Lecture

In this lecture, number 13, we continue a very brief survey of the subject of higher criticism of the Pentateuch. We have said that the original division into the J document and the Elohim document was changed. [Huckfeldt], around the middle of the century, split the Elohim document into the E document and the P document. The P document is called that because it is supposed to reflect priestly influences, and it deals particularly with sacrifices and [cult] matters. There were others at about that time who isolated the D document, the D document being much of Deuteronomy, and it was supposed to have been written at 621 BC as really the background of the reform that Josiah instituted when Josiah tried to get everybody to give up the high places and worship in Jerusalem. It seems very strange to think that there had not been an effort to centralize the worship of Israel in Jerusalem all those three hundred and some years while the temple of Solomon was standing there in all its glory. Actually, if we notice the program of reform of Hezekiah earlier than Josiah, the same thing was done as Josiah did to get the people to worship in Jerusalem. But at least the claim is made that the centralization of religious worship in Jerusalem was instituted for the first time by Josiah and that the D document, the Deuteronomist, was the background of his reform. So much for the division of the Pentateuch into these four documents: J, E, D, and P.

The next stage was added by Julius Wellhausen in Germany followed by S. R. Driver in England, and Briggs in New York. Wellhausen dated these documents by comparing them to their historical background. He would find what, in German, is called the Sitz im Leben, the situation in life. And he would put the document against the background of the history and see where it fitted and wherever it fitted best, that would be the date of the document. Unfortunately, he had to reconstruct Old Testament history in order to place his documents. And he reconstructed the Old Testament history in line with the prevailing Hegelian view of the evolution of history. And he actually did not know nearly as much about the history of ancient Israel as we do today. He did not know anything about the Mari tablets discovered in 1929. Wellhausen did his work around 1875. The Mari tablets were not known in his day, even the Amarna tablets were not known, much less the Ugaritic material in Hebrew verse from around 1400 BC just the times of Moses; nor did he know anything to speak of, of Palestinian archeology, which has developed so greatly since the First World War. I think it is important for us to realize that the Wellhausen view and the documentary divisions arose in a time of relative ignorance of ancient history. In old times, they knew the history of the Greeks, the history of the Romans; but the history of Mesopotamia and Egypt was just barely being discovered in the days of Wellhausen. And so much has been learned since then.

It is for this reason, doubtless, that Wellhausen and the early critics made mistakes such as the one we’ve mentioned already when Genesis 14 was placed according to the Sitz im Leben principle at about the days of the Maccabees. Now we see that this is quite impossible, and we find that the Genesis 14 fits before the monarchy as well as it fits after the monarchy. Indeed, when we compare the names of the kings in Genesis 14, it fits far better at an extremely early date rather than at the extreme late date that these early critics placed Genesis 14. So for this reason, it can be said that Wellhausenism has taken quite a beating in recent days.

Albright can be quoted to the effect that, Wellhausenism, and his views are really dead. I have quoted Albright to this effect in my book on Inspiration and the Canonicity of the Scriptures. And yet when we say that, I think we must make some qualifications. Wellhausen is indeed discredited in the details of his dating and of the historical background that he alleged. But, I would say that the old documentary ideas, the old documentary view, goes on, and you find it in recent commentaries. I have referenced to Dr. E. A. Speiser’s commentary on Genesis and the Anchor Bible. And although this is a recent commentary, he divides Genesis up just about the same way that Driver did into J, E, and P.

There is an adjustment now because of the obvious fact that there are some places where archeology supports the biblical record. We have argued that the patriarchal stories and customs are supported by the Nuzzi documents and other archeological finds. Why then do the critics still hang on to these divisions into J, E, D, and P? How can they do this? Well, one way they bend the theory to fit the new facts is to assume that the documents are indeed intact and that they are much later than Moses, but that these documents have early material in them because of the oral tradition. The oral tradition has become quite a popular theory first brought out by Swedish scholars. And the oral tradition theory now is used to explain the fact that there is obviously early material found in these late documents.

I think we might say that there are three major developments in the higher critical view that we should keep before us. And indeed, there is not a unified idea just now as to what particular views one should hold as to higher criticism. Except it is noteworthy that these who hold these views are united in agreeing that you cannot believe in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch except in perhaps a very few scraps where the ideas of Moses do shine through and are preserved for later days. I would mention these three major developments.

