I have been discussing the sources of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), sometimes also called the Torah or the Law of Moses. So far I have explained the kinds of literary problems that led scholars to realize that these books were not the writing of a single author, but represented a combination of earlier written accounts. The traditional “documentary hypothesis,” as it is called, was most famously formulated by the nineteenth-century German scholar, Julius Wellhausen, who, along with some of his predecessors, called the sources J E D and P.
This was the standard view of the matter back when I was doing my PhD in biblical studies way back when. Here is how the hypothesis worked, in nuce. (Again, this is taken from my textbook on the Bible).
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- The J source was the first source to be written. From it comes a number of the stories in Genesis and Exodus, including, for example the second creation account and the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3. The source is called J because its preferred name for the deity is Yahweh – which in German is spelled Jahweh (and so, it is named after the first initial of the deity’s name). It is widely thought that this source was written in, and based on oral traditions in, the southern part of the land, that is, in Judah (which is a second reason it could be called J). The reason for this location: many of the traditions…
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This is too good not to share on my Facebook page.
Well, I’ve learned some new things this week; the Pentateuch was written by more than one author and Moses was most likely not a real person.
Is there anyone in the Pentateuch that scholars believe was a real person?
Well, certainly the Pharaoh of Egypt!!!
I don’t understand why some scholars think it was P who amalgated the sources, since the P source itself contradicts so much in J, E, and D. I think Friedman is right when he says that P was written to supplant JE. I also don’t understand why some believe that E never existed, even though there are passages where it is clear that more than one source is present (e.g., the burning bush or the sale of Joseph), and one of them bears all the hallmarks of J, while the other does not have any hallmarks of P. Probably it’s because E is so fragmented, but I’ve always thought that this is because it may have been almost identical to J in places, and the JE redactor (who lived in the south) kept the J version.
Very interesting comment. I wonder what Bart’s reply would be.
My view is that the data are extremely complex once you start digging down deep, that no hypothesis is free from complications, and that different scholars have found different solutions to be “the least problematic,” which is all you can hope for in a situation like this. But some of these precise issues are what have led scholars to come up with mind-bogglingly sophisticated attempts to establish all the sources behind the Pentateuch.
Every so often – here, and a couple posts ago – the posts don’t show up correctly on my screen. The Comment box is *extremely* far to the left (sometimes, though not now, making it hard to type in it). And a worse problem: there’s no listing on the right with links to other posts.
We’ll look into it.
Just to add a couple other data-points here:
— I see this issue as well (occasionally). Most recently in the article “Literary Tensions in the Creation Account of Genesis”
— It occurs both when I’m reading the articles on my iPod and in Firefox on my Windows machine (i.e. it’s not simply a “mobile-device” issue).
— In the normal case, following a comment, Bart’s (or any subsequent) Replies will be “indented” On the pages with this display bug this indentation does not occur.
— To be specific: Not only are the “previous articles” missing, but the entire right-hand column is missing (including “Archives”, the list of books”, “Search by Keyword or User Name” and its search-box, etc.)
(If I had to make a complete wild guess, it sounds like a DIV isn’t being closed.)
Anyway, hope there’s something helpful here.
Also, the “date box” appears on the page, but is in the wrong location.
That is, the box near the top which, on the page, reads contains the text:
2
Jul
2016
…and contains the current number of comments.
Sorry. Make that “…reading the articles on my iPAd…”
Mine does that sometimes. It’s always random!
Wil-what hardware and browser is this happening on?
An iMac desktop, using Safari. But Steven sent me a copy of his explanatory e-mail to Bart, in which he said:
“This happened once before. A person can’t insert the [private] tag in a paragraph with a bullet point indentation, where the combined attributes inadvertently causes the side panel to disappear. Once I removed the bullet point annotation from the “join the blog” comment in red and moved the tag into it, the page was restored.”
All that means to me is that If we report the problem, Steven can fix it!
Not sure what any of that meant, but good idea, I’ll email Steven next time!
As an aside, I understand that there is precious little evidence for the existence of either David or Saul and none at all for Solomon. In fact the period when Solomon was supposed to have existed is singularly devoid of archaeological evidence for a palace culture.
Another related topic is the hypothesis that the Israelites were Canaanites as there is no evidence of intrusion during the time that the Hebrew culture supposedly supplanted the indigenous population.
What are your views?
Solomon (a son of David) could have existed without a palace culture. He simply wasn’t the amazing monarch the Bible paints him as being.
Your tremendous productivity continues to completely amaze me.
For me, the most puzzling and intriguing part of the “Old Testament” is in Exodus chapter 34 where God tells Moses that He (God) is going to write “the words that were on the first tablets'” and then, instead, writes a very different set of Ten Commandments. What do scholars make of this?
