Generally speaking, Biblical criticism is divided into two camps: Higher and Lower Criticism. Lower criticism concerns itself with the text as it stands, examining textual variants, interpretive methodology, context, etc. Higher criticism, on the other hand, deals with the form, historical circumstances, authorship, age, etc. of particular books. While Lower Criticism bases its findings on what the text itself purports, Higher Criticism questions the integrity, authenticity, and credibility of the writings that compose literature including Scripture. Higher Criticism began to be applied to Biblical studies as early as the 1700's by J.G. Eichorn who first related the two, and Jean Astruc who suggested that different sources were involved in the writing of the Pentateuch.

Although Higher Criticism has come to be used synonymously with views such as Form Criticism, the Oral Traditions of the Uppsala School, and others, it should be noted that each of these are particular schools of thought within the discipline and not all necessary outcomes of its methods. Presuppositions, whether they be prior commitments to theism or naturalism, greatly effect the conclusions reached by researching the issues involved in this type of study.

Proponents of one such position, that of the Documentary Hypothesis, deny traditional Hebrew history and assert that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but instead is a compilation of four basic records written by different authors from about 850 to 450 B.C. These documents were compiled by unknown editors and combined into its final form by about 400 B.C. It is this theory that will be the subject of the remainder of this article.

History of the Documentary Hypothesis

As early as the second century attacks were being leveled against the authorial veracity of Scripture. Differing criticisms arose periodically throughout the Church’s history, most notably in Spain during the tenth and eleventh centuries by Islamic scholars. Traditional authorship was brought into question again during the reformation by Bodenstein who noted that Moses could not have reported his own death in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old testament canon). John Calvin himself questioned the authorship of Joshua and Samuel.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Deistic writings of Thomas Hobbes, and the pantheistic philosophical criticisms of Benedict Spinoza laid the foundation for the methodology behind the eventual denial of Mosaic authorship for the Pentateuch. It was not, however, until the eighteenth century that a sustained and organized attack against traditional authorship surfaced in Europe. Suggestions made by Spinoza and others that had been largely ignored in their day began to be considered as real options for those who denied the supernatural and accepted a skeptical view of history. The European schools, especially in Germany, adopted the presuppositions of these philosophers and the Documentary Hypothesis came to life. Varying configurations of this “destructive” form of Higher Criticism have dominated Old testament studies to the present day.

The Documentary Hypothesis - Methodology and Presuppositions

The methodology that leads Documentary Hypothesis proponents to their conclusions consists of an analysis of authorial word usage, subject matter, and style coupled with the presupposition that differences in any of these is sufficient grounds for postulating a change of author. Most Documentary Hypothesis advocates also have an evolutionary view of religion, believing that Monotheism is a recent development from primitive forms of polytheism, and thus hold to the premise that religion is essentially man made. These latter assumptions lead easily to naturalism, the denial of supernatural activity in religion generally and in the writing of Scripture particularly. Finally, Scripture is looked upon with skepticism and assumed to be spurious unless it is proven true by outside sources. It is the importation of these assumptions into their “scientific method” that produces the anti-textual conclusions that they reach.

Word Usage, Subject Matter, and Style

The most prominent feature of the Documentary Hypothesis is its division of the Pentateuch according to usage of divine titles, known popularly as the “JEPD” theory. In this form, the Pentateuch is said to be written by at least four independent authors distinguished by their usage of the two divine titles: “Jehovah” (or “Yahweh”) and “Elohim.” The documents are then labeled according to this usage either “J” or “E.”

This view was first treated extensively by Jean Astruc in 1753 who used this criteria in his critique of the book of Genesis. This idea was then brought to Europe by J.G. Eichorn thirty years later. It was Eichorn who extended Astruc’s method beyond the book of Genesis dividing other parts of the Pentateuch into “J” and “E” - two documents written by two different authors that were later compiled by Moses. Adding his criteria for division based on “divergent parallel accounts and ‘doublets’ (e.g. the ‘two accounts’ of the flood)” he eventually concluded that the Pentateuch was written after the time of Moses.

Credit for the “D” (Deuteronomy) source theory is given to Wilhelm De Wette in 1806. De Wette claimed that Deuteronomy was the “book of the law which was found by the high priest . . . at the time of King Josiah’s reform, according to 2 Kings 22.” He then placed the date of writing at about 621 B.C.