First, the view of Martin Noth and others. Martin Noth and those who follow him in Germany would divide the Old Testament historical books somewhat differently than the earlier critics would. It used to be, he said, that there would be these four documents in the Pentateuch. The analysis was extended by some as far as Joshua to make the division of the Hexateuch; even Judges also came in for division and then it was called the Heptateuch. And it was popular to find these documents running right through all six or seven of these early books.

Noth now finds the documents J, E, and P only in the first four books of the Pentateuch, the Tetrateuch, he calls it: that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And these books are divided up into J, E, and P. Nothing of Deuteronomy is found in these books. And indeed, the early critics found very little of Deuteronomy influence in these early books. And the later books now include Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. All of this historical material from Deuteronomy on down to the end of 2 Kings is lumped together by Martin Noth. This is called, in his view, the Deuteronomist; the work of the Deuteronomist, who working at a late date, toward the end of the history of the book of Kings. The Deuteronomist had before him early traditions, valuable or less valuable. And he used them accurately or less accurately, and he worked them into the schema that he had in mind. And so we have the hand of the Deuteronomist going from Deuteronomy all through to 2 Kings. There are some problems with this view, and I suppose we might give it brief comment. Though again, I refer you to the writings such as those by Gleason Archer in his Survey of Old Testament Introduction.

It does seem rather strange that Martin Noth now can take these documents in Joshua, for example, which were confidently said to include a good bit of P work and a good bit of J. And the critics who found this P and J in Genesis felt that the P and J in Joshua was very similar in style. Now as far as the divine names are concerned, they don’t help us too much; because in the times after Exodus 6:3, it is alleged that all of the documents used indiscriminately, Elohim and Jehovah, the divine name criterion fails after that period. I should explain that a little bit more, but we hardly have time for it. It says, you see, in the alleged P statement in Exodus 6:3 that “By My name Jehovah, I was not known in ancient times.” Now, presumably, the P document feels that the name Jehovah is all right.

And so from here on after Exodus 6:3, the name Jehovah is used by the P document as well as by the J document and by the E document. But the name Jehovah is not used exclusively by the P document. And so strangely you have the same oscillation of the J and E in the other books of the Pentateuch, but the critics make nothing of these oscillations between J and E in the later books. They make a great deal of them in the book of Genesis. Well, I say, that these segments of P alleged and J, and also of E in Joshua, were thought to bear the same stylistic criteria that you find in J and E and P in the book of Genesis. At least they were identified so by a generation of critics, by Wellhausen, the chief of the school. And yet now Martin Noth finds all these things are not characteristic of P and J and E but are characteristic of the Deuteronomist or at least are worked into the work of the Deuteronomist. Where he got his materials no one knows, but at least they are now thought to be Deuteronimistic. Well, if these characteristics are Deuteronimistic in Joshua, it makes you wonder if they are really P and J in Genesis. Where go the clear marks of the J document or of the P document if they can be handled this way where some people following Noth change P into D and other people not following Noth would continue to use these characteristics of P and J in the other books as well as in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers? So the division of the Tetrateuch with Deuteronomy going with the latter part is a little bit strange, and it is strange because it breaks the alleged continuity and clear stylistic characteristics of these documents.

There is another question that we would like to ask for an answer from Noth and that is the question of the Canon. It seems very strange to hold that the Canon, which, according to critics, was made for the Law, the Torah, the Pentateuch in about 400 BC. It seems strange that, strangely, Deuteronomy got attached to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and it became part of the Canon of the Pentateuch when it really was a parallel document that had no relation to the Pentateuch. Presumably it separated in the D work, and the rest was circulating in the P work. And somebody made up a canon, but they did not put the two great works together. They added to the P work, P being the last one of the Tetrateuch, the last document, the last redactor to put together Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and added to it Deuteronomy alone without adding the rest. I can see how they might have made a canon of P and D or how they might have made a canon of the P work, the first four books and not the rest. But to have them make a canon of the first four books and Deuteronomy and exclude from that canon Joshua to 2 Kings, would seem to present somewhat of a problem. But at least this is the view that is adopted by Martin Noth.

