Talk:Documentary hypothesis

Contradictions between articles
This article says, "Scholars estimate the date of composition as c. 950 BCE, not long before the split of the united Kingdom of Israel into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah in 922 BC, making it the oldest source."

But the article on Genesis says, "This leaves the question of when these works were created. Scholars in the first half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist was produced in the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, and the Priestly work in the middle of the 5th century BC (the author was even identified as Ezra), but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist was written either just before or during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after."

So which do scholars generally hold, 950 BCE or the 6th Century? Kevin Corbett (talk) 23:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)


 * These days, 6th century - but bear in mind that there's a lot of discussion and the documentary hypothesis itself is not all that widely held. Best look up the books in the bibliography. PiCo (talk) 23:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Repetitions that don't conflict
I am editing the following because of gross inaccuracies or otherwise easily explainable situations:
 * "Exodus 38:26 mentions "603,550 men over 20 years old included in the census" immediately after passage of the Red Sea, while Numbers 1:44-45 cites the precisely identical count, "The tally of Israelites according to their paternal families, those over 20 years old, all fit for service. The entire tally was 603,550", in a census taken a full year later, "on the first [day] of the second month in the second year of the Exodus" (Numbers 1:1);"
 * In actuality, the first mention of the census in Ex 38:26 occurs after the construction of the tabernacle (which Numbers agrees with), some 24 chapters after the red sea crossing. I have kept only the fact that the same census is mentioned in two different books.
 * Moses' wife, though often identified as a Midianite (and hence Semitic), appears in the tale of Snow-white Miriam as a "Cushite" (Ethiopian), and hence black;
 * Moses' Cushite wife in Numbers 12 is unnamed and most likely refers to an extra-biblical event, and thus should not be confused with his Midianite wife Zipporah from Exodus 2, judging from gross disparity in chronology (i.e. why would Miriam and Aaron choose to bring up the issue of a foreign born wife many years after the fact?). At the time, it was not out of the ordinary for a man to have multiple wives.

Clown (talk) 01:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, Clown. Despite all the contrary evidence, however, I don't think the secular administrators with this page on their watch lists will let us make critical edits. Wekn  reven i susej eht  Talk• Follow 15:26, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Taking Issue with the Documentary Hypothesis
discussion removed from artice:

[Taking Issue with the Documentary Hypothesis: despite the excellent work of the author of this article, it should be noted that "The Documentary Hypothesis" (i.e., the Pentateuch is a compostie of 4 separate sources) while once accepted by the vast majority of Biblical scholars - is now only taught/promoted in universities and mainline/liberal seminaries in the United States. While the vast majority of scholars (except for orthodox Jewish and Christian ones) still reject Mosaic authoriship, the Documentary Hypothesis has (to the best of my knowledge) been rejected by European scholars, and is no longer taught as a valid theory in Tubingen, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburough, Aberdeen, Toulouse, Paris, or any of the more prestigious Biblical Studies programs throughout Europe. Unfortunately, I have no citations or references for this except my own memory from my Masters program from 14 years ago, and that was from lectures and studies in the basic coursework, and not in my specialty, which is early Christianity, so please, consider the source, and check into the facts on your own.] —The preceding comment was added by 210.4.139.129 (talk • contribs) 10:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * There are sources citing DH as the most accepted hypothesis. Are there sources citing DH as no longer the most accepted hypothesis? The trick is that some people like to play up differences between today's version of DH and the 100-year old version. Do scholars say that the consensus has "collapsed"? If not, we should cite our sources and describe DH as the most-accepted hypothesis. Documentary HypothesisLeadwind 21:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the problem is that the term "documentary hypothesis" has two meanings - Wellhausen's 4-document hypothesis, and at the same time any hypothesis that sees the Torah's origins in independent documents, no matter how many they may be. It boiols down to a difference between "hypothesis" and "model" - Wellhausen put forward a specific and influential hypothesis using a documentary model, while Van Seters, according to what he himself says on the subject, has been championing a hypothesis which uses a fragmentary model - i.e., not any kind of documentary hypothesis, even though others have decribed him as using a reduced documentary hypothesis because he refers to a J-author and a D-author. The big and crucial difference, as Van Seters explains it, is that he (Van Seters) vehemently rejects the concept of the Redactor, the "deus ex-machina" demanded by the logic of the DH to explain how the four documents came to be combined. If there were no Redactor, we'd be facing today an OT equivalent of the Four Gospels. Yet while the Redactor is a logical necessity, there's no actual evidence of his handiwork (says Van Seters). Anyway, to answer the point you make in your final sentence, every scholar who has produced a new theory outside the documentary model has begun with an explanation of why he felt it necessary to do so. The major names are mentioned in the final section of the article. The article tries to explain that Wellhausen is only one version of the documentary hypothesis, albeit the most widely known and most influential. It also explains, in the final section, how the acceptance of Wllhausen collapsed - basically, people came to accept that the redactor was a problem as much as a solution, a theoretical figure demanded by the hypothesis but not evidenced by the text itself. This was one of Friedman's concerns, to show just what the Redactor had contributed, thus answering these critics, but his revised hypothesis hasn't been widely accepted. PiCo 11:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

There is much in this section that I believe to be incorrect. The DH is in fact accepted by nearly every major university in BOTH the USA and Europe. A statement was even made here that it is not longer taught at Cambridge or Oxford. This is a false statement. Oxford does indeed teach the DH in its current Faculty of Theology department and even encourages students to submit specimen papers on the subject in its "Handbook for Bachelor of Theology". Cambridge has in its theological department a course in Old Testament studies called "Reading the Old Testament" in which students are asked to study Dom Henry Wansbrough's "Introduction to Genesis" which includes a discussion of the DH. Cambridge students are encouraged to write, as one of their required essays for this class, a paper on the "two flood accounts" as shown by the DH. Wansbrough's "Introduction to Genesis" can be read online here, and as you can see, like most scholars, he has a very favorable opinion of the DH:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sben0056//bkl-genesis1.htm

The DH has certainly not undergone any kind of "collapse". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cws51923 (talk • contribs) 17:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

No, the DH has not collapsed. However, there have been some interesting non-confessional challenges to it. One is the sort of "literary critique" that purports to show, at least with respect to Genesis, that the book is a literary unit and that the parallels between purportedly different sources are stronger than their differences. (E.g. Rendsburg, Gary - The Redaction of Genesis) Anyway, I don't think a discussion of this topic is complete without non-straw-man versions of its critics being presented. --Stormj (talk) 04:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

This article is very biased in favor of JEDP. It is just a theory, and it's unfair for any other opinions/views/facts/critiques to be summarily deleted. 204.130.172.16 (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is just a theory and it may be that it is no longer broadly accepted. It is however taught for historical reasons, as propaedeutic knowledge, a shorthand for the basics of all what followed it in the last quarter of the 20th century and later. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:43, 11 October 2016 (UTC)


 * There's no such thing as 'just a theory' when it comes to this kind of thing. Theory and hypothesis in scholarly terms have very specific meanings, neither of which are the common parlance definition of 'a hunch'.


 * In terms of what is 'fair' or 'unfair' to put into the article, it's okay to have opposing views as long as they are noteworthy.--Jcvamp (talk) 13:07, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * what does "teach" mean? Do they have textbooks that show what the methodology is and how it conforms better to linguistics and archaeology and other related fields?  I have asked people to point me to such textbooks and nobody has been able  to do it.  Presenting conclusions in a lecture is not the same thing as teaching new people how to use and expand on a methodology. 100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

--Here to say that support for the DH has definitely waned - at least in Europe. This means that although the history of DH is still taught, and how influential it was (even places like Oxford & Cambridge) it is now faced with a lot of criticism due to the lack of evidence. The only consensus that now prevails is p and non-p (priestly, and non-priestly). I'm actually here because I was going to edit the Hebrew Bible page that had a very badly written section on dating the bible, that vaguely mentions DH. Anyway, although - of course- lots of sources will claim the truth of DH, do remember that history is as progressive as it is cumulative, that means very well respected references are now outdated. Plus, religion - as a topic - is one of the most over saturated topics for *references* with very little of it being considered scholarly. Anyway, like I said on the talk page of Hebrew Bible, I'm going to write an explanation of where the author/dating debate is for the Hebrew Bible page. Maybe a more experienced editor will review it & see how/what from that can be added to this page. Noxiyu (talk) 14:38, 2 February 2015 (UTC)


 * There is an evangelical claim like "JEDP has fallen, so things are going good." No, things got actually worse, from an evangelical viewpoint, i.e. the present-day scholarship is much worse for them than JEDP. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:43, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

BC/BCE
"... and consensus for the change with other editors."

I don't care what convention is used, whether BC or BCE. I do object to someone making a change in violation of standards. I'm not going to give in to the temptation to continuing an edit war. I'm giving you the chance to stand up for your opinion. But if you don't want to gather a "consensus for the change" .... TomS TDotO (talk) 13:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

The change wasn't in violation of standards because the article used both BC and BCE dating styles. I chose BC because it was first used and there was need for consistency 66.31.110.254 (talk) 13:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I agree that it is preferable to have the article use a uniform style. As the article stands now, however, there are only two places where the BC style is used, under Documentary hypothesis, where it says, "the reign of Josiah in 621 BC"; and under Documentary hypothesis, where it says, "in the first millennium BC". Elsewhere, there are many uses of the BCE style. Just on the basis of numbers, it would superficially seem preferable to change the two cases of BC to BCE. As I said, however, I don't care, but unless there is some reason not to, I suggest that these two instances be so changed. What I do strongly feel about is that we try to keep cool about it, and let's discuss it before acting unilaterally. I realize that some people feel strongly one way or the other, but let's not attribute bad faith to the other side. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know why, but I just happened upon this old discussion, and I see that no one is interested in it. The article is still a mix of styles, and it isn't going to change unless someone does something. If no one show any interest in a reasonable time, I'm just going to go ahead and change all the "BC"s to "BCE"s. TomS TDotO (talk) 19:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I should point out that the use of the term "BC" is actually a religious statement on behalf of Christianity (like the useag of the term "AD"). That is why an article about the Bible (unless it is explicitly Christian) sho use BCE/CE rather than BC/AD. Sabba Hillel (talk) 02:43, 12 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I note that a few BC's remained. According to long-standing MOS:ERA, I changed them to make the usage in this article uniform. TomS TDotO (talk) 06:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Early date of P - consequences for Ezekiel?
The text says that Friedmann and Kaufmann argue for P dating from Hezekiah instead of Post Exilic.

