Student: Garrett Johnson

Matricula: 161590

Summary of the Two Centuries of Pentateuchal Scholarship

The longstanding view in both Jewish and Christian traditions regarding Moses as
the author of the entire Pentatuech. While according to todays standards such a proposal
is unsustainable, Blekinsopp points to two reason. On the one hand was the belief that
inspiration must pass through a specifically named individual. On the other, was the
tendency to associate a certain genre of composition to a certain individual. Thus, as we
see the Sapiential compositions were assigned to Solomon and liturgical hymns were
assigned to David, it becomes clear how simple the association the books of law and
Moses.
The path towards a more critical view of the Pentateuch and its author (s) is, at
first, a slow and gradual one. Due to the dominating view of Moses authorship, to show
even a hint of discordance could bring unwanted attention and sanctions. The first,
Abraham Ibn Ezra, did so quietly, mentioning around 6 verses whose authorship he put
into question. 5 centuries later, Spinoza in his, Tractatus Theologico-politicus,
highlighted these verses and explicitly concluded that Moses was not the author of the
Pentateuch. Spinoza was followed by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. While these two
were far enough beyond the reach of official censure, scholars such as Richard Simon
did not received a warm welcome.
Albeit it received no recognition at the time, it was Henning Witters book,
publish in 1711, that was the first to exploit the different divine names Elohim and
Yahweh as a way of distinguishing between parallel sources. Initially, this theory was
applied only to Genesis and the first two chapters of Exodus. The thinking was the after
the divine name YHWH was revealed to Moses in Ex 3:13-15, there was no need for the
Elohist source to avoid using the name. Further study and analysis of other instances
where the is an alteration of name such as what we find in the Garden of Eden story
have manifested certain defects in this initial application. 40 years later, Jean Astruc
independently arrived at a similar conclusion, proposing the theory of distinct and
parallel sources. This thesis was assumed and fine-tuned by Johann Echhorn who
produced the first critical Old Testament introduction (1780-83). While at first he
Eichhorn assigned an authorial role to Moses, after a key publication of Wette, he
abandoned the idea.
Not convinced by the parallel sources thesis, other scholars who likewise rejected
the Moses authorship proposed the fragment hypothesis: the suggestion that a plurality
of a varied number of sources which were systematized long after gave rise to the
Pentateuch. The first to follow this line was Alexander Geddes (1737-1802), whose
work was taken up by Johann Vater (1800) and later in the writings of Willhelm de
Wette. This last scholar marked a decisive new phase in in Penetateuchal scholarship
when he recognized the association between the temple during the rein of Josiah and an
early version of Deuteronomy. Such observation allowed him to date the Deuteronomic
law book to the seventh century; thus many of the ritual legislation found in the

Student: Garrett Johnson

Matricula: 161590

Pentateuch were probably a retrojection of the later time.

Moving into the nineteenth century, Blenkinsopp lists a serious of scholars that
continue to the efforts to identity and date sources, highlighting the motivations behind
the movement at the time. Ideas such as cultural primitivism the idea that primitive
societies lived our a spontaneous and were free from ritual constrains which were
imposed as the society developed opposed the early beliefs of Israel to the more
legalistic and structured religion that constituted not some much Israel, but post-exilic
Judaism.
The philosophy and influence of Hegel was also strongly felt in the nineteenthcentury biblical scholarship. Scholar such as George and Vatke sought to elaborate the
pre-exilic period under the light of the Hegelian dialectic according to which the
primitive nature religion came first and was then opposed by its antithesis, ethical
individuality, which was pushed by the prophets. Both the Romantic view and the
Hegelian view however, according to Blekinsopp, failed to render a convincing account
which was able to offer a convincing explanation of the post-exilic Judaism.
The motivation behind much of this source-critical work resided in the goal of
reconstructing the religious history of Israel. Still, the danger at the time and still today
was to construct a religion of Israel that had more to do with hypothetical sources that
were fruit of of preconceptions that what the people of Israel of the time actually thought
and felt. Even in the case of great scholars such as Wellhausen, hints of aversion to
Judaism and of anti-Semitism together with a general resentment towards religions
institutionalism in general lead us to question the tension in his works between natural
morality and legal-ritual systems.
Keeping in mind this critiques, Wellhausens still constitutes an important
landmark in biblical scholarship. Continuing the fragment hypothesis, Wellhausen
argued that the J and E were the earliest sources and were put together by a Jehovistic
editor. P followed the chronological structure of Q (a siglum that refers to the four
covenants Wellhausen claimed to discover in the time between Creation and Sinai) yet
was dependent on Ezekiel. It included the ritual law. P would belong to the last stage in
the editing process while Deuteronomy, or D, albeit the fact that it came existence
independently, still reveals certain similarities to JE and thus must have been integrated
with them before it was combined with P. In conclusion, the correct sequence is JEDP
and the Pentateuch in its final composition was published around the fifth century B.C.
at the time of Ezra.
The JEDP, four-source documentary hypothesis remained relatively accepted in
the academic world for at least two decades after the end of World War II. Due to a
variety of factors including anti-Semitic concerns and critiques on the part of the more
conservative line of thought, any convergence between Jewish and Catholic scholarship
with the critical mainstream only appeared after the World War II. Before this however,
certain threats to the theory that originated not so much from without as from within
began to emerge. As scholars demanded more an more consistency in the identification

