Student: Garrett JohnsonMatricula: 161590Summary of the Two Centuries of Pentateuchal Scholarship

The longstanding view in both Jewish and Christian traditions regarding Moses as the author of the entire Pentatuech. While according to todays standards such a proposal is unsustainable, Blekinsopp points to two reason. On the one hand was the belief that inspiration must pass through a specifically named individual. On the other, was the tendency to associate a certain genre of composition to a certain individual. Thus, as we see the Sapiential compositions were assigned to Solomon and liturgical hymns were assigned to David, it becomes clear how simple the association the books of law and Moses. The path towards a more critical view of the Pentateuch and its author (s) is, at first, a slow and gradual one. Due to the dominating view of Moses authorship, to show even a hint of discordance could bring unwanted attention and sanctions. The first, Abraham Ibn Ezra, did so quietly, mentioning around 6 verses whose authorship he put into question. 5 centuries later, Spinoza in his, Tractatus Theologico-politicus, highlighted these verses and explicitly concluded that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Spinoza was followed by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. While these two were far enough beyond the reach of official censure, scholars such as Richard Simon did not received a warm welcome. Albeit it received no recognition at the time, it was Henning Witters book, publish in 1711, that was the first to exploit the different divine names Elohim and Yahweh as a way of distinguishing between parallel sources. Initially, this theory was applied only to Genesis and the first two chapters of Exodus. The thinking was the after the divine name YHWH was revealed to Moses in Ex 3:13-15, there was no need for the Elohist source to avoid using the name. Further study and analysis of other instances where the is an alteration of name such as what we find in the Garden of Eden story have manifested certain defects in this initial application. 40 years later, Jean Astruc independently arrived at a similar conclusion, proposing the theory of distinct and parallel sources. This thesis was assumed and fine-tuned by Johann Echhorn who produced the first critical Old Testament introduction (1780-83). While at first he Eichhorn assigned an authorial role to Moses, after a key publication of Wette, he abandoned the idea. Not convinced by the parallel sources thesis, other scholars who likewise rejected the Moses authorship proposed the fragment hypothesis: the suggestion that a plurality of a varied number of sources which were systematized long after gave rise to the Pentateuch. The first to follow this line was Alexander Geddes (1737-1802), whose work was taken up by Johann Vater (1800) and later in the writings of Willhelm de Wette. This last scholar marked a decisive new phase in in Penetateuchal scholarship when he recognized the association between the temple during the rein of Josiah and an early version of Deuteronomy. Such observation allowed him to date the Deuteronomic law book to the seventh century; thus many of the ritual legislation found in the Pentateuch were probably a retrojection of the later time. Moving into the nineteenth century, Blenkinsopp lists a serious of scholars that continue to the efforts to identity and date sources, highlighting the motivations behind the movement at the time. Ideas such as cultural primitivism the idea that primitive societies lived our a spontaneous and were free from ritual constrains which were imposed as the society developed opposed the early beliefs of Israel to the more legalistic and structured religion that constituted not some much Israel, but post-exilic Judaism. The philosophy and influence of Hegel was also strongly felt in the nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. Scholar such as George and Vatke sought to elaborate the pre-exilic period under the light of the Hegelian dialectic according to which the primitive nature religion came first and was then opposed by its antithesis, ethical individuality, which was pushed by the prophets. Both the Romantic view and the Hegelian view however, according to Blekinsopp, failed to render a convincing account which was able to offer a convincing explanation of the post-exilic Judaism. The motivation behind much of this source-critical work resided in the goal of reconstructing the religious history of Israel. Still, the danger at the time and still today was to construct a religion of Israel that had more to do with hypothetical sources that were fruit of of preconceptions that what the people of Israel of the time actually thought and felt. Even in the case of great scholars such as Wellhausen, hints of aversion to Judaism and of anti-Semitism together with a general resentment towards religions institutionalism in general lead us to question the tension in his works between natural morality and legal-ritual systems. Keeping in mind this critiques, Wellhausens still constitutes an important landmark in biblical scholarship. Continuing the fragment hypothesis, Wellhausen argued that the J and E were the earliest sources and were put together by a Jehovistic editor. P followed the chronological structure of Q (a siglum that refers to the four covenants Wellhausen claimed to discover in the time between Creation and Sinai) yet was dependent on Ezekiel. It included the ritual law. P would belong to the last stage in the editing process while Deuteronomy, or D, albeit the fact that it came existence independently, still reveals certain similarities to JE and thus must have been integrated with them before it was combined with P. In conclusion, the correct sequence is JEDP and the Pentateuch in its final composition was published around the fifth century B.C. at the time of Ezra.The JEDP, four-source documentary hypothesis remained relatively accepted in the academic world for at least two decades after the end of World War II. Due to a variety of factors including anti-Semitic concerns and critiques on the part of the more conservative line of thought, any convergence between Jewish and Catholic scholarship with the critical mainstream only appeared after the World War II. Before this however, certain threats to the theory that originated not so much from without as from within began to emerge. As scholars demanded more an more consistency in the identification of the sources, the consistency of each source began to collapse and dissolve into a variety of components or strands. While the theory in itself did not fall, work on it since Wellhausen has evidenced the theories vulnerable nature. A significant departure from