Source Criticism (Documentary Hypothesis)

They label the four hypothesized sources of the Pentateuch. J is the Yahwist, named for its use of the divine name Yahweh (spelled with a J in German) and known for vivid, anthropomorphic narrative. E is the Elohist, which calls God Elohim before the name Yahweh is revealed and survives in fragments with a northern outlook. D is the Deuteronomist, the distinctive source behind Deuteronomy, centered on the centralization of worship. P is the Priestly source, marked by genealogies, ritual law, chronology, and ordered prose. Source critics assign Pentateuchal material among these four strands.

The primary evidence is internal: doublets that narrate the same event twice with differences, such as the two creation accounts and the repetitions in the flood story; outright contradictions in detail; and consistent correlations between the divine name used and a passage's vocabulary, style, and theology. When material is divided by these convergent criteria, the resulting strands read as continuous and internally coherent narratives, which is the strongest argument that the division reflects real underlying documents rather than an arbitrary cut. Wellhausen added the historical argument that the sources fit successive stages of Israelite religion.

It remains foundational and widely taught, but it is no longer a settled consensus in its classic Wellhausenian form. The reality of E as a separate continuous source, the relative and absolute dating of the strands, and Wellhausen's evolutionary assumptions have all been challenged. Some scholars favor supplementary models, in which a base text was expanded by later additions, or fragmentary models, in which short independent pieces were assembled. Most specialists still hold that the Pentateuch is composite and that P and D are distinguishable, while debating how many other sources exist and when they were written.