With Post Exilic P the religious laws in the text evolve as follows
 * 1) Ritual Decalogue (J)/ Covenant Code (E)
 * 2) Deuteronomic Code (D)
 * 3) Implications of the Book of Ezekiel
 * 4) Holiness Code (H = early layer of P)
 * 5) Priestly Code (later layer of P)

but if you put P in Hezekiah's time it becomes (leaving out the priestly code and ezekiel):
 * 1) Ritual Decalogue (J)/ Covenant Code (E)
 * 2) Holiness Code (H = early layer of P)
 * 3) Deuteronomic Code (D)

So where do Friedmann and Kaufmann put
 * Implications of the Book of Ezekiel
 * Priestly Code (later layer of P)

in relation to the Deuteronomic Code (D), and how is that rectified with the date of Ezekiel?

Newman Luke (talk) 16:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The Amber Witch link itself is weasel
There is no mention in the Amber Witch Hoax article to DH or even the idea behind DH. This is weaselly link to suggest that the DH is also a hoax. These topics are not related. —  f c s u p e r ( How's That?, That's How! ) (Exclusionistic Immediatist ) — 17:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The Amber Witch has a discussion which begins: "The author's intention had been to set a deliberate "trap for the disciples of David Strauss and his school who pronounced the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a collection of legends from historical research assisted by internal evidence".[8]" I am not defending the idea that the Amber Witch Hoax was an appropriate attack on the DH (and certainly not that the DH is itself a hoax), but merely that it is a mildly interesting topic in the history of the idea, at least worth passing reference. TomS TDotO (talk) 19:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Nobody is interested in The Amber Witch? TomS TDotO (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The Amber Witch Hoax was an attack upon scholars of the Historical Jesus, not upon scholars of the Documentary Hypothesis Revanneosl (talk) 13:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


 * They are all source critics.  When source critics blow it on one subject, it casts doubt on the others.  100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to redirect Ritual decalogue to Covenant code
Please see my proposal here and comment/vote. Thanks, Slrubenstein  |  Talk 15:46, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Support for Mosaic authorship
Are we really supposed to take seriously a reference which supports Mosaic authorship by saying that with God all things are possible? TomS TDotO (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Lacking any positive support for this reference, I'll revert the addition. TomS TDotO (talk) 16:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, he did part the Red Sea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.53.215.126 (talk) 01:56, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Blenkinsopp book?
This sentence says: "Whybray's questions pertaining to the documentary hypothesis, however, have been largely answered[citation needed] by Joseph Blenkinsopp." Then we have a whole para about Blenkinsopp's answer. Much as I admire Blenkinsopp, this really needs a source - does anyone know what we're referring to? PiCo (talk) 11:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Figure
We currently have this figure on the DH view re the development of the Torah: [[File:Modern document hypothesis.svg|thumb|240px|Diagram of the Documentary Hypothesis.

It's someone's personal work, and I think them for the effort they've put into it, but I believe it's a little bit not quite right in places. It puts J and E side by side, as if they came from the same time, when the theory holds that J was slighly earlier; and it seems to have D earlier than P, when the classic view has them the other way round. It also has a set of boxes for the Deuteronomistic history, which is really a separate if related issue. I wonder if anyone feels like either revising it or finding a free source we can use? PiCo (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Restoring a missing section of this article
There was a large section of this article that was deleted. The opinions of many Bible scholars were wiped out and replaced with this pious statement: "but none doubted the truth of the tradition." But this claim is simply incorrect.

That is why it is important to restore the deleted section. Critical academic study of the Torah's origins began in classical rabbinic Judaism, what some call Orthodox Judaism, centuries before Wellhausen - and as the sources quoted herein state, the existence of such views are explicitly recognized by Orthodox rabbis. In fact, the sources given within the article name an entire book on the academic, critical text study of the Torah, Bible and rabbinic literature from an Orthodox Jewish point of view.

RK (talk) 17:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The "pious statement" is a quote from Gordon Wenham, a respected (and not fundamentalist) scholar. Wenham was talking about the difference between traditional and modern attitudes - before Astruc scholars didn't question or care who wrote the bible. You mention early Jewish scholars, but people like Ibn Ezra are very few and far between - the exception, and a very rare one. PiCo (talk) 10:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The heart of this article was cut out: Now restored
Today, the vast majority of Bible scholars believe that the Torah is a composite document, edited together from a variety of earlier sources. (This view is also accepted as correct by all rabbis and scholars in non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, and by many priests and scholars in many forms of Christianity.) Why would anyone believe this? Shouldn't this article describe the reasoning behind the people who hold this point of view?

In point of fact, this article used to do just that. There was a section, Major areas considered to support the documentary hypothesis include. Just as importantly, this article used to note that: "Many portions of the Torah seem to imply more than one author. Doublets and triplets repeat stories with different points of view." This is a hugely important point. While at one point this article featured these sections front and center, for years, a while back somone cut out this section, leaving the article hanging in mid-air, presenting complicated views without summarizing the major textual reasons for people having such views. As such, I have restored this section. RK (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I've cut this out, not because I disagree with it (I agree), but because I believe it to be unnecessary. The idea that the Torah is a composite is universal - there's no need to argue for it. PiCo (talk) 10:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I strenuously disagree. I have worked in general education and religious education, and I can tell you that this impression is incorrect.  A great many Christians deny the essentials of the documentary hypothesis, possibly the majority of Christians in the world! And so do many Jews, including nearly all of the Orthodox Jewish community.  Most people I have discussed the Bible with, in fact, simply assume that the Torah is more or less directly from Moses, even if they are agnostics or atheists. RK (talk) 16:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

One must take it on faith that there are many authors. There is no need to argue this point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.92.138.14 (talk) 03:01, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Removing all the evidence and logic is a very bad idea
The latest edits to this article, Documentary Hypothesis, removes the summary of reasons that scholars believe that the Torah is a composite document. I am concerned, because a few years ago, some Orthodox Jewish, and traditional Christians, made these same types of edits - to make it look like the documentary hypothesis is less likely to be correct, and that fundamentalist teachings were more likely to be certainly true.

Because of the huge amount of material deleted by PiCo, all that is left of this article are various ideas that the Torah is composite...but without a good summary of the logical reasons why. I think that it is important for us to summarize the logic and textual evidence. If we do not have this, then I can assure that this article will be (mis)used to "prove" that there isn't a serious case to accept that the Torah is composite. Rather, it will (as it has been before) be used to "prove" that the Torah is unitary and (mostly) unchanged since the time of Moses,

''The majority of Wikipedia readers have little to no knowledge about this subject. '' Your averge person really believes that the Torah is, more or less, a unitary document, and many are willing to accept that it was probably written by Moses himself, plus or minus textual errors tha have accumulated over the milennai. In fact, even many agnostics believe this. For many people, the debate is about whether or not God literally inspired prophets to write the Bible, or whether God exists at all.

Right now this article focuses on the technical details, but lacks the general reasoning for it's very existence. RK (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm concerned about this too. Look how much information was deleted without any discussion at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Documentary_hypothesis&action=historysubmit&diff=406464971&oldid=406130103. I think we should revert these changes (as numerous as they are, many are just deletions and re-wordings), and not do it again until things are discussed. Yay or nay? GManNickG (talk) 22:34, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

What does the phrase "Documentary Hypothesis" mean?
I'd like to reiterate this point. Many people here seem to believe that the term "documentary hypothesis" refers to Wellhausen's 4-document hypothesis. But this is incorrect. Rather, Wellhausen's hypothesis is merely the first of a number of modern ideas about the textual origin of the Torah.

Outside of fundamentalist Christian and jewish communities, mainsteram academics (and non-fundamentalist Jews and Christians) use the phrase "documentary hypothesis" to describe any hypothesis that sees the Torah's origins in independent documents, no matter how many they may be. Also note that many, if not most, modern day views are loosely related to Wellhausen's basic concept of J, E, P and D. In other words, although his specific ideas are denied today, his general outline is still considered to be a good model by many scholars today. RK (talk) 20:35, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * "many" is a weasel word. 100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Wellhausen wasn't the first to propose a documentary hypothesis, and I believe the article makes this clear. He merely put forward the most exhaustive, conclusive case for documents over the other two competing hypotheses - the supplementary hypothesis and the fragmentary hypothesis. Note that Wellhausen put forward "a" hypothesis, not "the" hypothesis - his version had 4 sources, but Astruc's had only 2 sources. In the 20th century the E source has been so severely criticised that modern versions of the hypothesis frequently propose only 3 sources. Nor are modern theories using the symbolic language of JEPD (more often JPD without E) necessarily documentary in nature - many regard D as a document, but J and P as editorial work over several centuries. (Unless they're Tommy Thompson). PiCo (talk) 10:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not sure of why you wrote this. Maybe I was unclear. Just to be clear, these are points on which we agree. RK (talk) 13:42, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I have this question myself. Who coined "documentary hypothesis" as what Wellhausen meant? How do we know the coiner was right about what Wellhausen meant? The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has several meanings for "hypothesis," which one did the coiner mean? It's crucial to understanding what was originally meant, which may have meant different things to other scholars, leading to whatever disagreements have occurred. 71.163.114.49 (talk) 23:41, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a really significant point, and actually up for debate in my Theology department at KCL (university of London). If I was building this article from scratch, I would explain Documentary Hypothesis as a response/explanation to the many contradictions in the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). I would then go on to say that this form of biblical criticism has a long history. I would in fact call the (Graff-)Wellhausen hypothesis, the source hypothesis (or the Graff-Wellhausen hypothesis, or the JEDP hypothesis). Other examples under the title of DH, which are mostly ignored in the article, are: base text hypothesis, Fragmentary or Narratives hypothesis, and münsteraner pentateuch model (P.Weimar/E. Zenger). Finally, now that JEDP has been undermined and thrown out, we have P & non-P. The reason why this has the highest scholarly acceptance, is that nearly all forms of DH biblical criticism includes a differentiation between P and non-P. It's delineating the rest that is complicated, inconsistent & lacking consensus. P & non-P is primarily explained and *owned* by Schmid, Römer, et al. There are modern day DH biblical critics talking about Wellhausen: Schwartz, Baden, Stackert for example. Although their critics are that they are failing to provide any new evidence. (this comment goes with the one I wrote above, about how this article is factually flawed) As I mentioned in my earlier comment, I have written a suggested edit for the Hebrew Bible page on the dating, this concerns documentary hypothesis. It's on my user:noxiyu/sandbox page. Hopefully that short summary will give a little insight into what documentary hypothesis means - perhaps the content there, if accepted, can indicate what edits we should make on this page? Noxiyu (talk) 15:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * @Noxiyu: I only just saw this comment. I suggest that you re-post it as a new thread at the bottom ofg the page - comments appended to old threads in the middle of the page (like this) are highly likely to be overlooked. I also suggest you seriously consider a radical re-write of the article - if you outline what you propose and take it step-by-step you shouldn't encounter opposition. PiCo (talk) 03:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I've suggested that Torah redactor be merged into this article. It has been unsourced or poorly sourced for nearly a year and discusses mainly the same content in some more detail. 134.29.231.11 (talk) 18:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * merge performed as there was no discussion.173.141.251.43 (talk) 10:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I've now suggested that JE be merged into this article. JE is quite short and discusses the documentary hypothesis in more detail. That detail should be here, I think. 134.29.231.11 (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Support merge. I don't think "Documentary hypothesis" is the most common meaning of "JE", which should be a disambiguation page linking to this one. Jokestress (talk) 06:03, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support merge. Because of the similarity of the two and the concreteness of this article compared to Torah redactor.  Wekn  TAKN 17:28, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

