Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) [Paperback]

Norman R. Whybray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1987 | Series: Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies

'Whybray's recent book is a masterful review of all the options set out by critical scholarship since Wellhausen, i.e., over the last century. It is an exhaustive and up to date treatment, concise and highly readable.' E. Dyck, Crux 'Sensitive to standards of ancient historiography and parallels from the Greek sphere, Whybray proposes that the Pentateuch is the work of an ancient historian, possibly designed as a supplement or prologue to the deuteronomistic history. The analysis of the work of others and of the state of [CHECK REVIEW!] extremely valuable; the final suggestion makes it all the more engaging. Essential for all concerned with fundamentals of critical biblical studies.' W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review>

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Whybray's recent book is a masterful review of all the options set out by critical scholarship since Wellhausen, i.e., over the last century. It is an exhaustive and up to date treatment, concise and highly readable.' E. Dyck, Crux (E. Dyck )

"Sensitive to standards of ancient historiography and parallels from the Greek sphere, Whybray proposes that the Pentateuch is the work of an ancient historian, possibly designed as a supplement or prologue to the deuteronomistic history. The analysis of the work of others is extremely valuable; the final suggestion makes it all the more engaging. Essential for all concerned with fundamentals of critical biblical studies."-- W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review (W. Lee Humphreys Religious Studies Review )

"Whybray's recent book is a masterful review of all the options set out by critical scholarship since Wellhausen, i.e., over the last century. It is an exhaustive and up to date treatment, concise and highly readable.' E. Dyck, Crux (, )

"Sensitive to standards of ancient historiography and parallels from the Greek sphere, Whybray proposes that the Pentateuch is the work of an ancient historian, possibly designed as a supplement or prologue to the deuteronomistic history. The analysis of the work of others is extremely valuable; the final suggestion makes it all the more engaging. Essential for all concerned with fundamentals of critical biblical studies."-- W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review (, Religious Studies Review )

About the Author

The late was Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at the Univeristy of Hull.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press (March 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1850750637
• ISBN-13: 978-1850750635
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,107,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Must-read nonfiction, May 19, 2010

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Patricia Heil "attitude counts" (Greenbelt, MD United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) (Paperback)

Documentary Hypothesis: hate it or love it, you have to read this book. I saw a limited preview on Google and knew I had to read the whole book to give it a fair chance at contradicting what the preview showed; Whybray doesn't object to the idea that Pentateuch is not a unified work, he just thinks DH is not the way to identify the component parts.

Shorter than Ernest Nicholson's "The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century", Whybray's book covers the same territory and also takes the insider's point of view. The difference is in what this insider has to say. (One thing you need to remember is that when I say "document" below, I mean J, E, D or P and when I say text, I mean something that scholars in DH identify as a portion of Pentateuch to be assigned to a given document.)

Most importantly, Whybray points to Julius Wellhausen as the source of at least some weaknesses of the DH. One of those weaknesses is Wellhausen's failure to use related data from oral tradition research by the Grimms and then-current archaeological data. Whybray doesn't say why this is a weakness but my explanation is that a hypothesis is supposed to be scientific and well-behaved scientific hypotheses from different but related fields support each other. Whybray makes this failure a deliberate decision by Wellhausen.

Because of this, the internal weaknesses of DH become fatal. They include that the criteria don't apply to all of the Torah; some texts cannot be assigned to one of the four documents based on how Wellhausen defined the criteria. Worse yet, some scholars make assignments of texts which fail to follow the criteria of the document they are assigned to. E has multiple problems in that an editor who combined it with J, supposedly to preserve the information in E, nevertheless deleted parts of it, and what is left lacks continuity (one of Wellhausen's criteria) and doesn't meet some of the other criteria; it also may not meet the test of Occam's Razor and would thus represent a useless complication in DH. These are only a few examples of Whybray's almost 100 page treatment of just this part of his work. If DH scholars appealed to evidence in related fields, the structure might be repairable, but they don't.

Whybray points out that one criterion, the names of Gd, can only be used for Genesis through chapter 5 of Exodus, and fails to distinguish between the E and P elements in Genesis. This is not only one of Wellhausen's original criteria but it is also one of the famous five pillars, as Umberto Cassuto calls them, which are all that most people know about the DH. This is one of the reasons that Whybray says even at first glance the DH is implausible. Further, deciding that combined names represent conflated documents fails to coordinate with archaeological findings for geographic neighbors of the Jews from the 3000s BCE down to the transition to the Common Era. So this criterion for conflated documents cannot be propped up even if related fields could prop up other DH criteria.

Whybray also documents misapplication of the criteria, such as splitting the Pentateuch up into texts as short as a single word. Deciding how a single word meets one of the criteria can only be a problem, and unless it is the name of Gd it can't meet that criterion at all.

Not that Whybray doesn't have his own problems. He criticizes scholars of the DH for deciding they know what certain words and texts meant to people 25 centuries earlier, but in another part of the book claims that there's no purpose to the second time Joseph's brothers find money in their sacks. He must not realize that this creates an MO and elevates that part of the story from accident to either coincidence or purposeful action. It resolves the question by having the cup found in Benjamin's sack; if the audience hadn't already heard Joseph giving the instructions to his servants, they would think that the brothers might have stolen the thing. Then you're left with the cliff hanger of Joseph's threatened punishment until the following Saturday (at least if you go to synagogue regularly -- and don't peek).

But where Nicholson simply fails to demonstrate that Documentary Hypothesis is a teachable subject (he never identifies one of the authors he mentions as producing a textbook), Whybray shows that the whole structure needs a thorough housecleaning -- that is, if you think it's not rotten enough from the inside to make a wrecking ball a better idea.

But ya gotta read it to decide what you think about Whybray's arguments.