COLLECTION OF EVIDENCE

The Seven Main Arguments

The process of identifying the biblical sources took centuries. The process of refining our identifications of these sources has been ongoing, and it continues to the present day. Initially, it was a tentative division based on simple factors: where the name of God appeared in the texts, similar stories appearing twice in the texts, contradictions of fact between one text and another. Accounts of this early identifying and refining may be found in many introductions to this subject and in my Who Wrote the Bible? The collection of evidence here is not a review of that history of the subject. It is a tabulation of the evidence that has emerged that establishes the hypothesis. It is grouped here in seven categories, which form the seven main arguments for the hypothesis in my judgment.

I. LINGUISTIC

When we separate the texts that have been identified with the various sources, we find that they reflect the Hebrew language of several distinct periods.

The development of Hebrew that we observe through these successive periods indicates that:

The Hebrew of J and E comes from the earliest stage of biblical Hebrew.

The Hebrew of P comes from a later stage of the language.

The Hebrew of the Deuteronomistic texts comes from a still later stage of the language.

P comes from an earlier stage of Hebrew than the Hebrew of the book of Ezekiel (which comes from the time of the Babylonian exile).

All of these main sources come from a stage of Hebrew known as Classical Biblical Hebrew, which is earlier than the Hebrew of the postexilic, Persian period (known as Late Biblical Hebrew).

This chronology of the language of the sources is confirmed by Hebrew texts outside the Bible. The characteristics of Classical Biblical Hebrew are confirmed through comparison with inscriptions that have been discovered through archaeology, which come from the period before the Babylonian exile (587 BCE). The characteristics of Late Biblical Hebrew are confirmed through comparison with the Hebrew of later sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.1

Despite the power of this evidence, it is practically never mentioned by those who oppose the hypothesis.

2. TERMINOLOGY

Certain words and phrases occur disproportionately—or even entirely—in one source but not in others. The quantity of such terms that consistently belong to a particular source is considerable. Thus:

The mountain that is called Sinai in J and P (twenty times) is called Horeb or “the Mountain of God” in E and D (fourteen times). In thirty-four occurrences of these names, there is no exception to this distinction.

The phrase “in that very day” () occurs eleven times in the Torah. Ten of the eleven are in P. (And the eleventh is in R, in a passage that R modeled on P; Deut 32:48.)

The phrase “the place where YHWH sets his name” or “the place where YHWH tents his name” occurs ten times in D but never in J, E, or P. The phrase “gathered to his people” as a euphemism for death occurs eleven times, and all eleven are in P.

The phrase “fire came out from before YHWH” occurs three times, all in P.

The phrase “and he [or they] fell on his face” occurs eight times, all in P.

The phrase “be fruitful and multiply” occurs twelve times, all in P.

The phrase “YHWH’s glory” () occurs thirteen times, and twelve are in P.

The word “plague” (ngp) occurs fifteen times; fourteen are in P.

The word “possession” () occurs thirty-five times in the Torah, and thirty-three are in P. (The thirty-fourth is an R passage repeating a verse from P, and the thirty-fifth is uncertain.)

The word “chieftain” () occurs sixty-nine times in the Torah. Sixty-seven are in P. (The other two are in J and E.)

The word “congregation” () occurs more than one hundred times in the Torah, all in P, without a single exception.

The root ‘dp occurs eight times in the Torah, and they are all in P.

The word “property” () occurs in the anomalous source in Genesis 14 (four times) and once in the words of the Redactor. It occurs eight times in the four main sources, and all eight are in P, never in J, E, or D.

The word “complain” (Hebrew lwn and ) occurs twenty-three times in the Torah, and twenty-two are in P.

The word “cubit” occurs fifty-nine times in the Torah, and fifty-six are in P.

The term “to expire” (gw’) occurs eleven times in P but never in J, E, or D.

The phrase “lengthen your days in the land” occurs twelve times, and eleven are in D.

The phrase “with all your heart and with all your soul” occurs nine times, and all are in D.

The phrases “to go after other gods” and “to turn to other gods” and “to worship other gods” occur thirteen times, all in D.

The phrase “listen to the voice of YHWH” () occurs twelve times, all in D.

The term “to lie with” as a euphemism for sex () occurs thirteen times in the Torah, and eleven are in J. (The other two occur in a single passage in E; Gen 30:15–16.)

The term “to know” as a euphemism for sex (yd’) occurs five times in J but never in the other sources.

The term “Sheol,” identifying the place where the dead go, occurs six times in J but never in the other sources.

The term “to suffer” (‘sb) occurs seven times, and all seven are in J.2

3. CONSISTENT CONTENT

a) The Revelation of God’s Name

This line of evidence is frequently described as a matter of terminology: namely, that different sources use different names for God. But that is not correct. The point is not that sources have different names of God. The point is that the different sources have a different idea of when the name YHWH was first revealed to humans. According to J, the name was known since the earliest generations of humans. Referring to a generation before the flood, J says explicitly, “Then it was begun to invoke the name YHWH” (Gen 4:26). The use of the name by humans may go back even earlier in J, because Eve uses it when she names Cain (Gen 4:1). But in E and P it is stated just as explicitly that YHWH does not reveal this name until the generation of Moses. In Genesis YHWH instead tells Abraham that His name is El Shadday, thus:

YHWH appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shadday.”

(Gen 17:1)

And then when YHWH speaks to Moses in Exodus, the text says:

And God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am YHWH. And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shadday, and I was not known to them by my name, YHWH.

(Exod 6:2–3)

The sources in the text are then nearly 100 percent consistent on this matter. The E and P sources identify God as El or simply as “God” (Hebrew: Elohim) until the name is revealed to Moses. After that, they use the name YHWH as well. The J source meanwhile uses the name YHWH from the beginning.

