The Inspiration of the Pentateuch
or
The Graf-Wellhausen Fallacy
Introduction
The problem
Bible-based Christianity claims to be a revelation from God, in fact
it claims to comprise the most comprehensive collection of truths
concerning the nature and purposes of God, and the nature and destiny
of mankind that has ever been revealed. It claims that this
revelation was made to mankind by Divinely Inspired, and therefore,
utterly inerrant writings that have been transmitted to us through
what is popularly known as The New Testament. However, this
collection of documents rests upon the previously existing collection
of documents which comprise the Hebrew Canon, referred to by
Christians as the Old Testament, and therefore is itself acutely
vulnerable to any assault made upon the Hebrew Canon, or Old Testament.
The very foundation of the Hebrew Canon, in terms of the claimed
sequence of writing, historical events narrated, and theological
importance, is the Torah, or Pentateuch, or Five-Books-Of-Moses;
namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
It is not surprising then, that while there is continuing debate
about the so-called Synoptic Problem, the authorship and placement of
the Pastoral Epistles, the provenance of the Book of Daniel, the
authorship of the Book of Isaiah, and many of the Psalms, it is the
Pentateuch that has been the target of the most unremitting assaults
of sceptics and Critics down the years, and the Book of Genesis has
suffered the most brutal of these attacks. It is these assaults upon
the Pentateuch that form the subject of this dissertation.
Scope
While it is true that since the rise of popular evolutionary
hypotheses, and uniformitarian geology, attacks have been made upon
the Scriptural accounts of the Creation, the global Flood, and the
dispersal of the nations from Babel, this dissertation is concerned
primarily with an older assault upon the Hebrew Canon; an assault
which is traceable to the first days of Christianity, although its
current form dates from the middle of the seventeenth century.
This assault has been undertaken during the last three and a half
centuries through what is known as the Higher Criticism, or Source
Criticism. While the Lower Criticism often referred to as Textual
Criticism, deals with issues relating to the written text, and
examines such matters as the canon, and variant readings in extant
manuscripts copies, ancient versions, and citations from Lectionaries
and the 'Fathers' dating from antiquity, the Higher Criticism seeks
to go behind the text, to examine such matters as authorship,
literary sources, the date and place of writing, the purpose and
manner of composition, theological tendency and historicity.1 It
must be said that both areas of enquiry are perfectly legitimate,
being right and proper fields of research for genuine believers, but
in the main, they have been taken over by the sceptic with an agenda
that sets out to discredit the Scriptures. To this extent then it
might be said that the Higher Criticism has become tendentious.
Nevertheless, it ought to be understood that in calling the latter
field of Criticism, Higher,
no intrinsic spirit of arrogance is implied, although it may well be
present in the writings of many a sceptic. Nor is the word criticism,
necessarily and inevitably a negative term, although again there is
very frequently a negative tendency to be found in the writings of sceptics.2
This trend is clearly visible in the course taken by Biblical
scholarship in the Post-Reformation Period. Influenced by the
so-called Age-Of-Enlightenment, Biblical scholarship generally, and
with notable exceptions, has moved away from the confessional,
towards the rationalistic, and destructively critical. As Sir Robert
Anderson has pointed out, the main reason for the dominance, or near
monopoly of the sceptical variety of Higher Criticism, is not to be
looked for in the strength of the sceptic's arguments, but in the
weakness of the defence of the veracity of God's Word, by believers.3 It
is greatly to be regretted that believers generally shy away from
the attacks made upon the Word-of-God by sceptics, intimidated by
their so-called learning.
The most frequently encountered mode of the Higher Criticism that the
believer is liable to encounter in connection with the Pentateuch, is
that built upon what has become known as the Graf-Wellhausen
Hypothesis, or the New Documentary Hypothesis. It is the credibility
of this type of Literary Higher Criticism, as opposed to the Form
Criticism of Dibelius, Gunkel, Mowinckel, Von Rad, Noth, Rendtorff
and the Uppsala School that is examined in this brief dissertation,
although what I have termed Positive Form Criticism will be dealt
with in Chapters Nine and Ten.
It is not my intention for this work to be presented as an apologia
for Post-Critical Interpretation, nor should it be understood as
such, nonetheless there are some areas of agreement between
Post-Critical Interpretation and my own stance. In common with Post-Critical
Interpretation, I look to the Scriptures to interpret themselves,
yet am also keen to understand the most ancient forms of exegesis, as
will become apparent later. Again, as with Post-Critical Interpreters
generally, I agree that just as we cannot now be the same after the
discoveries at Qumran, and Nag Hammadi, so too, we cannot ignore the
rise of Critical Methods, as some of the questions Critics pose are
genuine, and do require investigation. I also hold in common with the
views of Post-Critical Interpreters, the belief that both Higher and
Lower Criticism may be used in a constructive manner, but believe
that they are by themselves inadequate to the task of understanding
literature that is Divinely Inspired.
