Dean Anderson

Evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis

The Documentary Hypothesis is derived from the text of the Torah, rather than from "basic assumptions" or pre-suppositions. It is the view held by the vast majority of mainstream Biblical scholars - most of which are either Christian or Jewish. This itself is prima facie evidence that the DH is not based on "anti-supernaturalism". Dave has claimed repeatedly that support of the DH is declining rapidly amongst Biblical scholars, but - just like claims that support of Evolution is declining rapidly amongst scientists - such claims are merely empty assertions. Dave has not given any examples of mainstream Biblical scholars who used to support the DH but no longer do. Instead, he has given us Josh McDowell; who is an evangelical apologist, and most certainly not a Biblical scholar. His appeal to this authority is on the level of appealing to Ken Ham as an authority on evolutionary biology. His authority is not an expert in a relevant field of study, and merely attacks a strawman version of the field because it disagrees with his a-priori theological viewpoint.

Firstly, let's look at what the DH actually is, rather than what McDowell and Dave claim it to be...

The DH splits most of the Torah (and much of the post-Torah Deuteronomic History) into four sources.

'J' - or Jahwist.
'E' - or Elohist.
'P' - or Priestly.
'D' - or Deutronomic.

This split is done by a number of criteria.

1) Linguistic style and development.
2) Emphasis on particular themes (including the times at which different names are used for God).
3) Duplication of stories.

The vast majority of the Torah and Deuteronomic History can be split, using these criteria, and placed in one of the four sources. In practice, The majority of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic Hstory is assigned to the D source and most of Genesis-Leviticus is split between the other three sources. There are occasional passages or stories that fit into none of the four main sources, and which can therefore be inferred to be other minor documents that have been incorporated into the text. Also, there are a few snippets of text which match no source and appear to have been inserted by the editors who patched the sources together.

Now, on to the evidence itself (most of the information here comes from Professor Richard Friedman's excellent books on the DH).

Basically, we can take a text as long as the Torah and split it up in a myriad of ways. The DH splits it up one way. The translators and scribes of the Bible usually split it a different way (into the 5 books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). There are many, many other ways we could split the text up.

So how do we judge whether the way we have split the text is the way it was written? Well, if we look at lots of different aspects of the text where there is variation - and the variation correlates strongly with our splits - then it is likely that our splits match the structure of the document itself. Conversely, if we look at lots of different aspects of the text where there is variation, and the variation correlates only weakly (or not at all) with our splits, then it is likely that our splits are arbitrary and do not correspond to the structure of the document itself.

That's right. The DH is based on - wait for it - consilience between many independant measures. Dave's favourite word.

So, without further ado, let's look at some of these measures (I am summarising heavily here. There is much more evidence than can be fit in a single forum post):

1) Theological Interests

a) Name of God - The multiple sources all use both Yahweh and Elohim (the claim that the DH splits the text between text that uses one name and text that uses the other is another strawman). However, if we look at all the J texts, they are consistent in that people started to call God Yahweh right from the beginning (Gen 4:1 and Gen 4:26). The P and E texts, however, are both consistent in that people only started to call God Yahweh when he revealed his name to Moses (Ex 6:2-3). Additionally, whilst the J author does call God Elohim, he only ever does this whilst narrating events - he never has a character refer to God as Elohim.

b) Nature and Role of Priests - In all the P text, priests of the line of Aaron are the only people with access/communication to God. There are no angelic visitations, dreams, talking animals, or anything else like that. All the other sources include God communicating with people via these means. E and D both repeatedly refer to prophets and prophesy. Neither P nor J ever does (P uses the word once - metaphorically - to refer to Aaron himself). P never mentions judges - only allowing Aaronid priests to mediate. P also does not classify non-Aaronid Levites as priests, and only allows the Aaronids have access to the Urim and Tummim. P only allows atonement for sins via sacrifices brought to Aaronid priests. In short, in P sources, the Aaronid priests and only the Aaronid priests have access to God. In D, on the other hand, all Levites are considered priests.

c) Nature of God - in P, as I have mentioned, the only contact with God is through priests. God never appears in person. He is never referred to as merciful or kind - indeed, the words "mercy", "kindness", "grace" and "repentence" are never used in P. The God described in P is implacable and all stories about him refer only to his wrath and justice; never to positive character traits. All the stories with positive (and more human) character traits of God are in J and E. In J, on the other hand, God makes frequent personal appearances. He walks in the garden in Eden, personally makes Adam and Eve's clothes, personally closes the door of the Ark, and so on. In E as well, God wrestles with Jacob and appears personally to Moses. In P, on the other hand, God never makes a personal appearance.

