Author’s Note: This essay contains responses to the Documentary Hypothesis espoused by both Orthodox scholars and less traditional figures. The essay’s primary focus is the exploration of and reaction to this important academic theory. The essay will begin with an exploration of the Documentary Hypothesis and its components. Afterwards, it will present the views and reactions of various scholars, both how this theory impacted their religious evaluation of the Bible and how they tried to reconcile it with their religious assumptions. The author will present three views out of the plethora that exist but does not endorse any particular view mentioned in this essay.
The methodological, critical study of the Bible did not begin in
Therefore, employing this definition, critical study did not begin with the advent of the Academy, but rather with Hazal and the medieval exegetes.[ii] Our Sages employed the critical method to unmask and solve various problems surrounding biblical text. For example, only the attentive reader would notice that although there are two spies in the house of Rahav in Joshua 2, the verse says “va-titspeno” – and she hid him, in the singular. Commenting on this textual peculiarity, Hazal create a midrash explaining how Pinehas hid himself independently of Rahav’s help. Thus, modern scholarship did not create the field of biblical criticism but merely expanded it.
Although the Academy did not begin the process of biblical criticism, it did advance a new methodology of approaching biblical texts, source criticism. Source critics maintain that the Torah as we have it today is a composite of other (now non-existent) earlier texts. This theory was born from the desire to explain many perplexing biblical paradoxes and conflicts, such as similar accounts of different stories,[iii] the shifting names of God,[iv] and contradictory laws.[v] According to the source critic, the original texts (Urtexte) read logically; redaction was the primary cause of confusion and contradiction. The results of more than a century of this style of research were then synthesized by Julius Wellhausen in his magnum opus, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel,[vi] into what is now more or less known as the Documentary Hypothesis. This theory surmises that the Pentateuch[vii] is an amalgamation of four main sources: J, E, P, and D. Wellhausen maintained that these sources range from as early as the mid-First
According to Wellhausen, J is a southern Judean source distinguished by its constant use of the Tetragrammaton. J has no theological issue about describing God in anthropomorphic terms and envisions a personal and reciprocal relationship with humankind.[viii] E is a northern Judean source salvaged by the remnant populous of the exiled
This theory, in one form or another, has since dominated the world of academic Bible. None of these sources has been archeologically proven and they all therefore remain in the realm of conjecture and literary theory. Many modern scholars who adopt the Documentary Hypothesis have relinquished the claim of scientific provability. Jeffery Tigay, a renowned Bible scholar, notes that “the degree of subjectivity which such hypothetical procedures [such as the Documentary Hypothesis] permit is notorious.”[xiv] Other scholars, such as Edward Greenstein of Bar-Ilan, humorously exploit the complete absurdity of the Documentary Hypothesis. Greenstein notes that the Documentary Hypothesis is comparable to a case of five blind men and an elephant in which “each of five blind men approaches a different part of an elephant’s anatomy. Perceiving only part of the elephant, each man draws a different conclusion as to the identity of what he encounters.”[xv] According to Greenstein, scholars who rely on the Documentary Hypothesis miss both the forest and the trees.
The religious implications of this theory are obvious: the text is no longer a work of mass divine revelation, Moses is no longer its author, and its laws are not of divine origin but rather the work of some rigid, legalistic priest. Those who maintain Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis and claim traditional Jewish religious fidelity must reconcile the Documentary Hypothesis with the statement in the Mishnah that “all Jews have a share in the World to Come.... And these are they who have no share in the World to Come: he who says... ‘The Torah is not from Heaven.’”[xvi] Similar reconciliation might be needed for Rambam’s eighth ikkar ha-emunah (principle of faith).[xvii]
Wellhausen’s provocative theory subsequently evoked a plethora of different responses from the broader Jewish world, ranging from rejection to adaptation to adoption. The views presented below are merely those of a few individuals and do not completely reflect the overall response.
Nonetheless, these views offer a unique opportunity to appreciate how Jews subsequent to Wellhausen grappled with his theory, whether we reject these various views or not. The remainder of this essay is dedicated to exploring the reconciliations of Jacob Milgrom, Franz Rosenzweig, and R. David Zvi Hoffmann.
