Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Shoshanna Walker <rosewalk AT concentric.net>]

What's P, J, E, JE, and D?

And which traditional Jewish scholarship "recognized that the Torah 
as well as other books of the Hebrew Bible were composite and had 
redactors"?  Names, sources, please

Shoshanna



The question of author(s)/unity of the Torah is a very interesting one.
I know of a computer assisted study in ZAW 1982 by Yehuda Radday et. al
called Genesis and the computer (something like this anyway)who found,
that in Genesis P was the only "source" that differed. According to the
study there was no justification for the discreteness of J and E. I think
later Radday argued for the unity of Isaiah, at least that was what the
computer "thought". I also think scholars would be hard pressed to argue
that D comes from the same hand of JE and P.
However, in the academic world I think most would agree that the Torah and
all other books are composite to a grater or lesser extent - regardless of
whether they find the Documentary hypothesis convincing or not. I also
think scholars would be hard pressed to argue that D comes from the same
hand that wrote JE and P.

Even traditional Jewish scholarship recognized that the Torah as well as
other books of the Hebrew Bible were composite and had redactors.
They did this, however, from a very different perspective than Wellhausen.
So here is the question posed by Kugel: given that already in the middle
ages scholars had come to this realization why did "Wellhausen" not
flourish in 11th century Spain? Any thoughts?

Brachot,

Leeroy

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