Unless we come by faith to the Ultimate Author of the Written Word,
we will never be able to handle it aright. Understanding the Word of
God, may only begin, after we acknowledge the supreme place of
honouring faith in the Living Word.
My aims
In examining the claims of source Critics I have three main aims.
These are;
-
I hope to demonstrate to the reader how inconsistent the schemes of
Higher Criticism are, and how thoroughly they are based upon
ignorance of ancient literary practice, special pleading, and the
labours of many supposed and anonymous redactors whose existence may
neither be proved or disproved.
-
I hope to show that over the years many independent researchers have
discovered these serious weaknesses within the hypotheses advocated
by sceptical Higher Critics.
-
Finally, I hope to reveal the genuine existence of viable and
attractive alternatives to the schemes advocated by sceptical Source
and Form Critics, which accept the Pentateuchal text at face value.
These alternatives do actually confront the real problems of the
Pentateuch, but nonetheless, reveal its immense value, and display
its utter trustworthiness.
The question of objectivity
This work is an unashamed apologia for accepting the books of
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as the Inspired
Word of God. How then may my work be objective and uncompromised?
Have I not already decided upon my conclusions, and am merely
embarking now on a search for evidence to bolster my own private
beliefs? How do I answer such charges?
In the undertaking of such an exercise I believe three categories of
evidence should be considered. Firstly, the internal evidence offered
by the Pentateuch itself must be reviewed; that is, the characters
and script it is written in, its literary style and forms, its
vocabulary, its literary structures, its supposed difficulties, and
so-called duplications, and similar matters.
Secondly the relevant external evidence must also be considered; such
as, the existence and nature of the Samaritan Pentateuch, various
relevant ostraca, legends of the Jews, archaeological discoveries
demonstrating the great antiquity of the age of writing, and the
various techniques employed in the most ancient forms of literature.
But I also believe that with the books of Scripture, there is above
and beyond this, a third category of evidence; that is, the impact
the Scriptures have had upon humanity, collectively, and
individually. When I first began to read the Scriptures, it was in
total isolation from any Jewish or Christian individual or
organisation. I did not even know that the book I had purchased,
entitled Good News For Modern Man,4 was
a New Testament. As I read its pages, I was drawn more and more
deeply into the heart of its teaching until I reached a definite
point where an event of recognition occurred. Without the aid of any
other human, immediately and comprehensively, I was granted the
realisation that what I was reading was absolutely and eternally
True. The impact this recognition made upon me was life-changing, and
brought a feeling of joy combined with wonder and awe. For me, there
could be no going back: from that moment on, I knew I was reading
words that forever were true, and must be lived by, and, if need be,
died for. This most potent power of the Scriptures, of witnessing for
the Truth of God, is for me a genuine property or attribute of the
Scriptures, and is equally present in all Scripture, including the
books under consideration in this dissertation. Thus I believe that
this power itself may also be offered as evidence for consideration,
and is certainly evidence that I have personally encountered, and
which any with an open mind may encounter also. My conclusions have
of course been made since the discovery of the Power to which I
refer, and were made by the leading of this Power.
If a study of humanity were to be based solely upon the anatomy and
physical attributes of human kind, to the exclusion of ordinary human
life and relationships, its conclusion would be flawed by
incompleteness and consequent bias. So too with Scripture; exclusive
consideration of the text, and a failure to consider the Life flowing
through it will produce a similarly biased conclusion. Of course,
once the Life or testifying Power flowing through Scripture has been
found, it is impossible for it to become 'unfound' so that the
subject may be returned to a position of neutrality for the purposes
of research. Inevitably my search begun after I had found and been
changed by this higher Life of the Scriptures, but I submit that this
does not weaken my research, but rather that it enhances it, as I
have considered evidence that no true sceptic has experienced, but
which each and every true sceptic might experience, were his or her
prior conclusions suspended, and a genuine enquiry into the existence
and force of this testifying Power honestly made. Thus Critics
themselves do not begin always, or even often,
from a position of neutrality, and inevitably they are not able to
consider as much evidence as am I. There will be more on this matter
in Chapter Ten, but for the moment my answer is that an agnostic is
unable to consider this third category of evidence, and is therefore,
under-equipped, which leads inevitably, even if unconsciously and
unintentionally, to bias.
