The final form of the Hebrew Bible was finalized in the first century C.E. Before this, however, there was several hundred years of collecting texts, additions, modifications, and other alterations. The Pentateuch was the first part of the Hebrew Bible to solidify, which most likely occurred sometime between the end of the Babylonian Exile (586-539 B.C.E.) and the time of Ezra in the fifth century B.C.E. The Documentary Hypothesis (DH) is a model used by many prominent biblical scholars, such as Dr. Julius Wellhausen and Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman, that seeks to explain the origins of the first five books in the Bible., These five books consist of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which are known as the Pentateuch (from Greek, meaning “five scrolls), also known as the Five Books of Moses, or the Torah (from Hebrew, meaning “instruction”). The DH posits that ancient writers produced a number of different documents over a long period of time, which editors then took and used as sources to piece together the Old Testament as it is known today. According to this hypothesis, the Pentateuch is made up four distinct sources: J (Yahwist), E (Elohist), D (Deuteronomistic), and P (Priestly). Based on the DH, Gen 1 is written by source P, and Gen 2 is written by source J.
Critical study of the authorship of the Pentateuch began with an attempt to read the Pentateuch as one unified narrative. With this objective in mind, scholars like Richard Simon, and later Wellhausen and Friedman, used source criticism to challenge the Mosaic authorship of the Bible. Before critical study of the Pentateuchal narrative, the traditional belief was that Moses is the lone author of the Pentateuch. However, critical reading of the Pentateuch exposes details in the text that seem to contradict that belief. One example of this is a verse in Deuteronomy, which says, “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.”(Deut 34:5-6). It is very unlikely, for obvious reasons, that Moses himself wrote this verse about himself in Deuteronomy.
J and P as Sources
J is called the “Yahwist” because they use Yahweh for the name of God. This is the oldest of the four sources according to the DH, is dated around 950 BCE during the reign of King Solomon, and is associated with the southern tribes of Israel. Linguistically, the Hebrew of J is dated much later than the Hebrew of P, which is direct evidence that supports the relative ages of the two sources. J tends to portray patriarchs favorably, likely due to the fact that this author was writing during the reign of King Solomon, who is portrayed as being an exceptionally wise and wealthy king. One theory posits that J is even older, from the 10th century BCE during the Davidic Dynasty. This author also tends to portray God as having anthropomorphic qualities. One of these qualities is human emotion, as J’s version of God is highly temperamental. For example, in chapters 7 and 8 in Genesis, God (Yahweh) is so angered by creation, he destroys the entire world in a massive flood. In Gen 3, God casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, enraged by their disobedience (Gen 3:1-24). From what is shown in these chapters of Genesis, J’s God is a God that walks alongside humankind on Earth, speaks to them directly, and generally has a more hands on approach in reigning over his Kingdom. Verses in Exodus such as, “You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble. By the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up like a wall…” (Exod 15:7-8) do well to showcase the human tendencies of God according to J.
P, the most recent of the sources according to the DH, is dated sometime around the 5th century BCE during the time of Ezra and is thought to be a Levite priest. P could be as late as the 6th century BCE, after the Babylonian exile, though this is not universally accepted. Biblical Scholars, such as Friedman, believe that P is dated before the Babylonian Exile. P is a rule-orientated source concerned with order, hierarchy, and priestly matters, such as ritual laws and rules relating to worship. Additionally, P tends to use numbers in their descriptions. Like J, P also has several apparent biases, included a favorable bias towards Aaron. P’s idea of God is an antithesis of J’s, as if the author was writing about God with J’s creation narrative in mind. According to P, God is a deity that distances himself from humankind, preferring to rule over creation from afar (or above). He simply speaks creation into being with his voice in Gen 1, as opposed to the hands-on approach of God in Gen 2 who forms humans and animals from parts of the Earth (dust, soil). The Hebrew verbs that P uses in their narrative is “to create” (bara) and “to make” (asah) . J, however, uses “to fashion” (yatsar), a word commonly used by potters, as well as “to build” (banah). P varies the most from the rest of the sources (J, E, and D), most likely because it is the latest source. As Wellhausen stated, It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own.”
Evidence of Distinct Sources in the Genesis Narrative
As previously mentioned, J often assigns anthropomorphic qualities to God, while P is much more reluctant to do so. God is given anthropomorphic qualities throughout Gen 2, which J is the assumed author of in the DH. For example, Gen 2:7 says, “YHWH God fashioned a human, dust from the ground, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and human became a living being.” In this verse, God is portrayed as an entity that breathes and has nostrils. In Gen 1, the author, presumably P, makes no mention of this “breath of life”. Additionally, Gen 2:7 says that humans are formed from dust, and P doesn’t mention dust anywhere in their version of the creation narrative. P does not describe the manner in which humans were created, only that they were created in the image of God (Gen 1:27). In a similar vein, P is often much less descriptive than J when describing the creation narrative. The garden planted by God called Eden, the river that flows out of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Forbidden Fruit, are all concepts that only exist in Genesis 2, J’s creation narrative. P does not mention a garden, a river, or a specific tree with forbidden fruit in Genesis 1. Both J and P use the phrase “living being”, “living creature”, or “living soul”. The English translation of the phrase varies depending on what translation of the Bible is being used. The Both sources are using the same Hebrew word, nefesh (נֶ֣פֶשׁ) which means “soul”. Although both sources use the phrase, they use it in very different ways. P uses the phrase four times: in Gen 1:20, Gen 1:21, Gen 1:24, and Gen 1:30. In each of these instances, P is using this phrase to describe animals, either sea animals, land animals, or birds. In contrast, J only uses “living soul” once, in Gen 2:7, to describe human beings, a distinct difference in how the phrase is understood by each author. The order in which human beings are created is arguably the most glaring contradiction between the two creation stories. In Gen 2, adamah (male) is created first, followed by animals, which are then followed by female (Gen 2:2-7). In Gen 1, humans are created after animals, and they are created together as both male and female (1:26-27). The name for God that is used in each narrative poses neither issue in interpreting the two narratives as written by the same author. As discussed, P always refers to God as God, or “Elohim”, while J always calls God “Yahweh Elohim” or “Lord God”. This is exactly what is seen in Gen 1 and Gen 2. The author of Gen 1 uses “Elohim” as the divine name, and the author of Gen 2 uses “Yahweh Elohim”. P is the source that values numbers and order, and consequently, P’s narrative has creation ordered and listed in days, while J does not.
Opposition and Response
Biblical scholar John J. Collins wrote, “It is often the case that people who hold passionate beliefs about the nature of the Bible are surprisingly unfamiliar with its content.” The Biblical Fundamentalist view is that Gen 1 and 2 are not written by two different sources. It may be argued that the two creation narratives are different because they are written by the same author but from different perspectives. However, this does not explain why the two narratives seem to contradict each other when describing the chronological order of events that occurred. It also doesn’t explain linguistic differences such as why a different name is used for God in Gen 1 than in Gen 2. If Gen 2 really is the same narrative as Gen 1, written by the same author from a different perspective, and even if it can be assumed that the order of events or the details of the events are different because of the change in perspective, there is still no reason to change what God is called. This is only one of many issues that make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to refute the case that Gen 1 and Gen 2 have separate authors.
The contradiction between the divine names becomes even more difficult to ignore when the origin of the names is considered. The divine name Yahweh comes from the four Hebrew consonants YHWH, and was supposedly revealed by the prophet Moses to the people of the Ancient Kingdom of Israel. The Book of Exodus refers to Yahweh as the “God of the Israelites.”The four consonants (YHWH) were not pronounced the same way as they were written, as God’s name was considered too holy for anyone to speak. Therefore, it was pronounced “Adonai” which meant “Lord”. The Ancient Israelites used Yahweh (“Adonai”) to refer to their God, and later, it became the name of the God worshipped by the Judahites in the Kingdom of Judah. Despite the traditional belief that it was Moses who first used Yahweh, the true origin of the word may go as far back as the Bronze Age (c.3500-1200 BCE). When the Iron Age (c.1200-930 BCE) came along after the Bronze Age, the Israelites turned Yahweh into a God more supreme and more powerful than El, and claimed Yahweh as their own. This was due largely in part to the political strife occurring with the Israelites in Canaan. Because of this, Yahweh became a God of fire, anger, storms, and war, a God that fit the profile of militant strength the Israelites needed.One example of Yahweh’s militant personality is in the “Song of Moses and Miriam” that contains phrases such as, “The Lord is my strength and my defense;”, “The Lord is a warrior;”, “Pharoah’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea….the deep waters have covered them…”, and “Your right hand, Lord, shattered the enemy.” (Exod 15:2-6).
Ancient Canaanite inscriptions mention a God by the name of “Yahweh”, though he is not the lone, all powerful, all controlling deity that he is depicted as in Exodus and other parts of the Old Testament. Early Near Eastern peoples like the Canaanites and Israelites were polytheistic and worshiped multiple Gods. The Canaanites worshiped another God by the name of El, who was seen as the greater and more powerful God compared to Yahweh. The polytheistic aspect of their cultures is apparent in the Book of Deuteronomy, in such verses as Deut 32:8-9, “When the Most High (El) gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the people’s according to the number of the sons of Israel. For the Lord’s (Yahweh) portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.” The divine name “Elohim” is the proper name of the God El and both El and Elohim have the Semitic root “el”. Elohim is a Hebrew word that the Canaanites also used as a generic word for all other gods. The word “Elohim” is actually plural in it’s true Hebrew form, though it is often used in the Old Testament as a singular word. One example of this is a mountain in the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai, which is also called “The Mountain of Elohim” which means, “the mountain of the gods”. Previously, the northern tribes used El as the divine name, while the southern tribes used the Yahweh, but the author of Exodus attempted to combine the two traditions into a monotheistic one with one singular deity. The Mountain of Elohim is clearly associated with Yahweh. For example, Elohim is the deity that speaks to Moses in Exod 3:15, but when he speaks, he says, ‘’Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’” In this verse, God calls Godself both “Elohim” and “Yahweh”, combining two divine names that previously represented two different deities into one singular deity. Not only were Elohim and Yahweh originally two distinct entities, they also had very distinct personalities. This is explicitly clear in the two creation narratives. God’s qualities and behaviors are not different in Gen 1 and Gen 2 because it is written from two different perspectives. It is different because both narratives were written by separate authors, hundreds of years apart, who had two different ideas of who God is.
Another fundamentalist criticism of this interpretation of the creation narratives is a broader criticism of the DH itself. Specifically, that Moses is not the author of Gen 1 and Gen 2. Biblical scholars like Dr.Terry Mortenson argue that scripture in Old Testament claim Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and that parts of scripture from both the Old and New Testaments attest to the historical accuracy of the events in Genesis 1-11. One of his examples from the Old Testament is Josh 8:31, “Just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses…”. From the New Testament, Mortenson cites 2 Corinthians 13, where Paul expresses his literal interpretation of Eve being tempted by Satan in the Garden of Eden. Mortenson also claims that the Bible is divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore, statements that support Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch like the ones found in Rom 10:5 and Josh 8:31 are undisputed fact.
Firstly, just because the Pentateuch was widely believed to be written by Moses, does not mean he was the one to actually compose it. The Pentateuch is traditionally accredited to Moses, and biblical figures, such as Paul in Romans and the author of Joshua, are adhering to that tradition. This is similar to the way Americans view the story of Paul Revere, who famously held up the lanterns in the Old North Church to warn the town of Boston that the British were approaching, right before he rode through the town on a horse shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” If asked who held up the lanterns in the church, most Americans with any knowledge of the American Revolutionary War would say it was Paul Revere. However, it was actually two men named Robert Newman and John J. Pulling who held up the lanterns. In the same way that this historical event is accredited solely to Paul Revere, the writing of the Pentateuch is accredited to Moses.The belief that Moses is the sole author of the Pentateuch is likely a product of cultural tradition, and not objective truth. As scholar Joel S. Baden points out, “The Pentateuch itself makes no claims for Mosaic authorship; the tradition that Moses wrote the five books is an unintentional by-product of inner-biblical developments and an intentionally articulated article of faith for both Jewish and Christian religious groups.”. Secondly, Mortenson’s argument fails to satisfy the questions that are raised by Wellhausen and other Biblical scholars regarding the DH. Specifically, his evidence doesn’t refute the evidence that Gen 1 and Gen 2 have two different authors, nor does it satisfy any of the questions as to why the two creation narratives contradict in so many ways.
Although the Bible has changed over the past several centuries since it’s been written, this does not mean the Bible does not have integrity, nor does it mean that the Bible is not divinely inspired. The Genesis creation narrative is not one unified story written by one author, however, this does not have to be the case (and is often not the case) for a work of art or literature to have integrity. Like many other works, the Pentateuch has been through many hands and has been edited perhaps countless times. While it is not entirely possible to know all of the motivations of the biblical redactors, it’s clear that each author felt the need to reproduce these narratives in ways they felt did the texts justice. P and J, for example, wrote Gen 1 and Gen 2 with certain themes, imagery, and language in a way that was thoughtful and purposeful. Each author had a goal in mind for what they were trying to portray, and they were intentional in their editing in a way that honored the integrity of the text.
Sources
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary . W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.
Baden, Joel S. The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
Barton, John, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984.
Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Third Edition-The Writings. Minneapolis, MN:Fortress Press, 2019
Friedman, Richard Elliott. The Exodus. New York: Harper One, 2017.
——————————. Who Wrote The Bible?. Simon & Schuster, 2019.
——————————. The Bible with Sources Revealed. Harper Collins, 2009
Mortenson, Terry. Coming to Grips with Genesis. New Leaf Publishing Group, 2008.
Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel. Wipf and Stock, 2003.
Wenham, Gordon. Rethinking Genesis: Gateway to the Bible. Wipf and Stock, 2015.
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