Merged with Pentateuch I merged this article with Pentateuch there was nothing in the Pentateuch article that was not already in the Torah article so there wasn t much point in making the distinction If the article were to be recreated I would suggest that attempts be made to focus specifically on that term as opposed to the Torah podous Dates and Wellhausen I think this edit by should be pulled at least pending further consideration It must be noted that Wellhausen s knowledge of Jewish literature outside of the Bible was limited and led to his considerable confusion in event chronologies and dating Notably he supposed the receiving of Torah was dating from about 1450 BCE and that of monarchy established by Saul c 1020 BCE and the later prophets 9th to 5th centuries BCE Julius Wellhausen In the case of the first the date in Jewish chronology is established as 1313 BCE Saul is dated to 879 BCE and Isaiah during 619 BCE pp 33 47 53 Kantor These dates are based on Seder Olam Rabbah But a literalist reading of that book would give the destruction of the Temple in 423 BCE way after the accepted dates for eg the Battle of Marathon 490 BC or Xerxes invasion of Greece 480 BC so a wholesale new chronology for the entire history of Classical Greece would have to be found which nobody seriously believes is credible See Missing years Hebrew calendar So people who use the Seder Olam Rabbah dates though not eg chabad org generally adjust them to make the destruction of the temple match its date in the Babylonian records viz 586 BCE Adding that shift to Kantor s dates gives 1476 BCE for the Exodus 1043 BCE for Saul and 782 BCE for Isaiah compare Chronology of the Bible Modern views tend to revise the numbers down very slightly see eg Kingdom of Judah So Wellhausen s dates still match contemporary scholarship pretty much exactly Furthermore what is important for Wellhausen s history is the relative dates of these events Even if one prefers not to add the absolute date shift it makes no difference to the relative chronology of the events and the relative dates between them I don t think therefore that this can be seen as a substantive objection to Wellhausen I m not sure I have ever seen Wellhousen mentioned to have been familiar with Seder Olam You seem to be well versed so I need not explain to you how Greek chronology is rather problematic in itself What modern academics do with dates to support their individual hypothesis about record keeping in various ancient cultures is of course their province but this particular subject if it is to be consistent can not be adjusted to match sources outside of its innate culture or time never mind that many academics who postulate the chronologies you suggest are neither Jewish nor even monotheistic I note that the Missing years Hebrew calendar completely lacks citations so its hard to say who and how argues for the modern secular dating In any case I will make sure to include a link to that article and will try to fix the citations in it Chronology of the Bible article besides being likewise poorly cited has four other templates at the top confusing date June 2008 disputed date June 2008 refimprove date June 2008 totally disputed date June 2008 Cleanup date April 2007 however I will get to that also eventually This article is about the Torah Textual criticism is really not the place for it given the volumes of published works on the subject so I d like to keep that short My point with the dates was to illustrate that not all 19th century theories about the Torah were well founded Meieimatai The dates need not be scholarly They come from a source consistent with the method by which chronology has been established within the culture for which this text is held as the core source of social construct I d say that it has every right to adopt whatever dating it desires for its purposes Lack of faith by the academic textual analysts is not required however deletion of what constitutes cultural me