Скачать или смотреть Old Testament = intro to Documentary Hypothesis or Wellhausen Hypothesis, redactor, priestly source

I was influenced by Bart Ehrman, Richard Elliott Friedman, Israel Finklestein, Harold Bloom, and other scholars. I invite corrections if I misstate anything.

All Biblical scholars are familiar with the Documentary Hypothesis or Wellhausen Hypothesis, named for proponent Julius Wellhausen.

The premise is that the books placed early in the Old Testament--the Torah--come from different writers, not one writer such as Moses.

The Greek word “Pentateuch” is sometimes used for Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

For various reasons you won’t hear about the theory if you sit in a pew during a church service on Sunday, but Biblical scholars agree that the Old Testament consists of manuscripts by authors from different eras and regions.

An anonymous editor at an unknown time combined different texts, making changes so inconsistencies are not too glaring.

The editor who combined sources is called the redactor. We don’t know exactly how or when or why the materials were woven together.

Any theory probably oversimplifies what really happened, but we can recognize different origins of books that make up the Old Testament.

One source (or writer) is known to scholars as E since this writer refers to God as Elohim. E was probably based on oral traditions from the northern part of the land, Israel (often called Ephraim due to the land’s dominant tribe of that name--another reason to call it E).

Another writer is very concerned with priestly matters, so the work of this writer is called P.

This Priestly source, like E, prefers the name Elohim for the deity. P uses additional names for God, such as El Shaddai (Exodus 6:2-3).

This “Priestly” writer may have been the editor, leaving an amalgamation of four sources (JEDP).

The “P” author may have done this in the sixth century BCE when the Babylonian exile began.

Think of the dry style of Leviticus and Numbers when you think of P.

In some places we can see how the editor did his work, like where the editor gives “doublets” (two versions of a story). There are two stories of the Creation. The “P” account is in Genesis 1:1-2:4. The Jahwist account is in Genesis 2:5-3:24.

One more writer is identified as the Yahwist (also Jahwist) since that writer uses “Yahweh” for God.

“J” is used for that writer since Yahwist starts with “J” in the German language (Jahwist). German scholars led the field in the 19th century. (I'll word that another way: the source is called J because its name for the deity is Yahweh, which in German is spelled Jahweh.)

The J source was the first source to be written, but it does not appear first in the Old Testament. It is the source for Genesis 2-3. The P source appears earlier--in Genesis 1.

J was written in, and based on oral traditions from, the southern part of the land, called Judah. This is an additional reason for calling it J.

Another source is called D, the first letter of Deuteronomy. Was D produced by Jeremiah around 595-585 BCE?

Laws in D differ from what is in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The redactor implies
that Deuteronomy represents the second giving of laws (or the Law) by Moses.

One contradiction in laws had consequences in history. King Henry VIII of England thought he was allowed to marry his dead brother’s wife due to Deuteronomy 25:5. But Leviticus 20:21 says the opposite: "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing...They shall be childless.” The king sought a divorce.

The writer responsible for the D source was very prolific, producing not only much of Deuteronomy but books ranging from Joshua to 2 Kings.

The name “Deuteronomy” comes from Deuteronomy 17:18. The word “copy” was understood to mean “second law” (that’s a misunderstanding).

The Deuteronomistic history is made up of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. They cover ancient Israel between the entry to the land and the exile to Babylon. The style and themes in these books are reminiscent of, and dependent on, the religious views set forth in the D source behind the book of Deuteronomy.

A passage in 2 Kings describes a “book of the law” being discovered in the Temple during the reign of King Josiah (2 Kings 22:8). This is around 621 BCE. This “book” may be the D source.

One theme of D is that sacrifices are to be made at Jerusalem’s temple, not wherever Jews choose to make sacrifices.

The traditions found in J, E, and P are not in the D source. The redactor ends Deuteronomy with the P account of the death of Moses.

In some places, especially involving the J and E materials, the interweaving is so complicated that we can’t identify where one source ends and the other begins. Some scholars prefer to speak of the JE source rather than J and E as separate sources.

I recommend these:

1) Who Wrote The Bible? (Harper San Francisco, 1987) by Richard Elliott Friedman

2) The Bible Unearthed (Free Press, 2001) by Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman