The documentary hypothesis was popularized by Wellhausen. In essence, the documentary hypothesis (DH) is a way of understanding the authorship of the Pentateuch.
According to DH, there are four main narratives, or sources, that provided the bulk of the Pentateuch's content. These sources are more or less identifable along the lines of socio-political power at given points in Israel's ancient history, divided into Y[J]ahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly sources (the origin of the famous JEDP acronym).
The theory concludes that these distinct Pentateuchal source were finally combined into a more or less coherent whole by later editors, or "redactors."
There are numerous reasons it has fallen into disrepute recently, but one of the most significant reasons, IMO, is that like single-authorship theories, the categories or "sources" are far too rigidly demarcated and require far too much from the categories than could ever be culled reasonably from the text. In other words, maintaining the theory in relation to the text produces an inherent complexity that makes holding together the meaningfulness of the text to the ancient Hebrews' history and cultus of worship to be no small feat.
While JEDP might be on the "outs" in terms of textual criticism, I think some of the principles it espouses are definitely still important. While it is probably a bit presumptuous for the theory to so ridigly place authorship in the 4-5 categories that it does, I think it is moving in the right direction in that it recognizes and attempts to identify the underlying socio-politico-religious issues that inevitably motivated and informed the writing of the Scriptures.
Far too many people, I think, have a "magical" conception of inspiration of Scripture, believing that the words, sentences, and paragraphs of the Scriptures are somehow transcendent of the times and minds by which they were written. And while one might make the argument that the ideas and meanings which they convey do, in fact, transcend the words, it is still important to understand and come to grips with who wrote the Scriptures, what kinds of world-views they had, and what the driving forces were that motivated them to write what they did.
While JEDP might be on the "outs" in terms of textual criticism, I think some of the principles it espouses are definitely still important. While it is probably a bit presumptuous for the theory to so ridigly place authorship in the 4-5 categories that it does, I think it is moving in the right direction in that it recognizes and attempts to identify the underlying socio-politico-religious issues that inevitably motivated and informed the writing of the Scriptures.
Far too many people, I think, have a "magical" conception of inspiration of Scripture, believing that the words, sentences, and paragraphs of the Scriptures are somehow transcendent of the times and minds by which they were written. And while one might make the argument that the ideas and meanings which they convey do, in fact, transcend the words, it is still important to understand and come to grips with who wrote the Scriptures, what kinds of world-views they had, and what the driving forces were that motivated them to write what they did.
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Quiz: What is the documentary hypothesis, where did it come from, and why is it no longer held by most critical scholars?
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