindicated 
their efforts, and (as far as authorship of the 
Torah goes) their views are now little more
than historical curiosities.

Cheers-Chris Ho-Stuart