Talk:Documentary hypothesis

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[edit] Untitled Discussions

[edit] Untitled Discussion 1

The D source is the source of the book of Deuteronomy, and likely in addition, the books of Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. Generally speaking, the Deuteronomist emphasizes centralization of worship and governance in Jerusalem. Consider the book of the teaching - this was the book that was found in the Temple in 622 B.C.E. by the High Priest Hilkiah while the Temple was undergoing a renovation....Modern scholarship has argued convincingly that this book of the teaching was in fact Deuteronomy....Several of the Deuteronomic prescriptions that Josiah carried out were actually created for the first time shortly before he did so, in the late 8th and 7th centuries B.C.E....

The first attempt to centralize sacrifice was made about a century before Josiah by King Hezekiah (late 8th-early 7th centuries B.C.E.). Hosea (early-mid 8th century B.C.E.) was the first prophet who criticized the proliferation of altars. Earlier, no prophets or pious kings attacked or suppressed the practice, and no less a prophet than Elijah (9th century B.C.E.) built an altar and offered sacrifices on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18[1]). As for the united national Pesach sacrifice, Kings itself says that nothing of the sort had even been done since the days of the Chieftains. If these Deuteronomic prescriptions did not exist prior to the 8th-7th centuries [B.C.E.], than Deuteronomy itself could not have existed earlier." [p.xx]

....key aspects of Josiah's reform and of Deuteronomy - centralization of sacrifice, destruction of shrines other than the Temple, and destruction of cultic pillars and sacred posts - had already been undertaken a century earlier by Hezekiah. Since Hezekiah's short-lived reformation is not said to have been based on a book, we cannot be certain than Deuteronomy existed then, but the ideas that produced the book were clearly developing. It seems likely, then, that Deuteronomy was composed in the 8th-7th centuries B.C.E." [p.xxi]

...Many features of Deuteronomy, particularly its vigorous monotheism and fervent opposition to pagan practices in Israel, are very understandable as a reaction to conditions in the 8th-7th centuries....[many examples discussed] ....However there is much in the book that seems considerable older than this. The society reflected in Deuteronomy's laws is a good deal less advanced than that of 7th century Judah. It consists primarily of farmers and herders. There are no laws about merchants, artisans, professional soldiers or other processionals. There are none dealing with commerce, real estate, or written contracts, and none dealing with commercial loans...There is no mention of royal officials or the royal power to tax and confiscate property and draft citizens....But [it does] contain some later elements. Deuteronomy in particular reflects some conditions that developed in monarchic times.

....Combining all of these chronological clues, it appears that the civil laws of Deut. go back to a time in the United Monarchy or the early divided monarchy - the tenth and nine centuries B.C.E. - during the transition from the old tribal-agrarian society to a more urbanized, monarchic one. It is difficult to tell whether Deut, selected these laws individually or in groups, or whether they were already a collection... In any case, these laws were supplemented and partly revised during the Assyrian age, primarily for the purpose of centralizing sacrificial worship and countering the threat of pagan religious belief and practice to which Israel was exposed during that time period....These connections with the northern kingdom make it seem likely that the Deuteronomic ideology crystallized there as a reform program, partly inspired by Hosea, during the final years of the kingdom as a response to the assimilatory pressures of the Assyrian age and to the excesses of the northern monarchy.....

Warning: The above quotes are excerpted from, with minor adaptations, from the Jewish Publication Society commentary on the Torah. As such, this text is not in the public domain. It does represent a mainstream current view of Biblical scholars on the subject (including research by Christians, Jews, and others), although it is by no means the last word.

Thank You! I really appreciate Your help.