The final steps in the creation of the JEPD theory came in 1853 when Hermann Hupfeld concluded that “priestly code” sections within the reexamined “E” document also had separate sources. He broke “E” into two parts, the second becoming known as “P.” Later scholars such as Karl Graf and Abraham Kuenen further revised the hypothesis, reassigning dates to the four documents and recombining sources. It was just after this time that Julius Wellhausen restated the theory in 1878 and brought the theory to its most popular form, known today as the Graf-Wellhausen view.

Evolutionary View of Religion

The Hegelian evolutionary view of history had a large effect on the Graf-Wellhausean Documentary view. Stated briefly, the religious form of this teaching asserts that the religions of man started out with Animism (the worship of nature), followed by Polytheism (the belief in numerous gods), succeeded by Henotheism (the worship of only one God while allowing for the existence of other supernatural beings), ending with Monotheism (the belief in, and worship of, only one supreme God). The final form, monotheism, is seen as an outgrowth of the prior views based solely on man’s ideas. That being the case, any writing viewed as “out of place” chronologically in Scripture is attributed to differing authors from different time periods. Anti-Supernaturalism

Deism, the popular view of the nineteenth century, teaches that God is inactive in the affairs of men and thus miracles do not exist. This naturalistic / humanistic world view leads to an automatic denial and revision of any event that requires supernatural intervention. A natural cause, therefore, is posited for every effect in the world including the writing of Scripture. This presupposition leads proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis to reject any conclusion based on supernatural acts of God (such as Moses’ source of knowledge of the creation events).

Skepticism

Bible scholar Gleason Archer reports that, “All too frequently the tendency has been to regard any biblical statement as unreliable and suspect,” and that a given biblical statement is, “not to be trusted unless it happens to fall in with the theory.” This “guilty-until-proven-innocent” approach has led to continuous denial of the authenticity of Scripture, trustworthiness of Scripture in recoding accurate history, and, of course, the distrust of the text’s record of its own author.

Critique of Documentary Hypothesis Presuppositions

The twentieth century has essentially seen the downfall of the Documentary Hypothesis in scholarly circles, although it continues unabated in educational institutions and in popular literature. Archer writes concerning the “structure erected by the documentary theory,” that, “Almost every supporting pillar has been shaken and shattered by a generation of scholars who were brought up on the Graf-Wellhausen system.” Sadly, this has done little to sway the general acceptance of the theory. Elsewhere Archer concludes that, “For want of a better theory, therefore, most non conservative institutions continue to teach the Wellhausian theory . . . as if nothing had happened in Old Testament scholarship since 1880.” Loath to accept religious assumptions (i.e. that the Biblical text means what it says), Documentary Hypothesis supporters cling religiously to their own. This attitude is exemplified in the statement by British scholar H. H. Rowley: That it [the Graf- Wellhausian theory] is widely rejected in whole or in part is doubtless true, but there is no view in its place that would not be more widely and emphatically rejected . . . The Graf-Wellhausen view is only a working hypothesis, which can be abandoned with alacrity when a more satisfying view is found, but which cannot with profit be abandoned until then.

In other words, scholars committed to the presuppositions of the Documentary Hypothesis are unwilling to surrender this already discredited view until a better one comes along that allows those presuppositions to remain intact. A critique of these presuppositions will do much to determine whether or not this reluctance to admit defeat is justified.

Word Usage, Subject Matter, and Style

There are many varied reasons for rejecting the divisions based on titles of deity, word usage, etc. The very idea that a single author is incapable of writing on more than one subject, using more than one style, or employing different modes of writing in different genres is preposterous and easily demonstrated to be false. Common sense dictates that one author may vary his style or word choice for several reasons such as emphasis, amplification of important points, literary genre distinctiveness, avoidance of repetition, etc. Further, if this assumption were true, the very authors of the Documentary Hypothesis would not be able to comment on this phenomenon themselves, for they themselves would have to write on different topics in order to dos so. Finally, the critics here are not even willing to consistently apply their own rules (e.g. Genesis 24).

