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    Composition of The Pentateuch Wellhausen's History of The 4 Sources

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    Rexelle Navales
    The document outlines Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis which identifies four sources (J, E, D, and P) that were combined to form the Pentateuch. It describes each source, including their approximate dates and content. The J source was the earliest narrative written in Judah around 950 BCE. The E source was a revised version produced in Israel around 850 BCE. The D source contained law collections and sermons from the 7th century BCE. The P source was a late priestly work from the 5th century BCE focused on laws and worship. These sources were gradually combined between the 10th-5th centuries BCE to form the completed Pentateuch.

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    Composition of The Pentateuch Wellhausen's History of The 4 Sources

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    Rexelle Navales
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    The document outlines Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis which identifies four sources (J, E, D, and P) that were combined to form the Pentateuch. It describes each source, including their approximate dates and content. The J source was the earliest narrative written in Judah around 950 BCE. The E source was a revised version produced in Israel around 850 BCE. The D source contained law collections and sermons from the 7th century BCE. The P source was a late priestly work from the 5th century BCE focused on laws and worship. These sources were gradually combined between the 10th-5th centuries BCE to form the completed Pentateuch.

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    The document outlines Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis which identifies four sources (J, E, D, and P) that were combined to form the Pentateuch. It describes each source, including their approximate dates and content. The J source was the earliest narrative written in Judah around 950 BCE. The E source was a revised version produced in Israel around 850 BCE. The D source contained law collections and sermons from the 7th century BCE. The P source was a late priestly work from the 5th century BCE focused on laws and worship. These sources were gradually combined between the 10th-5th centuries BCE to form the completed Pentateuch.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    123 views4 pages

    Composition of The Pentateuch Wellhausen's History of The 4 Sources

    Uploaded by

    Rexelle Navales
    The document outlines Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis which identifies four sources (J, E, D, and P) that were combined to form the Pentateuch. It describes each source, including their approximate dates and content. The J source was the earliest narrative written in Judah around 950 BCE. The E source was a revised version produced in Israel around 850 BCE. The D source contained law collections and sermons from the 7th century BCE. The P source was a late priestly work from the 5th century BCE focused on laws and worship. These sources were gradually combined between the 10th-5th centuries BCE to form the completed Pentateuch.

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    The passage discusses Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis which identified four major sources (J, E, D, P) within the Pentateuch based on differences in names used for God and contents. It also provides details on the approximate dates of each source and how they were combined.

    The four sources are the Yahwist (J) source, the Elohist (E) source, the Deuteronomist (D) source, and the Priestly (P) source.

    The J source uses Yahweh for God and contains narratives. The E source uses Elohim for God and also contains narratives. The D source is the book of Deuteronomy and contains sermons. The P source contains lists, laws on worship and uses Elohim for God.

    1

    Composition of the Pentateuch

    Wellhausen’s History of the 4 Sources


    4 major sources were identified by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), a German
    scholar who established the documentary hypothesis as the accepted model for
    the growth of the Pentateuch. He drew up a history of how each source came to
    be. This meant biblical students could discover not only four different authors &
    their literary styles within the Pentateuch, but they could picture clearly the time
    & place each source came from. The early & mostly oral traditions of Israel
    were gradually written down, preserved in four written documents, & then
    combined to make one Pentateuch.

    When David & Solomon united Israel as a kingdom, a new era of trained
    scribes & writers began. Sometime during Solomon’s reign, or soon after, in
    Jerusalem, an unknown author put together the Yahwist account from the
    viewpoint of the southern tribe of Judah, & to glorify the monarchy created by
    David & Solomon.

    When Solomon died & the nation split into a northern kingdom (Israel) & a
    southern kingdom (Judah), the northerners needed a revised version of the
    traditions that would not glorify Jerusalem & the kings of Judah so much. They
    produced a second, revised account of the old traditions which used Elohim for
    God & place names that were more familiar to their part of the country. They
    also stressed the role of the covenant of Moses over the role of the king, &
    avoided much of the Yahwist’s intimate language about God walking & talking
    with humans. They favoured a more “spiritualised” & awesome sense of God’s
    dealings with Israel. These two accounts existed side by side as long as the two
    kingdoms lasted. When the north fell to the Assyrian army in 722 BCE, the
    northerners who fled south carried their written Elohist source with them. The J
    & E documents were then combined as one during the following century for the
    people who lived now only in Judah.

    At the same time, there arose a group of priests, levites & prophets who tried to
    reform many bad practices of the faith in Judah. Out of their efforts came the
    Book of Deuteronomy (D source). This arose partly in reaction to “primitive”
    ideas in J’s & E’s theology of promise & blessing for the promised land. The
    deuteronomist reformers collected covenant legal traditions & added to them
    sermons stressing obedience & faithfulness to the covenant if the people were to
    receive blessings in the promised land. Although put together from the best of
    2

    both northern & southern traditions during a long period from Hezekiah (715-
    688) to Josiah (640 BCE), it was only “discovered” hidden in the temple when
    Josiah began his reforms of 622. The king & people recognised its authority &
    genuine Mosaic flavour, & D was joined with J & E as part of the nation’s
    sacred traditions.