Historically, many Jewish scholars have accepted the Documentary Hypothesis, but not without a few modifications, such as the early dating of P[xviii] and the emphasis on the document H (Holiness Code).[xix] According to Wellhausen, the historic order of the documents is J, E, D, and then P. Wellhausen believed that Judaism was once a romantic, fresh, undefiled religion, and only after the exile did a rigid, right-wing priest decide to introduce dead legalism to the law corpus. Wellhausen expresses this sentiment very clearly with his remark that “we may compare the cultus in the olden time to the green tree which grows up out of the soil as it will and can; later it becomes the regularly shapen timber, ever more artificially shaped with square and compass.”[xx] Subsequent scholars have claimed that this statement is a product of Wellhausen’s time and that his view of post-exilic Judaism “as a decline into dead legalism has an anti-Semitic cast.”[xxi] In addition to serving as a modern polemic against Jewish legalism, this contention also “made it easier to embrace the New Testament polemic against ‘Judaism’ (ie, legalism) while still accepting the Old Testament (as recommending, in its highest development in the prophets, ‘faith,’ not ritual ‘works’).”[xxii] Therefore, with the early dating of P and emphasis on H, Jewish scholars such as Jacob Milgrom, a professor emeritus at the
Yet, those who assume the validity of this hypothesis must also maintain that the Torah was not a divine revelation to Moses. As a result, if the Torah’s supposed authority from God is negated, why should it be binding? Jewish scholars who try to uphold both the sanctity of the Torah and the results of the Documentary Hypothesis have offered some very creative solutions. The following is the solution of Jacob Milgrom.[xxiii]
Milgrom notes our problem and asks the same question, albeit in a slightly different manner: “How does the claim of divine authorship mesh with the internal inconsistencies and contradictions found in the Torah?”[xxiv] Citing the Talmudic story of Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s beit midrash,[xxv] and using Rabbinic logic normally reserved for the justification of the Oral Law, Milgrom posits that Moses received only principles and generalizations at Sinai; the rest of Torah represents interpretation by the later compilers of tradition, J, E, P, D, H, and R.[xxvi] Employing this logic, Milgrom equates biblical methodology to Talmudic methodology. By analogy, just as “thousands of years after the Torah’s compilation, the rabbis would explain the origins of a new law by connecting it to Moses as ‘an oral law from Moses at Sinai,’”[xxvii] so, too, the alleged biblical authors would justify their interpretation of the law as emanating from the mouths of God and/or Moses. Only later would a pluralistic Redactor come and compile these traditions, each individually too sacred to completely disregard, into one book.
Although this logic readily explains blatant biblical contradictions, it is still at odds with traditional Orthodoxy. Even if one were to adopt this position, several questions would still remain: Is there any proof that rules used to justify the Oral Law, which we first see developing in the Rabbinic era, were utilized beforehand? Furthermore, Rabbinic Judaism assumes that the Torah was indeed given in its entirety to Moses; can one use the rules of the Oral Law to negate the explicit Rabbinic notion of the unity of the Written Law?
A different justification of the Torah’s divinity in light of the Documentary Hypothesis is an appeal to the essential divine nature of the documents, both as separate texts and as a literary whole. This argument was advanced by the influential German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig in his letter to Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim, a leader of the Orthodox Agudath Israel World Organization. The letter, dated April 21st, 1927, was part of an ongoing exchange between the two regarding the Buber-Rosenzweig translation of the Bible.[xxviii]
Rosenzweig claims that his disagreement with Orthodoxy stems from the fact that he, unlike his Orthodox counterparts, “cannot draw any conclusions concerning its literary genesis.” In light of recent discoveries, Rosenzweig maintains that he cannot maintain the fundamental belief that the text is from Moses; nonetheless, he says, “This would not in the least affect our belief [in the spiritual nature of the Torah].” Although possibly a work of multiple authors, the text is sacred, Rosenzweig maintains, because it is the “work of one spirit.” Therefore, even though the Torah contains contradictions and repeated narratives, the true authorial intent is for modern readers to view the text as a literary whole.
Although Rosenzweig tries to maintain the general sanctity of Torah, he differs fundamentally from Orthodoxy with regards to its authorship. He states:
“We too translate the Torah as a single book, to us too it is the work of one spirit. We do not know who he was; that it was Moses we cannot believe. Among ourselves we identify him by the siglum used by critical scholarship for its assumed final redactor: R. But we fill out this R not as redactor but rabbenu. For, whoever he was and whatever material he had at his disposal, he is our Teacher, his theology, our Teaching.”
