Introduction
The history of Pentateuchal Criticism is complex.[1] In the recent history of Pentateuchal Criticism, the “Documentary Hypothesis” has come into popular opinion.
“Documentary Hypothesis is a catchall name covering the many proposals that emerged to cope with the belief that the positing of two or more sources could perhaps explain puzzling features of the Pentateuch.”[2]
What puzzling features of the Pentateuch? As David W. Baker explains “Numerous items within the Pentateuch itself have caused people to question its Mosaic authorship,” specifically the following items: “Anachronisms,” “Divine Names,” “Duplicate Narratives,” “Literary Style and Vocabulary,” and “Contradictions and Divergences.”[3]
The aforementioned “many proposals” are scholarly fruit from interpretive strategies for dealing with the variety of “puzzling features.” Thus, biblical scholars have crafted claims about the documents/sources at back the Pentateuch. This obviously has significant implications upon its authorship and/or process of compilation.
In Pentateuchal studies, this has led to a “process of fragmenting the Pentateuch into supposedly underlying sources.”[4] As one author has observed, “The overwhelming tendency in biblical scholarship has been to explain the origin of the Pentateuch as the outcome of a process of compilations of various documents from different periods in Israelite history.”[5]
Assessment and Critique
Why is the “Documentary Hypothesis” not a viable approach to the composition/authorship of the Pentateuch? An assessment and critique of the Documentary Hypothesis must consider each of the “numerous items”/“puzzling features” that has caused biblical scholars to question Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
Scholars who have examined these and have found the arguments and claims less than compelling.[6] Documentary theories have been met by “vigorous opposition from those convinced of the essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch,”[7] e.g., T. Desmond Alexander writes about how R. N. Whybray’s “detailed assessment” of the Documentary Hypothesis illustrates the (1) faulty underlying presuppositions, (2) arbitrary criteria for identifying underlying sources, and (3) questionable application of the criteria.[8] Other authors note how close readings of the Pentateuch, especially in its Ancient Near East context, relativize the claims of documentary theories, i.e., the varied divine names are not criteria for identify underlying documents, but rather they are typical in Ancient Near East literary works, and duplicate narratives, rather than pointing to underlying documents/sources, are organically linked to overarching literary purposes and have a “rhetorical function.”[9]
Essential Mosaic Authorship
The authorship of the Pentateuch was traditionally ascribed to Moses. However, there is “widespread agreement that the Pentateuch, as it now stands, is an edited work and not a piece of literature that was penned ab initio by one individual.”[10] “Essential Mosaic authorship” accounts for the following: the “clear statements that Moses was responsible for writing substantial parts of the Pentateuch,”[11] underlying oral and/or written sources that preceded Moses’ life,[12] and an editor after the time of Moses but utilizing Mosaic documents.[13] Contrary to the unsupported, purported “late sources” and clams of proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis camp, the Pentateuch is not a late compilation utilizing late sources, but rather it is a unified literary work that in many places explicitly self-attests Mosaic authorship. As Geerhardus Vos noted in his work arguing for Mosaic origin of the Pentateuchal Codes:
A detailed examination of the facts must furnish the basis upon which all debate must be conducted between conservative and destructive critics.[14]
As briefly mentioned in the assessment above, many scholars have found lacking the facts/claims of the proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis, whereas they have found compelling the facts/claims arguing for “essential Mosaic authorship.”
[1] For a concise yet detailed history of Pentateuchal Criticism and the rise of the Documentary Hypothesis, see T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 7-31.
[2] Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Rethinking the Pentateuch: Prolegomena to the Theology of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 1.
[3] “Source Criticism” by David W. Baker in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, eds. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 800-801.
[4] “Historical and Literary Criticism of the Old Testament” by R. K. Harrison in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 1, Introductory Articles, gen. ed. Frank. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 240. The nomenclature for some of these underlying sources is “the now-famous sequence J, E, D, P” (T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land, 17). The oldest source is the Yahwist source (J); another ancient source is called the Elohist source (E); the fifth book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, is another source (D); finally, a “priestly writer (or school of writers) who composed the legal sections and the history bound up with laws” is the “P” source. One of the most important shared traits of these documents/sources is that all were finished and/or came about after the time of Moses (Clyde T. Francisco, Introducing the Old Testament, revised edition (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1977), 55-56).
[5] “Pentateuch” by David J. A. Clines, Oxford Guide to the Bible, eds. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 580.
[6] For example, the esteemed rabbi and biblical scholar “Umberto Cassuto made a frontal attack upon the documentary hypothesis in 1941. In this work he claimed to have destroyed every argument upon which the hypothesis rests” (Clyde T. Francisco, Introducing the Old Testament, 58).
[7] “Historical and Literary Criticism of the Old Testament” by R. K. Harrison in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 1, Introductory Articles, general editor Frank. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 240.
[8] T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land, 61.
[9] “Source Criticism” by David W. Baker in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, eds. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 803.
[10] “Authorship of the Pentateuch” by T. Desmond Alexander in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, eds. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 62-63.
[11] “Authorship of the Pentateuch” by T. Desmond Alexander in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, 70.
[12] E.g., In Numbers 21:14, an underlying source is mentioned: “Book of the Wars of the LORD.”
[13] Pace proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis, a late editor does not necessitate late sources; see comments in “Authorship of the Pentateuch” by T. Desmond Alexander in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, 64.
[14] Geerhardus Vos, The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes (New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1886), 11.