    Finally when the whole country went into exile under the Babylonians (597-
    586), a school of priests seems to have gathered many of the cultic & legal
    traditions together. This included the lists of ancestors preserved in the temple,
    the isolated stories & traditions not found in the earlier works, & most of the
    great law collections in Leviticus & Numbers. This Priestly work (called P)
    formed a fourth source which made the earlier historical accounts more
    complete & also set out a whole way of life under the law that would allow
    Israel’s covenant with God to be lived & to last even when there was no land or
    temple or king. According to Wellhausen, these four sources were finally edited
    by the Priestly school into the Pentateuch after the exile ended in 539 BCE. This
    is the classical four source theory followed by the majority of scholars in the
    20th cent.

    The underlying view behind this picture really belongs to the 19 th cent. with its
    romantic view of how cultures develop from primitive levels to more advanced
    ones. Thus the Yahwist represents a primitive anthropomorphic view of God,
    filled with magical appearances & mythical details. The Elohist shows a deeper
    awareness of God’s distance, while the Deuteronomist reflects the later & more
    sensitive concern of the prophets to the ethical demands & oneness of God over
    the whole world. Finally, the Priestly source brings together the complex
    institutional, cultic & legal aspects of Israelite faith that would support a life of
    fidelity to the covenant through exile & times of loss.

    Major Characteristics of the 4 Sources

    The oldest source, the Yahwist source (J), uses the name the LORD or Yahweh
    for God. Since Yahweh is spelled Jahweh in German it is usually called the J
    source. The J source consists of brilliantly told stories running through Genesis,
    the first half of Exodus & small sections of Numbers.

    The next oldest source, the Elohist source (E), refers to God as Elohim or God.
    It too consists of vivid stories running in parallel with the J source for the most
    part: e.g. the Jacob & Joseph stories from Gen 25-50 are split between J & E.
    3

    But unlike J, E has no account of the creation or the flood, because the narrative
    of the Elohist source does not start until Gen 15.

    The third source, the Deuteronomist source (D), is more or less the book of
    Deuteronomy. Its genre & style set it apart from the great narrative sources J &
    E. Deuteronomy is a series of sermons about the law. It is full of exhortation to
    observe the law, urgent appeals to love the LORD with all one’s heart, warnings
    about the dangers of disobedience etc. Its characteristic designation for God is
    “the LORD our/your God”, which also sets it apart from the J & E sources,
    where God is referred to by the names Yahweh & Elohim respectively.

    The fourth source is the Priestly Source (P) – parts of Genesis, together with all
    those parts of Exodus, Leviticus & Numbers about worship & associated
    matters which priests would have been interested in. In Genesis the genealogies
    are ascribed to this source, as well as chs 1, 17 & 23 because of their teaching
    on religious topics such as the Sabbath & circumcision.

    Source Name of God Character Content


    J Yahwist The LORD = Narrative 50% of Gen to Ex
    Yahweh 24; fragments of
    Numbers
    E Elohist God = Elohim Narrative 33% of Gen to Ex
    24; fragments of
    Numbers

    D The LORD Sermons Deuteronomy


    Deuteronomist your/our God
    P Priestly God = Elohim Lists, laws 17% of Genesis;
    on worship Exodus 25 to
    etc. Numbers 36

    In the English-speaking world the great advocate of the documentary hypothesis


    was S.R. Driver (1846-1914), professor of Hebrew at Oxford. Below is a
    simplified version of his analysis of Gen 11:27 - 25:11.

    Source Name of God Character Content


    J Yahwist The LORD = Yahweh Vivid narrative 11:28-30; 12:1-
    13:18; 16:1b-14;
    18:1-19:38;
    21:1a, 2a, 33;
    22:15-18, 20-24;
    4

    24:1-25:6, 11b.
    E Elohist God = Elohim Vivid narrative 15:1-21; 20:1-
    18; 21:6-32,34;
    22:1-14,19
    P Priestly God = Elohim Lists, dates, 11:31-32; 12:4b-
    religious issues 5; 13:6, 11b-
    12a; 16:1a,3,15-
    16; 17:1-27;
    19:29; 21:1b,
    2b-5; 23:1-20;
    25:7-11a

    According to the documentary hypothesis these sources were originally


    independent. But they were not all amalgamated at one time by a single editor,
    but at different times by a succession of editors. The oldest source J was first
    combined with the next oldest source E to form the combined JE work. Some
    time later, JE was combined with D, Deuteronomy, to form JED. Finally, JED
    was combined with the long priestly source P to form JEDP i.e. the present
    Pentateuch. The dates commonly associated with the documents are:

    Approximate Dating of Sources

    Document Date BCE


    (Moses) (1300)
    J 950
    E 850
    JE 750
    D 622
    JED 600
    P 500
    JEDP 450

    Reference:

    Gordon Wenham, Exploring the Old Testament. Vol.1 The Pentateuch, SPCK,
    London, 2003 (pp.165-171)

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