[edit] Untitled Discussion 2

I find the statement modern studies began in the 1800s to be arbitrary and therefore misleading. This study is centuries old. It's just in recent years the public as a whole has been less inclined to burn scholars at the stake. If I said, for example, that modern biochemistry began in the 1920s with the invention of the ultracentrifuge I might be able to defend the point, but as hemoglobins had been studied for decades earlier, I'd also be quite wrong. Dwmyers 22:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's a fair point. Maybe the article could say that Some critical study of the Bible began centuries before the modern era, but was sporadic and not generally accepted by the public at large. Modern critical study of the Bible began to be widely published and accepted in the 1800s. Or something like this. RK 02:45, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

More so, the recent partitioning by JeMa disturbs me. I know he excised material from the article on Dating the Bible which in my opinion belongs there. I ended up reverting the bulk of what I wrote that he edited. He's also divided the scholars into classes and in some cases gotten the classes wrong. For one, Rentdorff is not an oral traditionalist, but holds yet another view, and I'm not sure that JeMa's subdivisioning of scholars adds anything to this article.

In terms of scholastic division, this article still continues to suffer from identifying Baruch nee Benedict Spinoza as a Christian, as well.

Continuing on the problems of the latest revisions, the pre-JeMa orientation of this article had a clear historical narrative that bordered on "beautiful writing", and JeMa has changed that. History has been pushed to the rear of the article and the fact that people have been studying this problem for centuries is diminished as a result. It's as if the study is being "modernized" when that apparent modernization ignores the centuries of work others did.Dwmyers 15:13, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, my mistake. The moving of historical material "south" predates JeMa. But more to the point, the original orientation of this article had what amounts to an introduction and historical narrative, focused on Jewish scholars but still, you could watch the evolution of ideas through the time frame in the text. I think the article gave short shrift to people the original author didn't consider good Jews (this is why Spinoza has been lumped in with the Christians) but that could be fixed. What I think I'm going to do is remove the heading from the various scholars, and see if there isn't a way to show that Rentdorff isn't an oral traditionalist, because some editor thought he was... Dwmyers 15:30, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

One more point (nag, nag, nag, I know). The discussion of Bloom presents him as some kind of disciple of Friedman. It makes for a nicely told urban legend, but it diminshes Bloom and is probably factually incorrect. Harold Bloom isn't a biblical scholar, he's a highly regarded literary critic and I rather doubt he is one of Frank Cross's graduate students, as Friedman and Baruch Halpern are. Dwmyers 15:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Finally! I can enunciate the Spinoza problem more accurately. The problem is that the 2 paragraphs of text in Traditional Christian Scholarship aren't both about traditional Christian scholarship. The first paragraph is indeed about traditional Christian scholarship, but the second paragraph is more about 17th century scholastic views of the topic than about purely Christian views of the topic.

Section 2.2, Internal Textual Evidence, has been turned into a kind of orphan with the new reorganization. It's clearly out of place. Dwmyers 16:26, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Oral traditionalists

The recent edits which place Rolf Rentdorff among the "oral traditionalists", are simply incorrect. Rolf is nothing of the sort. He believes in a more extensive breakdown of documentary sources, and not in that the souces have an oral character. Any reading of Blenkinsopp's book will show that clearly. Harold Bloom, likewise, is clearly not a student of Friedmann's, though the text seems to suggest that. Bloom is a literary critic, Friedman is a scholar in the area. Dwmyers 16:26, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The thing about Bloom's work, while he dwells on some points that were obviously available from Friedmann, is that he elaborates on the contributions of documentary hypothesis to literature. Where Friedmann discussed the Shakespearean qualities of J, Bloom's agreement breaks into several essays on how the documentary theory provides us with access to vibrant ways of thinking about J and the characters (s)he offers us. Many of the theological and doctrinal discussions that crop up with the combined JEPD texts (or JEDP, depending on who you're with), just don't come up when reading J alone. The 'Humanities,' of which Bloom is professor at Yale, seem to come to the fore. In many ways, it seems that Bloom was trying to stake a claim for literary critics among those interested in DH. I read that he was encouraging scholars to take a literary critic's approach to other religious texts, such as the Book of Mormon, for which empirical evidence other than the text itself is conspicuously absent--where the historical approach to biblical studies may never be available. This emphasizes his literary roots as opposed to biblical studies roots. Because Bloom does not "come from" the tradition of source criticism or documentary theory, but from literary roots harking to Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke, perhaps an early link to literary criticism as one of the scholarly traditions involved would help organize things when it gets down to Friedmann and Bloom? The way I read it, Bloom is not a literary critic in the sense that biblical scholars seem to use the word--as a sub-heading of biblical studies--but a literary critic because he has a long-standing career in literature, who has expressed an interest in biblical texts. So I agree that he seems out of place under Friedmann's heading. Other thoughts? Jerekson 05:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bible Source book out

Richard E Friedman has a new book out, called The Bible With Sources Revealed. The ISBN number is ISBN 0060530693. It just came on sale on the 25th of November, and those who like this kind of scholarship may be interested in the book. It's on my Amazon wish list, for one. Dwmyers 18:46, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Removed paragraph

I have removed this paragraph, which was contributed by an anonymou user:

The hypothesis also contains a number of tenets which do not coordinate with archaeology. Archaeology has found little evidence supporting the hypothesis, although between 1960 and 2000 archaeologists have made discoveries that contradict tenets of the hypothesis. Periodicals such as Near Eastern Archaeology should be studied before drawing conclusions. Also important is Umberto Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis and The Composition of the Pentateuch; Eight Lectures and his fuller work on all of Genesis.

These claims are untrue. The vast majority of archaeologists and modern biblical scholars do not believe this. In fact, it is disingenuous to present Umberto Cassuto as someone who rejects the documentary hypothesis without clarification, because he in fact rejects the traditional Jewish and Chrisitan views! Cassuto rejects the idea that Moses wrote all of the Torah. He accepts that the current text of the Torah was assembled from more than one early source, but our anonymous contributor left that fact out. In any case, Cassuto's primary work against the most accepted form of the documentary hypothesis is old and rejected: it was written in 1941, convinced nearly no one, and has long been bypassed. RK

[edit] one "individual"

Hi! I think this sentence really needs to be reshaped:

"..are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual" - I think it would be proper to put "...rather than authored by one individual(or God)" or something like it. The Torah is held be Jews to be in fact authored by Hashem(God), and letter-by-letter copied by Moses(which I think is also the way the Chistians belive the 5 Books of Moses were written)

Don't individuals sign and date their conrtibutions here? PiCo 10:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone know what this means?

This is the last sentence in the article:

In this they are correct insofar as they see the challenge to the early dating for composition and the problematic control of documentary materials for which the literary evidence appears harder and harder to maintain.

If anyone can work out what it means, I'd be raetful if they could edit it in a way that makes that meaning clear. PiCo 10:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Most Humble Man

The section "Background to the hypothesis" includes this: "In Num 12:3 Moses is described as the most humble man on the face of the earth, which would be remarkably hypocritical if Moses himself authored the statement." But it seems to me that no one claims Moses to have been the author of that statement - certainly not the supporters of the Documentary Hypothesis, and not even the supporters of the traditional view, which is that God dictated the text and Moses merely transcribed it. Therefore, this comment neither supports nor detracts from the hypothesis that there were multiple authors, and I propose removing this item from the list. --Keeves 13:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

That's actually supposed to be a support for non-mosaic authorship, per JDEP construction.Thanatosimii 17:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vatican claim of 90% acceptance

I'm removing the "DH has wide acceptance" assertion from the opening intro, along with its "Vatican 90% support" claim. (see second paragraph of current version as of 2006-04-04) The intro should present the theory, not endorse it with superlatives. By doing so so early on in the article, it projects a strong slant. Statements about its acceptance should go in an appropriate section of the article, perhaps "History of the hypothesis / The modern era".

I'd add it to such a section now, if not for that the justification for the wide acceptance claim (i.e. Vatican 90%) has problems:

It lacks citation, despite the 2006-02-28 'needs citation' tag. I tried to find a support for this on the web, but could not. On the contrary, the best I could turn up was a quotation from the presumably Vatican-endorsed "Catholic Biblical Quarterly" (Jan. 1989, pp. 138-39 -- quoted by a GeoCities page) implying that such support was in fact waning: "It is widely known by now that the documentary hypothesis is in serious trouble, with no viable alternative yet in sight."
Even if the Vatican did say such a thing, consider the details of the statement, "90% of academics in the field of biblical scholarship support it." Of course! I would fully expect that academics in the field of biblical scholarship would largely accept the hypothesis (or some variant thereof), for the same reasons that I would expect traditional, religious theologians to be largely against it.

-- Nmagedman 15:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The old Catholic Encyclopedia appears to reject the documentary hypothesis in the article on the Pentateuch. Then in Biblical Criticism (Higher) it apparently expressly denies it:

In replying to the critical systems, conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant, re-enforce the argument from Jewish and Christian traditions by methods borrowed from their opponents; linguistic distinctions are countered by linguistic arguments, and the traditionists also employ the process of comparing the data of one book with another, in an endeavour to bring all into harmony. Not the methods so much as the conclusions of criticism are impugned. The difference is largely one of interpretation. However, the conservatives complain that the critics arbitrarily rule out as interpolations or late comments passages which are unfavourable to their hypotheses. The advocates of tradition also charge the opposite school with being swayed by purely subjective fancies, and in the case of the more advanced criticism, by philosophico-religious prejudices. Moreover, they assert that such a piecemeal formation of a book by successive strata, as is alleged for many parts of the O. T. is without analogy in the history of literature. The Catholic criticism of the O. T. will be described in a separate section of this article.

[. . .]

The Biblical Commission, whose decisions have now the force of acts of the Roman Congregations, declared, 13 February, 1905, that the fallibility of implicit citations in the Bible might be admitted, provided solid arguments prove that they are really citations, and that the sacred writer does not adopt them as his own. The Commission conceded on 23 June, 1905, that some passages may be historical in appearance only, always saving the sense and judgment of the Church. On 27 June, 1906, the commission declared that the arguments alleged by critics do not disprove the substantial authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses. This decision has necessarily modified the attitude of such Catholic writers and teachers as favoured in a greater or less degree the conclusions of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. The decree of the Inquisition "Lamentabili" (3 July, 1907) and the encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" (8 September, 1907) reasserted against the Modernists the sound, Catholic principles to be followed in the study of Sacred Scripture.

Now the that encyclopedia is older (c. 1913), and the "official" position may have changed, but I likewise could not find any indication that it has by a Google search. --MonkeeSage 07:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the 'Official' Vatican position is but The Interpretation Of The Bible In The Church may be a good starting place, it is an official Vatican document on the suject from 1993. My reading of it is that the documentary hypothesis could be useful when considered along with other approaches. --John Bracegirdle 10:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] informal request for comment

Would people who regularly follow/contribute to this article please look at Yahwism and the talk page, where I express my concerns? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple Authors - Try reading the bible properly

The assumptions on multiple authors and the flood are erroneous. In Gen 6:20 God makes statement that says 2 of every kind of animal will arrive before Noah, so he's got some sorting out to do. Gen 7:2 God says put 7 pairs of clean aniamls [kosher], and 1 pair of unclean animals (pair being male and female] on the ark. In Gen 8:20, Noah sacrifices some of the clean animals as an offering. More of the clean animals were needed otherwise they would now be extinct. It rained 40 days and 40 nights (Gen 7:17), and the flood waters rose. It took nearly a year (i.e. Gen 8:13 Noah is 601 years old , Gen 7:6 - Noah is 600 years old) for the waters to subside at the end of the 40 days. This is one account written by one person, NOT more than one author. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.112.95.238 (talk • contribs).

This is a good excuse to rehash some basics of DH. It is backward reasoning when doctrine that was born after the text gets used to explain the text's meaning or unity. This is among the key fallacies Wellhausen worked on so doggedly in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel[2]. The DH is based on the rational notion of temporal precedence--in cause and effect, the cause does not come after the effect. Since the traditionally attributed authors are rarely given in the text, but were added later, temporal precedence gives us other evidence than tradition and wild guesses as to when the authors lived. One of the key assertions of DH is that the text may tell us (between the lines) as much about who/when the writers were as it does about their religion. The fact that the Priestly source (who was often responsible for adding in calendar and genealogy passages) did not create blatant contradictions in dates and numbers in the story of Noah does mean he did not exist, it merely means he was not an idiot--he made sure his contributions made at least a rough fit with the earlier sources at hand. With all this in mind, kosher law was not likely in place during Noah's time. Jerekson 06:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

But at the end of the day DH belongs in the same league as astrology and phrenology :P Kuratowski's Ghost 08:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Or better yet, literary criticism.Jerekson 14:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

You're confusing personal belief with scientific significance. No one is saying you have to believe in a religion in order to find its study absolutely fascinating and of great scientific value. No Egyptologist has ever believed in any of the religions they study, the ancient Egyptian religions have been completely dead for centuries, but Egyptology is still a valid and important science because it sheds light on how modern society came to be. Biblical archaeology, which is what DH is in effect, is equally valid if not more so because the religions it deals with are still alive and extremely influential. All you actually need to be interested in the origins of the bible is an interest in history, but if you don't think history matters then you're doomed to repeat its mistakes.

[edit] "hypothesis"?

if applying textual criticism to the pentateuch is the "documentary hypothesis", what is the alternative view called? "ipse dixit hypothesis"? "Mosaic authorship hypothesis"? Much is made of the hypothetical nature of any conclusion drawn from textual criticism. To any philologist this goes without saying, therefore the term appears to be coined by whoever believes to own an a priori truth that cannot be inferred from the text. Since Mosaic authorship is not even claimed in the text itself, I would be rather interested in the origin and prevalence of this belief. Under "Traditional Jewish and Christian beliefs" we read about the belief that God revealed his will to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is of course taken directly from the text, and refers to the 10 commandments. It is unclear what this has to do with the question of authorship of the pentateuch, except of course for the passage detailing the 10 commandments themselves. Nowhere do we document the origin of the belief of Mosaic authorship, we only read about people doubting it. That makes it a complete strawman, a belief only postulated to be gloriously debunked, without evidence that any scholar ever even insisted on it. I have no doubt that there are some hinterland fundamentalist Christians or Jews who have this notion, but that hardly makes it something to be discussed as a hypothesis in a scholarly debate. Unless we can quote "traditional" scholars who argue for Mosaic authorship, this article should be rephrased as dealing straightforwardly with "pentateuch philology" and focus on J,E,P,D vs. other reconstructions rather than pretending that there is a controversy between two hypotheses. dab (ᛏ) 07:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Any scholars who disagree with a pet interpretation of an allegedly "neutral, driven-only-by-the-facts, having-no-biases" group of scholars are automatically "fringe-element" and not worthy of note because they are just making a priori judgments, not dealing with the facts (which of course require no interpretation and thus no prior judgments, because they are just "brute" facts that everyone knows [and this is not an a priori judgment about the nature of facts or rthe process of human knowing! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!]). Pshaw.

Is there any tradition or precedent for asserting Mosaic authorship as the "traditional" view?

The term "the book of Moses," found in II Chronicles 25:4; 35:12; Ezra 3:2; 6:18; and Nehemiah 8:1; 13:1, surely included the Book of Genesis and also testifies to a belief in Israelite circles in the fifth century B.C. that all five of the books were the work of Moses. Ben Sira (Ecclus. 24:23), Philo, Josephus, and the authors of the Gospels held that Moses was intimately related to the Pentateuch. Philo and Josephus even explicitly said that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34:5-12. Other writers of the New Testament tie the Pentateuch to Moses. The Jewish Talmud asserts that whoever denied Mosaic authorship would be excluded from Paradise. (H. G. Livingston, The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment [Baker, 1974], pp. 218-219).

Harrison, Kaiser, Gordon, Archer, Van Seters, Van Dyk, Wiseman, (G. F.) Wright, Allis, Orr, Merrill, Garrett, Livingston, Unger, and Kitchen (among others) have all argued either for Mosaic (or largly single-source) authorship/historical redaction, or against radical redactionist/form-and-source critical hypotheses like Graf-Wellhausen. These are significant, relevant views, and there is no reason to exclude them from Wikipedia. » MonkeeSage « 09:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link farm

In the past few days the number of EL has grown. Do you think we can trim it back down again?Andrew c 00:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some?

"some historians and academics"? It's probably closer to most. The Documentary Hypothesis appears to be the consensus even among competing historical and academic Biblical scholars.--LKS 5/29/06

The hypothesis was the consensus for a while, but it's falling quickly. I'm not an expert in the field, but apparently there's this problem with the five part suzerainity covenants used in the Bible, which would be 3 parts if it were composed in a post-assyrian timeframe.Thanatosimii 17:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How Be'ersheba got its name

The article says that there are accounts on the Bible for:

the three strikingly similar narratives in Genesis about a wife confused for a sister;

(...)

three different versions of how the town of Be'ersheba got its name;

Two Beersheba naming versions actually come from the wife-sister tales involving Abimelech. The other tale, however, involves the Pharaoh, and does not include the naming of Beersheba. What is the third account for how this city got its name? If there IS a third record, it should be added to the Beersheba page, and if there isn't, I think this comment should be excluded from this page. --Chalom 14:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delisted GA

This article did not go through the current GA nomination process. Looking at the article as is, it fails on criteria 2b of the GA quality standards in that it does not cite any sources. Most Good Articles use inline citations. I would recommend that this be fixed, to reexamine the article against the GA quality standards, and to submit the article through the nomination process. --RelHistBuff 09:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proper explanation

Moses' wife, though often identified as a Midianite (and hence Caucasian), appears in the tale of Snow-white Miriam as a "Cushite" (Ethiopian), and hence black;(however Rabbinical commentators state that the term "cushite" in this instance, refers to her beauty)

The information is on the Moses article. Flavius Josephus narrates Moses's expedition against Nubia and his marriage to a Nubian princess (Nubian=Cushite).

Numbers 25 describes the rebellion at Peor and refers to daughters of Moab, but the same chapter portrays one woman as a Midianite;

Read Flavius Josephus (available on Project Gutenberg); both Balak (a Moabite) and the Midianites were involved. It also explains why Balaam was killed by the Israelites in the war against the Midianites (he told Balak and the Midianites that if they wished to be victorious for a little while that the Israelites had to commit idolatry). This is also on the Moses page.

new note It's interesting that nowhere on the page is there mention that, as Cassuto states, the supporters of this notion change words in the Pentateuch to support their contentions. This amounts to falsification of data, a capital crime in scientific research. See the results of the discoveries that Poehlman and Sudbo falsified their data. There is also no discussion here of how the supporters deal with archaeological discoveries.

Hello,

Thank you for adding some information on Cassuto. Unfortunately, I haven't read Cassuto's work and am unfamiliar with his criticisms. Could you please flesh his arguments out a bit more in the article? For example, which supporters of the Documentary Hypothesis are charged with falsifying data? How often did this occur and is this a commonly held argument against the Hypothesis amoung detractors? We have two sentances on him now, but I found the sentances confusing because I haven't read the book; as it stands, it's a pretty serious, but very vague, allegation in the article.

As for the archaeological discoveries, which discoveries do you mean? Please feel free to add sentances (from NPOV, of course!) about these discoveries and their implications to the "controversies" section, if you think it will help represent another point of view about the Hypothesis.

Thanks, JKB 18:09 December 4 2006 (EST)

Also, please forgive my ignorance, but I'm unfamiliar with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, mentioned in the sentance: "In the same work Cassuto discusses the deconstruction of a parallel formation which disrupts a grammatical structure, a violation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." I assume it represents another criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis? Perhaps we could flesh out these two Cassuto sentances so they flow with the paragraphs above, instead of having them in seperate bullets. We could also describe the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis a little more, or even start a separate article on it? That way, we'll have an easy explanation handy for people (like myself) who are unfamiliar with it.