Plan of the work
In Part One, comprising Chapters One and Two, I give a brief survey
of the Modern Critical Movement. It was difficult to know quite where
to begin this survey, but the Post-Reformation era seems to mark a
definite turning point, in that the new-found faith in the Scriptures
that dates from that time, and that had been so greatly assisted by
the invention of printing, had begun to subside, and the dawning of
the so-called Age of Enlightenment was beginning to make its mark on
European intellectual life. Additionally, if P. J. Wiseman is
correct, the very term Higher Criticism is traceable to this era.
After a few opening comments concerning the Gnostics, I begin this
survey therefore from the middle of the seventeenth century, a time,
when ironically, the English Puritan Movement was at its height. I
was encouraged in this respect to find that this too is the point
from which Soulen, and Kendall Soulen in their Handbook
date the rise of Modern Criticism.5 The
first part of this survey takes us down to the time of Graf. The
second part covers the Period from Graf onwards.
It was equally difficult to know where to conclude the survey. Should
I bring it up to the present day? stop at Graf-Wellhausen? examine
the Form Criticism of Gunkel, Noth, Von Rad, and Rendtorff, and the
mass of theories which carry the dissection of the Pentateuch to
extremes, and the subsequent rise of Redaction Criticism? Should I
give a summary of the attacks on Graf-Wellhausen by Cassuto,
Robertson, Wiseman, Thompson, Harrison, Whybray, Wenham, and Kikawada
and Quinn?
In the end, I decided on a compromise solution. I conclude with the
afterglow derived from the apotheosis of Source Criticism, when
Graf-Wellhausen-type hypotheses had won such acceptance by academia
that it was virtually impossible for any who held to the views of
plenary Inspiration to receive a position of note in any college,
university or seminary in the West. I have however, included brief
notices concerning the insidious attacks made by Form Criticism,
which really merit a separate study; the trend of multiplying sources
for the Pentateuch; and the supposed labours of the so-called
Deuteronomists. I give also a very brief statement regarding the
situation as it is today.
Inevitably such a survey in a dissertation as slim as this may only
skim the surface, and some may feel I could, perhaps should,
have included other individuals and schemes within its scope. I have
had to exercise my own judgement as to whom and what I should include
and exclude, and ask the reader's indulgence where my judgement
differs from his or hers.
Within this survey I have inserted occasional numbered observations.
Inevitably this survey contains many technical terms, so I have
included a glossary on page 433.
In Part Two, I offer my basic objections to Graf-Wellhausen-type
hypotheses. Chapter Three shows from the discoveries of
Ashurbanipal's Library, Tel El Armana, Ugarit, or Ras Shamra, and
Ebla, that contrary to what had been believed in the early days of
the Modern Critical Movement, the dawning of the age of writing
presents no obstacles at all to accepting a Mosaic provenance for the
Pentateuch. Crucially this is evidence that Wellhausen could not have
been ignorant of, but chose to ignore, as it militated against his
views. A lesson even Martin Noth and others 'moderns' seem not to
have learned. In Chapter Four, I show from evidence gleaned from the
ancient characters used in the Samaritan Pentateuch, from certain
errors in its text, as well as certain peculiarities in the Masoretic
Text, and from evidence derived from other fields as well, that both
the Samaritan and Masoretic Texts descend from a vorlage that goes
back at least to the time of Hezekiah, and probably much earlier.
This of course disproves the assertion made occasionally by sceptics
that the Torah was lost at the Fall of Jerusalem. I also show that
the Pentateuch is a literary corpus in its own right, and that the
so-called Octateuch, Hexateuch, or Tetrateuch, have no objective existence.
In Chapter Five I demonstrate from the complex of highly detailed
literary patterns of many different types that are to be found in the
Pentateuch, that it is a work of literary unity, and that modern
Source Criticism is utterly overthrown by a serious consideration of
this compelling evidence. It is also shown that the unity of the
Pentateuch means that all five books must be at least as old as the
age of Hezekiah. This assertion by itself is sufficient to stand
Higher Criticism on its head, yet the believer in Divine Inspiration
requires much more, and further evidence follows.