DH 'universally accepted' Wenham ref
Is it appropriate to cite Wenham as authority for 'universal acceptance' for the DH, when he actually writes 'by the mid-twentieth century it was almost universally accepted. But in the 1970s this cosy consensus began to be disturbed.'? He then documents four areas of disagreement with and challenge to DH, which the article partly addresses, but the selective quote does not quite represent the situation accurately. Cpsoper (talk) 11:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe you're right - the full sentence in our article says: "The hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship for much of the 20th century, and, although increasingly challenged by other models in the last part of the 20th century, its terminology and insights continue to provide the framework for modern theories on the origins of the Torah." Wenham (who's a very respectable scholar by the way - no problem in that area) does say pretty explicitly that the DH dominated the field for much of the C.20th, but it would be hard to source the rest of the sentence to that article. It happens to be true, but the source doesn't support it. Feel free to look around for something better. (Wenham does support the sentence indirectly, as he talks at length about the use of terms such as P and J and accepts without question that the Torah has complex origins and multiple authors, but he doesn't explicitly say so). PiCo (talk) 06:45, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I see now you were talking about a different sentence. You made a good edit there. PiCo (talk) 06:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, have updated reference for Umberto Cassuto, for whom I declare, as a matter of transparency, considerable admiration. I am not a professional scholar in the field, but Oswald Allis' writing on the subject also appears cogent, tightly reasoned and stocked with specific evidence, so I have also cited him. Cpsoper (talk) 21:14, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Bullet item for 'Redactor'
There was a left-over bullet item for 'Redactor' which was an internal link to a now-deleted section ; I've removed it since a) it didn't point anywhere and b) its inclusion in the list made it seem (to my admittedly untutored eye) that "R" was one of five sources postulated by Wellhausen; I don't know if that's true or not but I'm guessing if the section 'Redactor' was removed as unreferenced it probably wasn't. But please do correct me (or at least the article) if I'm incorrect. Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 06:05, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

'Redactor' should not redirect to this article, but to 'Redaction'. HuPi (talk) 23:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

What is the source material?
Several hundred years of work by people who speak several different languages. Which bible did each of them use? Hebrew? Ancient Greek? German? King James? A combination? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.15.208.130 (talk) 05:20, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Please specify and clarify your comment.  Wekn  TAKN
 * Like Wekn, I'm not suere what you mean. In the hope that this clarifies matters: The Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew, the New Testament in the form of Greek common in the region in the first century CE; an important Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament was made in the last few centuries before Christ and is still the bible used by the Orthodox Christian churches. Both Testaments were translated into Latin round 500 CE, and then into various European languages from about 1500 on (the translators used the oldest texts they could find, usually the Hebrew text used by Jews for the Old Testament and old Greek texts for the New). PiCo (talk) 03:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Astruc claimed to use the Neuchatel French Geneva Bible but he misquoted it; Graf is another author; Reuss did his own translation which is terrible. Their works are available free online.  If DH pins itself to language issues but is not analyzing Hebrew,  it hasn't said anything about the Hebrew Tannakh.  If its linguistic information dates no later than 1900, it is outdated.  Septuagint has been known to be a bad translation since within 100 years of its completion so it is invalid for examining the Hebrew Tannakh.  Jerome translated Prophets and Writings from Septuagint but claimed to go back to Hebrew for Pentateuch -- but he used traditional translations like reproducing "Ohozath his friend" which  is a Septuagint mistranslation.  Dr. John A. Cook's doctoral dissertation on Biblical Hebrew (approved 2002) shows that almost  everybody has mis-analyzed Biblical Hebrew because they are not taking into account its relationship to other ancient Semitic languages, deciphered by archaeologists, whose work DH ignores.  100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Cook teaches at Asbury Theological Seminary, which has officially proclaimed inerrantism as its stance. So he belongs to the vocal minority of scholars which still affirms inerrancy, contrary to what is taught as fact in all major US universities. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:10, 26 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Cook was writing about the language. His work coordinates with modern linguistics on a broad basis and also with the work on other ancient Semitic languages.  The usefulness of his work has nothing to do with theology but with linguistics and in fact it also coordinates with 20th century work on oral traditions, which also has nothing to do with theology.   100.15.138.239 (talk) 14:34, 10 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Cook will knee-jerk reject any approach which does not support theological orthodoxy. His employment depends upon him doing that. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:34, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

"Let me stress – I can’t stress this enough, although roughly 36% of my readers won’t believe me or possibly hear me – I am NOT saying there cannot be evangelical scholars of the New Testament. That is absolutely not the case, in the least. There are lots of evangelical scholars of the New Testament.  Some of them superb scholars.  BUT, if they approach the New Testament from the point of view that there can be no mistakes of any kind in the New Testament (that would be a very hard-core evangelical, and certainly a fundamentalist, position) then they have to restrict their scholarly conversation partners to one another, publishing in journals and with presses that support their theological views, not in the standard critical journals and presses."

- Bart Ehrman


 * Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

question on expert sources
I've been corresponding with somebody who brought up an issue I find interesting. If somebody is considered an expert, they either have substantial continuing activities in a field (LPN) or they have published in peer-reviewed periodicals such that their methods, assumptions, application, and conclusions can be analyzed and the weaknesses corrected. AFAICT all the sources in the bibliography are books, which don't qualify. IS there a DH periodical that does all this stuff? On the same level as, like, Bulletinis of the American Schools of Oriental Research or Journal of International Affairs or Journal of Statistical Science? 108.56.212.179 (talk) 16:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Books are reliable sources if they have been written by professors widely acknowledged as authorities on the discussed issue. The policy does not state that only journals may be considered reliable. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:58, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * what peer-reviewed journals about DH do professors write in to get acknowledged as authorities on DH? 100.15.120.122 (talk) 16:59, 25 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I cannot answer that question, however if one is a full professor of Bible scholarship at a major university, we assume by default that he/she is an authority upon what he/she teaches there. With the disclaimer that sometimes even mainstream scholars indulge in WP:FRINGE theories, but this has to become evident at WP:FTN. Some disciplines prefer books to journals. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:58, 26 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Which does your discipline prefer? How does your discipline distinguish between "peer review" and "publisher puffing"?  I've read books by "authorities" in a field that were filled with fallacies and based on information no longer accepted in the field. How do people in your discipline decide which books to read and use and which to ignore if you want your work to be taken seriously? 100.15.138.239 (talk) 14:34, 10 October 2016 (UTC)


 * That is a complicated question. However, as far as Wikipedia is concerned do read WP:IRS, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Briefly, Wikipedia editors never make the call, instead reliable sources make the call for us. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:38, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Talk suggests DH still accepted; article doesn't seem to end on this note
I've just read this article and the Talk. The question within the talk of whether the DH is still a widely held belief seems to be answered there in the affirmative: that the DH (in some form or other) is now a widely held belief in both scholarly and religious realms. If that is the case the article doesn't seem to assert this. Consider the last paragraph of the article in particular which, in stating that the DH no longer dominates the debate as it once did, left me with the only alternative: that the notion of one author (Moses) has returned to favour.

Can someone correct this? Is this interference in the article by someone with traditional views? --174.7.56.10 (talk) 18:36, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


 * DH is still accepted as a starting point for even more daring and more radical theories. It opened their way, but it was not radical enough. DH has not been completely forgotten, but it has been surpassed at its own method. Certainly none but fundamentalist and very conservative evangelical scholars think that Moses has anything to do with writing the Pentateuch (that is, if he ever existed). Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I found the last paragraph of this Wikipedia article unclear and confusing and I strongly feel it quoted Sommer out of context. I will present two longer quotes from Benjamin Sommer review http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Doc4/sommer.pdf which was quoted in the last paragraph so you can assess whether Sommer was quoted out of context:  ″In the last quarter of this century, however, this consensus has broken down. No longer can a biblical scholar begin a sentence with the word J and presume that another scholar will listen to the rest -- or that the other scholar will mean more or less the same thing even if she is willing to use that term. The verities enshrined in older introductions have disappeared, and in their place scholars are confronted by competing theories which are discouragingly numerous, exceedingly complex, and often couched in an expository style that is (to quote John van Seter's description of one seminal work) "not for the faint-hearted.".″ To quote another Sommer paragraph ″In the longer second half, Nicholson examines the various attacks on the Documentary Hypothesis in the past quarter century, concentrating on the work of Rolf Rendtorff, Erhard Blum (both of whom describe the basic building blocks of the Pentateuch in new ways while rejecting the notion of discrete documents known as JE, P, and D), Norman Whybray (who views the Pentateuch as a literary unity built from motley older materials that cannot for the most part be reconstructed), and several scholars including Christoph Levin and John van Seters who retain the sigla of the Documentary Hypothesis but diverge from its main outlines in far-reaching ways (for example, by dating J-type material to the postexilic period and viewing it as dependent on Deuteronomy and related literature. In the last chapter he also addresses the work of synchronic readers who do not so much deny the Documentary Hypothesis as they move beyond it or ignore it.″