I added one more element to this picture. The J source never uses the word God (Elohim) in narration. When individual persons in the story are quoted, they may use this word; but the J narrator never uses the word, without a single exception in the Masoretic Text.

For the entire Torah, the picture is as follows: the names YHWH and El and the word God (Elohim) occur more than two thousand times, and the number of exceptions to this picture is three. Despite this phenomenal fact, we still find writers on this subject asserting that “the names of God” do not prove anything.

b) The Sacred Objects: Tabernacle, Ark, Cherubs, Urim and Tummim, Moses’ Staff and Aaron’s Staff

The Tabernacle is mentioned more than two hundred times in P. It receives more attention than any other subject. It is the only permitted site of sacrifice. It is the place where major ceremonies and laws must be carried out. It is the place where all revelation takes place after Sinai. But it is never so much as mentioned in J or D. It is mentioned three times in E.

The ark is identified as being crucial to Israel’s travels and military success in J (Num 10:33–36; 14:44), but it is never mentioned in E.

Golden cherubs spread their wings over the ark in P. And cherubs guard the way to the garden of Eden in J. But they are not mentioned in E or D.

In P, the Urim and Tummim are kept in the High Priest’s breastplate and are used in apparent divine consultation in judgment. But they are never mentioned in J, E, or D.3

In E, miracles are performed with Moses’ staff (Exod 4:2–5,17, 20; 7:15–17,2ob; 9:23; 10:13; 17:5—6,8). But in P, it is Aaron’s staff that is used for performing miracles (Exod 7:9—12,19; 8:1—2,12—13; Num 17:16—26; 2O:8).4

c) Priestly Leadership

In the P source, access to the divine is limited to Aaronid priests. In all the stories in P, there are no mentions of dreams, of angels, or talking animals, though these things occur in J, E, and D. As for human leaders: the words “prophet” and “prophesy” occur thirteen times in E and D, but not in P (or J). The single exceptional occurrence of the word “prophet” in P (Exod 7:1) uses the word figuratively, and it refers to the High Priest Aaron himself! Judges, too, are never mentioned in P (as opposed to D, which says: go to the priest and the judges in matters of law). In P, only the Aaronid priests have access to the Urim and Tummim. In P, all other, non-Aaronid Levites are not priests. In P, atonement for sin is to be achieved only by means of sacrifices that are brought to the Aaronid priests. It is not achieved by mere repentance or through divine mercy. Indeed, in P the words “mercy,” “grace,” “repentance,” and “kindness” (hesed) never occur.

This is more than a point of terminology. P not only lacks the terms that express divine mercy; its stories as well convey the merciful side of God far less than the other sources’ stories do. For example, in the story of the scouts whom Moses sends into the land, in the J version God says He will destroy the people and start over with a new nation descended from Moses; but Moses intercedes, God relents, and the divine sentence is commuted to forty years in the wilderness instead. But in P there is no such entreaty and relenting; God simply declares the forty-year sentence, and that is that. In both terminology and narrative, P characterizes God as acting according to justice more than as acting according to mercy. If one wishes to be forgiven for an offense, one cannot simply be sorry; one must bring a sacrifice to the priest. As with the absence of angels and prophets, in P the priesthood is the only sanctioned path to God.

In D, on the other hand, all Levites are priests. P regularly refers to “the priests and the Levites” (that is, as two separate groups) while D just as regularly refers to “the Levitical priests” (that is, as a single group).

Further conveying the idea in P that priests are the only channel to God, there are no blatant anthropomorphisms in P. In J, God walks in the garden of Eden, personally makes Adam’s and Eve’s first clothing, personally closes Noah’s ark and smells Noah’s sacrifice. In E, God wrestles with Jacob and stands on the crag at Meribah as Moses strikes it and water comes out. And in E and perhaps J as well, Moses actually sees the form of God at Sinai/Horeb. In P there is nothing so direct and physical as this. In P such things are metaphorical, as when the Egyptian magicians say that a plague is “the finger of God,” or they are mysterious, as when humans are said to be created “in the image of God,” which may or may not mean something physical.

d) Numbers

Ages, dates, measurements, numbers, order, and precise instructions are an obvious, major concern in P. There is nothing even nearly comparable in degree in J, E, or D.

4. CONTINUITY OF TEXTS (NARRATIVE FLOW)

One of the most compelling arguments for the existence of the source documents is the fact that, when the sources are separated from one another, we can read each source as a flowing, sensible text. That is, the story continues without a break. One of the primary purposes of this book is to demonstrate this fact. One can read the texts and see that, when we separate the two flood stories and read each of them (J and P, Genesis 6–9), for example, each reads as a complete, continuous story. And we can observe this kind of continuity through at least 90 percent of the text from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

Specifically, the combined JE text that was assembled by RJE reads as a flowing narrative, with only an occasional gap. When interrupted by material from P or other sources, it picks up after the interruption where it had left off. The P text likewise is a flowing narrative, with only an occasional lacuna. Within JE, each of its source texts, J and E, flows sensibly much of the time as well, but not always. It appears that RJE was willing to make cuts in his received texts (J and E) to a far greater degree than was R in his received texts (JE, P, D, and other, smaller texts).

