Talk:Documentary hypothesis

message: This article says, "Scholars estimate the date of composition as c. 950 BCE, not long before the split of the united Kingdom of Israel into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah in 922 BC, making it the oldest source."
But the article on Genesis says, "This leaves the question of when these works were created. Scholars in the first half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist was produced in the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, and the Priestly work in the middle of the 5th century BC (the author was even identified as Ezra), but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist was written either just before or during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after."
So which do scholars generally hold, 950 BCE or the 6th Century? Kevin Corbett (talk) 23:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: These days, 6th century - but bear in mind that there's a lot of discussion and the documentary hypothesis itself is not all that widely held. Best look up the books in the bibliography. PiCo (talk) 23:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradictions between articles 

message: I am editing the following because of gross inaccuracies or otherwise easily explainable situations:
:"Exodus 38:26 mentions "603,550 men over 20 years old included in the census" immediately after passage of the Red Sea, while Numbers 1:44-45 cites the precisely identical count, "The tally of Israelites according to their paternal families, those over 20 years old, all fit for service. The entire tally was 603,550", in a census taken a full year later, "on the first [day] of the second month in the second year of the Exodus" (Numbers 1:1);"
:In actuality, the first mention of the census in Ex 38:26 occurs after the construction of the tabernacle (which Numbers agrees with), some 24 chapters after the red sea crossing.  I have kept only the fact that the same census is mentioned in two different books.
:Moses' wife, though often identified as a Midianite (and hence Semitic), appears in the tale of Snow-white Miriam as a "Cushite" (Ethiopian), and hence black;
:Moses' Cushite wife in Numbers 12 is unnamed and most likely refers to an extra-biblical event, and thus should not be confused with his Midianite wife Zipporah from Exodus 2, judging from gross disparity in chronology (i.e. why would Miriam and Aaron choose to bring up the issue of a foreign born wife many years after the fact?).  At the time, it was not out of the ordinary for a man to have multiple wives.  
Clown (talk) 01:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, Clown. Despite all the contrary evidence, however, I don't think the secular administrators with this page on their watch lists will let us make critical edits. Wekn reven i susej eht Talk• Follow 15:26, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repetitions that don't conflict 

message: "...  and consensus for the change with other editors."
I don't care what convention is used, whether BC or BCE. I do object to someone making a change in violation of standards. I'm not going to give in to the temptation to continuing an edit war. I'm giving you the chance to stand up for your opinion. But if you don't want to gather a "consensus for the change" .... TomS TDotO (talk) 13:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. I agree that it is preferable to have the article use a uniform style. As the article stands now, however, there are only two places where the BC style is used, under Documentary hypothesis#The beginnings of the documenary hypothesis, where it says, "the reign of Josiah in 621 BC"; and under Documentary hypothesis#After Wellhausen, where it says, "in the first millennium BC". Elsewhere, there are many uses of the BCE style. Just on the basis of numbers, it would superficially seem preferable to change the two cases of BC to BCE. As I said, however, I don't care, but unless there is some reason not to, I suggest that these two instances be so changed. What I do strongly feel about is that we try to keep cool about it, and let's discuss it before acting unilaterally. I realize that some people feel strongly one way or the other, but let's not attribute bad faith to the other side. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know why, but I just happened upon this old discussion, and I see that no one is interested in it. The article is still a mix of styles, and it isn't going to change unless someone does something. If no one show any interest in a reasonable time, I'm just going to go ahead and change all the "BC"s to "BCE"s.  TomS TDotO (talk) 19:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

text: I note that a few BC's remained. According to long-standing MOS:ERA, I changed them to make the usage in this article uniform. TomS TDotO (talk) 06:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  BC/BCE 

message: The text says that Friedmann and Kaufmann argue for P dating from Hezekiah instead of Post Exilic. 
With Post Exilic P the religious laws in the text evolve as follows
#Ritual Decalogue (J)/ Covenant Code (E)
#Deuteronomic Code (D)
#Implications of the Book of Ezekiel
#Holiness Code (H = early layer of P)
#Priestly Code (later layer of P)
but if you put P in Hezekiah's time it becomes (leaving out the priestly code and ezekiel):
#Ritual Decalogue (J)/ Covenant Code (E)
#Holiness Code (H = early layer of P)
#Deuteronomic Code (D)
So where do Friedmann and Kaufmann put
*Implications of the Book of Ezekiel
*Priestly Code (later layer of P)
in relation to the Deuteronomic Code (D), and how is that rectified with the date of Ezekiel?
Newman Luke (talk) 16:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early date of P - consequences for Ezekiel? 

message: There is no mention in the Amber Witch Hoax article to DH or even the idea behind DH.  This is weaselly link to suggest that the DH is also a hoax.  These topics are not related.  — fcsuper (How's That?, That's How!) (Exclusionistic Immediatist ) —  17:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The Amber Witch#Background has a discussion which begins: "The author's intention had been to set a deliberate "trap for the disciples of David Strauss and his school who pronounced the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a collection of legends from historical research assisted by internal evidence".[8]" I am not defending the idea that the Amber Witch Hoax was an appropriate attack on the DH (and certainly not that the DH is itself a hoax), but merely that it is a mildly interesting topic in the history of the idea, at least worth passing reference. TomS TDotO (talk) 19:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody is interested in The Amber Witch? TomS TDotO (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The Amber Witch Hoax was an attack upon scholars of the Historical Jesus, not upon scholars of the Documentary Hypothesis  Revanneosl (talk) 13:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

text: They are all source critics.   When source critics blow it on one subject, it casts doubt on the others.  100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Amber Witch link itself is weasel 

message: Please see my proposal here and comment/vote.  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:46, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to redirect [[Ritual decalogue]] to [[Covenant code]] 

message: Are we really supposed to take seriously a reference which supports Mosaic authorship by saying that with God all things are possible? TomS TDotO (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Lacking any positive support for this reference, I'll revert the addition. TomS TDotO (talk) 16:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support for Mosaic authorship 

message: This sentence says: "Whybray's questions pertaining to the documentary hypothesis, however, have been largely answered[citation needed] by Joseph Blenkinsopp." Then we have a whole para about Blenkinsopp's answer. Much as I admire Blenkinsopp, this really needs a source - does anyone know what we're referring to? PiCo (talk) 11:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blenkinsopp book? 

message: We currently have this figure on the DH view re the development of the Torah:
It's someone's personal work, and I think them for the effort they've put into it, but I believe it's a little bit not quite right in places. It puts J and E side by side, as if they came from the same time, when the theory holds that J was slighly earlier; and it seems to have D earlier than P, when the classic view has them the other way round. It also has a set of boxes for the Deuteronomistic history, which is really a separate if related issue. I wonder if anyone  feels like either revising it or finding a free source we can use? PiCo (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Figure 

message: There was a large section of this article that was deleted.  The opinions of many Bible scholars were wiped out and replaced with this pious statement: "but none doubted the truth of the tradition."  But this claim is simply incorrect. 
That is why it is important to restore the deleted section. Critical academic study of the Torah's origins began in classical rabbinic Judaism, what some call Orthodox Judaism, centuries before Wellhausen - and as the sources quoted herein state, the existence of such views are explicitly recognized by Orthodox rabbis.  In fact, the sources given within the article name an entire book on the academic, critical text study of the Torah, Bible and rabbinic literature from an Orthodox Jewish point of view.
RK (talk) 17:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The "pious statement" is a quote from Gordon Wenham, a respected (and not fundamentalist) scholar. Wenham was talking about the difference between traditional and modern attitudes - before Astruc scholars didn't question or care who wrote the bible. You mention early Jewish scholars, but people like Ibn Ezra are very few and far between - the exception, and a very rare one. PiCo (talk) 10:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restoring a missing section of this article 

message: Today, the vast majority of Bible scholars believe that the Torah is a composite document, edited together from a variety of earlier sources. (This view is also accepted as correct by all rabbis and scholars in non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, and by many priests and scholars in many forms of Christianity.) Why would anyone believe this?  Shouldn't this article describe the reasoning behind the people who hold this point of view?
In point of fact, this article used to do just that.  There was a section, Major areas considered to support the documentary hypothesis include.  Just as importantly, this article used to note that: "Many portions of the Torah seem to imply more than one author. Doublets and triplets repeat stories with different points of view." This is a hugely important point.  While at one point this article featured these sections front and center, for years, a while back somone cut out this section, leaving the article hanging in mid-air, presenting complicated views without summarizing the major textual reasons for people having such views.  As such, I have restored this section. RK (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've cut this out, not because I disagree with it (I agree), but because I believe it to be unnecessary. The idea that the Torah is a composite is universal - there's no need to argue for it. PiCo (talk) 10:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I strenuously disagree.  I have worked in general education and religious education, and I can tell you that this impression is incorrect.  A great many Christians deny the essentials of the documentary hypothesis, possibly the majority of Christians in the world! And so do many Jews, including nearly all of the Orthodox Jewish community.  Most people I have discussed the Bible with, in fact, simply assume that the Torah is more or less directly from Moses, even if they are agnostics or atheists. RK (talk) 16:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: The heart of this article was cut out: Now restored