I read thru the trail of sources, and they do not support Mosaic authorship. Whybray is discussed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Pentateuch. Richard Elliott Friedman in the Bible with Sources Revealed disagreed with Whybray (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_with_Sources_Revealed). Here's a Bluhm reference http://www.jhsonline.org/reviews/reviews_new/review507.htm CreateW (talk) 07:53, 25 December 2013 (UTC) There seems to be a broad and narrow definition of documentary hypothesis which I will demonstrate via two online sources (regardless of whether they are reliable). [1. (http://www.fact-index.com/d/do/documentary_hypothesis.html) ″The documentary hypothesis is a theory held by many historians that the five books of Moses (the Torah) are a combination of documents from different sources. ...While many of Wellhausen's specific claims have since been dismissed, the general idea that the five books of Moses had a composite origin is now fully accepted by historians.″  2. http://creationwiki.org/Documentary_Hypothesis ″The Documentary Hypothesis, in its broadest sense, is an attempt to identify various source documents from which the present text of the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the historical books of Genesis through Joshua, is derived. In a more restricted sense, it is applied to a line of reasoning that found its full expression in the work of the German theologian Julius Wellhausen, with subsequent developments by many other scholars, and which has as a central tenet the idea that different names of God in the Pentateuch (or Pentateuch plus Joshua) indicate different authors or editors, and these authors/editors lived long after the events they were describing. " ] I have trouble knowing what the majority of scholars believe, but I would guess they mostly accept the broader view of the documentary hypothesis while mostly reject the narrower view of DH. The last paragraph of this Wikipedia article can be (mis)interpreted as most scholars reject the broader view. Ideally, the Wikipedia article should clearly express its views regarding the broad and narrow view like the above two sources did. Also, the last paragraph should use a more fuller quote, as it is quoting the author out of context. Last paragraph starts out with a reasonably broad definition of DH ″notably its claim that the Pentateuch is the work of many hands and many centuries, and that its final form belongs to the middle of the 1st millennium BCE″ and then rejects it ″"The verities enshrined in older introductions [to the subject of the origins of the Pentateuch] have disappeared...″ (misusing) a source that seems to have only rejected the narrow definition ″In the last quarter of this century, however, this consensus has broken down. No longer can a biblical scholar begin a sentence with the word J and presume that another scholar will listen to the rest -- or that the other scholar will mean more or less the same thing even if she is willing to use that term. The verities enshrined in older introductions have disappeared, and in their place scholars are confronted by competing theories which are discouragingly numerous,exceedingly complex, and often couched in an expository style that is (to quote John van Seter's description of one seminal work) "not for the faint-hearted.".″ — Preceding unsigned comment added by CreateW (talk • contribs) 08:24, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The documentary hypothesis is not widely held today - this is discussed in the last section of the article. This does not mean, however, that scholars now believe that Moses wrote anything at all, or even existed - Mosaic authorship has no standing in scholarly circles. Instead, contemporary scholars have turned to modern versions of old ideas that were in circulation before Wellhausen.


 * To understand what's gong on, you have to understand the difference between documents and sources'. All modern scholars, whether they accept the DH or not, agree that the Torah is made up from sources - which is to say, that it's not the work of a single author (Moses). The DH holds that these sources took the form of documents - written accounts of the complete and continuous story from Genesis to the end of Numbers (no need to Deuteronomy since it stands alone, a single source in a single document with no spill-over into the other books). These documents were supposedly written at different times and then combined by editors (the "redactors") into the Torah as we have it.


 * The other and more modern theories agree that there are sources involved, but not documents. Probably the most widely held view today is that a Yahwist source was created gradually over a century or more and then, in the 5th century, supplemented by a Priestly source, which hadn't previously existed. The D source had a separate history, and supposedly grew gradually from the late 6th century into the 5th.


 * Our articles on the sources (J, P, D) deal with the sources in some detail, while this source is about the older theory of the Documentary Hypothesis. If you want more information, look up the books in the reference sections - the more recent the better.PiCo (talk) 10:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Pico, I wish I had more time to investigate this topic. I find the last paragraph to be unclear and it informs, misleads and confuses the reader. This Wikipedia article wrote, ″notably its claim that the Pentateuch is the work of many hands and many centuries, and that its final form belongs to the middle of the 1st millennium BCE...The verities enshrined in older introductions have disappeared″. When read literally, if there is a small doubt regarding one of the 3 DH claims (I agree there is at least some doubt) then Wikipedia is literally correct. The literal reading means there is between 0%-99.9% chance of there being multiple hands. 0-99.9% of there being many centuries; 0-99.9% of there being mid millennium. A)The last paragraph quotes Sommers review, and nowhere in his review did it seem to challenge any of those 3 assertions(or at least directly challenge them). B) For example, if a large majority of modern bible scholars believe the bible has many hands, then the last paragraph shouldn't be challenging that assertion. If there is a strong minority scholarly view that a single author (single hand) (without editors; e.g., Ezra) then that opinion needs more support rather than a subtle hint in a sentence. C) My impression is that most scholars today accept many hands, multiple centuries and probably mid-millennium (but unsure how mid-millennium is defined). D) Sommers wrote: "In the last quarter of this century, however, this consensus has broken down. No longer can a biblical scholar begin a sentence with the word J and presume that another scholar will listen to the rest -- or that the other scholar will mean more or less the same thing even if she is willing to use that term. The verities enshrined in older introductions have disappeared,..." and I agree with him. In summary, if many scholars believe in a single hand, single century, non-mid-millennium then the last paragraph just needs sources/elaboration. If most scholars agree that there are multiple hands, multiple-centuries, mid-millennium but disagree on many details (roles of redactors vs. authors, how many authors/redactors, when did they live, who wrote each verse) then that message should be clearly articulated. CreateW (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

as of just a few years ago, I was taking a history course and I remember finding a jastor article that identified clearly divergent treads with the Europeans increasingly discounting the bible entirely and regarding it as a late hasmonean fabrication, and Americans who still preferred a basic 4 source theory. however our professor Morgan Broadhead (disregard his teaching at a minor junior collage, he is well accepted and liked in American IVY league schools) took a more cynical approach and more or less considered the entire biblical criticism field to be irresponsible and futile. (and tended to something which might be termed modest secular biblical maximalism.) If such views are current with any group of historians then there aught to be some mention of the reasons therefor. 109.186.102.159 (talk) 15:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * See . Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC)


 * To put it briefly, one can dismiss the answers (explanations) of biblical criticism, but a responsible intellectual cannot dismiss its questions (problems raised). Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Dates
This article lists dates for JEDP. Wellhaussen (950, 850, 600, 500) and Friedman roughly (700, 700, 700 and 600). The Wikipedia's articles on the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly Source provides additional dates. The Jawhist article (In the first half of the 20th century it was believed that the Yahwist could be dated to c. 950 BCE,[5] but later study has demonstrated that portions of J cannot be earlier than the 7th century BCE.[6] Current theories place it in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th–5th centuries BCE),[7] but the date and even the existence of J are currently the subject of vigorous discussion.[8].) However, this article estimates the Jahwist to be 950. I suggest that this article include the best estimated dates and some rationale for these dates or at least reference other Wikipedia articles with those dates. Also, the dates in this article should be consistent with the other 4 articles. Further, the dates should be listed near each other (e.g., in a table) so they are easier to find.CreateW (talk) 21:57, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The dates are of largely historical interest - the current idea is that the DH is incorrect in any case, and that the Torah as we know it was drawn together around 500 BCE. PiCo (talk) 10:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * It's good to aim for consistency among the articles. However, if I'm not mistaken, it needs to be done by having the main and the sub articles refer to the same reliable sources. That is, a WP article itself (such as J) cannot be used as a reference in another article (e.g., here). For this article, I think it'd be appropriate to list Wellhausen, due to the historical importance, and then a range of other estimates. Thanks. ProfGray (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Wellhausen never suggested any dates. I think the first estimates are from the mid-20th century - maybe Albright? I'm not sure. I think this article needs substantial revision in any case - the DH is only one of three hypotheses about the origins of the Pentateuch, and presumably we should cover them all. Do you have any suggestions? PiCo (talk) 02:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC).

After some exchanges with some biblists and read their recent books about the construction of the Pentateuque and other rolls, I found some small errors in listed centuries. So I found interested to replace in the section dedicated to Wellhausen the hundreds (e.g. 500s) by the official designation in centuries and as far as possible the correct date (e.g. Esdras, Vth century, by 450 BC).-- luxorion

When is satire 'not appropriate'?
There is disagreement about the inclusion of reference to scholarly parody of DH. To my mind the source is RS and its inclusion highly appropriate, and reminiscent of though more biting than Cassuto's description of a salami slicing approach to Homeric authorship. Cpsoper (talk) 17:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Redactor
A mysterious R appears in the diagram accompanying the lead to this article, which appears (looking deep into the article) to stand for "Redactor," the meaning of which is that some editing was done at the three indicated points. There is no mention of the R in the lead, and hardly any explanation of its meaning down below where it appears. I will add R and explain it in the caption. - 173.20.148.109 (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

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Weakening support
Until evidence can be provided to show that there is a general weakening of support for the Documentary Hypothesis, I feel that the section named 'weakening support' should be called 'Opposition and alternative theories', and the section within it that demonstrates modern support should be called 'Modern proponents'. This way, both sides of the 'argument' are shown as headings rather than giving the impression that the modern support is merely a sidenote within the general trend of 'weakening support'. I think this is more representative of the current situation.--Jcvamp (talk) 13:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

The opinion of Dr Richard Friedman
It is wrong to claim that "the documentary hypothesis is no more supported by most exegetes" as you wrote, and maybe based on the opinion on european scholars like Thomas Römer or from what you read in books for a general audience.

On his blog, at http://richardelliottfriedman.com/?p=289, Richard Friedman, biblist and author from Georgia University, reminds the main newest strong evidence (2011) and arguments supporting the documentary hypothesis : (1) linguistic evidence showing that the Hebrew of the texts corresponds to the stages of development of the Hebrew language in the periods in which the hypothesis says those respective texts were composed; (2) evidence that the main source texts (J, E, P, and D) were continuous, i. e. it is possible to divide the texts and find considerable continuity while keeping the characteristic terms and phrases of each consistent; and (3) as this book shows, evidence that the manner of composition that is pictured in the hypothesis was part of the literary practices of the ancient Near East.

Here is also what Friedman wrote me in 2017:

"It is not really correct to say that the documentary hypothesis has been either rejected or amended. I often hear people claim that, especially a number of scholars in Europe. The majority of scholars in the world still adhere to this hypothesis in some form. No other hypothesis has attracted nearly as many scholars. And the many new hypotheses that are being proposed, including the one by Römer, have never responded to the vast array of evidence that supported the documentary hypothesis in the first place. None of the sources of the Pentateuch can possibly come from the Persian period. They are written in Classical, pre-exilic Hebrew. Scholars who propose dates in the Persian period have simply failed to deal with this evidence." -- luxorion.


