The Documentary Hypothesis

[jd01]

Any thoughts on the Documentary Hypothesis? It attempts to explain the origin of the first five books of the Bible based on textual analysis. Very interesting.

 

[granpa]

Documentary hypothesis - Religion-wiki

Documentary hypothesis/Genesis - Religion-wiki

 

[ebia]

Any thoughts on the Documentary Hypothesis? It attempts to explain the origin of the first five books of the Bible based on textual analysis. Very interesting.

Interesting, but in the end all such hypotheses will remain such - there will always be elements they don't explain well and the data doesn't exist to prove them. That the pentateuch is a compilation put together long after Moses is clear but beyond that The only thing that remains certain is that there will never again be certainty on how they were written and compiled.

 

[wayseer]

The Documentary Hypothesis is an attempted explanation of how the early books of the Torah came to be written.

It has been challenged by some scholars but no one has come up with an acceptable alternative - so we are stuck with what we have.

 

[OzSpen]

Any thoughts on the Documentary Hypothesis? It attempts to explain the origin of the first five books of the Bible based on textual analysis. Very interesting.

Don't you think that it would be helpful if you articulated your understanding of the tenets of the Documentary Hypothesis?

This article states that the Documentary Hypothesis makes the Pentateuch a lying fraud. Does that assessment have some validity?

The J.E.D.P. outline of the Documentary Hypothesis has been saluted by theological liberals and rejected by many evangelicals. I wonder why?

However, if we understand the purpose of an hypothesis, it is developed from questions, and the hypothesis needs to be verified or falsified.

Are you planning to provide your assessment?

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

The Documentary Hypothesis is an attempted explanation of how the early books of the Torah came to be written.

It has been challenged by some scholars but no one has come up with an acceptable alternative - so we are stuck with what we have.

What do you mean that NO ONE has come up with an ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE? Alternatives have been proposed, but based on presuppositions, you are not going to get evangelicals accepting the presuppositions of theological liberals who actively promote JEDP.

Old Testament scholar, Walter C. Kaiser Jr has stated:

Eventually, however, the philosophical undergirding of the theory of source criticism collapsed, at least in its role as the ground floor on which to build the documentary theory. Alas, few have investigated whether the second story of the documents fell intact when the first floor on which the system was built ws removed.... The key question is whether the criteria set forth for each of the alleged sources of the documentary hypothesis are trustworthy or not (2001. The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, p. 54).

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

Any thoughts on the Documentary Hypothesis? It attempts to explain the origin of the first five books of the Bible based on textual analysis. Very interesting.

R. N. Whybray has provided these penetrating criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis that are summarised in Kaiser's work HERE (p. 137 of Kaiser).

Oz

 

[ebia]

Don't you think that it would be helpful if you articulated your understanding of the tenets of the Documentary Hypothesis?

This article states that the Documentary Hypothesis makes the Pentateuch a lying fraud. Does that assessment have some validity?

The J.E.D.P. outline of the Documentary Hypothesis has been saluted by theological liberals and rejected by many evangelicals. I wonder why?

However, if we understand the purpose of an hypothesis, it is developed from questions, and the hypothesis needs to be verified or falsified.

Are you planning to provide your assessment?

Oz

I just love the way these articles try to poison the well by trying to pretend that its only "liberals" who don't take the bible seriously give any credibility to hypotheses like this, and that the only motivation is to discredit it.

 

[OzSpen]

I just love the way these articles try to poison the well by trying to pretend that its only "liberals" who don't take the bible seriously give any credibility to hypotheses like this, and that the only motivation is to discredit it.

Theological liberals love these kinds of hypotheses to try to undermine the authority of Scripture. Don't your comments infer your support for theological liberalism? Some of your comments on other threads indicated to me that you do not affirm evangelical Christianity? Is that true or false?

Oz

 

[ebia]

Theological liberals love these kinds of hypotheses to try to undermine the authority of Scripture

Maybe they do. But truth is truth, even if it appeals to "the wrong sort of people". It is far from just theological liberals intent on discrediting scripture that take such critical scholarship seriously. To imply as the article does and so many do is barely short of a lie.

Don't your comments infer your support for theological liberalism?

Oz

I assume you mean imply, but no if theological liberalism means not taking scripture seriously.

I don't believe it is taking scripture seriously to insist it is X just because someone thinks it would make apologetics simpler if it were.

 

[jd01]

R. N. Whybray has provided these penetrating criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis that are summarised in Kaiser's work (p. 137 of Kaiser).

Oz

I believe that most if not all of those criticisms have been dealt with. Does Mr. Whybray offer a competing hypothesis?