I’ve already referred to the Swedish school of oral tradition particularly pushed by Ivan Engnell. A brief synopsis of this is given in a very helpful little paperback book by Eduard Nielsen called Oral Tradition. The Swedish school made quite a study of oral tradition and memorization techniques in ancient times. They are quite ecstatic when they consider the stability of oral tradition in ancient times. They declare that people did not use the book the way we do. They used memory instead. People recited things, gathered around the campfire, told the stories of antiquity, and the stories became adopted in fixed form. This fixed form was unchangeable because the audience would insist that the narrator would get the story right. So oral tradition is supposed to be a very conserving factor whereby the old materials would come down with remarkable fidelity. This explains why you have the passages, some of which we referred to already, where the old customs are preserved with amazing fidelity even though they were not written down until a much later date when the documents were written. So apparently, oral tradition has come down through the years from the days of the patriarchs on down to the days when things were written down. And this would be about the time of the exile, post-exilic period, when it seemed necessary for Israel to solidify its traditions; and writing would, apparently, be much more used then in Israel than otherwise.

There are some things about this oral tradition theory that again we must question. It is not entirely sure that people in ancient times were so given to oral studies or oral passing on of the knowledge of the race as the oral tradition exponents declare. They use the Icelandic parallels, which are rather odd parallels for the early times in Israel some three thousand years earlier and a much different situation. It is perhaps more to the point to refer to the Koranic studies of Islam. And here it is true that there are many people in Islam who know the Koran from cover to cover. Of course this is not impossible. There are large numbers of people who know the New Testament, also, from cover to cover. I have talked to foreign students. One I remember from eastern India spoke of his sister as having memorized the entire New Testament. And, of course, many people have memorized great amounts of the New Testament and the Old Testament as well. I think of the Psalms. So it is certainly possible to draw parallels of people who have memorized large amounts of material. The question in the Islamic circles is, I suppose, whether or not the people who memorized the Koran were using this in place of the written word or whether we should say that the memorization was not to conserve the tradition and pass it on so much as to take the written word and get it out. It was a matter of parallel oral and written tradition whereby the written tradition was given out to an illiterate people by word of mouth.

It may well be that in ancient Israel, there was a good bit of memorization. We’re not able to prove that there was. Certainly proof fails us. Nor are we able to prove that there was not. But even if there was a good bit of memorization of the Scriptures or of the ancient stories, it is much more likely to suppose that they memorized what was written. There were many people in Israel who wrote. This cannot be denied. That there were other people who memorized what these people wrote would be the most logical thing. So it would seem, rather, that oral tradition should go hand-in-hand with written work. If we look at the ancient world, we will see that in the parallel cultures, they were writing many things all the time.

I remember a professor in the class in Akkadian history and literature. After telling of the enormous number of clay tablets and of the different scribes that had been at work, he looked up with a smile and said, “Those men were writing like crazy.” And this was the situation in Mesopotamia. Indeed, in the law of Hammurabi a man must, upon demand by a court, be able to produce the receipts for some of his material or else it would presume to be stolen and he would suffer heavy penalties. They kept their receipts in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. In Egypt, the temples are covered with the writings of the Egyptians chiseled in enduring stone. People read those. They were not written simply for the fun of incising these documents in stone; they were monuments for people to read. And of course, the papyri were numerous too, and we have great numbers of them, and long papyri. They were writing in Egypt all the time. As I explained before, the writing material in Palestine was not lasting as the papyrus was in the Egyptian climate and the clay tables were enduring in Mesopotamia. The absence of much writing in Palestine should not lead us to the conclusion that no writing was being done. The parallel would be in Ugaritic, which is in the north border of Canaan in the Ugaritic area. Also, they clearly wrote on papyrus, but the papyrus has not been preserved. All that has been preserved is that part of the writing that was done on clay tablets. So to say that because we do not have much writing in Palestine, that, therefore, the history of the nation was carried on by oral tradition, is to jump to conclusions.