 * has agreed that while DH is no longer the virtually unanimous consensus, it is still the majority view in US and Israel. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:53, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Also, Wikipedia records changes in the academic consensus, but Wikipedia itself is not a forum for deciding what the academic consensus should be. We simply let scholars decide that and we quote their views. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * A valid point. It does make it very difficult to write the article when legitimate sources (Friedman, Romer and others) are in such basic disagreement. PiCo (talk) 01:01, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Note that most scholars that I discussed with including Drs Römer and Friedman refuse the concept of "school" to name the theories supported by the different specialists in specific countries or universities. They by far prefer that we speak of "different hypothesis", thesis or opinions. So speaking in terms of euopean, american or isralian school is not only unfounded, but incorrect because it is an arbitrary choice for trying "to label" persons. This abstraction is without interest. For short, it should be useful to reflect the relaity of research to remove all reference to "school" in this article. --luxorion

Who is Jean Astrid ?
It seems that many sites of Wikipedia and its copies have repeated the small sentence according wich a certain Jean Astrid in the XVIIIth century performed a criticism of the Bible.

But no one give additional comments about this person. Who was he, what was his title, etc., what book did he publish, there is no mention at all, not even in the note 14 refering to an external book. Even Google (including Scholars and Books) does not reply as if the name was unknown and not referenced. We can deduce that the name can be wrong or that this person has never existed...

I suggest to remove the name of Jean Astrid and to start with Johann Eichhorn whose work is attested.

Before publishing such data, it is essential that data be cross-checked and validated.-- luxorion — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:7E8:DC0A:6A01:E5D4:C0FF:60EE:1F73 (talk) 13:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The correct spelling is Jean Astruc. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Obsolete 19th century thought
I am not bringing this up as an attack on DH. But my understanding is that there are extreme forms of DH which have been objected to on two grounds, because of thought patterns which were widely unquestioned in 19th century Europe: Hegel's philosophy of history, which imposed a pattern on development of thought, so there "had to be" a certain more primitive theology evolving to a more asophisticated one, reflected in which order the four documents were written; and widely accepted anti-Semitism. I suggest that someone more learned than I might address these objections - even if just to debunk them. TomS TDotO (talk) 23:21, 11 January 2017 (UTC) TomS TDotO (talk) 23:21, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * @TomS TDotO That seems to be correct. A major reason Wellhausen's theory was adopted was because it was in accordance with late 19-century ideas of how history evolves, and a major reason for the great revaluation in the later 20th century was the abandonment of the idea that history evolves.PiCo (talk) 02:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * @TomS TDotO Thanks for your comments. The sort of idealist philosophy weaved into the very fabric of 19th-century germanophone historicism affected the narrative reconstructed, certainly. However, there's a conflation here between this particular theoretical framework of understanding the past and understandings of change over time that also maintained a gradual "development" (its consequences imagined as improvement or more "civilizing") but did not uphold this particular kind of philosophical substructure, namely within the more positivistic British context nearing the fin de siècle – even if the overriding narratives could bear much resemblance. Moreover, a related yet separable issue is the actual methodological operations in place, which had become standard across philological historicism across the Germanies, with classics in particular serving as a standard-bearer. Certain understandings about texts themselves, textual development, and particularly "editorial" activities emerged at the nexus of (usually implicit) theoretical frameworks and methodological procedures. As for anti-Semitism, there was a debate in the 1980s between Smend (Jr) and Rendtorff, and the issue still emerges, perhaps less in scholarly discussion than among the interested public more broadly. Without excusing the predominant scepticism towards Judaism at the time, as the 19th century wore on and the German Empire became increasingly Protestant in public life, a contemporaneous anti-Catholicism (and a broader German liberal anti-institutionalism) was mapped onto the past as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foosland (talk • contribs) 22:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Too much information removed
Over the course of a month, User PiCo has removed nearly half of the page, and while plenty of it has been replaced with more concise information, and lots of new sources have been added, some fundamental parts of the page, including the original dates ascribed to the sources, and a chart that displayed the relationships between them have been deleted. I think that the new sources and corrections can be preserved without removing so much of the original material. 66.190.196.35 (talk) 04:32, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for coming to talk (May I suggest you register with a name - it makes things easier). First, yes, I'm re-writing, so material gets deleted. I wrote the original article, so what I delete, I also wrote. Second, the older article is inadequate - it treats Wellhausen's DH as if it were still current, which is not the case. As the re-write makes clear, the consensus on the DH collapsed in the last few decades of the 20th century. With it collapsed any idea that any source dates from the time of the early monarchy - the earliest source is now universally recognised as D, which is still secure. P is also secure, and is still seen as post-exilic. What the article needs to make clear is that there is now no unanimity at all that J and E exist as sources - readers will open books and see talk about P and non-P, and never guess from our article that this means the Priestly source and the J and E sources - which, of course, are no longer viewed in a documentary manner. Yes, there are scholars who still talk about the Pentateuch in documentary terms, but this is Baden's neo-documentary hypothesis, not Wellhausen's. So what I'm trying to do is get the Wellhausen material out of the way quickly and spend more space on current approaches. You are welcome to help.PiCo (talk) 10:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

That's the thing, though. Wikipedia is supposed to have all available information, not just the most recent scholarly developments. While I think it's fine to emphasize what's now accepted and what's not, that doesn't mean we should remove all historical developments of the hypothesis and simply display a 5-minute-to-read summary on the modern "neo-documentary hypothesis." This is an encyclopedia, not a brief pamphlet. Also, while there is no consensus on the status of J and E, specifically whether they were complete works or additions made to D, there are still some clear differences between them (such as the binding of Isaac and the corporeal/incorporeal views of Yahweh), but you make it sound like they are universally accepted as being the same source or compilations of random fragments that cannot be divided into two sources. Again, while that is a legitimate hypothesis, it is not universally accepted. Finally, I'm a little confused on your statement: "Readers will open books and see talk about P and non-P, and never guess from our article that this means the Priestly source and the J and E sources". I might be completely off here, but it sounds like you're saying that you want to hide from readers the fact that these two sources are or ever were hypothesized to exist. Anyway, I respect your informal "ownership" of this article and the tremendous work you have put into it, and I will stop reverting your edits and instead preserve a link to the archived version, although I do hope you can address these concerns I mentioned. As for creating a Wikia account, I think I did a few years back, but I have long forgotten the password. Still, though, I will try to either find it or create a new account. Regards, 66.190.196.35 (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't claim ownership, just an interest. What I'm trying to do is shift the balance of the article from a focus on Wellhausen's hypothesis to modern ideas - my concern is with balance, not content.PiCo (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

"rigid, ritualistic world of the priest-dominated"
Surely, many people would see the characterization of later Judaism as "rigid, ritualistic ... priest-dominated" as anti-Semitic. Should that impression be mentioned here? If W. weren't anti-Semitic, isn't unfair to leave that impression? TomS TDotO (talk) 11:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * W. was certainly seen as anti-semitic by Jewish scholars, and that should be noted (with the reasons, which you mention).PiCo (talk) 04:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Clunky titles and deletion of information about contemporary proponents
The title 'Contemporary approaches: end of the documentary consensus and revival of supplementary and fragmentary models' isn't really the type of heading used on Wikipedia. Also, why is it that all the information about modern proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis has been removed? There are still books and articles being published on it, and replacing all that with the idea that idea that consensus has 'collapsed' based on citing one author hardly seems conclusive.

The article jumps from Wellhausen to a supposed state in which the Documentary Hypothesis has been abandoned, and misses out any intermediate development. Yes, there are other theories, but as editors we're supposed to be balanced.

I acknowledge that a lot of work has gone into this re-write, but this shouldn't be a single person's pet project. When I edited this article, it was to showcase opposing viewpoints, even though I personally disagree with some of them. That's because it's not up to me to decide which is more valid.--Jcvamp (talk) 15:05, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

--- I'm seconding Jcvamp's concerns; there are models competing in scholarship with DH, but it doesn't seem the claim that DH has been discredited/abandoned is supported. Why is there no Criticism section for the DH page? It seems there's a lot of this or that scholar believes this or that, and very little citing of evidence, or of arguments that can be tested. Gorkelobb (talk) 17:35, 28 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree. Also, there is a need for an article on the Fragmentary Hypothesis. TomS TDotO (talk) 20:08, 28 March 2017 (UTC)


 * If you feel the article is inadequate then edit it. Just some comments:

(1) The article jumps from Wellhausen to the contemporary situation because that's how history moved - Wellhausen was almost universally accepted until the 1970s and then the consensus quite suddenly collapsed. There were no intermediary developments. (2) Basing the statement that the consensus has collapsed on one author is quite acceptable in Wikipedia - it's a reliable source giving a piece of information. If you wish to oppose it you need to find another reliable source, of the same date or later, saying that the DH is still a consensus. (3) Saying that the consensus has collapsed is not at all the same as saying that nobody still follows the DH. It's probably the majority view in AMerica and Israel. But in Europe it has few followers. I hope this is clear from the article. (4) Information about modern proposents of the DH has not been removed. There's a subsection on the current version of the DH - but it's not exactly the same as Wellhausen's DH, e.g. it doesn't hold to his version of the dates of the four documents, and has different priorities when applying source criticism. (5) As for the absence of the reasons why various scholars have reached various conclusion, that's probably a valid criticism, but feel free to fill in the gaps yourself. (6) Re the fragmentary hypothesis, there's nothing on it because it doesn't exist. It did once, back in the very early 19th century, but not today.
 * Finally, please, edit the article. I do honestly thank you for allowing me so much freedom in the re-write, but I've finished, it's now common property. Go for it.PiCo (talk) 06:57, 3 April 2017 (UTC)