 

[jd01]

Don't you think that it would be helpful if you articulated your understanding of the tenets of the Documentary Hypothesis?

The J.E.D.P. outline of the Documentary Hypothesis has been saluted by theological liberals and rejected by many evangelicals. I wonder why?

However, if we understand the purpose of an hypothesis, it is developed from questions, and the hypothesis needs to be verified or falsified.

Are you planning to provide your assessment?

Oz

The DH has been around for more than a century and it is a widely taught and accepted model for understanding the early parts of the Bible

The theory states that the Pentateuch and other early books were compiled and fleshed out from various existing sources:
1. a J source based in southern Judah and a E source composed or assembled by a priestly source in northern Israel both between 922 and 722 bc.
2. After Assyria destroyed Israel in 722 J and E were stitched together by a redactor accounting for the dual versions of many stories.
3. A priestly P source very concerned about laws, customs etc of the priesthood around the same time.
4. D for Deuteronomy composed probably during King Josiah's reign as part of a nation building plan.

Finally these were all stitched together to form the final 5 books probably by Ezra or his scribe upon the return from exile.

The hypothesis is widely attested by
1. archaeology (eg there was no Kingdom of Edom during Exodus times)
2. Lingustic (eg D's Hebrew is much later than J or E's)
3. Terminology (Sheol as the place the dead dwell occurs only in J, no where else)
4. Consistent content (eg the tabernacle is mentioned more than 200 times in D but not even alluded to in J or P)
5. Narrative flow (eg when you separate out the two J and P embedded flood stories it makes much better sense)
6. Connections to other parts of the Bible (eg D is well known to be connected to the book of Jeremiah)
7. Connection to history (J is very connected to Judah, E is very connected to Israel, D very connected to Josiah's time).
8. It sorts out all of the overlap, repetition, and doublets.

The DH makes a lot of sense to me. When I read the OT I came away bewildered, it was all over the place. I asked (and am still asking) evangelicals for their opinions but unfortunately the DH seems a taboo subject. No one wants to discuss or present an alternative theory, which leads me to conclude they have no response.

Personally the DH sorts things out nicely. It is not a half-baked theory, it has been around for a long time and worked on and researched by many many scholars and archaeologists. It has constantly been tested in peer reviewed environments. And work on it continues.

It simply makes sense and lets me 'get on' with my study of the Bible.

 

[OzSpen]

I believe that most if not all of those criticisms have been dealt with. Does Mr. Whybray offer a competing hypothesis?

The assumptions of source and redaction criticism have been the subject of a lot of scholarly (and sometimes heated) debate and criticism down through the years. JEDP is just another example of source & redaction criticism and its many problems.

D. A. Carson has written a scholarly article that critiques redaction criticism, "Redaction Criticism: On the Legitimacy and Illegitimacy of a Literary Tool". Part of what Dr. Carson wrote about source criticism was:

Modern critics of the past one hundred years or so have expended enormous amounts of energy on retrieving literary sources whose independent existence is not attested anywhere: (p. 120).

While he was discussing NT source criticism, the application is just as penetrating for the OT, including the Documentary Hypothesis.

By the way, you are just as capable as I at using Google to locate whether or not Whybray offered a competing hypothesis.

There is a competing hypothesis (the NT used as an example) but I can't imagine that you will be too impressed with its most obvious hypothesis: Grudem, Wayne A. "Scripture's Self-Attestation and the Problem of Formulating a Doctrine of Scripture". Edited by D. A. Carson & John D. Woodbridge. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983. I have a copy of this article and book.

Here is an outline of the article online. The most obvious hypothesis that, in my view, is far superior to JEDP is Scripture's self-attestation. The Scriptures tell us in an inductive study of Scripture how Scripture was given to holy people of God who were moved upon by God to give us the theopneustos (breathed out by God) Scripture. That's the most sound hypothesis that has lots of scriptural backing.

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

I just love the way these articles try to poison the well by trying to pretend that its only "liberals" who don't take the bible seriously give any credibility to hypotheses like this, and that the only motivation is to discredit it.

I just love the way you try to poison the well with your support of theological liberalism and your attempt to try to discredit biblically-based hermeneutics.

Oz

 

[ebia]

I just love the way you try to poison the well with your support of theological liberalism and your attempt to try to discredit biblically-based hermeneutics.

Oz

I'm far from interested in discrediting biblic Hermeneutics of supporting theological liberalism unless that term means "anything short of fundamentalism" or "anyone who disagrees with me". My thinking on scripture is along the lines of such as Tom Wright, John Goldingay, Richard Bauckham,

Since we are talking about the Pentateuch we'll take John Goldingay - evangelical Anglican scholar who takes scripture very seriously, as God's word and decries himself as a "bible believing Christian".

