Editing Documentary hypothesis (section)

=== 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>