 * This article begins with the observation that there are three hypotheses, Documentary, Supplemental, Fragmentary. DH has its article here. SH has its article which is linked to. FH is nowhere. Later on, there are a couple of mentions of a revival of interest in the FH. TomS TDotO (talk) 09:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The root of the problem is that the article has the wrong title. It should be Origins of the Torah or Pentatuech or some such, but at some point in the Wikipedian Dark Ages someone, under the impression that the documentary hypothesis was the last word on the subject, started this article with this title. They were wrong, even back when Wikipedia was a baby the DH was already outmoded, but Wiki does tend to lag. Anyway, my suggestion, for what it's worth, is to retitle this as Origins of the Pentateuch]] and do redirects from separate articles on the documentary, fragmentary, and supplementary hypotheses. But I don't think there's much point in having articles on the supplementary and fragmentary hypotheses because, in modern scholarship, they don't exist. In America people still follow either a quite rigorous version of the Wellhausen hypothesis (that's Friedman) or the reformed version mentioned in our article. In Europe they follow the "block" model, which is quite different and melds fragmentary and supplementary approaches. The division between Europe and America is the reason we have people coming on here and complaining that the documentary hypothesis is still alive -they're American, and in America it is. But in Europe it isn't. PiCo (talk) 10:14, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Or one could look on this as: that there was an article on the DH, which is an important topic, whatever one thinks of the its present status; and there was a need for an article on the modern European Hypothesis. That need was filled by rewriting the article on the DH to be on EH: and that leaves the present situation with there being a need for an article on DH (and maybe even articles on other hypotheses of historical importance only, like FH). TomS TDotO (talk) 20:38, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Something like that. But DH is a sub-topic to the subject, which is the composition of the Pentateuch. Unfortunately, everyone knows that phrase (documentary hypothesis) and everyone thinks that's where it's at, when it's not.PiCo (talk) 06:14, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * One can add a hatnote on the article on the DH which directs one "this article is on the 19th century hypothesis of Wellhausen and its later developments. For the general topic of the formation of the Pentateuch, see Recent Pentateuch Hypotheses". Or something like that which can be informative to those who think that DH is where it's at today, rather than just leaving them perplexed about what is the DH.    TomS TDotO (talk) 12:31, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In regards to the invitation to edit the article, I did, and most of my work was undone. I'm not the type to claim ownership of an article, so, rather than just going and re-writing the article, I started this discussion.
 * Documentary Hypothesis is a sub-topic of 'origins of the Pentateuch', but enough can be said about it to constitute its own article. It's probably the most well-known of the hypothesis, there have been countless models based on it, and it was hypothesis that kick-started textual criticism of the Pentateuch. Regardless of anyone's opinion on it, the article should reflect the subject matter. I think that there can be other articles exploring other hypotheses (or even a single one if the resulting articles ended up being stubs), and a possibly article on the composition of the Pentateuch that gives a brief description of each and links to the corresponding articles (if the subject is too lengthy to be covered in the Biblical criticism article).--Jcvamp (talk) 04:32, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

To cut the craps: the Documentary Hypothesis has not been "discredited". It is just that it no longer is the only game in the town (i.e. in mainstream Bible scholarship). tgeorgescu (talk) 13:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Alternative titles
I think that this article could be improved if at its very beginning, it says that the Documentary Hypothesis is also sometimes known as the "Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis" or "JEPD hypothesis". I did Religious Studies A level (admittedly, years ago now - back in the 1980s) and these terms were used far more frequently than "Documentary hypothesis".Carltonio (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Quite a good website for this is: www.helpmewithbiblestudy.org/5system_moses/notes-dh6.aspx

This website gives the dates of K. Graf and Jullius Wellhausen, and also discusses fore-runners of their theory. Carltonio (talk) 19:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

And a good book which I used for my Religious Study "A" level was R.K. Harrison (1969)"An Introduction to the Old Testament." Carltonio (talk) 21:08, 25 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Although other terms used to be used more frequently, the more common name nowadays is the Documentary Hypothesis.--Jcvamp (talk) 04:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Linguistic evidence for pre-exilic J, E, P & Court History not addressed?
Have any scholars proposing late-dating addressed the linguistic evidence showing J, E, P, Court History and D were all composed in Classical (pre-exilic) Hebrew?

For example, see the R.E. Friedman chapter "Solomon and the Great Histories", p. 171 in Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period https://books.google.com/books?id=yYS4VEu08h4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=solomon%20the%20great%20histories&f=false

I didn't see this evidence mentioned on the DH or SH pages Gorkelobb (talk) 17:28, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Criticism Section?
Currently, there's no Criticism section for this article. It seems that would be appropriate; if there are flaws in DH such that alternative hypotheses have gained favor, it would be useful to have a section explaining some of the inadquacies of DH. This articles is sprinkled, including in the Introduction, with claims that DH is inadquate to explain the evidence. Where's the evidence of this? Gorkelobb (talk) 02:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Gorkelobb, I took the liberty of combining these two threads to make it easier to reply.
 * On using linguistic evidence to date Biblical texts: it's not easy. If it were, there'd be no disagreement about when they were written. SO the answer to your question is that it's not really possible to use language to date the texts. (Incidentally, the Court History is to be found in the Books of Samuel, which are not part of the Torah).
 * Criticism of the hypothesis: I thought the article did address that to an extent - is it not in the section on the collapse of the consensus? Put simply, the documentary approach can't explain why four authors (of the documents) were happy to invent material, but four redactors never changed a word, although they lived at widely separated points in time. That seems a bit incredible. And of course, there's also the problem of source criticism - does it really work? I think that's mentioned.
 * Anyway, if you feel the article is inadequate, look for answers to your questions in the sources in the bibliography, and if it still seems inadequate you can raise it again here.PiCo (talk) 06:41, 3 April 2017 (UTC)


 * PiCo Thanks PiCo. Re: Criticism section: i did notice critique of DH throughout the article, but in many Wiki articles there's a separate section summarizing critiques, with the main bodies of the articles explaining and presenting the evidence for the primary subject.


 * Linguistics: I'm most familiar with Friedman's work on DH - he charges that DH critics have not responded to the claims he and others have made for dating texts based on linguistic evidence, which he and others have repeatedly made in personal conversations, at seminars and in papers, articles and books. If scholars proposing other models have produced evidence that linguiistic evidence is not reliable for dating, citing these sources would be helpful. Friedman's chapter in Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period edited by Andrew G. Vaughn, Ann E. Killebrew, starting on page 171, cites a number of sources for the linguistic claims: https://books.google.com/books?id=yYS4VEu08h4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=solomon%20the%20great%20histories&f=false Friedman contends there are distinct differences in the various epochs of Israel's history, and the Wiki article on the Hebrew language explains this is the case. This is unsurprising - languages/writing evolve over time, the exile happened during a time period documented by archeological evidence, with corresponding changes in linguistic patterns - there was a change in geography and immersion in a radically different culture/society.


 * Court History; yes, it's not part of the Torah; i included it in my comment because the linguistic evidence allegedly shows pre-excilic dating for it, and because of theories that the Deuteronomist used it when creating their contribution to D, Joshua, Judges, 1 + 2 Samuel, 1 + 2 Kings. As of the 2nd ed. of Who Wrote the Bible? Friedman believes Dtr 1 and 2 was Baruch, influenced by Jeremiah, of course. After Josiah's death and while in exile, he rewrote parts of Kings to account for why history didn't work out the way they thought it would, even with Josiah's reforms.


 * Re: your comment "... the documentary approach can't explain why four authors (of the documents) were happy to invent material, but four redactors never changed a word, although they lived at widely separated points in time." Friedman's theory, as i understand it, has two redactors (individuals or committees, we don't know) - the redactor who combined J + E after the fall of Israel in 722, with P being written later as a response to it, because they wanted a work that advanced the theology and interests of the Aaronid priestly class, which J, E and JE didn't. The 2nd redactor combined JE with P. The JE redaction committee would have been working with already old and respected texts, and would have wanted to preserve essential elements - Friedman notes certain stories/details not preserved, which may have been judged unessential by the J and E sides of that committee. Regarding other stories/details, the J or E side would have demanded their inclusion in return for their support of the final work. By the time of the JEP redactor, these texts were old again and respected, and the redactor preserved as much as possible, inserting text to harmonize and promote continuity. These stories would have been read to public audiences regularly, so the religious authorities would be taking a risk to just invent new things out of whole cloth - but this was done on some occasions - introducing Deuteronomy, then slaughtering those who opposed it - Josiah was king, so he could do much of anything he wanted. And the Feast of Booths, which Ezra may have edited into Leviticus; Nehemiah says the People had previously been unaware of it, that the People knew they hadn't heard of it before. Friedman and other DH supporters don't claim the 4 separate texts were preserved unedited, just largely preserved.


 * In Who Wrote the Bible, pg. 11 Friedman notes 4 strengths of DH: "1. The convergence of many different lines of evidence. 2. Linguistic evidence for the dates of texts. 3. The narrative continuity of texts that are ascribed to particular authors. 4. How well the texts match the history of the periods from which they come."

Gorkelobb (talk) 19:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

This article is no longer about DH. Proposing revert to previous DH version, and this one be moved/retitled: 'Comparison of competing scholarly models on the Torah's origins'
This article is now a comparison and contrast of DH with FH (No article of its own yet, but worthy of repeated reference here as evidence of DH demise?) and SH, written in a way so as to undermine DH, portraying it as an antiquated theory that most scholars have rejected while promoting competing models, namely SH and FH. An article about DH would explain DH and give the evidence and arguments cited in favor of it. It could fairly have a criticism section, which could link to pages on SH and FH, as well as links to those pages in References.

The DH is worthy of an article: "The [DH] once held (and maybe still holds) the agreement of the majority of scholars. ... None of the alternatives has replaced it, not only because they have not won over a majority of the field, but because they remain insufficiently defended and because they have not dealt with the evidence that made the [DH} the standard for a century." (Friedman 2017 pp. 244-45) A DH article could have a lengthy section just on the history and evolution of the DH, referencing many different significant scholars and archaeologists whose work has contributed to the public body of evidence and arguments, developing our understanding of how and why the Bible was put together as it was. In Who Wrote the Bible, Friedman notes that there were questioners and critics of the Mosaic-authorship hypothesis even in ancient times - their observations paved the way for Wellshausen and others to look deeper. In modern times scholars who find DH the most compelling have spent a great deal of pages defending it and addressing evidence and arguments presented by DH critics, which has served to strengthen DH. Gorkelobb (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Antiquated is not the right word: as stated, in the US scholarship, DH still reigns supreme, not longer so in European scholarship. If you need a more authoritative view, see, there Peter Enns gives in a quite short text the needed nuance for understanding the role of DH: still the basic approach in universities, but in some aspects it has been superseded by newer views. Also, as our article claims, the various hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:21, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think DH is 'antiquated'; i think this article, as it's written, portrays it that way. This article is demonstrably slanted against DH, which may still hold the majority view among scholars. It would be interesting to see a poll and a literature survey worth citing. This article currently does somewhat explain DH, but i see very little laying out the arguments and evidence in favor of it, with critical/alternative views noted and cited. Rather, the article spends more text promoting the idea of debate, with DH losing/having lost. It repeatedly states that different scholars believe all manner of different things about authors and time periods, but there's relatively little of substance on actual evidence, lines of evidence and arguments. "in some aspects it has been superseded by newer views." - Tgeorgescu. Some scholars might believe this; it would be useful to know in what ways/why in the article. The lines of evidence cited by Friedman exclude a hard FH/SH, by the definitions of these hypotheses given in the article. These lines of evidence need to be addressed by DH critics. The linguistic evidence is particularly problematic for the late-daters, who form a great deal of the DH critics. As Friedman, has repeatedly pointed out, there simply isn't much response to the linguistic evidence by DH critics; it's surprisingly ignored in their publishing.

Gorkelobb (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Imho, the article has to say that for most of the 20th century DH was the mainstream view, and it still is a major view among scholars. As stated, the fact that other hypotheses may be valid does not contradict that DH is valid. But before suggesting radical rewriting of the article, I think you should try stuff like "change X to Y" and see if that works. Tgeorgescu (talk) 05:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with splitting the article, this on DH and a new one on Origins of the Torah of some such. Lot of work to change the redirects. Lot of work to write the articles, too. Gorkelobb, I think you're giving Friedman more importance than he actually has - his book didn't create much of an impact in scholarly circles. PiCo (talk) 12:11, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * PiCo - Origins of the Torah - please elaborate, this could be a useful article. It's a fact that there are competing explanations in scholarship (DH, SH, FH, etc) of the origins and debate over the evidence and arguments; such an article would be devoted to documenting evidence and what the differing views are, or what? Re: Friedman's written many books; i assume you're referring to Who Wrote the Bible, 1987, 2nd ed. published in 1997, scholar.google.com says it's been cited 653 times. I quoted him on this page from his 2017 book stating that there may still be a majority of scholars who accept the premises of DH - this is a falsifiable statement. Again, a literature survey would be useful, if anyone's got a link, please post. Also in that book he listed 9 lines of evidence supporting DH which stand on their own merit; see below. Gorkelobb (talk)
 * It doesn't matter if this very morning there was found indisputable proof that invalidates the DH — according to Wikipedia practice, DH (a notable topic) would still have its own article where it is the center of its own topic, not be removed or sidelined. DH, on its own, is a topic of interest, and should be treated, in its article, as it is, and not have all the weight in its article shifted toward the superiority of whatever hypothetically proven valid situation. In other words, Wikipedia isn't a collection of only currently known to be true topics, but all notable topics regardless whether they are known/believed to be true, known/believed to be false, or anywhere in between. If the weight of the content in the DH article is shifting toward other hypotheses, some of that should be trimmed down and moved to their own article so they can have an article of their own instead of parasitically leaching-on and smothering another. tl;dr: the above arguments about whether DH is now outdated, or valid, or whether other hypotheses are more accepted or not, does not matter, at all. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 09:38, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Imeriki al-Shimoni - I agree. Gorkelobb (talk • contribs) 16:46, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Tgeorgescu - I agree that it would be useful for an article on DH to show how the hypothesis has evolved and developed, and the state of current thinking in scholarship, including noting that not all scholars accept the basic premises of the hypothesis, let alone the details. I agree with Imeriki on how a DH article should be written. Please see my proposal for DH table of contents below - what do you think? Gorkelobb (talk)

Lines of evidence for DH
R.E. Friedman (2017, p245) assembled this summary of the individually compelling lines of evidence, which, as he notes, converge together in support of DH. This evidence cannot be accounted for by SH and FH; Friedman has repeatedly observed the failure of FH and SH supporting scholars to address this evidence in publication.

The [first five books of the OT] ... could not have been ... composed by one author: Gorkelobb (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) They are written in the Hebrew of several different periods ...
 * 2) They can be separated into sections that each use distinct terminology; words that the other sections rarely or never use. There are some five hundred of these unique occurrences of words.
 * 3) The sections with the different terminology also each consistently have their own particular depictions of the revelation of the name Yahweh, of the role of priests and of Levites, and of various sacred objects such as the ark, the Tabernacle, and the cherubs.
 * 4) There are stories that are told twice, called doublets.
 * 5) There are texts that contradict each other on events, on numbers, and on names of persons and places.
 * 6) When we separate the texts according to their distinct terminology, the doublets and contradictions 'disappear'. That is, they comfortably and consistently fit into one section or another.
 * 7) When we separate the texts along the lines of all these consistent points of evidence, the sections each flow naturally. That is: if one section interrupts another, then the next time that we find the one that was interupted, it picks up naturally where it left off before the intrusion.
 * 8) Each of these continuous, consistently worded, consistently depicted, noncontradicting, nonrepeated texts, which relate to the specific periods of Hebrew in which they are respectively written, also have unique connections to other parts of the Bible. ...
 * 9) We can trace each of these sections to particular times and events in Israel's history. We can see how those particular times and events influenced the respective authors to tell the story as they did.

Proposal: Table of Contents for DH article
Gorkelobb (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:18, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Introduction
 * 2) Explanation of the hypothesis with evidence and arguments for it, sub-sections for J, E, P, D and Court History, and debate/criticism noted/addressed/referenced as appropriate
 * 3) History of the hypothesis - including ancient skepticism of Mosaic authorship, Wellshausen, Noth, etc.
 * 4) Criticism of the hypothesis
 * 5) See Also - should have links to the J, E, P, D, Court History and other relevant pages
 * 6) Notes
 * 7) Refs
 * 8) Bib
 * 9) Links


 * I don't disagree with that, however, I think that we should preserve the information from the current version or move it to a new article. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:12, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There are a few issues with capitalization per MOS:HEADING.
 * The see also section should not link to content already linked in the article and since we plan to discussed JEPD, etc, linking it again is not appropriate per MOS:SEEALSO.
 * Any content in this article that directly relates to DH should be kept, and only brief mentions of other theories should me made. Instead, elaboration of those theories should be made either in the linked articles or in the references. I agree that we should stick to the content of this subject and not go into other subjects. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Walter. The outline looks basically alright, although it would make your job easier if you just used what's already there and refined it. A few points: the Court History has no connection to the DH; Noth isn't connected to it either (his fame is from his work on the Deuteronomistic History); there's no need to go into the rejection of Mosaic authorship, a simple sentence mentioning its demise would be enough. Anyway, good luck :) PiCo (talk) 05:36, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Reply to TgeorgescuWalter GörlitzPiCoI see this issue's come up before, on this talk page. It looks like there's basic agreement between four users here:

As you can see from my history, i'm mostly an occasional editor and not well-versed in the formatting rules. I've been visiting this DH article periodically as I research, and may contribute edits to the updated DH article and the new Origins of the Torah (or other name). Frankly, I was hoping some experienced wikipedians would be able to do this in a few clicks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gorkelobb (talk • contribs) 01:05, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Preserve the current article as a new page/article, to be developed (PiCo has suggested Origins of the Torah now and before; i think that would be a useful article, needs it's own table of contents - such an article could document the history and evolution of research as well as the current status of knowledge and debate)
 * 2) Rework the DH article on this page into one focused on DH, with a correctly formatted table of contents and article. There was an article on DH awhile back that PiCo had written, which I found useful when I was first learning about DH; reverting to that and editing it would be a simple way to start?
 * This is what Brittanica and Encyclopedia.com have to say about DH:

Gorkelobb (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) The Formation of the Canonical Torah https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/torah
 * 2) https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/Old-Testament-literature#ref73239
 * Don't use those two - the Britannica in particular is very poor-quality. Begin with this book, which you'll have to get from a library: Gertz, Jan C.; Levinson, Bernard M.; Rom-Shiloni, Dalit. The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America. Mohr Siebeck, 2017.PiCo (talk) 09:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Moses wiklink
In " According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses " the last stable version of the article links to Moses. , you piped the link to Mosaic authorship, which I reverted stating: "MOS:EGG, keep the target at Moses or wl entire 'dictated by God to Moses. I agree with your reply "but mosaic authorship isn't 'dictation. So, let's revert back to the latest stable version that links to Moses, shall we? The other option is to rephrase. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:02, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * No, you removed the pipe was removed by recently. I agree that EASTER should be honoured, but the last stable version was to Mosaic authorship. I suggest a change in wording to " According to tradition they were dictated by God and written by Moses ". Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:45, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I edited the Mosaic authorship link because it was in there twice in two successive sentences - "According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses ... As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah..." What I did was change the first Mosaic authorship link to a Moses link, and leave the second. As for Mosaic authorship being dictation, could someone please check this - I think the rabbinic tradition had at least two versions, in one of which God wrote the Torah in fire prior to creation, in the other he dictated it to Moses. Not a big deal either way, let's not spend too many words on it.PiCo (talk) 18:33, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I see now that the tradition was that God wrote the Torah before creation and then dictated it to Moses. The article is fine on that. But we do still have two links to Mosaic authorship in close proximity, which I think is not desirable.PiCo (talk) 18:49, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent point. I just removed the text since there's no need to link Moses anyhow and removing the WP:REPEATLINK was appropriate, although done in an unusual way (we usually leave the first entry, not the second, but in this case, it was an EASTER egg). Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:01, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

to answer your question,, included the traditional view of Mosaic authorship to the lede in a series of edits on November 11. To state that "Mosaic authorship has zero support" is not entirely true, but it's not supported in academic circles. With that said, the addition should be discussed from both sides. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:22, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The article itself discusses three models, so it would be natural for the lede to summarize that. There's nothing in the sources cited here that justify treating "some variant of Mosaic authorship" as a "model" on par with the other three. The unexplained edits from back in November take the lede away from both it's essential function of summarizing the article, and they move it away from the sources cited. Alephb (talk) 00:42, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * made a modification after you . Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:07, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * So I see. Now we're in the awkward position of having an article where the first paragraph is about the "four models", followed by a second paragraph that starts with "All three agree". Clearly more work of some kind is still needed. Alephb (talk) 01:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * If you wish to apply a rollback which removes my edit please proceed. Editor2020 (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, no. I'm sort of confused at the moment, and I will need to put on my thinking cap for a bit to figure out what's going on here before making any changes. Alephb (talk) 01:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I apologise for not joining the discussion earlier. My problem with the mention of the Mosaic "model" is that it's not on a par with the other three in terms of academic acceptance. Nor is it mentioned (at all) in the two sources given. But there's a deeper problem, which is that this article is supposedly about the Documentary hypothesis, but then discusses two others. There really needs to be another article on current approaches to the composition of the Torah, but I'm certainly not up to writing it.PiCo (talk) 00:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Re-write and new article needed
Frankly I find this article unsatisfactory. It says it's about the documentary hypothesis, but then it goes on to discuss two other hypotheses at length. A new article is needed. PiCo (talk)on the current state of Pentateuchal studies/origins of the Torah.PiCo (talk) 10:11, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree. I raised this concern myself. Even if the consensus of DH has 'collapsed', it's still a noteworthy part of textual criticism. I think that there should be an article on textual criticism of the Pentateuch that links to this one and discusses the various models, and that this article should focus on the Documentary Hypothesis itself. --Jcvamp (talk) 17:49, 15 April 2019 (UTC)It's still fair to talk about criticism of DH and even