They tend to think that this Ten Commandments (which are not ten commandments) come from a different source from Exodus 20.
Are the J and E sources taken to be individuals, or are they varied enough in style to be collections of literature from writers who saw things the same way(“synoptic”?:-) And do you think Deuteronomy was really “discovered,” or was that a cover story to legitimize a new enforcement of monotheism (some say a patriarchal assertion of the elimination of Ashera?)
They are sources written by individuals based on earlier oral traditions.
In Genesis 6:3 before the flood, God decides “My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” which I always took to mean peoples lifespan will be 120 from then on, but it always seemed odd to me, as people still continued to live longer. Then I found the Hebrew midrash Safer haYashar (often translated as the book of Jasher) that around the same point in the story God gives the people 120 years to stop being evil or he will destroy the earth. The people keep being evil except Noah, so he does the flood thing. Now I wonder was that what the author of Genesis meant?
Yes, I think God is saying that the human race only has a few generations to shape up or they’ll get wiped out. They preferred getting wiped out….
But wasn’t “the flood thing” somehow related to the supposed evil deeds of beings who weren’t normal humans at all – the giant progeny of humans who’d mated with angels? (I don’t, of course, believe such creatures really existed.)
Yup — read the opening of Genesis 6.
I’d like to mention here a specific piece of evidence for the JEDP hypothesis that I’ve always found interesting.
This involves the “Doublets” that we’ve been discussing. In particular, the two versions of the Flood story –and, specifically, the number of animals taken aboard the Ark.
1] The more commonly mentioned number is “one pair” of every animal (Gen 6:19-20). But Noah is also instructed to take “seven pair of clean animals” and “one pair of the unclean animals” (Gen 7:2-3).
2] If we follow most traditional commentators and use the first number (“one pair”) then this leads to a rather serious problem: What does Noah sacrifice (Gen 8:20-21)?
That is, if there are only “one pair” of each animal, then the sacrifice by Noah would wipe out the species in question.
But here the JEDP Hypothesis comes to rescue.
3] That is, the collecting of “one pair” of animals is almost universally assigned to the “P” source. While the “7+1 pairs” (as well as the sacrifice by Noah) is assigned to the “J” source.
4] More importantly, the “P” source, as Dr Ehrman has noted, is associated with the Priestly party in later Judaism. In particular the “P” source repeatedly stresses the importance of Aaron, from whom it claims its descent.
Of particular importance here, is the fact that if one follows the account of the “P” source throughout the Pentateuch, the *first* recorded sacrifice is performed by Aaron.
5] In other words, if we read the “J-version” of the Flood story, then Noah has available the “7+1 pairs” of animals, and so can safely performs a sacrifice.
However, if we read the “P-version” of the story, then Noah does _not_ preform a sacrifice; so taking “one pair” aboard the Ark is sufficient.
Thanks!!
In a recent post (I forget which one), you responded to a question by saying Saul probably existed, David and Solomon certainly existed, and all other “Old Testament” characters are probably legendary.
Given that Solomon existed, do you believe the first Temple really existed? Is there archaeological evidence to prove it?
Yes, in my opinion there was probably *some* kind of temple; whether it dates back to Solomon is hard to say. No, there is no archaeological record of it that survives.
Many scholars have thought that the J source was written during the United Monarch
Do you think there was ever a United Monarch?
In broad terms, yes.
What are your thoughts on why the editor would sometimes have the accounts separate and other times weave them together?
I think that’s just how editors often do their work.
You taught me a new word: nuce. You don’t mention that some scholars (I can’t cite any names right now) date all the sources later than the time frame you laid out. Do you think there is any merit to a post-exilic dating?
Yes, a lot of merit; but I don’t have the expertise to evaluate all the intricate arguments. My former colleague John van Seters was a huge proponent of a post-exilic date for all the sources
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
Do we have any way of knowing what the logic was behind the current combination of sources as they relate to the creation story? Especially since they seem entirely different? I have my theories… Thanks!
Simplest theory: the editor knew them both, liked them both, and wanted to include them both.
Forgot one other thing! Did the Hebrew people ever have a concept of a Trinitarian godhead? Is it possible that the editor who combined sources into one Book of Genesis had a trinitarian leaning?
No, they didn’t.
You provided a great summary of JEDP, but I cannot see any personal critical thoughts on this issue. To hold that Moses wrote the entire Torah seems far-fetched. So do you personally believe the JEDP is the “most likeliest” of explanations i.e. its what you believe as most truthful?
My sense is that it is *basically* right, even if the reality was actually more complicated than simply four identifiable sources.