The J.E.D.P. theory

[filosofer]

Two books that are older but do a good job of evaluating these positions are:

Introduction to the Old Testament R. K. Harrison (Eerdmans Publishing Co.)

The Word Becoming Flesh H. Hummel (Concordia Publishing House)

There are others more recent that are good as well. It's been many years since I read Survey of Israel's History by Leon Wood (Zondervan) and can't remember how much he deals with the issues.

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As for teaching, that is my gifting, passion, and calling. There is nothing I would rather do than teach (well, study too! ). It is a great thrill when a student reaches the "Aha!" point in studying when a particular theme or topic has suddenly opened up new vistas into God's Word.

And I have seen lives changed through consistent teaching of God's Word.

 

[A Sheep]

Don't let them blind you. I know that the J.E.D.P. theory is heretical also.
Keep the faith and the truth!

 

[Didaskomenos]

"Heretical"? Filosofer disagrees with the J.E.D.P. theory for scholarly, level-headed reasons. Hyperbole for a belief you do not espouse is definitely not in agreement with filo.

 

[Mr.Cheese]

Cool. That OT intro book sounds good.

 

[A Sheep]

Heretical : Characterized by departure from accepted beliefs or standards

The Theory is false and is a "departure from accepted beliefs or standards" so .

 

[Mr.Cheese]

I am interested in reading why it is false. Although it doesn't sound heretical to me, I'm not going to swallow JEPD just cause i haven't heard anything different. Just saying it's false doens't help me out here. But don't worry, Filo' recommended some books so I'm gonna check them out.
Doh! I'm a moron, my Expositor's i just got might have something in there.

 

[Didaskomenos]

Originally posted by A Sheep
Heretical : Characterized by departure from accepted beliefs or standards

The Theory is false and is a "departure from accepted beliefs or standards" so .

However, among J.E.D.P. theorists, your view is a "departure from accepted beliefs or standards" - it's all in who you ask!  Really, just because it's an accepted belief in certain circles doesn't mean it's true.  Christians use the term "heresy" waaaaay too much.  In fact, we probably shouldn't use it at all, because the person wielding that term presupposes that his particular group's version of the truth is the absolute truth.  That's pride.  And if you pass a value judgment like that on someone's belief system, you're not only closing off discussion (which Christians need), you're causing rifts in the body.  That's where the divisive state of the Church has come from.  I'd personally prefer not to be labeled as heretical by anyone, so I'm not going to call your belief heresy, ok? 

 

[filosofer]

Oh, no! I'm agreeing with Didaskomenos?

There is a difference between a heretical belief (teaching contrary to the six essential doctrines of the Christian faith), and errors in secondary doctrines and non-essential doctrine, and theories of canonicity and authorship. In other words, someone (Didaskomenos ) can accept JEDP yet not be guilty of errors in secondary doctrines and non-essential doctrine nor essential doctrines.

So how does one balance all of this? Carefully. A person must

1. know and understand what are those six essential doctrines.

2. know and understand secondary doctrines and non-essential doctrines.

3. know and understand how errors in secondary doctrines and non-essential doctrines may lead to heretical doctrines. This requires additional knowledge of history and how heresies were distinguished from essential doctrines.

4. recognize that the theory of JEDP is really an open question - unless the person pursuing it comes to conclusions that contradict any established doctrine.

5. realize that even with a theory such as JEDP, which I reject, a person can still learn from those who pursue such study.

6. approach all of this with an attitude of humility and surrounded with prayer.

 

[ThrdJohn13]

I'm no fundamentalist. Not a liberal either. I'm in line with filosofer up there for the most part. The interesting thing is that the documentary hypothesis, and source criticism in general, was first started by Julius Wellhausen -- who incidentally was a devout Lutheran (granted, living in modernist Germany), and was concerned about the vicious Jewish-CHristian debates. It would be a harsh criticism to call him a "liberal" -- especially if you understood his own situation as a conservative in Europe in that age. At that time, they'd call him a fundamentalist.

