Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jim West <jwest AT highland.net>]

At 10:50 AM 3/14/00 +0000, you wrote:

>
>1.  In general, do you accept the hypothesis?

I used to.  I no longer do.  The thesis has crumbled and disintegrated on
the rocks of careful exegetical work.  We can say that the documents of the
pentateuch (hexateuch- tetrateuch???) contain various sources- but that
there was a Yahwistic school and an Elohistic school and a Deuteronomistic
school and a priestly school press the evidence beyond the bounds.

>
>2.  If you answered "yes" to question 1, in what ways do your views differ 
>from the classical Graf-Wellhausen formulation of the hypothesis?  (E.g., 
>do you accept or reject a separate E source?  Would you date P prior to D, 
>as some do?  Do you agree with the recent trend of dating J late rather 
>than early?)
>
>3.  If you reject the hypothesis from within the historical/literary 
>critical school, with what would you replace it?  A "fragmentary" view that 
>sees numerous fragments being redacted together rather than three or four 
>main documents?  A "supplemental" view that sees one main source that was 
>supplemented with other material?  Other?

I think the narratives, stories, and traditions were redacted together by
some theologians during the post exilic period- and finalized in the
Hellenistic period.  I suppose that the nearest approximation I can come up
with is the notion that stories floated around in oral form for a very long
time and were collected by the story tellers and theologians and finally put
to paper (hahahah) during the post exilic period and ironed out in the
opening decade of the Hellenistic era.

>
>4.  If you reject the historical/literary critical enterprise altogether, 
>what is your view of the composition and authorship of the Pentateuch?  Is 
>it a unified composition?  What factors are most important in your 
>rejection of the Documentary Hypothesis?

Most of this answered above-- simply put the reason I reject the classical
documentary hypothesis is because it raises more questions than it answers.
To me, and in my very humble opinion, a theory should solve more problems
than it raises.  Occams Razor should be applied even to theological and
historical theories.

Best,

Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jim West, ThD
jwest AT highland.net
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest