Reading Report - Critical Views

1. Introduction to Pentateuchal Criticism
The reader is introduced to the first five books of the Bible which have been named the Pentateuch from the Greek pentateuchos, meaning five-volume work. From there four methods of criticism from the past 250 years are summarized, source criticism, form criticism, tradition-historical criticism and literary criticism. The first critical view is source criticism which seeks to discover the literary sources used to create the Pentateuch. Form criticism, rather than focus on the written sources, focuses its analysis on the oral traditions that lead to the written sources. The next method looks at the history of the traditions which underlie the stories presented. Finally literary criticism looks at the text as a whole seeking to understand the Pentateuch as a single piece of composed literature.

2. The Rise of the Documentary Hypothesis
The Documentary Hypothesis came about as an evolving critical view of the source documents used in creating the Pentateuch during the post-Enlightenment period. This critical view of the text began by assigning portions of the text to particular sources, combined by Moses and other redactors and copyist eventually forming the composition that we have today. Eventually this viewed evolved by the help of Graf, Vatke, and Wellhausen to the popular view of the J, E, D, P source texts and authorship chronology. The first two sources are labeled J and E for the primary name of God used within the text, YWYH or misnamed Jehovist or J source, and the Elohim or Elohist or E source penned in approximately 840 BCE and 700 BCE respectively. Then we have the D source who penned the book of Deuteronomy in 623 BCE and the P or priestly source who penned the cultic rituals between 500-450 BCE. The implication of this purely mechanical method is that it makes Mosaic authorship impossible, it ignores the context of the story, and permanently changes the history of the Israelites, all of which fail to properly analyze the Pentateuch.

3. Going Behind the Documents
Using the Documentary Hypothesis as a base from which to launch further analysis, scholars like Gunkel and von Rad began to explore even greater speculative methods called form criticism and traditio-historical criticism respectively. Gunkel believed that he could observe oral traditions that took place in various times and contexts that could be used as sources for the various institutions and explanations for names of places, origins of customs, legends of different people groups, etc. Most of this relied heavily on the theory that cultures in history developed from primitive to complex over time, or evolved. Next the traditio-historical criticism brings together the documents used in the Documentary Hypothesis and the oral traditions explained by form criticism to create our present text. The problem with these forms of criticism is that they begin with a flawed framework, the Documentary Hypothesis, speculate further from there in many conflicting directions with no extra-biblical texts or evidence to support their claims.

4. The Documentary Hypothesis Under Threat
New scholars have begun to investigate the shortcomings of the Documentary Hypothesis and have begun to either modify or reject it altogether. One of the most common modifications is the assigning of the J, E, D, P source text to various passages within the Pentateuch. While the J and E sources are broken down into smaller and smaller sections thus producing more sources (J1, J2…Jn and E1, E2…En), the Deuteronomist or D source has gained more attention by Noth’s proposition for a Deuteronomistic History which led to a focus on the book of Deuteronomy in conjunction with the books following it rather than the books preceding it. Alternatives to the Documentary Hypothesis have begun to take hold in the scholarly community. These alternatives reject the focus on the parallel sources and instead focus on a single source of composition with later redactions or supplements provided to the text. While these alternatives and criticism are still coming from a scholarly community that largely rejects the theological influence on the text, they do now admit that there is no clear consensus on when, why, how and through whom the Pentateuch was written.

5. The Sinai Narrative – A Test Case
Alexander here uses the Sinai Narrative in Exodus 19:1-24:11 as a test case for the Documentary Hypothesis and the Deuteronomistic History which views Genesis to Numbers as a fictional prologue for history that unfolds in Deuteronomy and the subsequent books. When analyzing the divine speeches in conjunction with the narrative sections surrounding them, along with the additional material of the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant, Alexander found that there was no evidence of redactional material and that there was a single author throughout. In addition to this analysis, Alexander found no evidence linking Deuteronomistic influence on the Sinai narrative, but the exact opposite showing the influence of the Sinai Narrative on the Deuteronomistic account.

6. The Future of Pentateuchal Studies
The types of criticism that have been waged against the Pentateuch in the past have many limitations and fail to prove that the content is fictional with their weak arguments against the historicity. Furthermore they fail to ask the most important question when analyzing the Pentateuch, it’s not how they were composed, but why were they composed. The catalytic event for bringing not only the Pentateuch together, but Joshua to Kings as a unified whole made of several authors and redactionists is most likely the post-exhilic period which provides the most obvious reason for the redactions and the cohesive unity of the texts. Since history rolls on without the ability to go back in time and many source documents have eroded away and become nothing, we are only left with the texts themselves which provide the answer to why they were formed, as a revelation of the almighty God, creator of all things, and “source of all true knowledge.”