The Torah, according to Rosenzweig, need not be the work of Moses but rather that of a person with whom we can identify our theology. According to this view, the documents retain sanctity not because of the historical divine revelation to Moses but rather due to the documents’ sanctity when unified by a character of theological similarity, Rabbeinu.[xxix] As Rosenzweig himself admits, this view regarding the Torah is beyond the pale of normative Orthodoxy as Orthodoxy maintains the notion of strict Mosaic revelation.
While some Jews tried to adopt and adapt the Documentary Hypothesis, others tried to destroy it. Perhaps the most famous Jewish counter-critic is Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann. Born in
In order to explain the milieu that enabled Hoffmann to become a renowned scholar and to show what institutions that combine Torah and Madda have the capability of becoming, we turn to a quick history of the Rabbinerseminar. R. Esriel Hildesheimer founded the Rabbinerseminar because of his fundamental belief that Orthodoxy must do more than simply affirm the value of contemporary culture; it must take a leading role in it. He tried to accomplish this goal by synthesizing academic methodology with Judaism. The Rabbinerseminar produced respected Torah scholars as well as renowned academics. The ideology of the Rabbinerseminar is best encapsulated in a speech given by Hoffmann upon the seminary’s reopening in 1919. Expounding the meaning of the biblical verse “Let the chief beauty of Japheth be in the tents of Shem,”[xxxi] Hoffmann said: “Jewish law and belief wish for and expect, not the stupefaction but the enlightenment of their true believers and adherents. Only the enlightened spirit is susceptible to the wisdom of Jewish teaching.” How is one to achieve enlightenment? Hoffmann answers, “Only an intellect which has been perfected by secular learning finds its satisfaction in the sublimity of the Jewish belief in the one and only creator.” Therefore, according to Hoffmann, secular studies and Torah studies go hand in hand, and a person lacking in one is fundamentally lacking in the other. True learning only comes with the mastery and sophistication attained by pursuit of the academic method. However, Hoffmann also realized that certain qualifications exist. In order for one to successfully implement academic methodology in the study of Torah, it must be done le-shem Shamayim (for the sake of Heaven).[xxxii]
It is with this attitude that Hoffmann begins his analysis and critique of Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis. Before beginning his attack, Hoffmann introduces his commentary on Leviticus with a declaration of faith:
“I willingly agree that, in consequence of the foundation of my belief, I am unable to arrive at the conclusion that the Pentateuch was written by anyone other than Moses; and in order to avoid raising doubts on this score, I have clearly outlined the principles on which my commentary is based.”[xxxiii]
Hoffmann then lists these principles:
“The first principle is this: we believe that the whole Bible is true, holy, and of divine origin. That every word of the Torah was inscribed by divine command is expressed in the principle Torah min HaShamayim… We must not presume to set ourselves up as critics of the author of a biblical text or doubt the truth of his statements or question the correctness of his teachings.”[xxxiv]
With statements such as these, Hoffmann arms himself as the defender of the faith and marches into battle against Wellhausen’s theory.
Although the previous statements might imply a myopic stance towards the study of biblical criticism, Hoffmann did not engage in polemics or tirades. Rather, he calmly and logically deconstructed parts of the Documentary Hypothesis, using both his own scholarly ability and that of the general academic world. For example, Hoffmann cites Dillmann, a scholar who had his own take on the Documentary Hypothesis, in order “to support the position that the demand for holiness was not the product of ancient Jewish culture, but was, instead, an a priori foundation of the Torah of Moses itself.”[xxxv] This was an attempt to undermine Wellhausen’s support for the late development of P. Through comments like this and by pointing out the logical inconsistencies within Wellhausen’s theory, Hoffmann tries to undermine the Documentary Hypothesis.