Another area in which Documentary critics find reason for their division is parallelisms and doublets. Examples include the creation accounts in Genesis, the flood narratives, the naming of Isaac, etc. These occurrences that seem to repeat other themes or stories are, according to the critic, a “clumsy combination of diverse traditions of the same event.” A thorough discussion of each of these is beyond the scope of this paper, but suffice it to say that several reasons can be given for these occurrences. They could simply be similar stories (many are not so unusual that one would not expect similarities), they could be purposefully written to show similarities with another event for emphasis or remembrance, for even unusual events can repeat in history. O.T. Allis also notes three major traits of Hebrew prose that could be mistaken for doublets: (1) The use of the word “and” to join subordinate or interdependent ideas could be mistaken for “pasting together” divergent accounts. (2) The repetition of important events for emphasis could be mistaken for copying. (3) Poetic Parallelism can make a text appear repetitious. All of these considerations and many others can explain the Hebrew writings much better than multiplying anonymous authors and artificially dividing the texts.

The criteria of names itself is highly suspect. It makes more sense to see the various names of God used as methods of conveying different aspects or sense of His working in history. The name Elohim is usually used when referencing God as the “Almighty Creator” and “Lord of the Universe,” hence its use in the Genesis creation account. Yahweh, on the other hand, is the “Covenant Maker” and this name is used in the Genesis relationship accounts. This use in Semitic times was unknown at the time of Astruc and Eichorn’s writings. Archer comments that, “the Semitic and Egyptian data were virtually unknown; otherwise it is impossible that any theory of source division based on divine names could ever have arisen. . . . it is hard to see how anyone could take seriously the terms Yahwist or Elohist any longer.”

There is also the issue of “misplaced” names between the “J” and “E” sources. Much like misplaced strata in the fossil record provides serious challenge to evolutionary theory, the “wrong” title for God is found in several places in the Pentateuch. As well, the very source that Documentary theorists use for their analysis has over 180 “name discrepancies” between the Majority Text (MT) and the LXX. This casts considerable doubt on the accuracy of their claim.

Perhaps one of the most clear refutations of the artificial division of the Pentateuch is the Documentary view’s own downward spiral into disintegration. Analogous to the effects of continuously inbreeding animals, the JEPD theory has corrupted itself by its own standards.

First, some of the most vociferous attacks against JEPD have come from within the Higher Criticism camp. The Documentary Hypothesis is itself the product of several failed views. It’s earliest version in 1783 quickly gave way to the Fragmentary Hypothesis in 1800. This view claimed that there were at least 38 fragments of documents that were put together by an unknown redactor about 500 years after Moses’ death. This view was later challenged by the Supplementary Theory of 1823-1830. After dealing the “death blow” to the Fragmentary Hypothesis with his work on the unity of Genesis, Heinrich Ewald proposed that there was one basic document “E” with additional material “J” added at a later date. Fifteen years later, the same Ewald rejected his own theory in favor of the Crystallization Theory. Now, he claimed, the Pentateuch was composed by five different authors over a period of about 700 years. It was not until 1853 that Hupfeld / Graf / Kuenen / Wellhausen began to develop what is now known as the Documentary Hypothesis. All this in just 80 years!

Second, today’s version of the Documentary Hypothesis is itself under continual attack from within. Using the methodology of his predecessors, Rudolph Smend discovered two parts to “J” (“J1" and “J2") in 1912. In 1922 an alleged “L” document was discovered within “J” by Otto Eissfeldt. Not to be outdone, Julius Morgenstern added “K” in 1927 similar to the “S1” and “S2" documents of Robert Pfeiffer in “J” and “E” in his Introduction to the Old Testament. These “divisions within divisions” provide the Documentary method with its own reductio ad absurdum - there is no criteria for when this parceling off of Scripture will end.
Josh McDowell’s quote of renowned scholar Cyrus Gordon sums up the blind adherence of JEPD theorists well when he states:

They are willing to countenance modifications in detail. They will permit you to subdivide (D1, D2, D3, and so forth) or combine (JE) or add a new document designated by another capital letter but they will not tolerate any questioning of the basic JEPD structure . . . I am at a loss to explain this kind of ‘conviction’ on any grounds other that intellectual laziness or inability to reapprise.

