firedragon
Veteran Member
If I may, if not all, most adherents of the Jewish faith, the Christian faith, and to a lesser degree, the Islamic faith (I dont know to what degree) believe that the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Tanakh or as the Christians called it, the Old Testament was one mans work. I will refrain from calling it a revelation as most believe because in this topic of Biblical Criticism it is an approach of analysing sources, thus applying source criticism.
As you would know the Documentary Hypothesis, or the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis, named after the scholars who compiled it into the "classic form" as we know way back in the 1800's. Documentary Hypothesis scrutinises the pentateuch as composed of traditions known as J,E,D,P. Though wellhausens work was of course very well established in the 19th century and had scholarly consensus it has evolved much further from that while there are of course the "other view" which is that other than probably the last eight verses of the Pentateuch, everything was the Torah revealed to Moses, the verses being the eulogy of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:5-12 which are of course even questioned by Jewish Rabbi's. Going back to greater like Abraham ibn Ezra of the 12th century who claimed that it was even impossible or at least improbable that Moses himself wrote the last 12 verses. As he believed the verses about the cananites could not have been by Moses himself because until his death canonises were still present and this verse could not have been written while they were there.
Anyway this four source theory is quite well established in scholarly consensus and is a contradicting theory to other theologians who still hold fast to the one source idea born of faith.
J source. The Jahwists or Yahwists use the Tetragrammaton as God's personal name and is deemed to be the source behind most of Genesis.
E source is the tradition that uses Elohim as Gods divine name until as theorised exodus was written until the four letters are sent down to Moses and this source is supposed to have given us a lot of parts in Numbers, exodus and some parts of Genesis.
D wrote Deuteronomy or predominantly most of it as per this theory.
P literally provides the priestly narratives which are gathered by the literary analysis and they give genealogies.
Of course there was opposition to this theory and quite good ones by scholars like Umberto Cassuto who was a very scholarly preacher. Though his criticism seems to make the case that the documentary hypothesis is purely based on the word usages which was defied by other latter scholars like Joel Baden who expands on the "document theory" as Umberto assesses and he says that the usages of the Yahwists and the Elohists are mixed in some verses like in the beginning of Genesis it begins with Elohim and then moves onto YHWH Elohim in the same sentence. The conflict being, the documentary hypothesis speaks JE which was a merger of the J and E sources which took place after 722 BCE.
Nevertheless this hypothesis is breaking the notion that the Pentateuch was purely Mosaic which breaks an immense number of beliefs and premises. What do you think? Was there one source, two sources, four sources, or more sources?
As you would know the Documentary Hypothesis, or the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis, named after the scholars who compiled it into the "classic form" as we know way back in the 1800's. Documentary Hypothesis scrutinises the pentateuch as composed of traditions known as J,E,D,P. Though wellhausens work was of course very well established in the 19th century and had scholarly consensus it has evolved much further from that while there are of course the "other view" which is that other than probably the last eight verses of the Pentateuch, everything was the Torah revealed to Moses, the verses being the eulogy of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:5-12 which are of course even questioned by Jewish Rabbi's. Going back to greater like Abraham ibn Ezra of the 12th century who claimed that it was even impossible or at least improbable that Moses himself wrote the last 12 verses. As he believed the verses about the cananites could not have been by Moses himself because until his death canonises were still present and this verse could not have been written while they were there.
Anyway this four source theory is quite well established in scholarly consensus and is a contradicting theory to other theologians who still hold fast to the one source idea born of faith.
J source. The Jahwists or Yahwists use the Tetragrammaton as God's personal name and is deemed to be the source behind most of Genesis.
E source is the tradition that uses Elohim as Gods divine name until as theorised exodus was written until the four letters are sent down to Moses and this source is supposed to have given us a lot of parts in Numbers, exodus and some parts of Genesis.
D wrote Deuteronomy or predominantly most of it as per this theory.
P literally provides the priestly narratives which are gathered by the literary analysis and they give genealogies.
Of course there was opposition to this theory and quite good ones by scholars like Umberto Cassuto who was a very scholarly preacher. Though his criticism seems to make the case that the documentary hypothesis is purely based on the word usages which was defied by other latter scholars like Joel Baden who expands on the "document theory" as Umberto assesses and he says that the usages of the Yahwists and the Elohists are mixed in some verses like in the beginning of Genesis it begins with Elohim and then moves onto YHWH Elohim in the same sentence. The conflict being, the documentary hypothesis speaks JE which was a merger of the J and E sources which took place after 722 BCE.
Nevertheless this hypothesis is breaking the notion that the Pentateuch was purely Mosaic which breaks an immense number of beliefs and premises. What do you think? Was there one source, two sources, four sources, or more sources?