At any rate, the thing I find most intersing about JEDP is that it's almost exclusively applied to the book of Genesis. If you can read Hebrew, you'd understand why. But it's inability to be applied elsewhere in the BIble (in particular, the pentateuch) also makes it pretty suspect. Granted, this doesn't mean that the theory is wrong, but it means we should be very cautious about it. One of my own concerns about Wellhausen's theory is that it suggests a particular history of progression in the Israelite religion that "may" be true, but it's not verifiable. Given that, in my opinion (an this opinion is shared by other scholars) it would be a bit irresponsible to place too much weight on this theory. I'm not too convinced that the argument is compelling in either the way that Wellhausen formulates it or his successors.

Also though, the documentary hypothesis is really kind of an unnecessary conclusion given the data. It's really not necessary to suppose it in order to account for the data -- and furthermore, it's really tough to justify it. If we did have evidence to justify the conclusion, that would be one thing, but we don't. There are easier ways to account for the data (especially given its redactionary history, and the fact that it's essentially post-Exilic) that to me seem much more likely and plausible.

There is evidence, however, of a complex redactionary history, but that's a different issue altogether. It seems pretty clear (even to most conservative scholars -- even at Westminster, where I study) that the "form" of the Pentateuch we have is probably post-Exilic, although some of the content is Mosaic. Taking a hint from William Henry Green (who was using a similar line to comment on the authorship of Ecclesiastes, oddly enough): "If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then there's no history of the Hebrew Language."

Anyway, I need to run. I may write more depending on how the discussion goes (and if I get a response or two).

Anyway, I'd be more than happy to accept the doc. hypothesis if I found it compelling, but from what I've read and heard in classes, I don't find it so.

-J

 

[Didaskomenos]

There is evidence, however, of a complex redactionary history, but that's a different issue altogether. It seems pretty clear (even to most conservative scholars -- even at Westminster, where I study) that the "form" of the Pentateuch we have is probably post-Exilic, although some of the content is Mosaic. Taking a hint from William Henry Green (who was using a similar line to comment on the authorship of Ecclesiastes, oddly enough): "If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then there's no history of the Hebrew Language."

This is what I've been reading lately.  I guess it's which "complex redactionary history" that is the only real point of contention. I'm not completely sold on Wellhausen's version of how Genesis was edited on all points, just that it seems to have been edited. I brought up J.E.D.P. specifically because it's the most well-developed view of Genesis' redaction that I'm aware of.

 

[filosofer]

When I teach classes I like to expose myself to other positions. This time around I will teach Old Testament Survey. I picked up a copy of Walter Brueggemann's Old Testament Theology last week. About 800+ pages, but I always enjoy reading him, even though I disagree with much of it. He causes me to reevaluate what I have understood the text to say.

 

It appears that Wellhausen's position is not the dominant view today, but a modified form. If regarded as a literary tool, this can help us better understand the text, then great. Just like in the NT, if someone claims that John's Gospel is early (pre-50), then that may open up new or different understandings of the text. Still may not be right, but at least it challenges the reader to wrestle with the text.

 

[ThrdJohn13]

This is where I think we need to be kind of careful: the documentary hypothesis does not only imply that "the Pentateuch has been redacted".Though it certainly means at least that, when scholars refer to the doc. hypothesis, they mean much much more. The presuppositions behind JEDP, which circularly make suggestions about Israelite religion it poses are "the guts of the ball". Many of us can agree that there is clearly a redactionary history by simply observing various manuscripts of differing Hebrew Bible text types (Palestinian, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc. if you buy F.M. Cross' theory of textual transmission...I'm more in line with Emmanuel Tov myself...and if you don't agree that there's a redactionary history, in my opinion your doctrines of God and Scripture need serious adjusting), but they will disagree with the documentary hypothesis, which both assumes certain textual phenomena are indeed redactions (like "God Yahweh", which although they may be redactions, have no textual evidence of being so) in virtue of it's presuppositions, and in turn explains them with it's presuppositions (which, again, is inherently circular -- which is important to recognize!). I can give a clear example if anyone wants...just send me a message and ask.

Personally, I myself have no problem asserting that there's clearly a complicated textual transmission/redactionary history to many books in the OT by simply observing various manuscripts (which I've done on occasion). Matter of fact, a while ago I wrote a 40 pg. paper on the theological implications of certain redactions of Samuel-Kings that are found in Chronicles. What I have a problem with are the tenets and conclusions of JEDP (kinda like what I mentioned before).