Evolutionary View of Religion

One of the more glaring assumptions of the Documentary view is that of an evolutionary view of religion. The idea was very popular in the nineteenth century and was easily taken for granted. The fact of the matter is that the Hebrew religion alone has spawned true monotheism in the world today. The only truly monotheistic faiths are branches of Judaism and of its Scripture the Old Testament. The Pentateuch presents monotheism so explicitly it is a very wonder that it could be mistaken for anything else. Any argument for a developing religion in Israel will have to be made on grounds other than textual, yet this is the very thing the Documentary view purports to do. Only an antisupernatural presupposition and ignorance of the facts has kept the idea alive. Ironically, Hegel, himself a proponent of religious evolution, warned against this very thing in his Philosophy of History:

Among other precautions we must take care not to be misled by professed historians who (especially among the Germans, and enjoying a considerable authority), are chargeable with the very procedure of which they accuse the philosopher – introducing a priori inventions of their own into the records of the past.

Is this view of evolutionary, man-made religion accurate? McDowell reports that, “The concept of a universal God was demonstrated as early as 1940 to be widespread during the third millennium B.C.” William Albright, considered by many to be the greatest archeologist in the world and professor of Semitic languages writes, “it is precisely between 1500 and 1200 B.C., i.e., in the Mosaic age, that we find the closest approach to monotheism in the ancient gentile world.” Examples refuting the evolutionary view of Israel’s monotheism could be multiplied, suffice it to say that this idea among modern, learned archeologists is simply erroneous.

Anti-Supernaturalism

The Documentary view’s foundational denial of supernatural intervention forms the justification for their complete disregard for the actual content of the texts they are supposedly critiquing objectively. This is across the board, with every member of the theory in agreement. The words of Kuenen are enlightening here, “we see ourselves obliged to do violence here or there to the well assured content of the historical accounts.” So the text really does not matter in any case in which it states that which the Documentary proponents have already decided is not the case. This is circular reasoning at its finest. To state that all cause and effect must be natural, throw out all references to supernatural activity, and then use the resulting text as proof against the supernatural is simply intellectually dishonest. A complete treatment of the miraculous as evidence is beyond the scope of this paper, but it should suffice to point out that any theory of textual criticism that sets out parameters of acceptability within a given text before the text itself is even scrutinized will obviously skew the results. The outcome of any study that begins with antisupernatural assumptions of a text that claims supernatural intervention cannot possibly be trusted to reach an objective conclusion.

Skepticism

The idea that a text cannot be trusted until it is proven true by outside sources causes many problems. First, why is one historical source to be trusted when another is not? How does one determine which text is reliable and to be used as a standard for judging all others? Even if these questions are answered, the Documentary proponents ignore evidence to the contrary even when it does surface, as it has time and time again. The archeological verification for the Biblical record is stunning. W.F. Albright writes, “Archeological and inscriptional data have established the historicity of innumerable passages and statements of the Old Testament; the number of such cases is many times greater than those where the reverse has been proved or has been made probable.” There will be more on this topic in the next section.

Summary of Arguments Against the Documentary Hypothesis

Negative Criticisms

Many flaws in Documentary Hypothesis thought have been brought up in the exposition above. Of the negative arguments against the view, the most common are:

Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning here involves importing pre-formed conclusions into one’s methodology thus guaranteeing its outcome. Several examples of this in the techniques of Documentary proponents: First, their assumption of antisupernaturalism results in the necessity of their reaching a naturalistic conclusion. No evidence against the supernatural is given, it is merely assumed. Second, circular reasoning can be seen in the way the documents are combined and named. A scholar begins by separating out all stylistic forms, he then names each as new documents, and then claims that those new documents are the source of the original (although that new documents have never been shown to actually exist apart from the mind of the scholar). Finally, when an unsolvable problem in the text arises, such as “misplaced names or word usage, appeal is made to yet another anonymous author or redactor ad nauseam, ad infinitum. This spiral continues until the view is rescued from its problem, and then the anonymous redactor will be used as evidence for the view’s correctness.

