This is the second in a series on critical biblical scholarship. For more, follow the RELATED links on each article.
In the last article, we discussed the basic contours of the documentary hypothesis and how it has developed through the years. For this post, we’ll discuss some of the problems with this hypothesis.
PREVIOUS: CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP PART 1 – JEDP AND THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS
What objections are raised against the documentary hypothesis?
The Divine Name Criterion
To start with, there are numerous examples in Ancient Near Eastern literature of one God being referred to with multiple names, and this undermines the divine names criterion for slicing up the Pentateuch. Baal was also known as Aliyan, the Koran refers to Allah as both Allahu and Rabbu, and in the Ebla tablets there are two gods—Mi-ka-il and En-na-il, who go by the same name but with a “ya” instead of an “il.” This is most interesting since the God of the Bible is known both as Yahweh and Elohim.
In addition, there are plenty of examples of a name for God showing up where the critics expect the other name. For instance, the name Elohim occurs in passages defined as belonging to J (such as Genesis 3, 16, and 32) YHWH occurs in E passages like Genesis 22 and 28, etc.
But perhaps the death blow to the divine names criterion is that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint), which is acknowledged by scholars to be more trustworthy than the Hebrew Masoretic text in a number of places, differs in which divine name is used in almost 200 places (substituting YHWH for Elohim or vice-versa), which means the criterion cannot be used definitively to show which supposed author is writing.
RELATED: PODCAST: A PRIEST AND A DEUTERONOMIST WALK INTO A BAR – THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS
If the use of one divine name over another doesn’t tell us who authored which section, what might it tell us? When critics argue that the name YHWH often is used in passages where God seems more intimate with humanity and is described in more anthropomorphic terms, they’re not far off. For instance, in Genesis 1, we find that Elohim brings the universe into existence. But in Genesis 2, it is YHWH Elohim who takes a special interest in the creation of mankind and walks in Eden with Adam and Eve and who enters into covenant relationship with them. This doesn’t necessarily require two different authors, however, but two ways of describing the same God depending upon how He is relating to His creation.
Begging the Question
There’s also a great deal of circular reasoning in the Documentary Hypothesis. For instance, if a critic says that J and E aren’t interested in issues of the temple or the sacrificial system, that’s only because they have defined any passage which discusses these issues as a P passage, and they’ve only done that because of assumptions they’ve made about the development of the Israelite religion. Why not assume, as earlier thinkers in the documentary hypothesis did, that the passages now relegated to P belonged to J or E?
Kenneth Kitchen, an orientalist and Egyptologist by training, has also spent some time examining Old Testament scholarship and noted how much more distrustful and cynical it is of its primary sources in comparison to other Ancient Near Eastern scholarship. Critical Old Testament scholarship has a strong tendency to avoid harmonizing texts—instead exaggerating differences in texts to create contradictions as a rationale to multiply proposed sources—and generally trusts non-OT sources over OT ones when an apparent discrepancy seems to exist. For instance, it was assumed in Old Testament scholarship that the Babylonian king Belshazzar, mentioned in Daniel, never existed since no other source seemed aware of him outside of the Bible. This was used to further the assumption that Daniel was written hundreds of years after it claims of itself and was not historical. In 1850 German scholar Ferdinand Hitzig said in his commentary on the book of Daniel that Belshazzar was ‘a figment of the writer’s imagination.'” This critical position was changed after the Nabonidus Cylinder and Chronicle were discovered, referencing Belshazzar and his position as co-regent.
Evidence for the Traditional View of Mosaic Authorship
Though the Torah by no means claims to have been written entirely by Moses (even the most conservative scholars will at least acknowledge that Moses didn’t write of his own death in Deuteronomy 34), there are portions which explicitly claim Mosaic authorship, such as Exodus 17:14, Num 33:1-2, and Deut 31:9. In addition there are other Old Testament passages which claim Moses as the author of at least portions of the Torah, such as Joshua 8:32, 1 Kings 2:3, and 2 Kings 14:6.
There are also some indirect evidences which suggest an author whose characteristics line up with those of Moses. The author of the Torah is familiar with Egyptian names, titles, and geography though he assumes some unfamiliarity on the part of his readers with Palestine. For instance, in Genesis 13:10 the author explains what the Jordan Valley was like by comparing it to Egypt. This assumes that he thought his readers would know more about the geography of Egypt than the geography of Palestine (perhaps Hebrews traveling to Palestine for the first time?), and perhaps that he knew more of Egypt than he did of Palestine.
Also, many of the commands in the Torah regarding sacrifices and worship assume a movable tabernacle and not the temple which would mark the worship of the Israelites after the time of Solomon in the tenth century B.C., two centuries before the documentary hypothesis dates its earliest source. There are also commands assuming life within a sojourning community–such as how one should defecate outside of the camp–which seem irrelevant if they were written for a people who were settled within Palestine.
Finally, the author of the Penateuch is clearly a very educated person, and this also fits the bill for Moses.
NEXT: CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP PART 3 – THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS APPLIED TO THE BOOK OF AMOS