-J

 

[ThrdJohn13]

Hey filo, you read Bruggeman, huh? I've recently digested some of his postmodern hermeneutics (which is both scary in one sense and challenging in another). What an interesting fellow he is -- an excellent scholar, although I too don't like a lot of his perspectives on hermeneutics, interfaith ecumenicity, etc. Even Jon Levenson (prof at Harvard NEL) has publically disagreed with him in that in virtue of their religious presuppositions, Jews and Christians cannot to Biblical theology together. Also, just thought I'd pass along something: I heard a lot of stuff in the Anchor Bible Dictionary is useful for a class like that. Anyway, you might know that already, but I just thought I'd pass it along.

 

[filosofer]

17 years ago I took a post-graduate class on Modern Theology. We chose an author and then had to critique his/her writings. Since I chose Brueggemann, I also had the opportunity to interview in person at Eden Seminary, and sit in on one of his Old Testament seminars. He expected his students to know the Hebrew text and work through it. In many ways, he and his students would have put to shame many "conservative" seminary students because they wrestled with the Hebrew and the text as it is written (somewhat of a canonical approach that Childs has advocated, but which Brueggemann challenges, even though on a practical level he follows).

One of his best writings is his book on the Psalms (can't remember the title). I have used his approach of Orientation - Disorientation - Reorientation in relationship to a Law-Gospel dialect to better present the theology of the Psalms, as well as a handle on individual Psalms.

 

[ThrdJohn13]

Have you had the opportunity to read much of David Clines' work as well?

 

[LewisWildermuth]

I haven't reviewed it fully, but I do tend to lean toward some of it's positions. I have often said that I would love to see the originals Moses was working from.

But even if after study I tend never to agree with anything 100%, I just look at these kind of things as the best theory so far and hope for a better one to come along.

 

[ThrdJohn13]

Try reading Cross' and Talmon's "Qumran and the Biblical Text".

 

[BWSmith]

JEDP in its classical formulation is a 19th-century answer to the issue of Mosaic authorship. Its basic premise is correct and justified in the textual evidence, but many classical details are essentially dead today.

Many scholars would agree that there is priestly material that can be separated from the earlier non-P by stylistic and theological criteria. Non-P forms a complete account from Gen-Numbers, but P as a whole is not. It is unclear what the prior form of the P material was: independent accounts or material written explicitly to supplement the non-P.

The non-P material is clearly older than P, but is not unified in style. There probably was Deuteronomic editing in the non-P, which indicates that it probably came to P from the hands of the Deuteronomists, who themselves assembled it from a variety of sources.

The distinction between J and E is primarily a historical one, since the names for God was originally the key for separating sources. Because this criterion can't be applied as objectively as stylistic criteria, all of non-P is best left unseparated. There probably were multiple sources at work, but their extent and date can't be recovered.

See "Who Wrote The Bible?" (R.E. Friedman) for a look at the modern documentarian views and "The Pentateuch" (Blenkensopp) for an overview of the full situation in the field.

Single (late) authorship is a common view in many parts of academia, but Mosaic authorship (and even edited Mosaic authorship) is not unless accompanied by a theological commitment to the idea that Moses had to be the author (most frequently because of the belief that Jesus affirmed it).

Comments?

 

[filosofer]

Its basic premise is correct and justified in the textual evidence

Whether the basic premise is correct is still debatable. However, there is no textual evidence (meaning manuscript evidence) to support the documentary hypothesis. Do you know of any manuscript evidence?

 

Or did you mean that the stylistic features of the Pentateuch tend to point toward documentary hypothesis?

 

[BWSmith]

> Whether the basic premise is correct is still debatable. However, there is no textual evidence (meaning manuscript evidence) to support the documentary hypothesis. Do you know of any manuscript evidence?  Or did you mean that the stylistic features of the Pentateuch tend to point toward documentary hypothesis?

The biggest evidence for the basic premise is the text of the Pentateuch itself, in which doublets and apparent contradictions appear to point to some sort of multiple source explanation.

The most dramatic manuscript evidence supporting the process that led to the development of the Pentateuch is that of the David and Goliath account. 

See http://www.geocities.com/bwsmith88/david/2davids1.html

The Masoretic version is much longer than the Septuagint version, indicating that the LXX is the original with the MT being supplemented by another source and not a translation or omission error.