Even when unsuccessful, Hoffmann retreats behind the religious notion that “when, in the tents of Shem, human learning presumes to negate God’s revelation of the doctrine of Shem, this is none other than the displacement of Shem’s divine doctrine and law of its very house, which we must decisively reject.”[xxxvi] And when faced with what seemed unanswerable and even beyond rejection, Hoffmann still claims that “true faith must maintain its skepticism [of human learning] even in the absence of such a refutation.”[xxxvii]
Hoffmann remains a stellar example of both the power of combining the Academy with Torah as well as the possible limitations of doing so. Both scholarship and faith can be maintained simultaneously; they are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the fusion of Torah with the Academy is a necessary prerequisite to understanding and therefore appreciating the study of either. To Hoffmann, the Documentary Hypothesis remains a faulty theory to be discredited now or later. It is my assumption that normative Orthodoxy tends to agree with Hoffmann in his assessment of the Documentary Hypothesis and hopefully (eventually) his evaluation of the Academy.
The new branch of biblical criticism, featuring the Documentary Hypothesis, shook the Jewish world and elicited a variety of responses. These responses range from adoption with modification, as in the case of Milgrom, to the outward rejection espoused by Hoffmann. Some Jews tried to reconcile faith with this new theory while others firmly stood their ground. To me, though, it seems that the fundamental argument over the Documentary Hypothesis does not lie in the amalgamation of sources, but rather in the identity of R. Biblical critics who view the Bible through the lens of Wellhausen’s theory presume that R is the unknown Redactor. People such as Rosenzweig are more theologically comfortable calling him Rabbeinu. However, to many other Jews, R is simply Ribbono shel Olam.[xxxviii]
Postscript:
This essay has dealt with only three ways of understanding the Documentary Hypothesis. Many more angles and possibilities remain. What I will present now is a brief notation of other related and pivotal works that the interested reader is encouraged to read. The views presented here are done little justice and it is highly recommended that one explore the sources from which these views are culled.
Mordechai Breuer: Breuer essentially adopts a variation on the Documentary Hypothesis. However, instead of four different sources originating over the length of First and Second Temple Judaism, the four sources are really four “voices” of God which all originated at Sinai. Breuer tries to eat his cake and have it, too, suggesting that we can maintain a stylistic division of Torah but also attribute it entirely to Mosaic revelation. For further information as well as critique, see his article in the Orthodox Forum Series: R. Mordechai Breuer, “The Study of Bible and the Primacy of the Fear of Heaven: Compatibility or Contradiction?” in R. Shalom Carmy (ed.), Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), pp. 159-180. See also the subsequent response by Sid (Shnayer) Z. Leiman (pp. 181-187).
Umberto Cassuto: Cassuto lived during the 19th century and was the chief rabbi of
Kenneth Kitchen: Kitchen is a reverent Christian Egyptologist who vigorously defends the traditional positions on the archeological and historical issues surrounding the Bible. His book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (
Yehezkel Kaufmann: Kaufmann was an Israeli philosopher and Bible scholar. He was one of the earliest to convincingly posit the early dating of P. His work, The Religion of
AJ Berkovitz is a junior at YC majoring in Jewish Studies and is a believer in Torah min ha-Shamayim.
[i] Bible study in the academic world began a long time before the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement with the scholarship of people such as Jean Astruc. What I refer to here is the systematic approach to unraveling the multiple layers of tradition present in the Bible.
[ii] If anyone is unconvinced of my proposed definition or the fact that medieval exegetes used various scholarly tools to understand Tanakh, please read almost any comment by Ibn Ezra.
[iii] E.g., Abraham’s and Isaac’s respective journeys to Gerar (Genesis 20 and 26).
[iv] E.g., the shift of divine name from E-lohim to Lord/E-lohim from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 or internal divine name inconsistencies in the Flood Narrative in Genesis 6-8.
[v] For example, consider the different and conflicting commandment of tithes: Leviticus 27:30 has the farmer give tithes to God, Numbers 18:21 gifts them to the Levites, and Deuteronomy 14:23 says the farmer keeps them.
[vi] Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient
[vii] Or rather, according to him, the Hexateuch. Wellhausen, among others, believed that the Book of Joshua really represents part of the northern J source later incorporated into Deuteronomic history. Joshua is really the conclusion of the Pentateuch; the Pentateuch represents the promises to enter the land, which are then fulfilled by Joshua.
[viii] For example, the second Creation account (Genesis 2) is attributed to J precisely because of its emphasis on the God-human relationship. For those interested in an Orthodox/homiletic perspective on the two Creation stories, see Rav Soloveitchik’s discussion of Adam the first and Adam the second in The Lonely Man of Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
[ix] Separating H from P, P is responsible for most of Leviticus 1-18.
