Q&A: The Documentary Hypothesis
The Documentary Hypothesis
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I saw in an old question that someone asked you what you think about the Documentary Hypothesis, and you said that you think there is something to it, but that it does not change your attitude toward religious commitment.
I am familiar with your approach regarding the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, that things can be interpreted as allegory, but what about the halakhic parts of the Torah?
If the Torah is a collection of writings from different periods that were edited by human beings, where does the authority of the Oral Torah and Jewish law come from? After all, it is clear that the Sages also expounded creative midrashim (and not only preservative ones), and if they expounded a non-divine text, then where does the authority come from?
Thank you,
Answer
Even according to the Documentary Theory, we are talking about late editing, not late composition of the documents themselves. There is a detailed article by Baruch Schwartz on this issue, and I discuss it at considerable length in the trilogy.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi,
if the Torah was edited with divine inspiration, and therefore the duplications, contradictions, and all the various phenomena are due to divine inspiration, then—
why not simply assume that the Torah is from Sinai in 95% of it, but here and there it was edited by the prophets?
After all, the whole justification for the Documentary Hypothesis is the duplications and contradictions, so if we say that there is a divine reason for that, then the basis of the Documentary Hypothesis falls away, because the contradictions are not arbitrary…
So why, basically, accept the Documentary Hypothesis?
I did not understand the question. I wrote above exactly what you are proposing. But the editing is a combination of documents. So I do not see why, under these assumptions, one should give up the Documentary Hypothesis.
What I am asking is this—
Bible scholars based the Documentary Hypothesis on the duplications, contradictions, and various other phenomena.
Now if you are saying that God wanted there to be duplications, contradictions, etc. (by dictating to the editor, through divine inspiration, what to keep and what not to keep from the four documents…)
then God wanted it to be this way, which means there is no room to assume that contradictions = different authors, because the contradictions are God's will. So the basis for the Documentary Hypothesis no longer exists, because there is no need for two authors in order to answer the problem of contradictions and duplications. We can simply assume that God wanted it this way, and that's it—not because there were different schools within the Jewish people…
It could also be that there is no force of gravity. Rather, every time some object remains hanging in the air, a demon comes and pushes it downward. That is a conspiracy theory.
By the way, Rabbi Breuer, in his aspects theory, argued exactly this. And still, there are documents here that are woven together; you are just suggesting that the weaving was not done by human beings but by the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine.
I recommend taking a look here:
https://www.knowingfaith.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%90-%D7%95%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%94/%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%90-%D7%95%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A2-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA