Talk:Documentary hypothesis/Archive 2

Untitled Discussion

I find the statement modern studies began in the 1800s to be arbitrary and therefore misleading. This study is centuries old. It's just in recent years the public as a whole has been less inclined to burn scholars at the stake. If I said, for example, that modern biochemistry began in the 1920s with the invention of the ultracentrifuge I might be able to defend the point, but as hemoglobins had been studied for decades earlier, I'd also be quite wrong. Dwmyers 22:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's a fair point. Maybe the article could say that Some critical study of the Bible began centuries before the modern era, but was sporadic and not generally accepted by the public at large. Modern critical study of the Bible began to be widely published and accepted in the 1800s. Or something like this. RK 02:45, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

More so, the recent partitioning by JeMa disturbs me. I know he excised material from the article on Dating the Bible which in my opinion belongs there. I ended up reverting the bulk of what I wrote that he edited. He's also divided the scholars into classes and in some cases gotten the classes wrong. For one, Rentdorff is not an oral traditionalist, but holds yet another view, and I'm not sure that JeMa's subdivisioning of scholars adds anything to this article.

In terms of scholastic division, this article still continues to suffer from identifying Baruch nee Benedict Spinoza as a Christian, as well.

Continuing on the problems of the latest revisions, the pre-JeMa orientation of this article had a clear historical narrative that bordered on "beautiful writing", and JeMa has changed that. History has been pushed to the rear of the article and the fact that people have been studying this problem for centuries is diminished as a result. It's as if the study is being "modernized" when that apparent modernization ignores the centuries of work others did.Dwmyers 15:13, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, my mistake. The moving of historical material "south" predates JeMa. But more to the point, the original orientation of this article had what amounts to an introduction and historical narrative, focused on Jewish scholars but still, you could watch the evolution of ideas through the time frame in the text. I think the article gave short shrift to people the original author didn't consider good Jews (this is why Spinoza has been lumped in with the Christians) but that could be fixed. What I think I'm going to do is remove the heading from the various scholars, and see if there isn't a way to show that Rentdorff isn't an oral traditionalist, because some editor thought he was... Dwmyers 15:30, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

One more point (nag, nag, nag, I know). The discussion of Bloom presents him as some kind of disciple of Friedman. It makes for a nicely told urban legend, but it diminshes Bloom and is probably factually incorrect. Harold Bloom isn't a biblical scholar, he's a highly regarded literary critic and I rather doubt he is one of Frank Cross's graduate students, as Friedman and Baruch Halpern are. Dwmyers 15:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Finally! I can enunciate the Spinoza problem more accurately. The problem is that the 2 paragraphs of text in Traditional Christian Scholarship aren't both about traditional Christian scholarship. The first paragraph is indeed about traditional Christian scholarship, but the second paragraph is more about 17th century scholastic views of the topic than about purely Christian views of the topic.

Section 2.2, Internal Textual Evidence, has been turned into a kind of orphan with the new reorganization. It's clearly out of place. Dwmyers 16:26, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oral traditionalists

The recent edits which place Rolf Rentdorff among the "oral traditionalists", are simply incorrect. Rolf is nothing of the sort. He believes in a more extensive breakdown of documentary sources, and not in that the souces have an oral character. Any reading of Blenkinsopp's book will show that clearly. Harold Bloom, likewise, is clearly not a student of Friedmann's, though the text seems to suggest that. Bloom is a literary critic, Friedman is a scholar in the area. Dwmyers 16:26, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The thing about Bloom's work, while he dwells on some points that were obviously available from Friedmann, is that he elaborates on the contributions of documentary hypothesis to literature. Where Friedmann discussed the Shakespearean qualities of J, Bloom's agreement breaks into several essays on how the documentary theory provides us with access to vibrant ways of thinking about J and the characters (s)he offers us. Many of the theological and doctrinal discussions that crop up with the combined JEPD texts (or JEDP, depending on who you're with), just don't come up when reading J alone. The 'Humanities,' of which Bloom is professor at Yale, seem to come to the fore. In many ways, it seems that Bloom was trying to stake a claim for literary critics among those interested in DH. I read that he was encouraging scholars to take a literary critic's approach to other religious texts, such as the Book of Mormon, for which empirical evidence other than the text itself is conspicuously absent--where the historical approach to biblical studies may never be available. This emphasizes his literary roots as opposed to biblical studies roots. Because Bloom does not "come from" the tradition of source criticism or documentary theory, but from literary roots harking to Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke, perhaps an early link to literary criticism as one of the scholarly traditions involved would help organize things when it gets down to Friedmann and Bloom? The way I read it, Bloom is not a literary critic in the sense that biblical scholars seem to use the word--as a sub-heading of biblical studies--but a literary critic because he has a long-standing career in literature, who has expressed an interest in biblical texts. So I agree that he seems out of place under Friedmann's heading. Other thoughts? Jerekson 05:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Bible Source book out

Richard E Friedman has a new book out, called The Bible With Sources Revealed. The ISBN number is ISBN 0060530693. It just came on sale on the 25th of November, and those who like this kind of scholarship may be interested in the book. It's on my Amazon wish list, for one. Dwmyers 18:46, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Removed paragraph

I have removed this paragraph, which was contributed by an anonymou user:

The hypothesis also contains a number of tenets which do not coordinate with archaeology. Archaeology has found little evidence supporting the hypothesis, although between 1960 and 2000 archaeologists have made discoveries that contradict tenets of the hypothesis. Periodicals such as Near Eastern Archaeology should be studied before drawing conclusions. Also important is Umberto Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis and The Composition of the Pentateuch; Eight Lectures and his fuller work on all of Genesis.

These claims are untrue. The vast majority of archaeologists and modern biblical scholars do not believe this. In fact, it is disingenuous to present Umberto Cassuto as someone who rejects the documentary hypothesis without clarification, because he in fact rejects the traditional Jewish and Chrisitan views! Cassuto rejects the idea that Moses wrote all of the Torah. He accepts that the current text of the Torah was assembled from more than one early source, but our anonymous contributor left that fact out. In any case, Cassuto's primary work against the most accepted form of the documentary hypothesis is old and rejected: it was written in 1941, convinced nearly no one, and has long been bypassed. RK

one "individual"

Hi! I think this sentence really needs to be reshaped:

"..are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual" - I think it would be proper to put "...rather than authored by one individual(or God)" or something like it. The Torah is held be Jews to be in fact authored by Hashem(God), and letter-by-letter copied by Moses(which I think is also the way the Chistians belive the 5 Books of Moses were written)

Don't individuals sign and date their conrtibutions here? PiCo 10:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know what this means?

This is the last sentence in the article:

In this they are correct insofar as they see the challenge to the early dating for composition and the problematic control of documentary materials for which the literary evidence appears harder and harder to maintain.

If anyone can work out what it means, I'd be raetful if they could edit it in a way that makes that meaning clear. PiCo 10:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The Most Humble Man

The section "Background to the hypothesis" includes this: "In Num 12:3 Moses is described as the most humble man on the face of the earth, which would be remarkably hypocritical if Moses himself authored the statement." But it seems to me that no one claims Moses to have been the author of that statement - certainly not the supporters of the Documentary Hypothesis, and not even the supporters of the traditional view, which is that God dictated the text and Moses merely transcribed it. Therefore, this comment neither supports nor detracts from the hypothesis that there were multiple authors, and I propose removing this item from the list. --Keeves 13:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

That's actually supposed to be a support for non-mosaic authorship, per JDEP construction.Thanatosimii 17:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Vatican claim of 90% acceptance

I'm removing the "DH has wide acceptance" assertion from the opening intro, along with its "Vatican 90% support" claim. (see second paragraph of current version as of 2006-04-04) The intro should present the theory, not endorse it with superlatives. By doing so so early on in the article, it projects a strong slant. Statements about its acceptance should go in an appropriate section of the article, perhaps "History of the hypothesis / The modern era".