[x] E.g., Genesis 1, parts of the Noah story, and the story of Avraham’s berit milah.
[xi] Exodus 25-31.
[xii] Scholars claim that ancient
[xiii] For Wellhausen’s exact characterization of all of these sources, read his introduction to Prolegomena.
[xiv] J. Tigay, Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 2. I would like to personally thank Dr. Tigay for pointing me to his book and introducing me to the letter of Franz Rosenzweig which appears later in this essay.
[xv] E. Greenstein, “Formation of the Biblical Narrative Corpus,” AJS Review 15,1 (1990), p. 164.
[xvi] Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10:1.
[xvii] For a possible reconciliation, see Marc Shapiro’s work, The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised (
[xviii] This trend was first popularized by Yehezkel Kaufmann in his magnum opus, The Religion of
[xix] H (Holiness Code) is the alleged literary source for the second half of Leviticus starting from chapter 19. According to current scholarship, H was written by a universalistic priestly figure who wished to extend the sanctity of P outward unto the general populace. Thus, moral laws are combined with and formulated in a religious cast, giving them the weight of religious law, not just moral/ethical advice. This combats Wellhausen’s claim of dead legalism because it shows that legalism is not artificial but indeed ethical. Furthermore, legalism is integral to the triangular relationship between God, Man, and his fellow man. For the supposed formation of the Holiness School and more about its doctrine and influence on Rabbinic Judaism, see Israel Knohl, The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), pp. 5-8, 63-69, 123-143.
[xx] Prolegomena, pp. 71, 313.
[xxi] Adele Berlin and Marc Z. Brettler, “The Modern Study of Bible,” The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation (
[xxii] S. David Sperling, “Modern Jewish Interpretation,” The Jewish Study Bible, p. 1909. It is no surprise that scholars such as Solomon Shechter called Higher-Criticism (i.e., the criticism articulated by the Documentary Hypothesis) “Higher anti-Semitism.”
[xxiii] Special thanks to Dr. Shawn-Zelig Aster for pointing me to Milgrom.
[xxiv] J. Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics: A Continental Commentary (
[xxv] Menahot 29b.
[xxvi] Milgrom’s exact quote is: “Indeed, a case can be mounted that all of the Torah’s codes are compilations of traditions comprising interpretations and applications of Mosaic principles.” Leviticus, p. 2.
[xxvii] “Halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai;” ibid., p. 3.
[xxviii] The following quotes are all from Rosenzweig’s letter found in “Die Einheit der Bibel: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Orthodoxie und Liberalismus” (The Unity of the Bible: An Argument between Orthodoxy and Liberalism), in Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1984), pp. 831-835. For English analysis, see Franz Rosenzweig, Alan Udoff, and Barbara Ellen Galli, Franz Rosenzweig’s “The New Thinking” (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 183. Also see Franz Rosenzweig, “The Unity of the Bible: A Position Paper vis-à-vis Orthodoxy and Liberalism,” Scripture and Translation, ed. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 25, and Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vol. (Boston and The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974-1984), in vol. 3, p. 834.
[xxix] A somewhat related reconciliation is the claim that the authors of the original biblical texts were divinely inspired prophets. For more on this, see James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (
[xxx] M. Shapiro, “Rabbi David Zevi Hoffmann on Torah and ‘Wissenschaft,’” The Torah u-Madda Journal 6 (1995-1996): 129-137. The following quotes by Hoffmann in his address are contained therein.
[xxxi] Genesis 9:27.
[xxxii] Shapiro, p. 132.
[xxxiii] David Zvi Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus: Übersetz und Erklärt, 2 vol. (
[xxxiv] Ibid.
[xxxv] Ibid., p. 32.
[xxxvi] Shapiro, p. 135. This stance is similar to the “Tsarikh Iyyun Gadol” (much examination is required) position taken by some members of the YU faculty with regard to these issues.
[xxxvii] Ibid., p. 32.
[xxxviii] This is not my unique formulation. I have heard this elsewhere but cannot remember where nor whom to attribute it to. I believe I may have heard it in the “Dead Sea Scrolls” class with Dr. Bernstein last semester, but I am not sure.
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