Tag Archives: Yahwist

The Yahwist

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

The textual tradition know as the Yahwist (J) was so named by academics because of its consistent and unequivocal use of the god of Israel’s name, Yahweh. Even though the divine name appears approximately 1,800 times in the Pentateuch alone, the other Pentateuchal sources (Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly) restrain from using it prior to its revelation to Moses in Exodus: at 3:14-15 in the Elohist tradition and at 6:2-8 in the Priestly tradition. Only the Yahwist text, in other words, affirms and acknowledges—in contradiction to the claims of the later Priestly source—that the name Yahweh was known to and frequently invoked by the patriarchs prior to its revelation. Indeed, it is for this reason that the Yahwist tradition does not narrate a revelation of the divine name. According to this tradition, it was known right from the first generation of mortals (Gen 4:26). This is merely one of dozens of … Read more

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The Documentary Hypothesis: How Scholars Discovered J, E, D, and P (3)

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

This posts is part 3 of the ‘Did Moses Write the Torah?’ series. It too has been excerpted from my writing.

Nineteenth century scholarship: post-Mosaic by centuries

The observable textual data collected over the centuries leading up to and including the nineteenth century no longer supported the long-standing traditional and pre-critical claim that the Pentateuch was written by Moses—a traditional view, moreover, that the text never claimed to begin with and which only came into existence through culturally conditioned theological and ideological interpretive agendas of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. By the nineteenth century the large majority of biblical scholars realized that the Pentateuch was composed out of a variety of sources, all of which postdate Moses by centuries. It was the work of Wilhelm de Wette (1780-1849) that ushered in this new paradigm.

Previously commentators had claimed that the textual data suggested that much of the Pentateuch’s narrative … Read more

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Did Moses Write the Torah? (2)

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

This and the forthcoming post outline the centuries-long discovery that led careful readers, professors, and clergymen alike to conclude from the accruing textual data that the Torah was composed out of, primarily, 4 once separate sources which were later redacted together. This centuries-long discovery culminated in the 19th century with the Documentary Hypothesis, which is still the most reliable hypothesis that explains, and continues to explain with its variations, the textual data observed. The following is again excerpted from my Introduction. It follows directly from Part 1.

Early evidence of post-Mosaic authorship: anachronisms

Not only was the account of Moses’ death to continuously resurface, implying, as the text itself does, that it was written by a later author—“no man has knowledge of his burial place to this day” (Deut 34:6)—but as early as the eleventh century, educated readers of the Bible, Jewish rabbis, and Christian clergy alike, began … Read more

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Contradictions in the Bible: an introduction

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

My current research and writing projects display an interest in the textual history of the Bible. In other words, how did the various and once independent texts and traditions that now make up what later generations of readers dubbed “the Bible” come about? And more significantly, how do these once independent texts now interact with each other in their new composite framework? Thus the title of the other project that I am working on: The Bible’s Many Authors and the Contradictions They Left Behind. I’d like to post parts of the introduction to this project and then continue by actually posting various textual contradictions and explaining how they came about and what they tell us about the Bible’s composite nature. I hope to generate some sort of feedback and discussion as we move along. We will limit our inquiry to the Torah.

There are literally thousands of contradictions in … Read more

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