This high degree of narrative continuity in P also weighs against supplementary versions of the hypothesis, in which some scholars propose that P was never an independent document. They argue that P was rather composed around the JE text as a supplement to it. The narrative flow of P is entirely contrary to these models.5

One might object that the scholar has simply divided the text in such a way as to produce this result. But that is not possible. So much of the text flows smoothly in this way that it is not possible that any scholar could have constructed it to do so while keeping all the evidence consistently within sources. The scholar would still have to keep all the sources’ similar versions of common stories (known as “doublets”) separated. The scholar would still have to keep all the characteristic terminology of each source within the passages attributed to that particular source. The scholar would still have to keep all the linguistic evidence for the stages of Hebrew intact, all the occurrences of the divine name consistent within sources, and all the other lines of evidence intact—all of this while producing stories that flow smoothly. I submit that no such phenomenally consistent results would be possible to construct.

5. CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER PARTS OF THE BIBLE

When distinguished from one another, the individual sources each have specific affinities with particular portions of the Bible. D has well-known parallels of wording with the book of Jeremiah. P has such parallels with the book of Ezekiel. J and E are particularly connected with the book of Hosea. This is not simply a matter of a coincidence of subject matter in these parallel texts. It is a proper connection of language and views between particular sources and particular prophetic works.

a) Jeremiah and D

In treating the book of Jeremiah, it is customary to distinguish the poetic portions of the book from the prose. When we do so, we find that D has marked connections to both the poetry and the prose of the book of Jeremiah.6 In the poetry, there are at least forty-five occurrences of terms or phrases that are characteristic of D and/or the Deuteronomistic history. For example:

from the smallest to the biggestn

stubborn and rebellious

early rain and late rain in its time

grain, wine, oil, herd, flock

they left me

go after Baal (or: other gods)

[] on the face of the field

circumcise your heart7

they went after emptiness and became empty

When we examine the prose of Jeremiah, we find an even more pervasive array of parallels with the language of D and the Deuteronomistic history. Thirty chapters of prose in Jeremiah have terms and phrases that are characteristic of Dtr. For example:

with all my heart and all my soul

brought them out from the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace

all the array of the skies

and it will be, if you listen to YHWH

they left me and burnt incense to other gods

on every high hill and under every attractive tree

obstinacy of heart

an alien, an orphan, or a widow

[God’s] name is called on this house

cast them out from before His face

your carcass will become food for every bird of the skies and for the animals of the earth, with no one making them afraid

I call witness

here, I’m bringing a bad thing

everyone who hears it: his two ears will ring

fire has ignited in my anger

b) Ezekiel and P

Parallels between P and the book of Ezekiel are at least as noticeable and striking as those between D and Jeremiah. For example:

The P list of blessings and curses in Leviticus 26 promises blessings “if you will go by my laws, and if you will observe my commandments, and you will do them” (26:3), and it promises curses “if you will reject my laws, and if your souls will scorn my judgments so as not to do all my commandments” (26:14). Ezekiel indicts the people, drawing on those words: “You did not go by my laws, and you did not do my judgments” (5:7).

The P curses include “you will eat your sons’ flesh” (26:29). Ezekiel threatens, “fathers will eat sons” (5:10).

Ezekiel’s warnings in that verse also use the word zrh for scattering, which likewise occurs in the P curse passage (Lev 26:33); and Ezekiel uses the word s’r for a remnant in that verse, which occurs in the P context as well (Lev 26:36,39).

P threatens: “and I shall let loose the wild animal among you, and it will bereave you … and I shall bring a sword over you … and I shall let an epidemic go among you” (Lev 26:22,25). And Ezekiel says: “I shall let loose hunger and wild animal, and they will bereave you, and epidemic and blood will pass through you, and I shall bring a sword over you” (5:17).

In the P version of the exodus from Egypt, YHWH says to Moses, “I shall bring you to the land that I raised my hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I shall give it to you” (Exod 6:8). In the book of Ezekiel, YHWH says to Ezekiel, “I brought them to the land that I raised my hand to give to them” (Ezek 20:28; see also 20:6,42).

There are other matching elements between these two passages, Exodus 6 and Ezekiel 20. Both have references to YHWH’s making Himself known (in the Niphal form of the root yd’—Exod 6:3; Ezek 20:5). Both have references to God’s outstretched arm (Exod 6:6; Ezek 20:33–34).

In P, God charges the priests “to distinguish between the holy and the secular, and between the impure and the pure” (Lev 10:10). In Ezekiel, God criticizes the priests because they “have not distinguished between holy and secular and have not made known [the difference] between the impure and the pure” (Ezek 22:26).

For more examples, see Exod 6:6–7 and cf. Ezek 20:6,9; see Lev 26:21 and cf. Ezek 20:8; and see Lev 26:43 and cf. Ezek 20:13,16,24.

Especially noteworthy is the recent demonstration by William Propp that a passage in Ezekiel quotes a passage from P that is divided as it stands in the combined text of the Torah.8

c) Hosea and J and E

Hosea, meanwhile, when speaking about Jacob and Esau, cites only J and E, but nothing of the P version of those events:

In the womb he “heeled” his brother,
and by his might he fought with God,
and he fought with an angel and was able;
he cried, and he was gracious to him.
He found him at Beth-El,
and there He spoke with him.
(Hos 12:4–5)

The connection between the womb and the grabbing of his brother’s heel is well known from J (Gen 25:24–26). The fighting with God9 and being “able” connects to an equally well known passage from E (Gen 32:25–31). The reference to finding him at Beth-El and especially referring to speaking “with” (Hebrew ‘im) him calls to mind the J version of the story of the revelation to Jacob (Gen 28:3–16,19).10

Hosea also refers to the Israelites’ heresy at Baal Peor (Hos 9:10). This event is known from J (Num 25:1–5). Only J refers to it as “Baal Peor.” The P version of this event speaks of “the matter of Peor” (Num 25:18 [twice]; 31:16) but never uses the name Baal Peor.

d) J and the Court History

A vast series of connections exists between J and the Court History of David, which takes up nearly all of the book of 2 Samuel. This has been observed by many scholars during the past century. They have offered a variety of explanations for it, including that the two texts were written by the same author, or that one text imitated the other or was influenced by the other. I have presented the evidence that J and the Court History, as well as some texts in Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel, were written by the same author. I refer those who are interested in the broader treatment of this matter, with bibliography and the evidence and arguments for the common authorship of J and the Court History, to my The Hidden Book in the Bible.11 For the purpose of this present collection of evidence, I simply note the fact that it is possible to observe a singular connection between the Court History and J, whereas there is no such connection with E, P, or D. This is further strong evidence that J was originally an independent source.

6. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE SOURCES: TO EACH OTHER AND TO HISTORY

The sources each have connections to specific circumstances in history. And they have identifiable relationships with each other.

a) J and E and the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel

From 922 to 722, Israel was divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south. J has numerous elements that connect it with Judah, and E has numerous elements that connect it with Israel:

In J Abraham lives in Hebron/Mamre (Gen 13:18; 18:1). Hebron was Judah’s capital.

In J the scouts whom Moses sends see only Hebron and other locations in Judah; they see nothing of what became the northern kingdom of Israel (Num 17–20,22–24).

In that story, the sole scout who has a positive view is Caleb. The Calebite territory was located in Judah and included Hebron.

In J—and only in J—Judah is a significant figure. There is a narrative about him, the story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38). It ends with the birth of Peres, ancestor of the clan from which the kings of Judah were traced. Jacob’s deathbed blessing favors Judah and promises his descendants the scepter. Judah’s wife is bat (daughter of Shua), paralleling the name of the wife of David (bat —Bathsheba) and mother of all the kings of Judah through her son Solomon.12 In J Judah is the brother who saves Joseph from their other brothers’ plans to kill him (Gen 37:26–27; 42:22); it is Judah who assures Jacob that he will see that Benjamin will safely go to and return from Egypt (Gen 43:8–9), and it is Judah who speaks for his brothers and defends Benjamin to Joseph in Egypt (44:18–34).

Other elements in J connect with the monarchy of Judah. In J God promises Abraham the land “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen 15:18). This matches the borders attributed to David, first king of Judah. In J the root of the name Rehoboam () occurs six times. (It never occurs in E.) Rehoboam was the first king of Judah as a separate kingdom from the northern kingdom of Israel.

Other elements in J relate to the twelve brothers who become the eponymous ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. In J the stories of the births and namings of the brothers cover only the first four: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. That is, it reaches only as far as Judah! Moreover, only Judah, out of these four, actually survived as a community with a land of its own. Also, in J there is a report that Reuben has sex with his father Jacob’s concubine; and in J there is a story in which Simeon and Levi massacre the men of Shechem. These acts are singled out in Jacob’s deathbed blessings when he bypasses these three oldest brothers and promises the monarchy to Judah.

The J story of the massacre at Shechem also casts a negative light on the acquisition of the city of Shechem. Shechem was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, built by Jeroboam I, the king who had rebelled against Judah.

In J there is more about Jacob and Esau than in other sources. And in J Esau is identified as the ancestor of Edom. In J there is also a list of the kings of Edom (Genesis 36). And J alone has an account of Israel’s encounter with Edom during the journey from Egypt to the promised land (Num 20:14–20). Judah bordered Edom; Israel did not. And it is reported in Samuel and Kings that David conquered Edom and that it remained subjugated to Judah until the reign of Jehoram.

In J the ark is important (Num 10:33–36; 14:41–44), but in E it is never mentioned. The ark was located in Judah, not in Israel.

According to 1 Kings, the symbols of God’s presence in Judah were golden cherubs placed over the ark, whereas the symbols of that presence in Israel were two golden calves, erected by Jeroboam I. Cherubs are mentioned in J but not in E. And in J, in the Ten Commandments, the commandment against idols is stated as forbidding molten gods (Exod 34:17). The golden calves of Israel were molten and are thus forbidden; but the golden cherubs of Judah were not molten. (They were carved from wood and then gold plated.)

In E, meanwhile, the connections are disproportionately with the northern kingdom of Israel. And, more specifically, they relate to the Levites of the priesthood of Shiloh. Thus:

In E Israel acquires its territory at the city of Shechem, the future capital of Israel, by a purchase rather than by violence (Gen 33:18–19).

In E the stories of the births and namings of the brothers do not include Judah (or Reuben, Simeon, and Levi), but they do include all the tribes that were part of the northern kingdom of Israel: Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin. And in E the birthright is awarded to Joseph—and since the birthright is a double portion, this results in two tribes being created from Joseph: Ephraim and Manasseh, which were the two largest tribes of the kingdom of Israel. Further, in E Ephraim is favored over Manasseh (Gen 48:13–20); Ephraim was Jeroboam’s tribe and frequently the dominant tribe of Israel, so much so that Ephraim is sometimes used in the Hebrew Bible as a euphemism for the entire northern kingdom. Shechem, which was built by Jeroboam, was in the hills of Ephraim. And in E there is a pun: when Joseph is awarded the double portion, it is referred to as “one shoulder over your brothers” (Gen 48:22), and the word for shoulder there is sekem (i.e. Shechem).

Shechem is identified in the book of Joshua (24:32) as the traditional burial site of Joseph, and it is in E that the story appears in which Joseph asks to be buried back in Canaan, not in Egypt. E then contains the notice in the exodus story that the people take Joseph’s bones with them when they leave Egypt.

