Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Thank you. Episode 1.7, Writing the Pentateuch.

In episode 1.3, I talked about how Johann Salomo Semler founded what we now call the historical criticism of the Bible, sometimes also known as higher criticism. This discipline is dedicated to unraveling the origins of the many biblical texts,

to understanding how the history of the Israelites drove the formation of the Bible.

For some devout Christians and Jews, the entire enterprise is deeply suspect, if not outrageous.

Moses wrote the Torah or the Pentateuch, the prophet Jeremiah wrote the book of the same name,

and so on. What is there to study?

Semler thought that there were many problems, and so did Julius Velhousen, a Christian German theologian,

who wrote his most influential works in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Although his theories have been modified and attacked, reformulated and repudiated,

Wellhausen's ideas still permeate all of biblical scholarship a century after his death.

Even if you disagree with every word he said, you are nonetheless compelled to engage with his arguments.

Valhousen tackled the Penterchick, the five books of Moses.

Valhousen felt that there were so many inconsistencies and duplications in the biblical texts

that it was inconceivable that a single author was behind them.

There are three versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5.

There are two creation stories, two stories of the flood to name but many.

He formulated what is now known as the documentary hypothesis, which argue that four great traditions or schools had contributed

to those books, not one single author, Moses, but four independent narratives that were later

combined into the books we have today.

Each author retold many of the same stories from their own point of view.

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