A Critical Examination of the Documentary Hypothesis Essay

A Critical Examination of the Documentary Hypothesis - Essay Example This latter view forms the core of the Documentation Hypothesis.The Documentation Hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch is a composite work consisting of four literary strands. The four strands have been assigned the letters J, E, D, and P; each representing a different document or source that was woven into the fabric of the Bible. This set of assumptions is also known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory. According to this view, the letter "J" stands for the Yahwist ("J" from the German Jahweh) Narrative, coming from the period of the early Jewish monarchy, about 950 B.C. "E" stands for the Elohist Narrative from the region of the Northern Kingdom dating from about 750 B.C. "D" is best represented by the book of Deuteronomy and is said to have originated in the Southern Kingdom about 650 B.C. or later. And finally, "P" is the Priestly Document that comes from the period after the fall of Israel in 587 B.C. According to the theory, the Pentateuch reached its current form around the time of Ezra or about 400 B.C. (Closson)The conservative view holds to Mosaic authorship and treats the books as a literary unit. This does not mean that Moses did not use other documents to write the books. ... This established the first principle of what is now known as the Documentary Hypothesis, the assumption that different divine names must mean different authors or sources. In 1780 Johann Eichhorn applied the idea of two sources to the rest of Genesis, Exodus, and finally to most of the Pentateuch. He gave up on the belief of Mosaic authorship as well. (Closson) In 1805, Wilhem De Wette argued that none of the Pentateuch was written before David. He established the "D" document standing for Deuteronomy, which he believed was written as propaganda to support political and religious unification in Jerusalem during the reign of King Josiah around 621 B.C. The "P" or Priestly Document of the current theory was added by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853. He believed that the E source should be split in two, the later becoming the new P document. The name most associated with the documentary hypothesis is Julius Wellhausen. His publications in the late 1870's argued from a Darwinistic perspective. (Closson) Counter Arguments Against Documentation Hypothesis The following are the defenses against the Documentation Hypothesis. In essence, according to Archer (105-110), the Documentary Hypothesis banished Moses into the illiterate mists of oral tradition. Archer pointed out that in the Hypothesis, the text of the Torah or Pentateuch is used as evidence but consistently evaded whenever it happens to contradict the Hypothesis itself. Further, sarcastically, according to Archer, the documentarians likewise assume that Hebrew authors differ from any other writers known in the history of literature in that they alone were incapable of using more than one name for God; more than one style of writing, no matter what the difference in subject matter is;