Northern Israel’s first king, Jeroboam I, is associated with another city, Penuel, which he is reported to have built (1 Kgs 12:25). E contains the story of Jacob’s fight with God, which concludes in the naming of the place where it happens: Penuel (Gen 32:31).

In E Reuben is the one who saves Joseph from their other brothers’ plans to kill him (Gen 37:22), and it is Reuben who assures Jacob that he will see that Benjamin will safely go to and return from Egypt (Gen 42:37).

Whereas J is favorable to Judah’s royal family of David, Solomon, and Rehoboam, E contains elements that are implicitly critical of them. Solomon established work-companies (Hebrew ), a policy of required labor for the king, which so offended the northern tribes that it is identified in the book of Kings as a reason for their break with Judah and formation of the northern kingdom of Israel when Rehoboam came to the throne: their first act of rebellion is to stone the head of the work-companies (1 Kgs 12:18). E reflects this pointedly, as it describes the Egyptians’ enslavement of Israel in the words “they set commanders of work-companies () over it” (Exod 1:11).

Joshua, whether historical or legendary, was understood to have come from the tribe of Ephraim. And E develops the special standing of Joshua as Moses’ successor (Exod 17:9–14; 24:13; 32:17; 33:11; Num 11:28; Deut 31:14–15, 23), while J never mentions him.

E contains a corpus of law, the Covenant Code (Exodus 21–23). This suggests that E comes from priests since law codes in the Hebrew Bible otherwise come exclusively from priests (D, P, and Ezekiel).

Other elements of E confirm this priestly connection and point to a particular northern priestly group. The priests of Shiloh have a specific relationship with the northern kingdom of Israel and with E. Their place in the Jerusalem priesthood in Judah suffered when King Solomon expelled their chief priest, Abiathar, and gave the chief priesthood solely to an Aaronid priest. The prophet Ahijah from Shiloh instigated Jeroboam’s rebellion and formation of the northern kingdom (1 Kgs 11:29–39). Later, however, Jeroboam failed to make these excluded Levites the sole priests of his new kingdom. Following Jeroboam’s establishment of the golden calves, Ahijah of Shiloh condemned his dynasty (1 Kgs 14). The E story of the golden calf corresponds to these events: by saying that Aaron made the golden calf at Horeb, it denigrates both the Aaronid religious establishment of Jerusalem and the golden-calf religious establishment of northern Israel. It is the Levites in this E story, however, who are zealous to destroy the golden-calf heresy.

While J forbids molten gods, which can throw the golden calves into question, E forbids “gods of silver and gods of gold” (Exod 20:23), which likewise may apply to both the northern and southern religious establishments.

And in E, when Moses sees the golden calf he shatters the tablets that he had brought down from the mountain, and there is no report of his getting a second set of tablets. This would question whether there are actually authentic tablets in the ark in Judah.

In E there is also another story in which Aaron is demeaned. Aaron and Miriam speak against Moses regarding his Cushite wife, but God personally sides with Moses against Aaron and declares that Moses’ experience of God is superior to that of Aaron or any other prophet. In both the golden-calf story and the Cushite wife story, Aaron acknowledges Moses’ superior standing by addressing him as “my lord.”

b) P and the Period Following the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel

P has elements that connect it to the time of Hezekiah, king of Judah (715— 687 BCE):

P makes distinctions between Aaronid priests and all other Levites. This distinction is of tremendous importance in P. It comes up repeatedly in the P narrative and law codes. Only the Aaronids may serve as priests; all other Levites serve as lesser clergy. The book of Chronicles reports that this distinction was a development of the reign of Hezekiah (2 Chr 31:2). Moreover, this distinction appears in a source of the book of Chronicles that was composed during the reign of Hezekiah, which argues especially for its accuracy.13 From the time of Wellhausen, this innovation was widely held in scholarship to derive from the prophet Ezekiel (especially Ezekiel 44), but this was not correct. Ezekiel does not distinguish Aaronid priests from the other Levites. He specifically distinguishes one particular group of priests, the Zadokites, not Aaronids. Moreover, since it has now been shown linguistically that the Hebrew of P precedes that of the book of Ezekiel, it is no longer possible to argue that this central innovation in P is based on that prophetic book.14 The separation of Aaronid priests from the Levites is a Hezekian event.

This is complemented by the other major mark of P: centralization of worship. In J and E, people sacrifice at various locations. But in P, one is permitted to sacrifice only at the Tabernacle and nowhere else on earth. This, too, was a Hezekian policy, eliminating all places of sacrificial worship outside the Temple in Jerusalem. Kings and Chronicles coalesce on this point: there was no centralization before Hezekiah. The merger of centralization with the divisions of priesthood within the Levites is associated with only one king of Israel or Judah, and that is Hezekiah. (D has centralization but does not have the divisions of the priesthood; and, in any case, other well-known aspects of D connect it to the reign of Josiah, Hezekiah’s great-grandson.)

Only in P is the law of centralization expressed in terms of the Tabernacle. P devotes more space and attention to the Tabernacle (also called the Tent of Meeting) than to any other subject. The construction of the Taber nacle and related objects takes up two very large sections of P (Exodus 25–31 and 35–39). After its dedication in the last chapter of Exodus, all revelation takes place there. Sacrifice and various other practices can be performed there and nowhere else (Lev 1:3,5; 3:2,8,13; 4:5–7,14–18; 6:9,19,23; 14:11; 16:1–34; 17:1-9; Num 5:17; 6:10; 19:4). And P says more than a dozen times: the performance of these commandments at the Tabernacle is the law forever (Exod 27:21; 28:43; 30:21; Lev 3:17; 6:11; 10:9; 16:29,34; 17:7; 24:3,8; Num 18:23; 19:10). This view in P of the necessity of the Tabernacle’s presence forever further supports the linguistic and historical connections of P to the era in which the first Temple was standing in Jerusalem. Scholars in the nineteenth century thought that the Tabernacle was a fiction, but in the twentieth century and in the present century archaeological evidence and internal biblical evidence mutually pointed to the historicity of the Tabernacle in ancient Israel.15 I assembled evidence that further supported this conclusion and that indicated that the Tabernacle was located in the first Temple in Jerusalem.16 This, in turn, agreed with all the other evidence and arguments that P was composed in the first Temple period. It made no sense at all to picture P being composed in the postexilic, second Temple period, because P required all sacrifices and the other ceremonies to be performed only at the Tabernacle, forever—but the Tabernacle no longer existed in that period!