In Part Three I discuss the origins of the Pentateuch, and begin with
the book of Deuteronomy which recent discoveries have shown to be a
work of literary unity, and which is likely to be so ancient, that a
Mosaic provenance is far from unreasonable. This finding has
important consequences for the books at the heart of the Pentateuch,
Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. I show that there are good reasons for
the puzzling form these books exhibit, and that far from being a
problem, their unique form, along with other factors suggest a Mosaic
provenance for these works too. Finally I consider the book of
Genesis, and examine in particular the occurrence, and meaning of the
Hebrew word toledoth, which
is found throughout the book, is usually translated as generations,
and provides a most valuable but rarely used key to the book. The
use of this key enables the elusive literary sources of Genesis
finally to be identified and even named.
In Part Four, using the findings of Duane Garrett, Isaac M. Kikawada
and Arthur Quinn, the literary forms of Genesis and the rest of the
Pentateuch are examined. This technique proves most rewarding, and
enables us to move from Higher Criticism, to the Highest Appreciation
of the Pentateuch, through understanding it to comprise Inspired
Scripture, which, like all Scripture, is a profound and supreme
testifier to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Part Five, I offer five definite Propositions which together I
believe account for the origins of the five books of Moses.
In Part Six I give two Supplementary Studies. The first of these
examines an issue which is closely intertwined with The New
Documentary Hypothesis, namely, the rôle of the Levites. A
strong attraction of Wellhausen's views for many is the way he
related the alleged Documentary Sources of the Pentateuch to what he
saw as the evolution of Hebrew Religion. He believed that the
priesthood changed radically in form from the period of the Judges,
throughout the monarchical period, and during the days of Ezra, and
that these changes in the priesthood, which he claims are discernible
in the Hebrew Canon, and the scheme of alleged Documentary Sources,
corroborate one another. In my examination I show that Wellhausen and
his followers have never understood the rôle of the Levites
with precision, and that when this is done, support for the New
Documentary Hypothesis evaporates.
The second Supplementary Study looks at the non-literary problems
involved in accepting the book of Genesis as being literally true,
and gives ideas for those interested in pursuing these matters.
Finally in Part Seven, I give a series of Appendices which give
background information on matters raised in the study itself,
followed by the Glossary, and Bibliography.
Assumptions
The only intended assumptions made in this work are that my readers
are familiar with the content of the Scriptures, understand Hebrew
and Greek orthography, are willing to consider evidence honestly, and
do not have closed minds. I would be pleased indeed were this work to
become a springboard for further research in this field.
A note on the sub-title
The sub-title of this work, The
Graf-Wellhausen Fallacy, was the title of the original
dissertation. This title was a deliberate echo of the name given to
the New Testament Source Criticism argument, attributed to Lachmann,
that makes Urmarkus the
Primary source, and Q the Secondary source of the Synoptic Gospels.
It was said that Mark preserves best the order of Urmarkus,
and that when either Matthew or Luke departed from that order, the
other adhered to it. It was thought that this proved that both
Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark. This argument, because it
has now been exploded, is known as The
Lachmann Fallacy.6 To
be fair to Lachmann, it is actually a distortion of what he said,
nevertheless the name continues to be used widely. I borrowed the
idea behind the title, and applied it instead to Old Testament Source
Criticism, implying thereby that it is now high time that the myth of
Graf-Wellhausen and its legion of kindred hypotheses was exploded!
Indeed, it seems as if the attacks made by Robertson, Wiseman,
Cassuto, Thompson, Harrison, Whybray, Wenham, Garrett, and Kikawada
and Quinn, may quite soon, actually achieve this. For
Graf-Wellhausen, I believe, time has all but run out. A new title was
thought to be appropriate for its publication by Twoedged Sword,
nevertheless, the retention of the sub-title maintains the connection
with the doctoral dissertation from which it was born.
1 See Adeney, W.F.,
in the article Criticism, in Dictionary Of The Bible, edited by
Hastings, J., & Selbie, J., Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1909. <Return
to text>
2 Ibid. In fact it
is true to say that the term Higher Criticism is used less now than
formerly, giving way to the alternative Biblical Criticism, mainly
because it is thought to possess a pejorative resonance. So also the
term Lower Criticism has given way more and more to the term Textual
Criticism. See Soulen, R. N., and Kendall Soulen, R., Handbook Of
Biblical Criticism, Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A., Westminster John
Knox Press, 2001, p.108. <Return
to text>
3 Anderson, Sir
Robert, The Bible And Modern Criticism, London, Hodder &
Stoughton, 1902, p. 257. <Return
to text>
4 The New Testament
portion of what is now known as The Good News Bible, London, The
Bible Societies, 1976. <Return
to text>
5 Op.cit., p. 19. <Return
to text>
6 Soulen and Kendall
Soulen, op.cit., in. loc. <Return
to text>