message: The latest edits to this article, Documentary Hypothesis, removes the summary of reasons that scholars believe that the Torah is a composite document. I am concerned, because a few years ago, some Orthodox Jewish, and traditional Christians, made these same types of edits - to make it look like the documentary hypothesis is less likely to be correct, and that fundamentalist teachings were more likely to be certainly true.
Because of the huge amount of material deleted by PiCo, all that is left of this article are various ideas that the Torah is composite...but without a good summary of the logical reasons why.  I think that it is important for us to summarize the logic and textual evidence. If we do not have this, then I can assure that this article will be (mis)used to "prove" that there isn't a serious case to accept that the Torah is composite. Rather, it will (as it has been before) be used to "prove" that the Torah is unitary and (mostly) unchanged since the time of Moses,
The majority of Wikipedia readers have little to no knowledge about this subject.  Your averge person really believes that the Torah is, more or less, a unitary document, and many are willing to accept that it was probably written by Moses himself, plus or minus textual errors tha have accumulated over the milennai. In fact, even many agnostics believe this. For many people, the debate is about whether or not God literally inspired prophets to write the Bible, or whether God exists at all. 
Right now this article focuses on the technical details, but lacks the general reasoning for it's very existence. RK (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm concerned about this too. Look how much information was deleted without any discussion at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Documentary_hypothesis&action=historysubmit&diff=406464971&oldid=406130103. I think we should revert these changes (as numerous as they are, many are just deletions and re-wordings), and not do it again until things are discussed. Yay or nay? GManNickG (talk) 22:34, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Removing all the evidence and logic is a very bad idea

message: I'd like to reiterate this point. Many people here seem to believe that the term "documentary hypothesis" refers to Wellhausen's 4-document hypothesis.  But this is incorrect. Rather, Wellhausen's hypothesis is merely the first of a number of modern ideas about the textual origin of the Torah.  
Outside of fundamentalist Christian and jewish communities, mainsteram academics (and non-fundamentalist Jews and Christians) use the phrase "documentary hypothesis" to describe any hypothesis that sees the Torah's origins in independent documents, no matter how many they may be. Also note that many, if not most, modern day views are loosely related to Wellhausen's basic concept of J, E, P and D. In other words, although his specific ideas are denied today, his general outline is still considered to be a good model by many scholars today.
RK (talk) 20:35, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "many" is a weasel word. 100.15.120.122 (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

text: Wellhausen wasn't the first to propose a documentary hypothesis, and I believe the article makes this clear. He merely put forward the most exhaustive, conclusive case for documents over the other two competing hypotheses - the supplementary hypothesis and the fragmentary hypothesis. Note that Wellhausen put forward "a" hypothesis, not "the" hypothesis - his version had 4 sources, but Astruc's had only 2 sources. In the 20th century the E source has been so severely criticised that modern versions of the hypothesis frequently propose only 3 sources. Nor are modern theories using the symbolic language of JEPD (more often JPD without E) necessarily documentary in nature - many regard D as a document, but J and P as editorial work over several centuries. (Unless they're Tommy Thompson). PiCo (talk) 10:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure of why you wrote this. Maybe I was unclear. Just to be clear, these are points on which we agree. RK (talk) 13:42, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

text: @Noxiyu: I only just saw this comment. I suggest that you re-post it as a new thread at the bottom ofg the page - comments appended to old threads in the middle of the page (like this) are highly likely to be overlooked. I also suggest you seriously consider a radical re-write of the article - if you outline what you propose and take it step-by-step you shouldn't encounter opposition. PiCo (talk) 03:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: What does the phrase "Documentary Hypothesis" mean?

message: I've suggested that Torah redactor be merged into this article. It has been unsourced or poorly sourced for nearly a year and discusses mainly the same content in some more detail. 134.29.231.11 (talk) 18:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: merge performed as there was no discussion.173.141.251.43 (talk) 10:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: Is it appropriate to cite Wenham as authority for 'universal acceptance' for the DH  , when he actually writes 'by the mid-twentieth century it was almost universally accepted. But in the 1970s this cosy consensus began to be disturbed.'? He then documents four areas of disagreement with and challenge to DH, which the article partly addresses, but the selective quote does not quite represent the situation accurately.
Cpsoper (talk) 11:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you're right - the full sentence in our article says: "The hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship for much of the 20th century, and, although increasingly challenged by other models in the last part of the 20th century, its terminology and insights continue to provide the framework for modern theories on the origins of the Torah." Wenham (who's a very respectable scholar by the way - no problem in that area) does say pretty explicitly that the DH dominated the field for much of the C.20th, but it would be hard to source the rest of the sentence to that article. It happens to be true, but the source doesn't support it. Feel free to look around for something better. (Wenham does support the sentence indirectly, as he talks at length about the use of terms such as P and J and accepts without question that the Torah has complex origins and multiple authors, but he doesn't explicitly say so). PiCo (talk) 06:45, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I see now you were talking about a different sentence. You made a good edit there. PiCo (talk) 06:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, have updated reference for Umberto Cassuto, for whom I declare, as a matter of transparency, considerable admiration. I am not a professional scholar in the field, but Oswald Allis' writing on the subject also appears cogent, tightly reasoned and stocked with specific evidence, so I have also cited him. Cpsoper (talk) 21:14, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  DH 'universally accepted' Wenham ref 

message: There was a left-over bullet item for 'Redactor' which was an internal link to a now-deleted section ; I've removed it since a) it didn't point anywhere and b) its inclusion in the list made it seem (to my admittedly untutored eye) that "R" was one of five sources postulated by Wellhausen; I don't know if that's true or not but I'm guessing if the section 'Redactor' was removed as unreferenced it probably wasn't.  But please do correct me (or at least the article) if I'm incorrect. Thanks. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 06:05, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bullet item for 'Redactor' 

message: I've been corresponding with somebody who brought up an issue I find interesting.  If somebody is considered an expert, they either have substantial continuing activities in a field (LPN) or they have published in peer-reviewed periodicals such that their methods, assumptions, application, and conclusions can be analyzed and the weaknesses corrected.  AFAICT all the sources in the bibliography are books, which don't qualify.  IS  there a DH periodical that does all this stuff?  On the same level as, like, Bulletinis of the American Schools of Oriental Research or Journal of International Affairs or Journal of Statistical Science?
108.56.212.179 (talk) 16:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Books are reliable sources if they have been written by professors widely acknowledged as authorities on the discussed issue. The policy does not state that only journals may be considered reliable. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:58, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  what peer-reviewed journals about DH do professors write in to get acknowledged as authorities on DH?  100.15.120.122 (talk) 16:59, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot answer that question, however if one is a full professor of Bible scholarship at a major university, we assume by default that he/she is an authority upon what he/she teaches there. With the disclaimer that sometimes even mainstream scholars indulge in WP:FRINGE theories, but this has to become evident at WP:FTN. Some disciplines prefer books to journals. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:58, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Which does your discipline prefer?  How does your discipline distinguish between "peer review" and "publisher puffing"?  I've read books by "authorities" in a field that were filled with fallacies and based on information no longer accepted in the field. How do people in your discipline decide which books to read and use and which to ignore if you want your work to be taken seriously? 100.15.138.239 (talk) 14:34, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a complicated question. However, as far as Wikipedia is concerned do read WP:IRS, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Briefly, Wikipedia editors never make the call, instead reliable sources make the call for us. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:38, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  question on expert sources 

message: This article lists dates for JEDP.  Wellhaussen (950, 850, 600, 500) and Friedman roughly (700, 700, 700 and 600).  The Wikipedia's articles on the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly Source provides additional dates. The Jawhist article (In the first half of the 20th century it was believed that the Yahwist could be dated to c. 950 BCE,[5] but later study has demonstrated that portions of J cannot be earlier than the 7th century BCE.[6] Current theories place it in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th–5th centuries BCE),[7] but the date and even the existence of J are currently the subject of vigorous discussion.[8].) However, this article estimates the Jahwist to be 950. I suggest that this article include the best estimated dates and some rationale for these dates or at least reference other Wikipedia articles with those dates. Also, the dates in this article should be consistent with the other 4 articles. Further, the dates should be listed near each other (e.g., in a table) so they are easier to find.CreateW (talk) 21:57, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The dates are of largely historical interest - the current idea is that the DH is incorrect in any case, and that the Torah as we know it was drawn together around 500 BCE. PiCo (talk) 10:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It's good to aim for consistency among the articles. However, if I'm not mistaken, it needs to be done by having the main and the sub articles refer to the same reliable sources. That is, a WP article itself (such as J) cannot be used as a reference in another article (e.g., here). For this article, I think it'd be appropriate to list Wellhausen, due to the historical importance, and then a range of other estimates. Thanks. ProfGray (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Wellhausen never suggested any dates. I think the first estimates are from the mid-20th century - maybe Albright? I'm not sure. I think this article needs substantial revision in any case - the DH is only one of three hypotheses about the origins of the Pentateuch, and presumably we should cover them all. Do you have any suggestions? PiCo (talk) 02:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates 

message: There is disagreement about the inclusion of reference to scholarly parody of DH. To my mind the source is RS and its inclusion highly appropriate, and reminiscent of though more biting than Cassuto's description of a salami slicing approach to Homeric authorship. Cpsoper (talk) 17:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: When is satire 'not appropriate'?