The same may be said of the ark, tablets, cherubs, and Urim and Thummim. They are all prominent in P but were associated only with the first Jerusalem Temple, never with the second, postexilic Temple.

c) D and the Period of Josiah

D has elements that connect it to the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (640–609 BCE).

Deuteronomy is part of a seven-book work that tells the history of Israel from Moses to the exile in Babylon (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings). This work is called the Deuteronomistic history because it constructs the fate of Israel in each period by the standards of Deuteronomy: did the people and their kings follow the commandments in Deuteronomy or not? The story that begins with Moses culminates in King Josiah in a number of ways:

In D it is said about Moses, “a prophet did not rise again in Israel like Moses.” In Kings it is said about Josiah, “after him none rose like him” (2 Kgs 23:25). This expression, “none rose like him,” is applied to no one else in the Hebrew Bible.17

In D, Moses says, “love YHWH, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5). In Kings, it is said about Josiah that he alone turned to YHWH “with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might” (2 Kgs 23:25). This threefold expression occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.18

In D, Moses instructs that, if a matter of law is too difficult, one should inquire () what to do via a priest or judge at the chosen place (Deut 17:8–12). Only one king in the Deuteronomistic history is ever pictured as doing this: Josiah. He inquires via the priest Hilkiah at Jerusalem (2 Kgs 22:13,18).

D also contains the Law of the King. Both the command about inquiring and the Law of the King require that one do exactly as one is instructed and “not turn from the commandment, right or left” (Deut 17:11,20). This admonition against turning right or left occurs in two other places in D and two more places early in Deuteronomistic literature (Josh 1:7; 23:6). Only one person in the Hebrew Bible is described as having done this: Josiah (2 Kgs 22:2).

At the end of D, Moses writes a “scroll of instruction” () and instructs the Levites to set it at the side of the ark so it will be there as a witness in future days (Deut 31:24–29). The scroll of Torah then is rarely mentioned19 and plays no part in the history until it is found by the priest Hilkiah in the Temple in Josiah’s time (2 Kgs 22:8). The discovery of that scroll is a turning point for Josiah and for Israel.

In D, Moses says to gather all the people and “in the place that He will choose, you shall read this instruction in front of all Israel in their ears” (Deut 31:11). Josiah summons all the people of Judah to the divinely chosen place (Jerusalem), and “he read in their ears” the scroll of instruction (2 Kgs 23:2). (The idiom “to read in their ears” occurs in only one other place in the Deuteronomistic history.)20

Josiah’s religious reforms following the reading of the scroll of the Torah have connections to D as well. According to D, Moses burns the golden calf and grinds it “thin as dust” (Deut 9:21). According to the Deuteronomistic history, at the site of Jeroboam’s golden calf Josiah burns the high place “and made it thin as dust” (2 Kgs 23:15). In the Hebrew Bible, the phrase “thin as dust” occurs only in the Moses and Josiah contexts. Moreover, when the Deuteronomistic history tells the story of Jeroboam’s setting up the golden calf, it says that a man of God comes and proclaims that a king descended from David will some day ruin that altar, and it adds: “Josiah is his name!” (1 Kgs 13:2).

D says, “you shall demolish () their altars … and burn () their Asherahs” (Deut 12:3). Josiah demolishes (nts) altars and burns () the Asherah at Jerusalem (2 Kgs 23:6,12).

D prohibits making a statue (“graven image,” Hebrew pesel) five times (Deut 4:16,23,25; 5:8; 27:15) and instructs the people to “burn the statues of their gods in fire” (7:25). The word “statue” occurs rarely after that (only in one story in Judges 17–18 and in one verse about statues among the Samaritans, 2 Kgs 17:41). Then King Manasseh puts a statue of Asherah at the Temple. And it is Josiah who takes that statue out and burns it as commanded in Deuteronomy (2 Kgs 23:6).

Josiah, like Hezekiah, establishes exclusive centralization of sacrifice in Jerusalem. The difference is that Josiah’s centralization is described in the terms and context of the full Deuteronomistic history that has preceded it, as we have just seen. Hezekiah’s reforms are told in a completely different set of terms.21

Josiah’s reforms are connected to instructions that are found in D; the narrative of Josiah’s making those reforms is told in terms and phrases that are typically found in D; and Josiah’s reforms are traced to the promulgation of a particular scroll, which is identified by the same words as the scroll that Moses writes in D. This interlocking chain of connections led to the extremely widely held view in scholarship that the scroll that was read in Josiah’s day was D. There have been a variety of conceptions: It may have been just the law code that appears in Deuteronomy (chapters 12–26). It may have been the law code and some of the material that precedes and follows it. It may have been written at the time of Josiah. It may have been written earlier and then made public and authoritative in Josiah’s time. But there is little room for doubt that D is linked in some integral way to the reign of Josiah.

d) P Follows JE

The P narrative follows the JE narrative in content and in the order of episodes: creation, flood, Abraham’s migration, Abraham’s parting from his nephew Lot, the Abrahamic covenant, Hagar and Ishmael, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the birth of Isaac, Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, Abraham’s death, Jacob and Esau, Jacob’s journey to Aram, Jacob’s offspring, Jacob’s return to Canaan, the change of Jacob’s name to Israel, Esau’s offspring, Joseph in Egypt, Jacob’s journey to Egypt, the enslavement of Israel in Egypt, God’s summoning of Moses, the plagues, the exodus, the Red Sea, manna, the theophany at Sinai/Horeb, the giving of law at Sinai/Horeb, the departure from Sinai/Horeb, the spies, rebellion in the wilderness, the heresy at Peor, and Moses’ death.

