This Essay Brought to You by the Letters J, E, D and P

INTRODUCTION

It would be easy to dedicate an entire semester to studying Julius Wellhausen. Just one look at the index to Prolegomena to the History of Israel proves his own self-assessment: “The literary and historical investigation on which we thus enter is both wide and difficult.” The version I examined dated from 1885 and included an Encyclopedia Britannica article by Wellhausen.[1]

Not only does this tomb address the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, but stretches well beyond the Pentateuch. He dedicates explicit discussion to Scripture all the way through the Book of Kings and goes on to make remarkable observations about Jewish theology almost up to present times.

Just look at these chapter headings: The Place of Worship; Sacrifice; The Sacred Feasts; The Priests and the Levites; The Endowment of the Clergy; Chronicles; Judges, Samuel, and Kings; The Narrative of the Hexateuch; Conclusion of the Criticism of the Law; The Oral and the Written Torah; and The Theocracy as Idea and as Institution. As you can see, Prolegomena could well act as a jumping off point for exploring the entire Hebrew Bible.

HOW D AND P SAVED JUDAISM

I am going to go out on a limb and argue that Document Hypothesis standard bearer Julius Wellhausen not only maintains grudging respect for the Priestly and Deuteronomistic Sources but attributes to their harmonizing redactions preservation of Judaism. Writing in Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Wellhausen seems to indicate that  literary coherency within the Pentateuch and beyond, as contributed before, during and after the Babylonian Exile, helped protect Judaism from heathenism and allowed it to survive over subsequent centuries, even in the Diaspora.

Jewish unity was accomplished, even before the Exile, by the “reform of the theocracy, demanded by the prophets and begun in the cult,” Wellhausen wrote. “After the exile, this tendency could not fail to be persisted in.” Eventually, “The restoration of Judaism took place in the form of a restoration of the cult,” he said, noting that following the Exile, Jews did not “relapse into the heathen ways which the prophets had attacked.”

I see Wellhausen as arguing that, with festivals and sacrifices long past, the cult used D- and P-influenced scriptural language as a “shield” behind which Judaism retreated to be safe from “heathenism.” He wrote that the cult was “nothing more than a means to that end. It was the shell around the faith and practice of the fathers, around the religion of moral monotheism, which it alone preserved until it could become the common property of the world.”

Public worship gave the new theocracy, which I understand to have derived in part from the priorities and values advanced by D and P, a firm and undivided center. With guidance and influence offered through D and P, pious exercises served to Judaize the whole life of every individual.

“[T]he center of gravity of Judaism was in the individual,” Wellhausen wrote. “Judaism was gathered from scattered elements, and it depended on the labor of the individual to make himself a Jew. This is the secret of the persistence of Judaism, even in the diaspora.”

A coherent scripture, with its observance of laws of purity, provided a guard against sin. “For what holiness required was not to do good, but to avoid sin.  By the sin and trespass offerings, and by the great day of atonement, this private cult was connected with that of the temple; hence it was that all these institutions fitted so admirably into the system,” he wrote. It is worth noting the Priestly Source played a key role in shaping Yom Kippur celebrations. These rituals, whether performed in the Tabernacle or the Temple, were important components of Jewish identity and alignment with Yahweh.

“The whole of life was directed in a definite sacred path; every moment there was a divine command to fulfill, and this kept a man from following too much the thoughts and desires of his own heart,” Wellhausen wrote.

Wellhausen noted that the new theology, again, shaped in large part by D and P, separated the new period from the old. “The aim was universal culture by the law.” As post-Exilic time went on, “The ever-growing body of regulations even came to be felt as a sort of emancipation from self.” The Torah not only contained ceremonial guidance, but offered a moral sentiment that resonated with the fact religion was no longer just a custom of the people but the work of the individual.

The effect D and P had on the Pentateuch was to stitch a variety of stories together into a more or less streamlined story of individual responsibility. Wellhausen seems to be arguing that the effect of this was to create a new type of covenant and the rise of a new wisdom as seen expressed in Book of Job, in the Proverbs of Solomon and of the Son of Sirach, and in Ecclesiastes. “This wisdom flourished not only in Judah, but also at the same time in Edom; it had the universalistic tendency which is natural to reflection.”

Given his spiritual perspective, one would not expect Wellhausen to be all that sympathetic to D and especially P, but we read, “Even the sacrificial practice of the priests was made subjective, being incorporated in the Torah, i.e., made a matter for every one to learn.”

Ultimately, the individual responsibility cultivated through the new theology helped Jews survive in coming centuries, especially after the introduction of Christianity. “The Jews had no historical life, and therefore painted the old time according to their ideas, and framed the time to come according to their wishes, Wellhausen wrote.

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[1] Wellwausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Israel (with a repreint of the article “Israel” from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black (1885).