Nielsen in his book, gives some helpful opposition to the ordinary documentary hypothesis. The situation is that we have in these documents, the alleged J document from 850 (some would now say 950) BC and the P document from about 450 BC, we find archeological confirmation in the P document, some remarkable second millennium material, even legal phraseology, some of which I have pointed out, in this late, late P document material that is much, much earlier than the J document. How did it get there? Well, Nielsen remarks on page 96 of his book,

If one admits that a written source, the literary age of which is three or four hundred years younger than that of another, and it contains features that are considerably older than the recension of the oldest written source, then one presupposes, as [Gumbel] does too, that these written sources are the reduction to writing century-old traditions, where the time of the reduction to writing, in reality, says nothing as to the age of the material. And so he says, In this case, source criticism: that is to say, the literary criticism we’ve been speaking of, indisputably loses its charm, the charm which it possessed when literary critics were fully convinced that source distinction clarified the development of the Israelite religion in the times of the monarchy and the exile.

He has a real point. Strange if the oral tradition carried down to the P document at 450 and this oral tradition was abroad in Israel, it's strange that some of that oral tradition was not also found in the parallel J document. We have to assume parallel streams of oral tradition, which were somehow quite strictly insulated from each other so that they end up in distinctive writings that were at last put down into documentary sources. There are doubtless other problems with the oral tradition, but at least it is quite possible that we should say that the oral tradition works against the literary tradition, literary source criticism.

There is a third factor in the picture now, and that is an emphasis upon form criticism. This dates back to the work of Hermann Gunkel in the early 1900s, late 1800s. And Gunkel pushed this method of study used also in the New Testament. The method is to take a document, any document really, the book of Amos for instance, the book of Hosea, or the other prophets, or the documentary sources that we have, the book of Deuteronomy for instance, to take these sources and divide them up into small, literary subunits. For instance: if you can find a series of commandments that are similar in form as von Rad does in his Studies in Deuteronomy; if you can find a place where there is a “thou shalt not plow with an ox and ass, thou shalt not wear mixed garments of linen and wool, thou shalt not have cattle of various kind/gender” and so on. If you have a sequence of “thou shalt nots,” perhaps there are six. Unfortunately, you may have a few phrases in between that don’t fit the pattern. And of course, you get rid of them because there is a redactor. You call in the redactor. I might quote the interesting remark of Nielsen when he deals with predictions of the literary analysis of the flood story. He says that, “It is reassuring and sometimes necessary to have a redactor at one sleeve,” on page 98 of his book.

Well, unfortunately, both the form critics as well as the older literary critics find it quite necessary to have a redactor at one sleeve, but at least a certain format is isolated out in a particular paragraph. Then in another paragraph, you have another format. For instance, in Amos you have three visions. And these visions are very similar. And they are classed similarly. Then you have a place where Amos gives a message to the people, and this is introduced by the formula called the messenger formula. This messenger formula appears in different places in Amos and in other prophets, too. Well, then you have these various literary form subunits. And now the question is, since we have a document, what can we find that lies back of the document? The claim is that we can find through these literary subunits, we can find material that the final redactor put together in the document that we have before us, be it Amos or Deuteronomy or what not. And in Deuteronomy, von Rad finds here that these early forms have similarities he thinks with the Levites, and the Levites were proclaiming a holy war. This would be about the time of Josiah.

Now this is very interesting. I think my comment would be that I don’t object to classifying the form of the different parts of the author’s work. But just as Shakespeare can write sometimes a sonnet and sometimes a play, and I suppose he also wrote receipts for his theater and his business work; we nonetheless feel that all these different formats were due to the one man, Shakespeare.

One man can write several different formats. To identify the forms is one thing, but to try to date these forms by an assumed knowledge of when the holy war motif was common in Israel, seems to go far beyond any knowledge that we have. We would be doing the same thing that Driver did in trying to find the Sitz im Leben when we do not know the history in detail and all of these different periods to find out that this particular form would fit in this particular period and not in some other. So again, we say that the basic error of all of these methods is to try to divide up documents at all. There is no need to find in these writings; in Genesis for instance, there is no need to find a multiplicity of authors. We do have a good bit of Hebrew repetition. But the Hebrews loved repetition. And you can find it in the undoubted literary units of the poems of David and of Moses as well. It is the documentary division that is at fault. And then the Wellhausen oral tradition, the form criticism, all of it stems from that major error. No, there is no need to divide the Pentateuch. We look rather at its unity, and we are told by the Lord Jesus Himself that this unity is caused by the single author, Moses himself.