Self Refutation

When Documentary methodology is used consistently to judge itself, the results are contradictory and thus refute themselves. For example, the Documentary adherents use different names for God when reporting on this very practice, stating that the use of different names for God must mean different authors, yet they do not come to that conclusion about their own writings. Further, they will accuse detractors for allowing their theological bias to color results, yet the Documentary scholar’s own antisupernaturalism is a theological bias. These examples show that the claim to objectivity and the methodology for dealing with the text is problematic.

Bad Methodology

Gleason Archer writes that, “Scarcely any of the laws of evidence respected in legal proceedings are honored by the architects of this Documentary Theory.” Problems noted include: (1) The Documentary scholar’s assumptions that historians living over 3,000 years after the fact can more accurately construct history than those who lived at the time. 2) Their complete dismissal of tradition and history with no objective evidence for taking that position. (3) Ignoring standard procedure for critique of literature in the case of the Pentateuch. (4) Creation of problems found in the “original documents” by the theory are held up as evidence for the theory. (5) An infinite regression results once source finding methodology is used consistently, making the theory next to useless for its intended purpose. If one can never be arrive at a fundamental source then why not accept the single document as is?

Response to Critics

Essentially ignoring all outside voices, the composers of the Documentary theory have cut themselves off from any kind of accountability within the scholarly community (considering themselves, alone, to be the scholarly community). Even in this seemingly safe environment the theory has not fared well as it has given way to several complete revisions, suffered under criticism from within, and has simply decayed from the inside. That the proponents of the Documentary are hopelessly biased is evident from the fact that they continue to hold to a view that has been decidedly destroyed for years. The best adherents can do is appeal to the collective force of all their arguments. But one hundred bad arguments do not add up to even one good one.

Positive Evidence for Mosaic Authorship

That Moses was indeed the author of the Pentateuch is established by the following facts:

Internal Evidence

1. The Pentateuch itself testifies to Mosaic authorship (Ex. 17:14, 20:22-23:33, 34:10-26; Deut. 31:9, 24-26, 32:19-21; Num. 33:2; etc.). Any objective reading of the text will confirm this, and to dispute it is a criticism that cannot be leveled on any textual grounds.
2. Other Old Testament books cite Moses as the author (Josh. 1:7, 8:31, 23:6; 1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 14:6; etc.).
3. The New Testament names Moses as its author (Mk. 12:19; Jn. 1:17; Lk. 2:22; Acts 3:22; Heb. 9:19; etc.)
4. Jesus Himself specifies Mosaic authorship (Mk. 12:26; Jn. 5:45-47).

External Evidence

1. Jewish tradition claims that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
2. Jewish philosopher Philo cites Moses as the author.
3. The Jewish historian Josephus names Moses as the author. (4) The Church Fathers agreed with these Jewish historians and Jewish tradition (e.g. Melito, Cyril, Hilary, Augustine).
4. There were things recorded that only an eyewitness could have known (e.g. Ex. 15:27; Num. 11:7-8). The very presence of this detail also argues against later authorship as fictional accounts would tend toward only important events and not small details.
5. Customs lost for thousands of years until the advent of archeology were recorded in the Pentateuch that could not have been added later (e.g. Egyptian idioms / customs). Archeology has confirmed numerous details that would have been unknown to later writers. This really has been the proverbial nail in the Documentary Hypothesis’ coffin. Harrison writes, “all books written before 1940 about the themes of Old Testament history and archeology must be regarded as obsolete.” These, of course, would include every book that the originators of the Documentary Hypothesis had at their disposal and upon which their anti-historical theories were based.

Conclusion

The current state of the Documentary Hypothesis is twofold. In popular circles, as well as educational venues, the liberal line is being held. Until a “better” theory comes along it will continue to be taught as fact, not because of conclusive or good evidence, but because of a prior commitment to philosophical presuppositions that (most) adherents are loathe to let go. Until these assumptions can be overturned, JEPD will continue to be foisted upon unsuspecting students by professors who are either ignorant of the facts, or who will admit to knowing better but will not admit defeat.

In critical circles JEPD is, for all practical purposes, obsolete. It has all but been replaced by Form Criticism and other offshoots. As Umberto Cassuto writes in his book The Documentary Hypothesis, “I did not prove that the pillars [of the Documentary Hypothesis] were weak or that each one failed to give desired support, but I established that they were not pillars at all, that they did not exist.” It is high time for this revelation to trickle down to the laity.