The Documentary Hypothesis : A Composite Of Four Separate, Complete, And Coherent Documents

The argument over the material that is comprised of the first five books of the Bible and that Moses was the author is speculated to be hypothetical. The data that led scholars to arrive at the Documentary Hypothesis points out that there is no evidentiary support or documentation to back up the information claimed in the first five books. The Documentary Hypothesis includes repetition, shows similarities, reflects inconsistences,

To study Genesis in terms of its literary and historical content is not to say that we are in any way being irreverent in our reading of this part of the Old Testament. In other words, it is possible to read Genesis in both a spirit of appreciation for its position as the opening exegetical narrative of the Bible and as a document that reflects literary and historical realities and influences during the time when it was being written down. This paper examines some of the contemporary sources that influenced the two sets of writers who recorded the events of Genesis.

Unlike Mythology, narratives of the Bible are actual events that took place dating back to the beginning of time. The conception of The Holy Bible’s compilation started thousands of years ago in the land of Egypt. Initially, the Old Testament Scriptures were written in the Hebrew language, however, they were later translated to the Greek. At the onset of the New Testament writings, they were originally recorded in the Greek language. Forty men transcribed the voice of God, which resulted in sixty-six books of the Holy Bible. The Holy Scriptures explained the creations, formation of the world, God, God’s chosen people, sin, and the plan of salvation as well.

One of the fundamental questions that religions seek to answer is that of origin. How was man put on earth? Why and from what was he created? Who created him? What does his creation imply about the status of human beings? Some or all of these questions are answered by a religion’s creation stories. Every religion’s creation myths attempt to give solutions to problems present to that religious society. Because of this, each religion may have one or more creation stories, each of those different from one another in the questions they ask and the answers they give.

It is noted that the Elohist source was composed in the 800s or early 700s BCE. A priest is the only known composer of this specific source. The Elohist’s name came from their use of the Hebrew words Elohim. This is the word the Elohist source uses to refer to G-D. Elohim is known to be a very general term for G-D. This is in contrast to the personalized divine name: YHWH. The Elohist source is much less epic than the Yahwist source. In fact, the Elohist source solely appears in fragments throughout the Yahwist

Joseph M. Bolton RELS 103-02 Online Old Testament Studies Spring Semester 2011 Session E May 8, 2011 to July 2, 2011 The Old Testament TimeLine Creation & Primeval History The Creation: * God creates the Heavens and the Earth * God creates man in his image. *

The Documentary Source Theory states the belief that Torah was not written by Moses, but rather, four independent authors. (Ch. 1 Pg. 21 )

Although it is argued that rabbis began work on compiling the oral histories prior to the fall of the Second Temple, there was a definite resurgence in documentation of the important history and moral laws of Judaism after the fall. The most important of these written documents in the Jewish faith is the Hebrew Bible. This bible is comprised of the Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim, these three components combine to make up the Tanakh. The Torah is the core of the Hebrew Bible and contains the story of creation, as well as directions on daily conduct and religious rituals. The Nevi’im contains the stories of prophets. The prophets were people that spoke on behalf of God to the Jewish people. Lastly, the Ketuvim is comprised of mostly imaginative literature such as psalms, proverbs and poetry (Molloy, 294). Shifting the focus from priests and temple to a written work that is accessible to all regardless of location was the main adaptation of Judaism and certainly saved the faith. Although the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible is debatable, as some stories may have morphed from their origination to when they were assembled in writing, the bible still remains at the core of Judaism today.

These accounts describe, in some way a chaotic primitive state, the creation of mankind, the concept of “image”, and the division of primitive waters. Showing they have some astonishing similarities as well as important differences. Which brings us to our final question “what can we learn from these similarities and differences?” Well it is apparent that by these interpretations, that the Israelite worldview perceived God through the mythological lenses of the ancient Near East, in many aspects. Mainly because in this time people used religion, instead of science to describe why things are how they are, so it is no surprise that they might have stories with the same central theme but different ways of explaining how they happened. But by looking at the similarities between these accounts we are given a hint of the ancient Near Eastern worldview of explaining how things came to be, and how that impacted the themes of Israelite faith. Likewise, the dissimilarities show how different the Israelites viewed their deity; specifically the praise of Jahwist and his role over

Documentary Hypothesis, or JEDP Theory, is the view held by various scholars that the five books of the Pentateuch were really written by four different authors, and not Moses. This theory claims that afterwards various editors (called Redactors) blended the five books together and edited them to make them flow easier. Documentary Hypothesis is one form of higher criticism theology and is closely associated with Germany.

The Old Testament consisted of a set of documentations of religious scriptures, which were written by different people at various times for a different audience. Most of the Old Testament contains short stories of traditional stories and those stories of distinguished ways God established mankind. These stories are often told to the people in narrative form, which are guidelines often referred to as laws, songs, genealogies, and a list from these authors that composed the Old Testaments. The pressing of set documentation is essential because it is the framework for the lives of God 's followers. The term “Old Testament” originated as a means to express spoken traditions and God 's creation of that particular era. It is an method of philosophical investigation was designed to answer the why questions within these spiritual text documentations. These religious documentations consisted of four parts. These four sections retrieved from the Old Testaments are the laws, history, wisdom and prophecy. The laws are a rule of behavior enforced within the community. The rules are sometimes called “Torah.” When analyzing this Torah, these rules viewed within the first five spiritual books of the Bible. For example, in the first Torah in Genesis, it explains the creation, Noah’s Flood, Abraham and Isaac, and Joseph’s coats of many colors. However, the laws in Exodus were in regards to the going out. The going out took about 40 plus years, until the people led to

It is believed that the Pentateuch was compiled in the 5BCE from different sources. Coogan(2008:12) describes that Jewish tradition believed God revealed the Torah to Moses the author. Coogan(2008:20) challenges this perception by reporting that it was common place for authors of that area and culture to attribute their words to revered persons: Moses after all was the main character of the last four books. In the 17th century, the beginning of modern philosophy, men such as Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and Richard Simon called for freedom from presumptions with consideration needed to explain style and inconsistencies such as different names used for God (Coogan 2008: 13.) Scientific challenges including Evolutionary biology and geology also appeared in 17th Century, again threatening the traditional perception associated with the authority of the Bible (Coogan 2008:15.) It is now believed that a number of authors wrote the Pentateuch. To help explain this, theories such as the Documentary Hypothesis have been considered. Coogan (2008:18) describes this as the editing of four different ‘sources’ into blocks or interwoven together to form the

Genesis illustrates the way Biblical writers J (Yahwist), E (Elohist) and P (Priestly) drew upon the cultural and religious legacy of the Ancient Near East (ANE) along with its stories and imagery and transformed it to conform to a new vision of a non-mythological God and a monotheistic, superior religion.

Throughout the decades the traditional belief of the author of the first five books in the Hebrew Bible is believed to be Moses. The Pentateuch is the first division of the Hebrew Bible which consists of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Contrary to traditional belief, it is thought that the Pentateuch is a conglomeration of early written documents. The Documentary Hypothesis explains the issues of how and why the Pentateuch was written. The Documentary Hypothesis presents four source documents the Yahwist document, the Elohist document, the Deuteronomist document, and the Priestly document as the basis of the first five books in the Hebrew Bible that would later form the Pentateuch as the world knows it today.

To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It