I'd add it to such a section now, if not for that the justification for the wide acceptance claim (i.e. Vatican 90%) has problems:

• It lacks citation, despite the 2006-02-28 'needs citation' tag. I tried to find a support for this on the web, but could not. On the contrary, the best I could turn up was a quotation from the presumably Vatican-endorsed "Catholic Biblical Quarterly" (Jan. 1989, pp. 138-39 -- quoted by a GeoCities page) implying that such support was in fact waning: "It is widely known by now that the documentary hypothesis is in serious trouble, with no viable alternative yet in sight."
• Even if the Vatican did say such a thing, consider the details of the statement, "90% of academics in the field of biblical scholarship support it." Of course! I would fully expect that academics in the field of biblical scholarship would largely accept the hypothesis (or some variant thereof), for the same reasons that I would expect traditional, religious theologians to be largely against it.-- Nmagedman 15:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The old Catholic Encyclopedia appears to reject the documentary hypothesis in the article on the Pentateuch. Then in Biblical Criticism (Higher) it apparently expressly denies it:

In replying to the critical systems, conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant, re-enforce the argument from Jewish and Christian traditions by methods borrowed from their opponents; linguistic distinctions are countered by linguistic arguments, and the traditionists also employ the process of comparing the data of one book with another, in an endeavour to bring all into harmony. Not the methods so much as the conclusions of criticism are impugned. The difference is largely one of interpretation. However, the conservatives complain that the critics arbitrarily rule out as interpolations or late comments passages which are unfavourable to their hypotheses. The advocates of tradition also charge the opposite school with being swayed by purely subjective fancies, and in the case of the more advanced criticism, by philosophico-religious prejudices. Moreover, they assert that such a piecemeal formation of a book by successive strata, as is alleged for many parts of the O. T. is without analogy in the history of literature. The Catholic criticism of the O. T. will be described in a separate section of this article.

[. . .]

The Biblical Commission, whose decisions have now the force of acts of the Roman Congregations, declared, 13 February, 1905, that the fallibility of implicit citations in the Bible might be admitted, provided solid arguments prove that they are really citations, and that the sacred writer does not adopt them as his own. The Commission conceded on 23 June, 1905, that some passages may be historical in appearance only, always saving the sense and judgment of the Church. On 27 June, 1906, the commission declared that the arguments alleged by critics do not disprove the substantial authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses. This decision has necessarily modified the attitude of such Catholic writers and teachers as favoured in a greater or less degree the conclusions of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. The decree of the Inquisition "Lamentabili" (3 July, 1907) and the encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" (8 September, 1907) reasserted against the Modernists the sound, Catholic principles to be followed in the study of Sacred Scripture.

Now the that encyclopedia is older (c. 1913), and the "official" position may have changed, but I likewise could not find any indication that it has by a Google search. --MonkeeSage 07:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the 'Official' Vatican position is but The Interpretation Of The Bible In The Church may be a good starting place, it is an official Vatican document on the suject from 1993. My reading of it is that the documentary hypothesis could be useful when considered along with other approaches. --John Bracegirdle 10:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

informal request for comment

Would people who regularly follow/contribute to this article please look at Yahwism and the talk page, where I express my concerns? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

"hypothesis"?