Thanks,JKB 18:49 December 4 2006 (EST)

[edit] Modern Era Section

In the modern era section, the following paragraphs appear:

"Some modern allegorical interpretations and historical readings lead to a hypothesis of significant authorship by a woman or women. In one such interpretation, the Genesis stories depict a powerful male God who does not substitute well for a mother/grand-mother figure.[citation needed] Other interpretations lead to the hypothesis that women initially told/wrote certain Genesis stories.[citation needed] For example, very few males would have initially supported the circumcision of young boys.

Historical readings alone can also lead to a hypothesis of female authorship. The Hebrew states functioned as a buffer zone, set between more powerful neighbors. Large armies would periodically invade such a buffer area, killing most of the male population, thus fostering matriarchal trends that could survive defeat and return to the Promised Land.[citation needed] According to this theory, surviving females experiencing slavery would find it difficult to maintain paternal lineage, and children of female slaves would benefit from patrilineal stories. Stories praising the wisdom and compassion of motherhood can appear without overtly challenging male authority and power. Citizenship would derive solely from the Mother."

Does anyone know where these ideas came from, so we can cite them? Also, I find the 2 last sentances confusing. What does "citizenship would derive solely from the Mother" mean in the context of the Documentary Hypothesis? Is there any research that would support this line of reasoning? Any ideas on how to rewrite this to sound more encyclopedic?

Thanks, JKB November 7 2006 (EST)

Hi again everyone,

I'm concerned that the first two paragraphs of the "female authorship" section represents original research. Broad statements such as "Large armies would periodically invade such a buffer area, killing most of the male population, thus fostering matriarchal trends" are made without citation. Although at first glance it seems intuitive that a society beset by war would foster matriarchal trends, I can think of several societies where this did not take place; citing a source showing that this happened in ancient Israel would make me feel better.

Other sentances, such as "the Genesis stories depict a powerful male God who does not substitute well for a mother/grand-mother figure" puzzle me; the statement might be true, but I'm not sure how that represents evidence for female authorship. Finally, I think we need a few more examples of "Stories praising the wisdom and compassion of motherhood" in the Bible, as well as evidence that they were written by a woman. If we're going to make the argument that women-centered stories may reflect female authorship, we might want to mention the opposing hypothesis that the many men-centered stories may reflect male authorship too.

I'm going to do some digging to see if I can find any citations for these ideas. If I can't, and if no one objects, I'm going to temporarily remove these two paragraphs until we figure out the sources.

I'm actually a supporter of the theory that women may have written parts of the Bible, by the by. I'm just troubled by not citing sources or counter-arguments in an Encyclopedia; it's not NPOV. Please add your thoughts, especially if you have sources for these ideas and cited counterarguments! Thanks, JKB 18:09 December 4 2006 (EST)

You're right to be troubled, there's nothing wrong with female authorship theories but encyclopedias are about supporting evidence, and the passages have nothing but half-baked theory. From the way they were written I get the feeling the passages were added with a political agenda in mind, rather than scholarship. There's absolutely nothing in the texts to exclude female or male authorship, but at the end of the day there's not really anything at all to indicate the gender of the writers. We just don't really know enough to make any assumptions. Even stories written from a female or male point of view aren't really evidence, talented writers can do both points of view convincingly (Shakespeare, for example).

If the authors regarded themselves as historians trying to record what they have been told is true, it gets even more complicated. If you read a biography of Elizabeth I, that would technically be from a strong female point of view but it wouldn't necessarily tell you anything about the gender of the author.

I think to be honest it's a fruitless line of enquiry to concentrate on the nature of the individual authors of these texts, as there's no real hope of ever pinning them down to individuals. Even if you could, edited folk tales put down on paper aren't really works by that individual, they're more like a compilation of oral history which has many different roots in myth and history. The best we can do is just study the style and the factual content of the texts and compare them with other texts, as they're the only things we have solid evidence about.