Student: Garrett Johnson

Matricula: 161590

of the sources, the consistency of each source began to collapse and dissolve into a
variety of components or strands. While the theory in itself did not fall, work on it since
Wellhausen has evidenced the theories vulnerable nature.
A significant departure from the hypothesis was initiated by Hermann Gunkel
(1852-1932) who shifted the angle of focus away from the existence and identification
of the sources to the prehistory rooted in non literate culture of Israel. He thought that by
understanding the literary and aesthetic feature of the individual narrative unites one
could categorise their respective types and consequentially identify the social situations
at their origin. This new approach was introduced as form criticism and the history of
traditions. With this, he sought answers in the earlier periods that preceded the time
when the sources were put together. Gerhard von Rad concurred on the importance of
preceding oral traditions but proposed a cultic origin for Israels traditions. Blekinsopp
points out, however, that von Rad and those who followed this line of thinking never
offered a convincing explanation of who these cult origins generated the written
narrative that followed. This same critique he applies also to Martin Noth who believed,
unlike von Rad, that most of the essential content of the Pentateuch had been laid down
before any document was drafted. Proponents of even more radical theories of oral
tradition also fail to convincingly explain the passage from oral tradition to written
tradition.
In recent years the documentary hypothesis has entered into crisis. On the one
hand, with two approaches on the stage, the question for Blekinsopp is whether the
hypothesis of distinct documents is reconcilable with the history of tradition as presented
by Gunkel. On the other, is the problem of the dating of the sources. More conservative
scholars such as W. F. Albright dated the Pentateuch back to 522 B.C. David Noel
Freedman, a student of Albright, choose a slightly early date (5th century or possibly
6th) and argued that the earliest sources were combined and edited during the reign of
Hezekiah after the Assryian conquest of the northern Kingdom between the tenth and
with century B.C. The debate over the dating of the traditions also affected the sources
where the came from. Certain scholars such as George Mendenhall, for example, used
the analogy of Hittite suzerainty treaties in order to establish the great antiquity of the
covenant as an idea and an institution. While the issue continues to be debated, most
scholars now argue that, at a closer look, the theory is a weak one and that the covenant
as a mature formulation is a creation of the Deuteronomist tradition around the seventh
century B.C.
The Deuteronomic thesis brings with it other consequences. Other scholars have
began to doubt the view of a continuous narrative at the early period of Israels history.
Luis Alonso-Shokel concluded that due to the evidence of mythological and sapiential
language in Genesis 2-3, a post-prophetic dating would be more adequate. Frederick
Winner continued and developed the hypothesis of a post-exilic J through Genesis.
Following in his footsteps, Norman Wagner argued that a series of stories such as those
about the ancestors, the exodus narrative, etc. were each developed independently up

Student: Garrett Johnson

Matricula: 161590

until the post-exilic period when a Yahwhistic compiler provided the editorial linkage.
Sustaining and even more radical view, Hans Heinrich Schmid argued that the entire
history of creation to the fall of the Judean king would not belong to the J of the classical
documentarians J, as such, no longer exists rather to the Deuteronomists.
Another critique of the documentary hypothesis is Rold Redtorff. He argued that
the Pentateuch narrative is, in reality, a combination of distinct units or building blocks
that were integrated editorially only later on. The cohesion of the Pentateuchal story for
him would be the promise theme. Such a theory, however, struggles to explain why it
must be the promise theme and not another and fails to give a convincing description of
the overall cohesion that is present in the narrative, one that seems to manifest
something more than just a later editing.
In the articles final section, Blekinsopp provides 6 provisional conclusions. The
first regards the fact that there is no longer a consensus regarding the existence of
identifiable, continue narratives sources form the pre-exilic period that are present in
entire range of the Pentateuch. Secondly, few would endorse an early dating of the J
source. Most hypothesis a much later date, probably around the Babylonian exile; such a
dating puts the J source in general in danger of extinction. Thirdly, the principle that that
what is not known positively must be considered to be later is an argument e silentio
presents a series of problematic issues that have yet to be addressed. Fourthly, just as the
J source has come under serious criticism, less attention has been payed to other
documents which must now me more seriously addressed. Finally, most of the scholars
have focused there attention on the narrative aspects of the Pentateuch, ignoring or
giving little attention to the legal elements, elements which constitute a very large
portion of the text. The relation thus between law and narrative must be clarified.
The tensions and roadblocks that have appeared on the scene of critical biblical
scholarship over the years have led to a serious of attacks. Recent scholars such as
Robert Alter have began to propose new approaches which, they hope, can offer more
fruits than the excavating techniques. Alter and others have sought to focus and reach a
better understating of the aesthetic aspects for which preceding scholars showed little or
no interest. In a similar line, the emergence of groups of scholars who decidedly broke
with the historical, philological and referential approach sought to study the text as if it
had a life of its own, indecent of the its origins and the authors original intentions. This
movement, led by I. A. Richards and others, is known as the New Criticism. The
preference for more text-immanence methods as opposed to the excavate techniques also
prevails in canonical criticism, represented mainly by Brevard Childs. Although similar
to the New Criticism, the latter is more focused on theological concerns as opposed to
literary ones.
In conclusion, Blenkinsopp recognizes that critical methods were not always done
well. Concerned, however, with an exaggerated rejection and opposition between it and
other more recent ones, he argues that the historical-critical approach does indeed offer
us access in a unique way to certain dimensions of religious experience and levels of

Student: Garrett Johnson

Matricula: 161590

meaning in biblical texts. While significant modifications must be made, Blenkisopp

argues against writing off the real advances of our scholarly predecessors and proposes
that the attempt to understand how the Pentateuch came about is still a worthy endeavor.