Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Lucretius · 09-27-2007, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barbarian

I had a WTF? moment when I looked up DH on Wikipedia, for it says:

Quote:

Wellhausen's hypothesis [i.e. the DH - note by Barbarian] became the consensus view on the origin of the Pentateuch for much of the 20th century, but its assumptions, methodology and conclusions have been seriously questioned in recent decades and it no longer dominates the field.

I thought the DH was the dominant view. Obviously, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but still ... is this true or not? Did the DH lose its dominance?

From my reading of the subject Wellhausen's original hypothesis has been amended a little since but the main principles are still intact.
As far as I can see the only people who disagree are those who still maintain that Moses was the sole author such as Cassuto the Jewish writer and a few (mainly American)YECs who seem to now like Wiseman's hypothesis instead.

But in reality a "slightly modified" Wellhausen hypothesis is still dominant in the field.

Barbarian · 09-27-2007, 09:00 AM

The 'After Wellhausen' portion of the Wiki article sounds more like an epitaph of the hypothesis - or even more like the 'Evolutionary theory - a hypothesis in trouble' mantra.

Quote:

The collapse of the consensus began in the late 1960s ...

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The result has been proposals which modify the documentary model so far as to become unrecognizable, or even abandon it entirely in favour of alternative models which see the Pentateuch as the product of a single author, or as the end-point of a process of creation by the entire community.

Quote:

The challenge to the Wellhausen consensus was perhaps best summed up by R. N. Whybray, who pointed out that of the various possible models for the composition of the Pentateuch - documentary, supplemental and fragmentary - the documentary was the most difficult to demonstrate, for while the supplemental and fragmentary models propose relatively simple, logical processes and can account for the unevenness of the final text, the process envisaged by the documentary hypothesis is both complex and extremely specific in its assumptions about ancient Israel and the development of its religion.

and finally

Quote:

But while the terminology and insights of the documentary hypothesis continue to inform scholarly debate about the origins of the Pentateuch, it no longer dominates that debate as it did for the first two thirds of the 20th century.

I am an outsider to this topic, and to me the above parts of the article mean that the DH was dismissed, no longer held to be true etc.

Lucretius · 09-27-2007, 09:05 AM

This bit about Whybray as an opponent of the DH is puzzling (from the wiki link above)

Quote:

His alternative proposal was that the Pentateuch was essentially the work of a single author who drew upon multiple sources and disregarded, or was ignorant of, modern notions of literary consistency and smoothness of style and language.

As far as I can see this does not contradict the DH at all .

JonF · 09-27-2007, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zagloba

Is there a place on line that shows the sources assigned to each portion of the text?

There's several, and they're easily found. But Davie-pie is famous for being too lazy to find anything himself and for ignoring what people find for him. So nobody want to post a link here. You have a private message,

VoxRat · 09-27-2007, 09:10 AM

The wikipedia take on this seems to be at odds with the New York Times book review I cited... which I point out because - having absolutely no claims or pretensions of expertise in this area myself - this is about as close as I get to having my "finger on the pulse" of current Biblical scholarship.

Coleslaw · 09-27-2007, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barbarian

I had a WTF? moment when I looked up DH on Wikipedia, for it says:

Quote:

Wellhausen's hypothesis [i.e. the DH - note by Barbarian] became the consensus view on the origin of the Pentateuch for much of the 20th century, but its assumptions, methodology and conclusions have been seriously questioned in recent decades and it no longer dominates the field.

I thought the DH was the dominant view. Obviously, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but still ... is this true or not? Did the DH lose its dominance?

According to this site:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/jepd.html

Quote:

Contemporary critical scholars disagree with Wellhausen and with one another on details and on whether D or P was added last. But they agree that the general approach of the Documentary Hypothesis best explains the doublets, contradictions, differences in terminology and theology, and the geographical and historical interests that we find in various parts of the Torah.

ericmurphy · 09-27-2007, 09:16 AM

Quote:

His alternative proposal was that the Pentateuch was essentially the work of a single author who drew upon multiple sources and disregarded, or was ignorant of, modern notions of literary consistency and smoothness of style and language.

In other words, a literary hack.

:-)

Lucretius · 09-27-2007, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coleslaw

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barbarian

I had a WTF? moment when I looked up DH on Wikipedia, for it says:I thought the DH was the dominant view. Obviously, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but still ... is this true or not? Did the DH lose its dominance?

According to this site:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/jepd.html

Quote:

Contemporary critical scholars disagree with Wellhausen and with one another on details and on whether D or P was added last. But they agree that the general approach of the Documentary Hypothesis best explains the doublets, contradictions, differences in terminology and theology, and the geographical and historical interests that we find in various parts of the Torah.

That is a fair reflection of the case as far as I can see ,but it is typical of certain fundamentalists /Biblical Literalists /Creationists that they tend to jump on minor disagreements as to the dating of specific features to state that this of course "proves " that the whole hypothesis is wrong.

In fact I sometimes think that when asked the question "Which came first the chicken or the egg? " would use that as "proof" that, as you cannot say which that obviously then neither chickens or eggs even existed

Dean Anderson · 09-27-2007, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zagloba

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

The answer would seem to be that the P author keeps stressing that only Aaronid priests are allowed to do sacrifices, and Noah is not an Aaronid priest.

So the difference in the two stories is consilient with the interests of the P author, and we can speculate that the P author probably dropped the references to sacrifice because they did not match his theology/agenda.

Based on this, I'd expect that DH assigns Abel's sacrifice in Genesis 4:4 to a non-P source?

Yes. Genesis 1 and the start of Genesis 2 is generally P. The rest of Genesis 2-4 is generally J.

Quote:

Is there a place on line that shows the sources assigned to each portion of the text?

I don't know of one, but someone mentioned finding one earlier in the thread...

Dean Anderson · 09-27-2007, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barbarian

I am an outsider to this topic, and to me the above parts of the article mean that the DH was dismissed, no longer held to be true etc.

Mostly (to use an evolutionary analogy) it is like someone saying "Strict Darwinism is dead and has been replaced by the Mordern Synthesis".

Few people these days would agree with all the exact details that Wellhausen suggested (and that's one of the many reasons why Dave/McDowell's quote mines and misrepresentation of Wellhausen are irrelevant), but most of the "replacements" to the DH are just tweaks or refinements of it (for example, rather than the J and E sources both being pre-existing texts that were edited together by a later Redactor, some scholars hypothesise that the E text was not pre-existing but was written and added to J at the same time).

That doesn't stop apologists siezing on these refinements and claiming that the DH is "in crisis" or "refuted" or "no longer popular", of course.

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09-27-2007, 09:10 AM	#405
VoxRat Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: New Jersey Posts: 1,768	The wikipedia take on this seems to be at odds with the New York Times book review I cited... which I point out because - having absolutely no claims or pretensions of expertise in this area myself - this is about as close as I get to having my "finger on the pulse" of current Biblical scholarship.

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