d) The Tabernacle is mentioned more than two hundred times. All except three of these are in P (where it recieves huge amounts of attention). E and J never mention it once.

e) J often refers to the Ark of the Covenant. E never mentions it once.

f) The Urim and Tummim, divining items that the High Priest holds, are mentioned only in P.

g) In E, it is only ever Moses's staff that performs miracles. In P, it is only ever Aaron's staff that performs miracles.

2) Doublets and Triplets

There are more than 30 cases of repetition of stories and/or laws in the Torah. Often the two (or occasionally even three) versions will be slightly different. There are also many apparent contradictions. When the Torah is split stylistically into the J, E, P and D sources; all these every single one of these repetitions ends up with the two or three different versions being in different styles and from different sources. I won't bother listing them all here. Similarly, the vast majority of the apparent contradictions disappear since the contradictory text is split between different sources.

3) Linguistic Evidence

In the same way that one can easily tell Chaucer from Shakespeare, Shakespeare from Dickens, and Dickens from modern authors by the changes in the English language that have taken place over the centuries, we can also distinguish between different ages of the Hebrew language used in the Bible.

a) The Hebrew used in both J and E is early Hebrew.

b) The Hebrew used in P is from a later development of the language, but still earlier than the Exilic period.

c) The Hebrew used in D is from a later still development of the language, from the Exilic period.

4) Narrative Continuity

a) We can take each of the four sources individually, and reading only the text that is stylistically assigned to that source in isolation we get a continuous narrative in more than 90% of the text breaks. For example, the J text taken individually - skipping over all non-J text - it shows a consistent narrative flow as if it were a single written document.

b) Additionally, the J and E texts show narrative flow when combined together. They also show ideosyncratic phrases at their joins as if they were combined by an editor who left traces of their handiwork as they stitched the two sources together.

c) Similarly, the places where J and E are joined to P show phrases that indicate traces of a (different) editor.

4) Similarity to other parts of the Bible

a) The language and terminology of D is very similar to the language and terminology of the book of Jeremiah. None of the other sources are.

b) The language and terminology of P is very similar to the language and terminology of the book of Ezekiel. None of the other sources are.

c) The book of Hosea quotes and/or refers to sections of the Torah. It only ever does so with regard to sections assigned to the E and J sources, however; not the P and D sources.

d) The Court History of David (most of 2 Samuel), as well as much of Joshua, Judges and 1 Samuel, is very similar in language and terminology to the J source - to the extent that some scholars believe it was written by the same hand.

5) Miscellaneous Stylistics

a) J and P both refer to Mount Sinai repeatedly. E and D refer to it as Mount Horeb. There are no exceptions to this.

b) The phrase "in that very day" is not found in any source other than P.

c) The phrase "with all your heart and with all your soul" only ever occurs in D.

There are a couple of dozen examples like these of phrases used only in one source and never in others. Again, I won't bother listing them all here.



Conclusion

There is much more evidence than I have presented here, but this should be enough for starters.

It could be argued that any of the distinctions made above is arbitrary. For example, it could be argued that the reason doublets and triplets split between the sources is that the sources were deliberately arranged that way.

However, this misses the point. The point is the consilience between all the different measures. Whichever way you arrive at the split into J, E, P and D, the split agrees with all the other measures of difference within the text.

In other words, the DH explains the consilience between the different ways of dividing the text. Whether it is divided by author's theological interest or divided by age of language or divided to split duplications we arrive at the same source texts. And these source texts - that were derived by other means - each have consistency in phraseology and a consistent narrative flow. If the splitting of the text by any of these criteria was arbitrary, then we would not see such consistency with the other ways of splitting it.

Given the age of the Hebrew in each of these sources, and the presence of the "stitching" phrases between them, it would be unreasonable to come to any conclusion other than:

Originally J and E were written, telling the same stories with slightly different emphases. At some point these were edited together into a single JE document. Some time after the writing of the first documents, a P document was written - telling the same stories but with a very different theological basis. Some time later still, a D document was written telling the more recent history of Judah and Israel (and claiming that they were once a unified kingdom). At some point after this, all four documents were edited together into a single document that became the Torah we know.

Of course, if we wanted to go into detail, we can actually infer much more about exactly where and when each of the documents was written - but that is way beyond the scope of this current discussion.

Dave's hypothesis (or rather, Wiseman's hypothesis that Dave is parrotting) says that the J, E, P and D splits are in the wrong place. His hypothesis is that the text should be split into a series of "Tablets" each written by a Biblical character (Adam, Noah, etc). He places the splits such that we have the entire text of "Adam's Tablet", and then the entire text of the next tablet, and so on. This, of course, means that within each tablet there is a variety of writing styles and writing in Hebrew of a variety of ages.

So, Dave - the ball is in your court.

How does your theory of Biblical authorship explain the consilience between the different ways in which there are textual differences? How do you explain the fact that when split using the DH, the text sources are consistent when each of these criteria is applied - yet when split using your criteria, the sources are inconsistent when each of the criteria is applied?

angelo

[QUOTE=afdave;4803526]You mean 3 centuries of wishful thinking now discredited by the findings of archaeology. You must not be very familiar with the findings of archaeology?

Hebrew cuneiform tablets? No one is saying anything about Hebrew cuneiform tablets.There is very little evidence that Moses ever existed. I thought the founder of the Hebrew nation was Abraham. [ also a possible myth] Anyway, there are numerous scholars nowadays that doubt Moses [if he existed] wrote anything.
It was written by anonymous authors much later than the events it is describing.

judge

Whilst it may be true there are some scholars skeptical about the DH, none of these are seriously backing Wisemans hypothesis, although I stand to be corrected on this point.

Lucretius

The big difference is that the Ark of the Covenant, in particular ,is actually mentioned in the Bible and we have no reason to assume that this part is fiction, as it would have been available for people of the time to see it or at least see where is was kept,however even the Bible itself does not mention these stone or clay tablets,
The Tablet "Theory" is merely an assumption based on the fact that clay tablets with writing on them did exist, but with no evidence that the Bible stories were in fact written on any of them.
NOT ONE line of the Bible has as far as I know ever been found on any of these tablets.
NOT ONE.
How do you explain that level of destruction of what would have been so important to the Jews of the time ?

I remember as a small child my grandmother telling me stories of her grandfather who lived in the 19th century.
If I were to write these down now would it be reasonable for me to assume that as the society my great great grandfather lived in ,19th century England, had "writing" there must have been a contemporary written record of his life (possibly written by him)?
Or would it be more reasonable to assume that these are oral stories and I am the first to put them in writing ?

VoxRat

In last weeks New York Times book review, there was a review of a book by James Kugel called "How to Read the Bible". I thought I'd mention it, since it looks germane to this discussion.

Dean Anderson

It's sort of germane to the discussion, although it should be stressed that the DH is dependent on neither archaeology nor on the fact that many of the Bible stories are found in older works.

It is, of course, compatible with those facts (something which, of course, strengthens it); but it is not dependent on those facts. If we had done no archaeology in the Middle East and if we had no earlier stories; then the DH would still stand on its own merits.

I am stressing this because I don't want Dave to latch on to some minor detail of archaeology and quibble about the dates involved in it. It doesn't matter if all the archaeology we have is wrong, and it doesn't matter whether or not the Genesis stories match earlier myths - the DH still stands as the best way to interpret the text that we see.

Johnny Skeptic

Since when did you come to trust the opinions of scholars? That is unscriptural. Romans 3:4 says "God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged." Since no YEC cares anything at all about what scholars say, you have no business selectively mentioning scholars only when it is convenient for you to do so.

Well sure the book of Genesis was written down, but when it was originally written down, you do not have any idea what it said, and where the writer(s) got his information from.

It is incredible that you presume to know what was originally written thousands of years ago. Do you make that same claim about other copies of ancient documents?

Bigmo

Genesis is a religious scripture, not a history book or an archological document. Its about God, the prophets, and judgement day.

VoxRat

I don't remember anything in it about "the" prophets or judgment day... but it's been a while.

notta_skeptic

It was when I discovered this vast body of research on the writing of the Bible that I started questioning the whole foundation of my belief structure. Having been told my entire life that it was written by god himself, using men as intermediaries, was inerrant, and was as good as a history book, I was astounded beyond measure that there were thousands or more scholars who had undeniable evidence that Moses had not written the first five books of the Bible. It started me on the path that led to unbelief.