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Documentary hypothesis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090504213127/http://www.ctsfw.edu:80/library/files/pb/1647 to http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/1647
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 11:42, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: A mysterious R appears in the diagram accompanying the lead to this article, which appears (looking deep into the article) to stand for "Redactor," the meaning of which is that some editing was done at the three indicated points.  There is no mention of the R in the lead, and hardly any explanation of its meaning down below where it appears.  I will add R and explain it in the caption.  - 173.20.148.109 (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redactor 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Documentary hypothesis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090208225810/http://www.bookreviews.org:80/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=10 to http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=10
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:57, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Failed due to robots.txt (for PDF files). Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Until evidence can be provided to show that there is a general weakening of support for the Documentary Hypothesis, I feel that the section named 'weakening support' should be called 'Opposition and alternative theories', and the section within it that demonstrates modern support should be called 'Modern proponents'. This way, both sides of the 'argument' are shown as headings rather than giving the impression that the modern support is merely a sidenote within the general trend of 'weakening support'. I think this is more representative of the current situation.--Jcvamp (talk) 13:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weakening support 

message: It is wrong to claim that "the documentary hypothesis is no more supported by most exegetes" as you wrote, and maybe based on the opinion on european scholars like Thomas Römer or from what you read in books for a general audience.
On his blog, at http://richardelliottfriedman.com/?p=289, 
Richard Friedman, biblist and author from Georgia University, reminds the main newest strong evidence (2011) and arguments supporting the documentary hypothesis :
(1) linguistic evidence showing that the Hebrew of the texts corresponds to the stages of development of the Hebrew language in the periods in which the hypothesis says those respective texts were composed; 
(2) evidence that the main source texts (J, E, P, and D) were continuous, i. e. it is possible to divide the texts and find considerable continuity while keeping the characteristic terms and phrases of each consistent; and 
(3) as this book shows, evidence that the manner of composition that is pictured in the hypothesis was part of the literary practices of the ancient Near East.
Here is also what Friedman wrote me in 2017:
"It is not really correct to say that the documentary hypothesis has been either rejected or amended. I often hear people claim that, especially a number of scholars in Europe. The majority of scholars in the world still adhere to this hypothesis in some form. No other hypothesis has attracted nearly as many scholars. And the many new hypotheses that are being proposed, including the one by Römer, have never responded to the vast array of evidence that supported the documentary hypothesis in the first place. None of the sources of the Pentateuch can possibly come from the Persian period. They are written in Classical, pre-exilic Hebrew. Scholars who propose dates in the Persian period have simply failed to deal with this evidence." -- luxorion.
: has agreed that while DH is no longer the virtually unanimous consensus, it is still the majority view in US and Israel. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:53, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, Wikipedia records changes in the academic consensus, but Wikipedia itself is not a forum for deciding what the academic consensus should be. We simply let scholars decide that and we quote their views. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: A valid point. It does make it very difficult to write the article when legitimate sources (Friedman, Romer and others) are in such basic disagreement. PiCo (talk) 01:01, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  The opinion of Dr Richard Friedman 

message: It seems that many sites of Wikipedia and its copies have repeated the small sentence according wich a certain Jean Astrid in the XVIIIth century performed a criticism of the Bible.
But no one give additional comments about this person. Who was he, what was his title, etc., what book did he publish, there is no mention at all, not even in the note 14 refering to an external book.
Even Google (including Scholars and Books) does not reply as if the name was unknown and not referenced. We can deduce that the name can be wrong or that this person has never existed...
I suggest to remove the name of Jean Astrid and to start with Johann Eichhorn whose work is attested.
Before publishing such data, it is essential that data be cross-checked and validated.-- luxorion  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:7E8:DC0A:6A01:E5D4:C0FF:60EE:1F73 (talk) 13:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The correct spelling is Jean Astruc.  TomS TDotO (talk) 14:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who is Jean Astrid ? 

