Taking the Pentateuch to the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Since the latter half of the twentieth century the literary origin of the Pentateuch and its sources have been re-evaluated. As a result the validity of the long-standing classical formulation of the Documentary Hypothesis has been called into question. Recently several new theories of the literary formation of the Books of Genesis-Deuteronomy (Joshua) have emerged that maintain the existence of a priestly source but view the other material as much more fragmented in character than proponents of the classic hypothesis were willing to do. A closer look at the text itself suggests that a combination of documentary, fragment and supplementary hypothesis is probably the best way to explain the long and complicated literary history of the Pentateuch.