the hypothesis was initiated by Hermann Gunkel (1852-1932) who shifted the angle of focus away from the existence and identification of the sources to the prehistory rooted in non literate culture of Israel. He thought that by understanding the literary and aesthetic feature of the individual narrative unites one could categorise their respective types and consequentially identify the social situations at their origin. This new approach was introduced as form criticism and the history of traditions. With this, he sought answers in the earlier periods that preceded the time when the sources were put together. Gerhard von Rad concurred on the importance of preceding oral traditions but proposed a cultic origin for Israels traditions. Blekinsopp points out, however, that von Rad and those who followed this line of thinking never offered a convincing explanation of who these cult origins generated the written narrative that followed. This same critique he applies also to Martin Noth who believed, unlike von Rad, that most of the essential content of the Pentateuch had been laid down before any document was drafted. Proponents of even more radical theories of oral tradition also fail to convincingly explain the passage from oral tradition to written tradition.In recent years the documentary hypothesis has entered into crisis. On the one hand, with two approaches on the stage, the question for Blekinsopp is whether the hypothesis of distinct documents is reconcilable with the history of tradition as presented by Gunkel. On the other, is the problem of the dating of the sources. More conservative scholars such as W. F. Albright dated the Pentateuch back to 522 B.C. David Noel Freedman, a student of Albright, choose a slightly early date (5th century or possibly 6th) and argued that the earliest sources were combined and edited during the reign of Hezekiah after the Assryian conquest of the northern Kingdom between the tenth and with century B.C. The debate over the dating of the traditions also affected the sources where the came from. Certain scholars such as George Mendenhall, for example, used the analogy of Hittite suzerainty treaties in order to establish the great antiquity of the covenant as an idea and an institution. While the issue continues to be debated, most scholars now argue that, at a closer look, the theory is a weak one and that the covenant as a mature formulation is a creation of the Deuteronomist tradition around the seventh century B.C. The Deuteronomic thesis brings with it other consequences. Other scholars have began to doubt the view of a continuous narrative at the early period of Israels history. Luis Alonso-Shokel concluded that due to the evidence of mythological and sapiential language in Genesis 2-3, a post-prophetic dating would be more adequate. Frederick Winner continued and developed the hypothesis of a post-exilic J through Genesis. Following in his footsteps, Norman Wagner argued that a series of stories such as those about the ancestors, the exodus narrative, etc. were each developed independently up until the post-exilic period when a Yahwhistic compiler provided the editorial linkage. Sustaining and even more radical view, Hans Heinrich Schmid argued that the entire history of creation to the fall of the Judean king would not belong to the J of the classical documentarians J, as such, no longer exists rather to the Deuteronomists. Another critique of the documentary hypothesis is Rold Redtorff. He argued that the Pentateuch narrative is, in reality, a combination of distinct units or building blocks that were integrated editorially only later on. The cohesion of the Pentateuchal story for him would be the promise theme. Such a theory, however, struggles to explain why it must be the promise theme and not another and fails to give a convincing description of the overall cohesion that is present in the narrative, one that seems to manifest something more than just a later editing.In the articles final section, Blekinsopp provides 6 provisional conclusions. The first regards the fact that there is no longer a consensus regarding the existence of identifiable, continue narratives sources form the pre-exilic period that are present in entire range of the Pentateuch. Secondly, few would endorse an early dating of the J source. Most hypothesis a much later date, probably around the Babylonian exile; such a dating puts the J source in general in danger of extinction. Thirdly, the principle that that what is not known positively must be considered to be later is an argument e silentio presents a series of problematic issues that have yet to be addressed. Fourthly, just as the J source has come under serious criticism, less attention has been payed to other documents which must now me more seriously addressed. Finally, most of the scholars have focused there attention on the narrative aspects of the Pentateuch, ignoring or giving little attention to the legal elements, elements which constitute a very large portion of the text. The relation thus between law and narrative must be clarified. The tensions and roadblocks that have appeared on the scene of critical biblical scholarship over the years have led to a serious of attacks. Recent scholars such as Robert Alter have began to propose new approaches which, they hope, can offer more fruits than the excavating techniques. Alter and others have sought to focus and reach a better understating of the aesthetic aspects for which preceding scholars showed little or no interest. In a similar line, the emergence of groups of scholars who decidedly broke with the historical, philological and referential approach sought to study the text as if it had a life of its own, indecent of the its origins and the authors original intentions. This movement, led by I. A. Richards and others, is known as the New Criticism. The preference for more text-immanence methods as opposed to the excavate techniques also prevails in canonical criticism, represented mainly by Brevard Childs. Although similar to the New Criticism, the latter is more focused on theological concerns as opposed to literary ones. In conclusion, Blenkinsopp recognizes that critical methods were not always done well. Concerned, however, with an exaggerated rejection and opposition between it and other more recent ones, he argues that the historical-critical approach does indeed offer us access in a unique way to certain dimensions of religious experience and levels of meaning in biblical texts. While significant modifications must be made, Blenkisopp argues against writing off the real advances of our scholarly predecessors and proposes that the attempt to understand how the Pentateuch came about is still a worthy endeavor.