message: I am not bringing this up as an attack on DH. But my understanding is that there are extreme forms of DH which have been objected to on two grounds, because of thought patterns which were widely unquestioned in 19th century Europe: Hegel's philosophy of history, which imposed a pattern on development of thought, so there "had to be" a certain more primitive theology evolving to a more asophisticated one, reflected in which order the four documents were written; and widely accepted anti-Semitism. I suggest that someone more learned than I might address these objections - even if just to debunk them.    TomS TDotO (talk) 23:21, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: @TomS TDotO That seems to be correct. A major reason Wellhausen's theory was adopted was because it was in accordance with late 19-century ideas of how history evolves, and a major reason for the great revaluation in the later 20th century was the abandonment of the idea that history evolves.PiCo (talk) 02:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

text: @TomS TDotO Thanks for your comments. The sort of idealist philosophy weaved into the very fabric of 19th-century germanophone historicism affected the narrative reconstructed, certainly. However, there's a conflation here between this particular theoretical framework of understanding the past and understandings of change over time that also maintained a gradual "development" (its consequences imagined as improvement or more "civilizing") but did not uphold this particular kind of philosophical substructure, namely within the more positivistic British context nearing the fin de siècle – even if the overriding narratives could bear much resemblance. Moreover, a related yet separable issue is the actual methodological operations in place, which had become standard across philological historicism across the Germanies, with classics in particular serving as a standard-bearer. Certain understandings about texts themselves, textual development, and particularly "editorial" activities emerged at the nexus of (usually implicit) theoretical frameworks and methodological procedures. As for anti-Semitism, there was a debate in the 1980s between Smend (Jr) and Rendtorff, and the issue still emerges, perhaps less in scholarly discussion than among the interested public more broadly. Without excusing the predominant scepticism towards Judaism at the time, as the 19th century wore on and the German Empire became increasingly Protestant in public life, a contemporaneous anti-Catholicism (and a broader German liberal anti-institutionalism) was mapped onto the past as well.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foosland (talk • contribs) 22:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolete 19th century thought 

message: Over the course of a month, User PiCo has removed nearly half of the page, and while plenty of it has been replaced with more concise information, and lots of new sources have been added, some fundamental parts of the page, including the original dates ascribed to the sources, and a chart that displayed the relationships between them have been deleted. I think that the new sources and corrections can be preserved without removing so much of the original material. 66.190.196.35 (talk) 04:32, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for coming to talk (May I suggest you register with a name - it makes things easier). First, yes, I'm re-writing, so material gets deleted. I wrote the original article, so what I delete, I also wrote. Second, the older article is inadequate - it treats Wellhausen's DH as if it were still current, which is not the case. As the re-write makes clear, the consensus on the DH collapsed in the last few decades of the 20th century. With it collapsed any idea that any source dates from the time of the early monarchy - the earliest source is now universally recognised as D, which is still secure. P is also secure, and is still seen as post-exilic. What the article needs to make clear is that there is now no unanimity at all that J and E exist as sources - readers will open books and see talk about P and non-P, and never guess from our article that this means the Priestly source and the J and E sources - which, of course, are no longer viewed in a documentary manner. Yes, there are scholars who still talk about the Pentateuch in documentary terms, but this is Baden's neo-documentary hypothesis, not Wellhausen's. So what I'm trying to do is get the Wellhausen material out of the way quickly and spend more space on current approaches. You are welcome to help.PiCo (talk) 10:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

text: I don't claim ownership, just an interest. What I'm trying to do is shift the balance of the article from a focus on Wellhausen's hypothesis to modern ideas - my concern is with balance, not content.PiCo (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much information removed 

message: Surely, many people would see the characterization of later Judaism as "rigid, ritualistic ... priest-dominated" as anti-Semitic. Should that impression be mentioned here? If W. weren't anti-Semitic, isn't unfair to leave that impression?    TomS TDotO (talk) 11:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: W. was certainly seen as anti-semitic by Jewish scholars, and that should be noted (with the reasons, which you mention).PiCo (talk) 04:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "rigid, ritualistic world of the priest-dominated" 

message: I think that this article could be improved if at its very beginning, it says that the Documentary Hypothesis is also sometimes known as the "Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis" or "JEPD hypothesis". I did Religious Studies A level (admittedly, years ago now - back in the 1980s) and these terms were used far more frequently than "Documentary hypothesis".Carltonio (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Although other terms used to be used more frequently, the more common name nowadays is the Documentary Hypothesis.--Jcvamp (talk) 04:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternative titles

