Editing Documentary hypothesis (section)

== History of the documentary hypothesis ==
[[File:Targum.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|11th-century CE manuscript of the [[Hebrew Bible]]]]
The [[Torah]] (or Pentateuch) is collectively the first five books of the Bible: [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]], [[Book of Exodus|Exodus]], [[Leviticus]], [[Book of Numbers|Numbers]], and [[Deuteronomy]].{{sfn|McDermott|2002|p=1}} According to tradition, they were dictated by God to Moses,{{sfn|Kugel|2008|p=6}} but when modern critical scholarship began to be applied to the Bible, it was discovered that the Pentateuch was not the unified text one would expect from a single author.{{sfn|Campbell|O'Brien|1993|p=1}} As a result, the [[Mosaic authorship]] of the Torah had been largely rejected by leading scholars by the 17th century, with many modern scholars viewing it as a product of a long evolutionary process.{{sfn|Berlin|1994|p=113}}{{sfn|Baden|2012|p=13}}<ref group="Note" name="Moses">The reasons behind the rejection are covered in more detail in the article on [[Mosaic authorship]].</ref>

In the mid-18th century, some scholars started a critical study of doublets (parallel accounts of the same incidents), inconsistencies, and changes in style and vocabulary in the Torah.{{sfn|Berlin|1994|p=113}} In 1780, [[Johann Gottfried Eichhorn|Johann Eichhorn]], building on the work of the French doctor and [[exegete]] [[Jean Astruc]]'s "Conjectures" and others, formulated the "older documentary hypothesis": the idea that Genesis was composed by combining two identifiable sources, the [[Jahwist|Jehovist]] ("J"; also called the Yahwist) and the [[Elohist]] ("E").{{sfn|Ruddick|1990|p=246}} These sources were subsequently found to run through the first four books of the Torah, and the number was later expanded to three when [[Wilhelm de Wette]] identified the [[Deuteronomist]] as an additional source found only in Deuteronomy ("D").{{sfn|Patrick|2013|p=31}} Later still the Elohist was split into Elohist and [[Priestly source|Priestly]] ("P") sources, increasing the number to four.{{sfn|Barton|Muddiman|2010|p=19}}

These documentary approaches were in competition with two other models, the fragmentary and the [[Supplementary hypothesis|supplementary]].{{sfn|Viviano|1999|pp=38–39}} The fragmentary hypothesis argued that fragments of varying lengths, rather than continuous documents, lay behind the Torah; this approach accounted for the Torah's diversity but could not account for its structural consistency, particularly regarding chronology.{{sfn|Viviano|1999|p=38}} The supplementary hypothesis was better able to explain this unity: it maintained that the Torah was made up of a central core document, the Elohist, supplemented by fragments taken from many sources.{{sfn|Viviano|1999|p=38}} The supplementary approach was dominant by the early 1860s, but it was challenged by an important book published by [[Hermann Hupfeld]] in 1853, who argued that the Pentateuch was made up of four documentary sources, the Priestly, Yahwist, and Elohist intertwined in Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, and the stand-alone source of Deuteronomy.{{sfn|Barton|Muddiman|2010|p=18–19}} At around the same period, [[Karl Heinrich Graf]] argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source the latest, while [[Wilhelm Vatke]] linked the four to an evolutionary framework: the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law.{{sfn|Friedman|1997|p=24–25}}

=== Wellhausen and the new documentary hypothesis ===
[[File:Julius Wellhausen 02.jpg|right|thumb|upright|Julius Wellhausen]]
In 1878, [[Julius Wellhausen]] published ''Geschichte Israels, Bd 1'' ('History of Israel, Vol 1').{{sfn|Wellhausen|1878}}  The second edition was printed as ''[[Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels]]'' ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel") in 1883,{{sfn|Wellhausen|1883}} and the work is better known under that name.{{sfn|Kugel|2008|p=41}} (The second volume, a synthetic history titled ''Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte'' ['Israelite and Jewish History'],{{sfn|Wellhausen|1894}} did not appear until 1894 and remains untranslated.) Crucially, this historical portrait was based upon two earlier works of his technical analysis: "Die Composition des Hexateuchs" ('The Composition of the Hexateuch') of 1876–77, and sections on the "historical books" (Judges–Kings) in his 1878 edition of [[Friedrich Bleek]]'s ''Einleitung in das Alte Testament'' ('Introduction to the Old Testament').

Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis owed little to Wellhausen himself but was mainly the work of Hupfeld, [[Édouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss|Eduard Eugène Reuss]], Graf, and others, who in turn had built on earlier scholarship.{{sfn|Barton|Muddiman|2010|p=20}} He accepted Hupfeld's four sources and, in agreement with Graf, placed the Priestly work last.{{sfn|Barton|Muddiman|2010|p=19}} J was the earliest document, a product of the 10th century BCE and the court of [[Solomon]]; E was from the 9th century BCE in the northern [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Kingdom of Israel]], and had been combined by a redactor (editor) with J to form a document JE; D, the third source, was a product of the 7th century BCE, by 620 BCE, during the reign of [[King Josiah]]; P (what Wellhausen first named "Q") was a product of the priest-and-temple dominated world of the 6th century BCE; and the final redaction, when P was combined with JED to produce the Torah as we now know it.{{sfn|Viviano|1999|p=40–41}}{{sfn|Gaines|2015|p=260}}

Wellhausen's explanation of the formation of the Torah was also an explanation of the religious history of Israel.{{sfn|Gaines|2015|p=260}} The Yahwist and Elohist described a primitive, spontaneous, and personal world, in keeping with the earliest stage of Israel's history; in Deuteronomy, he saw the influence of the prophets and the development of an ethical outlook, which he felt represented the pinnacle of Jewish religion; and the Priestly source reflected the rigid, ritualistic world of the priest-dominated, post-exilic period.{{sfn|Viviano|1999|p=51}} His work, notable for its detailed and wide-ranging scholarship and close argument, entrenched the "new documentary hypothesis" as the dominant explanation of Pentateuchal origins from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries.{{sfn|Barton|Muddiman|2010|p=19}}<ref group="Note" name="newer">The two-source hypothesis of Eichhorn was the "older" documentary hypothesis, and the four-source hypothesis adopted by Wellhausen was the "newer".</ref>