 

[hedrick]

I'm concerned about the characterization of liberals as interested in undermining Scripture. I suppose there are liberals and liberals, but typical mainline preachers and members are as committed to Scripture as conservatives. They're just less committed to tradition and more willing to look at evidence, both scholarly and scientific. Attacks on them look to me just like 16th Cent attacks on Protestants. Luther and Calvin also made major changes in theology based on new Biblical scholarship, and faced exactly the same type of attack. It's particularly ironic to see these attacks made by the spiritual heirs of Luther and Calvin. It's also a classic ad hominem, which is just as inappropriate as ad hominem always is.

As to the DH, I'm convinced that the OT combines multiple strands of tradition. It's hard to see how to avoid that short of divine dictation. I don't see how that observation is an attack on Scripture. What is an attack, not on Scripture but certain Christians traditions, is the observation that different OT traditions have somewhat different content. But the DH itself doesn't create that problem. It's there in the texts anyway. And we have to face this kind of difference in orientation among Gospels, between Peter and Paul, etc.

I'm less convinced that the details of the analysis are right. I've seen speculation that assigns sources at the level of half verses. I don't think literary criticism is precise enough to sustain that kind of detailed analysis. Nor do I think we really know how much of the tradition used in the OT was written and how much oral. There are signs of editing that we think of as occurring when editing written documents. I suppose some of it indicates at least some written documents. But I'm less convinced than most scholars that we know how many documents there were and what was written vs. oral.

 

[ebia]

I'm concerned about the characterization of liberals as interested in undermining Scripture. I suppose there are liberals and liberals, but typical mainline preachers and members are as committed to Scripture as conservatives. They're just less committed to tradition and more willing to look at evidence, both scholarly and scientific. Attacks on them look to me just like 16th Cent attacks on Protestants. Luther and Calvin also made major changes in theology based on new Biblical scholarship, and faced exactly the same type of attack. It's particularly ironic to see these attacks made by the spiritual heirs of Luther and Calvin. It's also a classic ad hominem, which is just as inappropriate as ad hominem always is.

As to the DH, I'm convinced that the OT combines multiple strands of tradition. It's hard to see how to avoid that short of divine dictation. I don't see how that observation is an attack on Scripture. What is an attack, not on Scripture but certain Christians traditions, is the observation that different OT traditions have somewhat different content. But the DH itself doesn't create that problem. It's there in the texts anyway. And we have to face this kind of difference in orientation among Gospels, between Peter and Paul, etc.

I'm less convinced that the details of the analysis are right. I've seen speculation that assigns sources at the level of half verses. I don't think literary criticism is precise enough to sustain that kind of detailed analysis. Nor do I think we really know how much of the tradition used in the OT was written and how much oral. There are signs of editing that we think of as occurring when editing written documents. I suppose some of it indicates at least some written documents. But I'm less convinced than most scholars that we know how many documents there were and what was written vs. oral.

 

[wayseer]

What do you mean that NO ONE has come up with an ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE? Alternatives have been proposed, but based on presuppositions, you are not going to get evangelicals accepting the presuppositions of theological liberals who actively promote JEDP.

I did qualify what I said by using the word 'acceptable'. There are any number of hypotheses but there are not 'acceptable' by recognized scholars.

 

[wayseer]

I'm concerned about the characterization of liberals as interested in undermining Scripture.

It's a bit like what is going on in Beit Shemesh - one keeps attacking until the wider population either conforms to their insanity or there is some intervention and one can claim victim status and demand retribution.

It is all about personal egos and tribal loyalty.

Christianity is fast going the same fundamentalist route.

Otherwise - good points.

 

[OzSpen]

I'm far from interested in discrediting biblic Hermeneutics of supporting theological liberalism unless that term means "anything short of fundamentalism" or "anyone who disagrees with me". My thinking on scripture is along the lines of such as Tom Wright, John Goldingay, Richard Bauckham,

Since we are talking about the Pentateuch we'll take John Goldingay - evangelical Anglican scholar who takes scripture very seriously, as God's word and decries himself as a "bible believing Christian".

Your characterisation of me as "fundamentalism" is false. I also am committed to Scripture and N T Wright and Richard Bauckham have been a great help in helping me understand Scripture, as have D A Carson, Craig Blomberg and Craig Evans, along with former professor of history and exegete from Macquarie Uni, Sydney, Paul Barnett.

Your labelling me in your understanding of "fundamentalism" is both false and misleading.

Oz