message: R.E. Friedman (2017, p245) assembled this summary of the individually compelling lines of evidence, which, as he notes, converge together in support of DH. This evidence cannot be accounted for by SH and FH; Friedman has repeatedly observed the failure of FH and SH supporting scholars to address this evidence in publication.
The [first five books of the OT] ... could not have been ... composed by one author:
# They are written in the Hebrew of several different periods ... 
# They can be separated into sections that each use distinct terminology; words that the other sections rarely or never use. There are some five hundred of these unique occurrences of words. 
# The sections with the different terminology also each consistently have their own particular depictions of the revelation of the name Yahweh, of the role of priests and of Levites, and of various sacred objects such as the ark, the Tabernacle, and the cherubs.
# There are stories that are told twice, called doublets.
# There are texts that contradict each other on events, on numbers, and on names of persons and places.
# When we separate the texts according to their distinct terminology, the doublets and contradictions 'disappear'. That is, they comfortably and consistently fit into one section or another.
# When we separate the texts along the lines of all these consistent points of evidence, the sections each flow naturally. That is: if one section interrupts another, then the next time that we find the one that was interupted, it picks up naturally where it left off before the intrusion. 
# Each of these continuous, consistently worded, consistently depicted, noncontradicting, nonrepeated texts, which relate to the specific periods of Hebrew in which they are respectively written, also have unique connections to other parts of the Bible. ...
# We can trace each of these sections to particular times and events in Israel's history. We can see how those particular times and events influenced the respective authors to tell the story as they did.
Gorkelobb (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 01:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lines of evidence for DH 

message: In "According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses" the last stable version of the article links to :Moses. , you piped the link to :Mosaic authorship, which I reverted stating: ":MOS:EGG, keep the target at Moses or wl entire 'dictated by God to Moses. I agree with your reply "but mosaic authorship isn't 'dictation. So, let's revert back to the latest stable version that links to :Moses, shall we? The other option is to rephrase. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:02, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you removed the pipe was removed by  recently. I agree that EASTER should be honoured, but the last stable version was to Mosaic authorship. I suggest a change in wording to "According to tradition they were dictated by God and written by Moses". Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:45, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I edited the Mosaic authorship link because it was in there twice in two successive sentences - "According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses ... As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah..." What I did was change the first Mosaic authorship link to a Moses link, and leave the second. As for Mosaic authorship being dictation, could someone please check this - I think the rabbinic tradition had at least two versions, in one of which God wrote the Torah in fire prior to creation, in the other he dictated it to Moses. Not a big deal either way, let's not spend too many words on it.PiCo (talk) 18:33, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

text:  I see now that the tradition was that God wrote the Torah before creation and then dictated it to Moses. The article is fine on that. But we do still have two links to Mosaic authorship in close proximity, which I think is not desirable.PiCo (talk) 18:49, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Excellent point. I just removed the text since there's no need to link Moses anyhow and removing the :WP:REPEATLINK was appropriate, although done in an unusual way (we usually leave the first entry, not the second, but in this case, it was an EASTER egg). Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:01, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

text: The article itself discusses three models, so it would be natural for the lede to summarize that. There's nothing in the sources cited here that justify treating "some variant of Mosaic authorship" as a "model" on par with the other three. The unexplained edits from back in November take the lede away from both it's essential function of summarizing the article, and they move it away from the sources cited. Alephb (talk) 00:42, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  That makes sense. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:   made a modification after you . Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:07, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: So I see. Now we're in the awkward position of having an article where the first paragraph is about the "four models", followed by a second paragraph that starts with "All three agree". Clearly more work of some kind is still needed. Alephb (talk) 01:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  If you wish to apply a rollback which removes my edit please proceed. Editor2020 (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, no. I'm sort of confused at the moment, and I will need to put on my thinking cap for a bit to figure out what's going on here before making any changes. Alephb (talk) 01:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I apologise for not joining the discussion earlier. My problem with the mention of the Mosaic "model" is that it's not on a par with the other three in terms of academic acceptance. Nor is it mentioned (at all) in the two sources given. But there's a deeper problem, which is that this article is supposedly about the Documentary hypothesis, but then discusses two others. There really needs to be another article on current approaches to the composition of the Torah, but I'm certainly not up to writing it.PiCo (talk) 00:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moses wiklink 

message: In line with suggestions by User:PiCo, User:Jcvamp, User:TomS TDotO and others, I've made a draft of a new article titled "Composition of the Torah," which surveys all the major pieces of evidence and viewpoints in modern scholarship concerning the writing and compilation of the Pentateuch. You can check it out (and edit it) here: User:Montgolfière/sandbox/Composition of the Torah. It includes a lot of material copied over from this article, plus a good amount of new stuff. The idea is to remove the material concerning hypotheses other than the documentary hypothesis from Documentary hypothesis and have it link to the new article. My draft is nearing completion, although I'd like someone to review it and add info about the fragmentary hypothesis. We should probably also add more info about different views on the dating of the sources. Montgolfière (talk) 14:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: New article Composition of the Torah is now up in the mainspace. Montgolfière (talk) 13:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I think this is the best way to keep this article focused on the topic whilst retaining the useful information on Wikipedia.--Jcvamp (talk) 12:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creating new "Composition of the Torah" article 