This following of the JE sequence of events is not simply a matter of the Redactor’s having arranged the P episodes to match those of JE. We can know this because P, when read on its own, still flows as a continuous text. If it were just a collection of rearranged sections, we would not expect it to flow in this way.

Where P does have a change from what is in JE, we can see the reason for the change in almost every case in terms of the consistent views of the author of P. For example, P, without exception, has no sacrifices until the Tabernacle is established in Exodus 40. P therefore has no story to parallel the J story of Cain and Abel, which involves a sacrifice; P has no sacrifice at the end of the flood story, though J does; P has no sacrifice in the Abra-hamic covenant (Genesis 17), though J does (Genesis 15); P has no parallel to the E story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac (and sacrifice of a ram). Also, as noted above, P has no channels to God outside the priesthood, so it never includes angels, dreams, or talking animals, and rarely has a blatant anthropomorphism. P therefore has no parallel to the J story of the garden of Eden, with God walking in the garden and making the humans’ clothes, and with a talking snake. Nor does P have the JE Balaam story with the talking ass. P does not have a story of the three angelic visitors to Abraham like that in J. It does not have the story of Jacob wrestling with God or an angel at Peni-El as in E, nor does it have a parallel to the J story of the angel in the burning bush. P does not have the stories of the dreams of Joseph, the drink steward, the baker, and the pharaoh in its account of Joseph.

P does not have the stories of the golden calf or of Moses’ Cushite wife, both of which detract from Aaron, the ancestor of the priesthood according to P.

P, on the other hand, has an account of Abraham’s purchase of the burial cave of Machpelah at Hebron, while J and E do not; and this fits with the fact that Hebron was a priestly, Aaronid city (Josh 21:13). This story claims a legal holding at Hebron.

Observing this consistent relationship between P and the prior sources is a valuable support for the hypothesis in general, and it helps us to identify the steps by which the sources were formed and the contexts of the sources in history. It reveals that P was composed later than JE, that it was composed by someone who was familiar with J and E in their combined form, and it indicates that P was composed as an alternative to that JE version of Israel’s story. It was a retelling of the story in terms that were more suitable to the Aaronid priesthood.

7. CONVERGENCE

Above all, the strongest evidence establishing the Documentary Hypothesis is that several different lines of evidence converge. There are more than thirty cases of doublets: stories or laws that are repeated in the Torah, sometimes identically, more often with some differences of detail. The existence of so many overlapping texts is noteworthy itself. But their mere existence is not the strongest argument. One could respond, after all, that this is just a matter of style or narrative strategy. Similarly, there are hundreds of apparent contradictions in the text, but one could respond that we can take them one by one and find some explanation for each contradiction. And, similarly, there is the matter of the texts that consistently call the deity God while other texts consistently call God by the name YHWH, to which one could respond that this is simply like calling someone sometimes by his name and sometimes by his title. The powerful argument is not any one of these matters. It is that all these matters converge. When we separate the doublets, this also results in the resolution of nearly all the contradictions. And when we separate the doublets, the name of God divides consistently in all but three out of more than two thousand occurrences. And when we separate the doublets, the terminology of each source remains consistent within that source. (I listed twenty-four examples of such terms, which are consistent through nearly four hundred occurrences, above, in the Terminology section.) And when we separate the sources, this produces continuous narratives that flow with only a rare break. And when we separate the sources, this fits with the linguistic evidence, where the Hebrew of each source fits consistently with what we know of the Hebrew in each period. And so on for each of the six categories that precede this section. The name of God and the doublets were the starting-points of the investigation into the formation of the Bible. But they were not, and are not, major arguments or evidence in themselves. The most compelling argument for the hypothesis is that this hypothesis best accounts for the fact that all this evidence of so many kinds comes together so consistently. To this day, no one known to me who challenged the hypothesis has ever addressed this fact.

Thus, I did not list the doublets as one of the primary arguments for the hypothesis above. The primary argument is rather that so many double stories could line up with so many other categories of evidence, composed of hundreds of points of data. With that larger argument in mind, we can now take account of the doublets and add them to the picture in this collection of evidence:

  1. Creation. Gen 1:1–2:3 (P) and Gen 2:4b-25 (J).

  2. Genealogy from Adam. Gen 4:17–26 (J) and 5:1–28,30–32 (Book of Records).

  3. The flood. Gen 6:5–8; 7:1–5,7,10,12,16b-20,22–23; 8:2b-3a,6,8–12,13b,20–22 (J) and 6:9–22; 7:8–9,11,13–16a,21,24; 8:1–2a,3b-5,7,13a,14–9; 9:-7 (P).