if applying textual criticism to the pentateuch is the "documentary hypothesis", what is the alternative view called? "ipse dixit hypothesis"? "Mosaic authorship hypothesis"? Much is made of the hypothetical nature of any conclusion drawn from textual criticism. To any philologist this goes without saying, therefore the term appears to be coined by whoever believes to own an a priori truth that cannot be inferred from the text. Since Mosaic authorship is not even claimed in the text itself, I would be rather interested in the origin and prevalence of this belief. Under "Traditional Jewish and Christian beliefs" we read about the belief that God revealed his will to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is of course taken directly from the text, and refers to the 10 commandments. It is unclear what this has to do with the question of authorship of the pentateuch, except of course for the passage detailing the 10 commandments themselves. Nowhere do we document the origin of the belief of Mosaic authorship, we only read about people doubting it. That makes it a complete strawman, a belief only postulated to be gloriously debunked, without evidence that any scholar ever even insisted on it. I have no doubt that there are some hinterland fundamentalist Christians or Jews who have this notion, but that hardly makes it something to be discussed as a hypothesis in a scholarly debate. Unless we can quote "traditional" scholars who argue for Mosaic authorship, this article should be rephrased as dealing straightforwardly with "pentateuch philology" and focus on J,E,P,D vs. other reconstructions rather than pretending that there is a controversy between two hypotheses. dab (ᛏ) 07:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Any scholars who disagree with a pet interpretation of an allegedly "neutral, driven-only-by-the-facts, having-no-biases" group of scholars are automatically "fringe-element" and not worthy of note because they are just making a priori judgments, not dealing with the facts (which of course require no interpretation and thus no prior judgments, because they are just "brute" facts that everyone knows [and this is not an a priori judgment about the nature of facts or rthe process of human knowing! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!]). Pshaw.

Is there any tradition or precedent for asserting Mosaic authorship as the "traditional" view?

The term "the book of Moses," found in II Chronicles 25:4; 35:12; Ezra 3:2; 6:18; and Nehemiah 8:1; 13:1, surely included the Book of Genesis and also testifies to a belief in Israelite circles in the fifth century B.C. that all five of the books were the work of Moses. Ben Sira (Ecclus. 24:23), Philo, Josephus, and the authors of the Gospels held that Moses was intimately related to the Pentateuch. Philo and Josephus even explicitly said that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34:5-12. Other writers of the New Testament tie the Pentateuch to Moses. The Jewish Talmud asserts that whoever denied Mosaic authorship would be excluded from Paradise. (H. G. Livingston, The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment [Baker, 1974], pp. 218-219).

Harrison, Kaiser, Gordon, Archer, Van Seters, Van Dyk, Wiseman, (G. F.) Wright, Allis, Orr, Merrill, Garrett, Livingston, Unger, and Kitchen (among others) have all argued either for Mosaic (or largly single-source) authorship/historical redaction, or against radical redactionist/form-and-source critical hypotheses like Graf-Wellhausen. These are significant, relevant views, and there is no reason to exclude them from Wikipedia. » MonkeeSage « 09:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Link farm

In the past few days the number of EL has grown. Do you think we can trim it back down again?Andrew c 00:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Some?

"some historians and academics"? It's probably closer to most. The Documentary Hypothesis appears to be the consensus even among competing historical and academic Biblical scholars.--LKS 5/29/06

The hypothesis was the consensus for a while, but it's falling quickly. I'm not an expert in the field, but apparently there's this problem with the five part suzerainity covenants used in the Bible, which would be 3 parts if it were composed in a post-assyrian timeframe.Thanatosimii 17:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

How Be'ersheba got its name

The article says that there are accounts on the Bible for:

• the three strikingly similar narratives in Genesis about a wife confused for a sister;

(...)

• three different versions of how the town of Be'ersheba got its name;

Two Beersheba naming versions actually come from the wife-sister tales involving Abimelech. The other tale, however, involves the Pharaoh, and does not include the naming of Beersheba. What is the third account for how this city got its name? If there IS a third record, it should be added to the Beersheba page, and if there isn't, I think this comment should be excluded from this page. --Chalom 14:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Delisted GA

This article did not go through the current GA nomination process. Looking at the article as is, it fails on criteria 2b of the GA quality standards in that it does not cite any sources. Most Good Articles use inline citations. I would recommend that this be fixed, to reexamine the article against the GA quality standards, and to submit the article through the nomination process. --RelHistBuff 09:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)