Documentary Hypothesis of the Origin of the Pentateuch in the Works of Erhard Blum

Abstract

The article examines the works of the modern German biblical scholar Erhard Blum, devoted to the analysis of the history and contemporary state of the documentary hypothesis of the origin of the Pentateuch, which is still dominant in modern Western biblical studies. An introduction to the article contains a brief history of the documentary hypothesis. Further in the text, the contemporary state of the hypothesis is represented by the description of Blum, with three main directions of its development, which he distinguishes, and his critical assessment of its problems and prospects. The author considers Blum’s reasoning about the problems of linguistic dating, which is important for various aspects of modern biblical studies, including the documentary hypothesis. As an example, the linguistic dating of Genesis 24 (the marriage of Isaac), made by the Israeli biblical scholar Alexander Rofe, is described, and its critical analysis is given. The author reasons about the modern critical assessment of the documentary hypothesis based on the analysis of Blum’s works, and applies his own interpretations. The author presumes that the history of the documentary hypothesis and its current state clearly demonstrates controversy. Meanwhile, opinions on the origin of the Pentateuch, alternative to the traditional church views, should not necessarily contradict the church doctrine and may be useful for identifying and solving some problems of the biblical text. Due to the fact that Blum is a contemporary biblical scholar, his person, as far as the author knows, has not been an object of academic research yet, and the present article can be considered the first in this area, and the author, therefore, is forced to rely solely on Blum’s works.