Documentary Hypothesis:

First associated with the name of the German Protestant scholar Julius Wellhausen, the idea that there were multiple authors in the Bible; J, E, P,R, and D. Skepticism follows this hypothesis for two reasons, according to harper collins. First, some believe that the importance of oral tradition adn memory to transmit in ancient societies is not receiving enough credit, and second, ancient writers had stylistic conventions and inventions which were very different from the expectations of modern print-based intellectual culture. "The response to teh first of these concerns was the attempt to investigate characteristics of oral folklore taht might be comparable to the lore of ancient Israel lying behind the written documents we possess. By studying patterns of speech often repeated in various texts and by comparing these with simiar patterns found in neighboring cultures, "form critics" undertook to discover the typical settings in teh life of the community in which each "form" or pattern was characteristically used. By further analyzing variations in that form in other texts, they tried further to reconstruct a "history of forms" or "history of traditions." For example, one might seek to show how a maxim or a style of central legal codes and, again, how it might have become a metaphor in prophetic speech to describe God's "case" against the whole people." It continues with some interesting information about oral cultures and why and when they disappeared. "Furthermore, many readers felt that the attempts to distinguish separate sources adn the early, analytic kind of form criticism tended to dissolve the larger units of the text into unrelated fragments. They sensed that these results obscured the unique literary qualities are produced by the interplay between just those "doublets" and dissonant elements that had set the critics looking for earlier sources or embedded forms."

Here is a sweet table I found that illustrates the distinctions between the authors.

J (Jahwist)

• stress on Judah
• stresses on leaders anthromorphic speech about God
• God walks and talks with us
• God is YHWH
• uses "Sinai"

E ('Elohist)

• stress on northern Israel
• stresses the prophetic
• refined speech about God
• God speaks in dreams
• God is 'Eloim (until Ex. 3)
• Sinai is "Horeb"

P (Priestly)

• stress on Judah
• stresses the cultic
• majestic speech about God
• cultic approach to God
• God is 'Elohim (until Ex. 3)
• has geneologies and lists

D (Deuteronomist)

• stress on central shrine
• stresses fidelity to Jerusalem
• speech recalling God's work
• moralistic approach
• God is YHWH
• has long sermons

This subject really fascinated me because I had never really thought about who the author of the Bible was. I think that this would be so cool to study because you would really have to get into the text and history of the past. One would have to be quite educated to take on a task like this.