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Talk:Documentary hypothesis/Archive 1

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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.
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