message: (Disclaimer: I have no formal background at all in any of this.)
This article is about how the Pentateuch/Torah arrived at its final form.  But didn't Samuel/Kings arrive at its final form by a somewhat similar process?
Just as the DH (and its variants) has proposed J, E, P and D sources, aren't there also proposed sources such as "Monarchial" and "Republican" (or "Anti-monarchial") for Samuel/Kings?  Indeed, while Wellhausen is most famously linked to the DH/Pentateuch, I seem to recall also seeing his name linked for analogous work in Samuel/Kings.
It seems that some sort of article, even if only "start" class, for this would be useful.
Would someone like to have a go?  Alternatively, if you can provide online pointers to suitable reliable sources, I might be able to try it myself.
Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:17, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monarchial source, etc.: articles needed 

message: I'm no scholar, but if the scholarly consensus is, the texts are not one text, I want to look at at least a close approximation of the current consensus as an outsider. Can I, or this is some secret stuff the priests will never let you access? 89.134.17.89 (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The scholarly consensus is that the Pentateuch is, by far, not the work of a single person, let alone Moses. Everything else is disputed, so there is not going to be an agreed Bible according to the Documentary Hypothesis, or to the supplemental model, or to whatever. tgeorgescu (talk)  11:23, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Like @Tgeorgescu said, there's not exact consensus on the sources, but one version of this exists here: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Bible/King_James/Documentary_Hypothesis Huz and Buz (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The scholars seem to agree that there is some some editing from multiple sources, but equally disagree on the details. Here's another visualisation of the general idea: https://religion.fandom.com/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis#After_Wellhausen Feline Hymnic (talk) 19:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a Bible-edition that marks the different texts? 

message: Just a note that I use this quote and connected references at the Ten Commandments page.
“The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now collapsed. This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters, Hans Heinrich Schmid, and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s.” IncandescentBliss (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: In title: Quoted at* IncandescentBliss (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quoted andat Ten Commandments page 

message: As I read material on the documentary hypothesis, etc., I repeatedly find this phrase, often in quotes: "the assured results of modern scholarship." It was clearly pre-20th century. Does anybody know who originated it. It is quoted so many places, it deserves to be mentioned. But who wrote it first, or even second or third? Pete unseth (talk) 22:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who said "the assured results of modern scholarship"? 

message: Is anyone aware of any scholars that address the assumption that all authors and redactors were atheists? It may not be explicitly stated, but it's the only way the hypothesis works. If they believed that God dictated the Pentateuch to Moses, the idea that they would think to alter it, especially in a such a large way, seems unlikely. It couldn't have just been a small handful of non-believers either, it would've required a good chunk of the priestly class to either not believe in God or be willing to lie about what God has said. Ask someone of an Abrahamic religion who believes in inerrancy if they would accept a copy of the Torah/Bible/Quran that has been edited to tell a more cohesive story. Is there any source that addresses this? Blast335 (talk) 23:08, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi. If you read your comment, you'll notice that you've assumed that a contemporary theology of "inerrancy" (not to mention a post-canonical knowledge of the bible) was known to the composers of biblical texts. Scholars do not assume that contemporary theologies were in vogue 2500 years ago, but rather that it is possible to believe in a god and still not be bound to the "inerrancy" you seem to have in mind. Anyway, I am not familiar with scholars who assume atheistic authors of scripture. ProfGray (talk) 02:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: "But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death." Deuteronomy 18:20. The Pentateuch claims to be written by Moses at the direction of God, which means that the Pentateuch explicitly claims to be the words of God and explicitly condemns to death those who say that God said something that God has not said. Inerrancy in its modern form may not have existed, but the idea that you don't change God's words is just the natural conclusion of passages like this. Blast335 (talk) 14:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: You work deductively. Mainstream Bible scholars work inductively. See Jesus, Interrupted. tgeorgescu (talk)  16:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

text: Hi again. You wrote "the idea that you don't change God's words is just the natural conclusion of passages like this." It's great if that inference feels natural to you, but that doesn't happen to be how historians understand the history of inerrancy and the handling of ancient Israelite literature. In any case, you might search Google Scholar (or other academic databases) and if you find a scholar of Biblical literature who addresses your question, then it'd be suitable for Wikipedia. Right? ProfGray (talk) 17:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scholarly sources addressing the assumption of atheism in the DH.