The Making of the Pentateuch

The Making of the Pentateuch (in fact only Genesis–Numbers, as Whybray excludes Deuteronomy) is in three parts. Part 1 examines the methodology and assumptions of source criticism and the Documentary Hypothesis; Part 2 examines the methodology of form criticism and tradition history as developed by Noth and others; and Part 3 sets out Whybray's own suggestions for the process by which the Pentateuch came to be composed.^[1]

Whybray's attack on the documentary hypothesis addressed the basic methodology of source criticism, which relies on the existence of inconsistencies, repetitions and stylistic features such as alternative names for God to identify distinctive sources within the biblical text. The assumptions behind this methodology, Whybray says, are illogical and self-contradictory. If the authors of the original documents did not tolerate contradiction and repetition, why did the editors of the final work do so? And if the writers who created the final document did not mind such features, why should we suppose that the earlier sources did not contain contradiction and repetition? "Thus the hypothesis can only be maintained on the assumption that, while consistency was the hallmark of the various documents, inconsistency was the hallmark of the redactors" (p. 19). Similarly, the repetition and stylistic variation which the documentary hypothesis explains as the remains of distinct sources, may be understood quite differently. For example, since other religious texts use a variety of names for God, why should the change of divine name in Genesis from Yahweh to Elohim signal a change of source? There could be a theological reason why one name is preferred to another, or the writer may just want a change. Repetition is often done for stylistic reasons, or for emphasis, or for rhetorical effect or in poetic parallelism. The task of form and tradition critics, according to Whybray, is even more difficult than that of source critics. Where the latter are dealing with partially extant texts, the former are dealing with hypothetical reconstructions for which we have no tangible evidence: "Much of Noth's detailed reconstruction of the Pentateuchal traditions was obtained by piling one speculation upon another." (p. 20)

His critique of scholars such as Rolf Rendtorff and Erhard Blum (a student of Rendtorff), who worked after Noth but in the same form and tradition-critical school was even more trenchant. These scholars contributed to what is known as the Supplementary hypothesis.

According to Whybray:

"Rendtorff has merely replaced the comparatively simple Documentary Hypothesis which postulated only a small number of written sources and redactors with a bewildering multiplicity of sources and redactors" (p. 21), while Blum's approach was, if anything, more complex and more dogmatic – not to mention less demonstrable – than Rendtorff's.^[2]

Whybray's own, alternative hypothesis, is based not on the documentary model but on a fragmentary model. He suggests that the Pentateuch was the product of a single author (not the four authors and multiple editors of the documentary hypothesis) working at some time in the 6th century BC "[with] a mass of material, most of which may have been of quite recent origin and had not necessarily formed part of any ancient Israelite tradition" (p. 242). Whybray saw this author as a national historian, aware of contemporary Greek history and writing in conscious imitation of Greek models, with the aim of extending the existing Deuteronomic history backwards in time to create a national history of the Israelites from the creation of the world.^[1]

The Making of the Pentateuch has been described as "the most compelling critique of the [documentary] hypothesis" ever made, and its arguments are frequently cited by evangelical Christians who wish to state the case for Mosaic authorship (although Whybray explicitly rejects this notion and states that he regards the Pentateuch as fiction).^[3] Gordon Wenham, for example, writing in 1996, "Whybray's work on the Pentateuch could be viewed as the logical conclusion of the direction in which most pentateuchal criticism has been moving in the last three decades. ... His book is a powerful and valid critique of the methods that have been taken for granted in Pentateuchal criticism for nearly two centuries."^[2]

Egyptologist and Bible scholar James K. Hoffmeier has affirmed that although Whybray offers the most comprehensive critique of the documentary hypothesis within recent critical scholarship, he concludes that Whybray's view doesn't actually advance pentateuchal studies but instead revives a late 18th, early 19th century theory held by Alexander Geddes and J.S. Vater.^[4][5]