  4. Genealogy from Shem. Gen 10:21–31 (J and P) and 11:10–26 (Book of Records).

  5. Abraham’s migration. Gen 12:1–4a (J) and 12:4b-5 (P).

  6. Wife/sister. Gen 12:10–20 (J) and 20:1–18 (E) and 26:6–14 (J). (Triplet)

  7. Abraham and Lot separate. Gen 13:5,7–11a,12b-14 (J) and 13:6,11b-12a (P).

  8. The Abrahamic covenant. Genesis 15 (J, E, and R) and 17 (P).

  9. Hagar and Ishmael. Gen 16:1–2,4–14 (J) and 16:3,15–16 (P) and 21:8–19 (E). (Triplet)

  10. Prophecy of Isaac’s birth. Gen 17:16–19 (P) and 18:10–14 (J).

  11. Naming of Beer-sheba. Gen 21:22–31 (E) and 26:15–33 (J).

  12. Jacob, Esau, and the departure to the east. Gen 26:34–35; 27:46; 28:1–9 (P) and 27:1–45; 28:10 (J).

  13. Jacob at Beth-El. Gen 28:10,11a,13–16,19 (J) and 28:11b-12, 17–18,20–22 (E) and 35:9–15 (P). (Triplet)

  14. Jacob’s twelve sons. Gen 29:32–35; 30:1–24; 35:16–20 (JE) and Gen 35:23–26 (P).

  15. Jacob’s name changed to Israel. Gen 32:25–33 (E) and 35:9–10 (P).

  16. Joseph sold into Egypt. Gen 37:2b,3b,5–11,19–20,23,25b-27, 28b,31–35; 39:1 (J) and 37:3a,4,12–18,21–22,24,25a,28a,29–30 (E).

  17. YHWH commissions Moses. Exod 3:2–4a,5,7–8,19–22; 4:19–20a (J) and 3:1,4b,6,9–18; 4:1–18,20b-21a,22–23 (E) and 6:2–12 (P). (Triplet)

  18. Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues. Exod 5:3–6:1: 7:14–18,20b-21, 23–29; 8:3b-11a,16–28; 9:1–7,13–34; 10:1–19,21–26,28–29; 11:1–8 (E) and 7:6–13,19–20a,22; 8:1–3a,12–15; 9:8–12 (P).

  19. The Passover. Exod 12:1–20,28,40–50 (P) and 12:21–27,29–36, 37b-39 (E).

  20. The Red Sea. Exod 13:2–22; 14:5a,6,9a,10b,13–14,19b,20b1 21b,24,27b,30–31 (J) and 14:1–4,8,9b,10a,10c,15–18,21a,21 c, 22–23,26–27a, 28–29 (P)

  21. Manna and quail in the wilderness. Exod 16:2–3,6–35a (P) and Num ii:4–34 (E).

  22. Water from a rock at Meribah. Exod 17:2–7 (E) and Num 20:2–13 (P)

  23. Theophany at Sinai/Horeb. Exod 19:1; 24:15b-18a (P) and 19:2b-9,16b-17,19; 20:18–21 (E) and 19:10–16a,18,20–25 (J). (Triplet)

  24. The Ten Commandments. Exod 2o:1–17 (R) and 34:10–28 (J) and Deut 5:6–18 (D). (Triplet)

  25. Kid in mother’s milk. Exod 23:19 (Covenant Code) and 34:26 (J) and Deut 14:21 (D). (Triplet)

  26. Forbidden animals. Leviticus 11 (P) and Deuteronomy 14 (D).

  27. Centralization of sacrifice. Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12.

  28. Holidays. Leviticus 23 (P) and Numbers 28–29 (R) and Deut 16:1–17 (D). (Triplet)

  29. The spies. Num 13:1–16,21,25–26,32; 14:1a,2–3,5–10,26–29 (P) and 13:17–20,22–24,27–31,33; 14:1b,4,11–25,39–45 (J).

  30. Heresy at Peor. Num 25:1–5 (J) and 25:6–19 (P).

  31. Appointment of Joshua. Num 27:12–23 (P) and Deut 31:14–15,23 (E).

I have seen it claimed that such doublets are a common phenomenon in ancient Near Eastern literature. That is false. No such phenomenon exists. Doublets are not common in Near Eastern prose because there is no Near Eastern prose, in the form of either history-writing or long fiction, prior to these biblical texts. It is not even common in Near Eastern poetry. The poetic text that comes closest to the qualities of the biblical text that we are discussing here is the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is a composite of several sources. It is a demonstration of composition by combining sources in the ancient Near East, not a refutation of it!22

I have also seen the claim that the scholar just chooses the evidence to fit his or her arrangement: for example, that the scholar assigns every verse that has the word “congregation” in it to P and then says that the recurrence of this word in P is proof of the hypothesis. This argument should be seen to be false in the light of all the evidence presented here. No scholar is clever enough to make all of these terms line up within the sources—and to make it all come out consistent with the other signs of the sources. In the text of the Torah that appears in the next section of this book, one can observe each of the doublets with the sources identified. One can then observe all the characteristic terms, the resolution of the contradictions, the separation of the words that are used to identify the deity, the continuity of each story within the doublet, and all the other categories of evidence. The combined weight of the evidence that one will observe there, together with the evidence that is collected here in this section, should make it clear why this explanation of the biblical origins has been so compelling for more than a century. And, whether one agrees with this explanation, questions it, or challenges it, one will have in front of him or her the evidence to address. It is amazing that at this point, when such a mass of evidence is available, some writers still discuss this at so low a level as, for example, arguing about whether “different names of God” constitutes proof or not, or whether doublets prove multiple authorship, or whether a beautiful literary structure (for example, a chiasm) is evidence for a single author. Or some just say that “the hypothesis was disproved long ago” or “nobody accepts it anymore.”

Here, rather, is the evidence, for anyone to see, evaluate, acknowledge, or refute.