 * I agree that "Even if the consensus of DH has 'collapsed', it's still a noteworthy part of textual criticism." AIUI, there is no consensus replacing the DH, so, for all of its flaws, it remains an important achievement of intellectual history. There is no going back to pre-DH assumptons. That being said, there is a need for an article on "The Current State of Pentateuchal Studies". I would vote against "Origins of the Torah" for several reasons: the Torah is a religious concept, it includes the "Oral Torah" also, and the current understanding of the Pentateuch goes beyond the five books. TomS TDotO (talk) 23:29, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree we need a new article, but "Current State of Pentateuchal Studies" sounds way too abstract and meta to me. I would probably go for something like "Composition of the Pentateuch," or honestly just "Composition of the Torah," given the WP:COMMONNAME guidelines. I understand 's concerns about that, but most people don't know what the hell the "Pentateuch" is, and we can have a hat-note disambiguation at the top of the article if necessary. Montgolfière (talk) 02:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. How many Christians know what the Torah is, other than something of Judaism?
 * Actually I would vote against the wording "Current state of ... studies". Better would be "Biblical philology" with a hatnote "About the composition of Genesis through Deuteronomy and beyond", or some such. How about something like, "Following the Documentary Hypothesis"?
 * Let's not let this die for lack of a perfect title. TomS TDotO (talk) 03:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I definitely don't want to let this die, but article titles do matter. "Biblical philology" is too broad. This article would specifically be on the topic of how the first five books of Moses were written and compiled together (and where/when this happened). We already have articles on Development of the Hebrew Bible canon and Development of the Old Testament canon, as well as on Torah and Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The article title needs to be clearly distinct from all these other articles.


 * Anything with the phrase "Hebrew Bible" or "biblical" in the title is too broad, since we are specifically talking about the first five books of Moses. "Pentateuch" isn't good both because of WP:COMMONNAME and because, as it stands now, Pentateuch just redirects you to Torah. So we've already decided that we're using the word "Torah" in article titles to refer to the books of Moses. "Following the Documentary Hypothesis" is way too abstract and meta. Most people aren't going to search for articles on the "documentary hypothesis," as if they already know what that is, they're going to search for "Torah" or "Bible" or "Tanakh" or "Pentateuch" or something like that. Of course the article will talk about the DH but it shouldn't be in the title. I would vote for either "Composition of the Torah" or "Origins of the Torah." Montgolfière (talk) 12:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I admit that I don't have any better title. As long as there are other articles "Compositon of ..." I would vote for "Composition of the Torah" as keeping with the pattern. (Also, "origins of" sounds rather presumptive.) I wish that there were more interest shown from others. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:11, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds like we have an agreement on the article title. I went ahead and started a draft at User:Montgolfière/sandbox/Composition of the Torah, just by copying the wikitext over from Documentary hypothesis and giving it a different intro paragraph. If you'd like to help out with it, by all means go ahead and start editing it. I was thinking the article should sort of start out by laying out the baseline facts on which there is consensus, and then have a few different sections discussing different theories. As long is there is no objection, I'd like to make sure there is a section specifically on the dating of the Torah (i.e. mentioning the oldest extant manuscripts and external references to the Pentateuch and how they establish a terminus ante quem, then discussing historical/linguistic/etc. reasons for possibly dating it earlier than that), as well as a modest section at the end on recent theories (by Russell Gmirkin, Niels Peter Lemche, Philippe Wajdenbaum, etc.) proposing a Hellenistic origin of the Torah. Montgolfière (talk) 15:28, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * If you'd like to help out with the drafting, by all means take a look at User:Montgolfière/sandbox/Composition of the Torah and make some edits. :) Montgolfière (talk) 11:44, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Creating new "Composition of the Torah" article
In line with suggestions by User:PiCo, User:Jcvamp, User:TomS TDotO and others, I've made a draft of a new article titled "Composition of the Torah," which surveys all the major pieces of evidence and viewpoints in modern scholarship concerning the writing and compilation of the Pentateuch. You can check it out (and edit it) here: User:Montgolfière/sandbox/Composition of the Torah. It includes a lot of material copied over from this article, plus a good amount of new stuff. The idea is to remove the material concerning hypotheses other than the documentary hypothesis from Documentary hypothesis and have it link to the new article. My draft is nearing completion, although I'd like someone to review it and add info about the fragmentary hypothesis. We should probably also add more info about different views on the dating of the sources. Montgolfière (talk) 14:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * New article Composition of the Torah is now up in the mainspace. Montgolfière (talk) 13:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think this is the best way to keep this article focused on the topic whilst retaining the useful information on Wikipedia.--Jcvamp (talk) 12:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Duplicate ref defs
I made a corrective edit to this page which seems to be controversial. The error I corrected was a duplicate reference definition, created when an editor modified some footnotes to use dashes while leaving some other footnotes to use hyphens. This is a pretty common problem when using templates like sfn, which rely on being able to create redundant definitions of the same name with identical content.

The other editor left a comment that he reverted my edit, but actually didn't do so. I posted a note to them about the problem to their talk page, but they removed it -- twice, in fact. Hopefully, this is really an unncessary tempest in a teacup as the addition of the mismatching definitions is clearly an error that needs to be fixed. -- Mikeblas (talk) 00:25, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * First, thank you for fixing the error.
 * Second, I left no comments, I left an edit summary.
 * Third, the error was introduced by the editor before I applied correct MOS:DASH usage. The content used hyphens and en-dashes. It was simply not visible until all the incorrectly used hyphens were replaced with en-dashes.
 * Fourth, it's your tempest.
 * Fifth, by singling me out as the perpetrator of the the error you violated WP:NPA which clearly states, "comment on content, not on the contributor."
 * Sixth, I am a person, not a collective. Using a second person pronoun(they) to describe me is wrong. There is an edit notice on my talk page that reads in part, "If you're here to tell me about an edit of yours that I reverted, please explain why it should be included on the article's talk page. I likely have the article on my watchlist and will see it eventually." If you don't want to read it, and leave the comment, feel free to expect me to delete it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:30, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Monarchial source, etc.: articles needed
(Disclaimer: I have no formal background at all in any of this.)

This article is about how the Pentateuch/Torah arrived at its final form. But didn't Samuel/Kings arrive at its final form by a somewhat similar process?

Just as the DH (and its variants) has proposed J, E, P and D sources, aren't there also proposed sources such as "Monarchial" and "Republican" (or "Anti-monarchial") for Samuel/Kings? Indeed, while Wellhausen is most famously linked to the DH/Pentateuch, I seem to recall also seeing his name linked for analogous work in Samuel/Kings.

It seems that some sort of article, even if only "start" class, for this would be useful.

Would someone like to have a go? Alternatively, if you can provide online pointers to suitable reliable sources, I might be able to try it myself.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:17, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Is there a Bible-edition that marks the different texts?
I'm no scholar, but if the scholarly consensus is, the texts are not one text, I want to look at at least a close approximation of the current consensus as an outsider. Can I, or this is some secret stuff the priests will never let you access? 89.134.17.89 (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The scholarly consensus is that the Pentateuch is, by far, not the work of a single person, let alone Moses. Everything else is disputed, so there is not going to be an agreed Bible according to the Documentary Hypothesis, or to the supplemental model, or to whatever. tgeorgescu (talk) 11:23, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Like @Tgeorgescu said, there's not exact consensus on the sources, but one version of this exists here: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Bible/King_James/Documentary_Hypothesis Huz and Buz (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The scholars seem to agree that there is some some editing from multiple sources, but equally disagree on the details. Here's another visualisation of the general idea: https://religion.fandom.com/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis#After_Wellhausen Feline Hymnic (talk) 19:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Quoted andat Ten Commandments page
Just a note that I use this quote and connected references at the Ten Commandments page. “The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now collapsed. This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters, Hans Heinrich Schmid, and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s.” IncandescentBliss (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * In title: Quoted at* IncandescentBliss (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Who said "the assured results of modern scholarship"?
As I read material on the documentary hypothesis, etc., I repeatedly find this phrase, often in quotes: "the assured results of modern scholarship." It was clearly pre-20th century. Does anybody know who originated it. It is quoted so many places, it deserves to be mentioned. But who wrote it first, or even second or third? Pete unseth (talk) 22:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Scholarly sources addressing the assumption of atheism in the DH.
Is anyone aware of any scholars that address the assumption that all authors and redactors were atheists? It may not be explicitly stated, but it's the only way the hypothesis works. If they believed that God dictated the Pentateuch to Moses, the idea that they would think to alter it, especially in a such a large way, seems unlikely. It couldn't have just been a small handful of non-believers either, it would've required a good chunk of the priestly class to either not believe in God or be willing to lie about what God has said. Ask someone of an Abrahamic religion who believes in inerrancy if they would accept a copy of the Torah/Bible/Quran that has been edited to tell a more cohesive story. Is there any source that addresses this? Blast335 (talk) 23:08, 8 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi. If you read your comment, you'll notice that you've assumed that a contemporary theology of "inerrancy" (not to mention a post-canonical knowledge of the bible) was known to the composers of biblical texts. Scholars do not assume that contemporary theologies were in vogue 2500 years ago, but rather that it is possible to believe in a god and still not be bound to the "inerrancy" you seem to have in mind. Anyway, I am not familiar with scholars who assume atheistic authors of scripture. ProfGray (talk) 02:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * "But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death." Deuteronomy 18:20. The Pentateuch claims to be written by Moses at the direction of God, which means that the Pentateuch explicitly claims to be the words of God and explicitly condemns to death those who say that God said something that God has not said. Inerrancy in its modern form may not have existed, but the idea that you don't change God's words is just the natural conclusion of passages like this. Blast335 (talk) 14:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You work deductively. Mainstream Bible scholars work inductively. See Jesus, Interrupted. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi again. You wrote "the idea that you don't change God's words is just the natural conclusion of passages like this." It's great if that inference feels natural to you, but that doesn't happen to be how historians understand the history of inerrancy and the handling of ancient Israelite literature. In any case, you might search Google Scholar (or other academic databases) and if you find a scholar of Biblical literature who addresses your question, then it'd be suitable for Wikipedia. Right? ProfGray (talk) 17:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)