If you really want to discuss gender in the bible, it's probably best to just stick to what the texts actually say and imply about gender rather than guessing the genders of the actual authors.

[edit] G for Grundlage

I read when I took an academic class on Biblical Source Criticism about a combination of J and E called G, Grundlage, meaning foundation in German. Anyone know anything more about this? Valley2city 03:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cassuto

I deleted this sentence: "In the same work Cassuto discusses the deconstruction of a parallel formation which disrupts a grammatical structure, a violation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." My erason is that put here in isolation it makes it look as if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a foundation stone of modern linguistics, accepted by all in the field. But in fact SW is highly controversial, as the wiki article on the subject makes clear. PiCo 03:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Stephen C. Carlson 04:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Good call. Does anyone know anything about the sentance before that, about Cassuto and the alleged scientific misconduct? I've never read the book, and in isolation it confuses me. Has anyone else read it? Is there anyway to tie that sentance into the preceding paragraphs? JKB 22:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If you have access to a library - I don't - please read the book and see if you can improve that point, or else delete it. (Merry Christmas).PiCo 07:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why Sapir-Whorf should be controversial, it makes sense to me after 35 years of studying a dozen languages and seeing what crazy things come out of ignoring cultural influence on language and grammar when doing translations. If you translate Milton's buxom into Russian the way you would translate Georgette Heyer's, you come out with "pleasingly plump air." Or read the translation of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse available from Project Gutenberg, which talks about "vehicles" and "conductors" when the American culture dictates that the real meaning is cars and drivers. Or Cassuto's case where the Hypothesis deconstructs two uses of vehineh...veatah in Genesis 27 into different putative source documents when the same structure appears in Exodus 32 and Samuel I 18, proving that it is a grammatic feature of Hebrew and not restricted to Genesis.

[edit] Revision to Introduction

I ervised the Introduction to make it more comprehensible to the ordinary reader who might be consulting Wikipedia to find out what the DH is. My aim was to outline the DH in its contemporary form, giving the main outlines of what it says about the authorship and dating and background of the Torah's five books. I tried to get away from the emphasis on defending the DH, and just sate, as simply but comprehensively as I could, what it is. (I also made a small ervision to the top of the next section - this was largely so that I could save some useful material from the existing Introduction which I felt didn't quite belong but shouldn't be lost). For comment. PiCo 07:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Taking Issue with the Documentary Hypothesis

discussion removed from artice:

[Taking Issue with the Documentary Hypothesis: despite the excellent work of the author of this article, it should be noted that "The Documentary Hypothesis" (i.e., the Pentateuch is a compostie of 4 separate sources) while once accepted by the vast majority of Biblical scholars - is now only taught/promoted in universities and mainline/liberal seminaries in the United States. While the vast majority of scholars (except for orthodox Jewish and Christian ones) still reject Mosaic authoriship, the Documentary Hypothesis has (to the best of my knowledge) been rejected by European scholars, and is no longer taught as a valid theory in Tubingen, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburough, Aberdeen, Toulouse, Paris, or any of the more prestigious Biblical Studies programs throughout Europe. Unfortunately, I have no citations or references for this except my own memory from my Masters program from 14 years ago, and that was from lectures and studies in the basic coursework, and not in my specialty, which is early Christianity, so please, consider the source, and check into the facts on your own.]—The preceding comment was added by 210.4.139.129 (talk • contribs) 10:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consistent date notation

Currently the article uses both BC and BCE notations. Per WP:MOSDATE, I am going to make the date notation consistent. Since it talks about Jewish religious matters, I hope there is not objection to use denomination-neutral BCE. Thanks. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 00:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing sentence

Does anyone know what this sentence means: "The hypothesis may further postulate the combination of the sources into their current form by an editor known as R (for Redactor) who also made small additions"? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

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