Challenging The Documentary Hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis is the view the five books of Moses (Pentateuch), were originally four separate sources of Israel's history. Alleged a redactor combined them into the present form of the Pentateuch, preserving most of the four sources. Proponents claim it is the best way to understand the history of the Pentateuch, but a lot of data challenges this assumption. I would like to thank the scholar Benjamin Kilchör for helping with the script for this video.

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[AChristianGuy]

I frequently hold to the P, B & J hypothesis (when it's close to lunch time anyway). Good work brother.

[theflaggedyoutuberii]

The idea that a redactor is the solution for the problems of J.E.P.D. hypothesis, when it comes to the Pentateuch, is what I like to call: *'the redactor of the gaps fallacy.'*

[WhatYourPastorDidntTellYou]

This is pretty eye-opening. Good to finally get a good Documentary Hypothesis critique on YouTube.

[KTChamberlain]

J.R.R. Tolkien gave roughly fifteen names to Gandalf alone, created two dialects of Black Speech, the language of Mordor, gave two names to Middle-earth's analog of Satan (Melkor/Morgoth) and uses them interchangeably, referred to Mount Doom as Orodruin early on in Lord of the Rings, and called the Fellowship the Company more often than Fellowship and nobody questions it being the sole creation of Tolkien's imagination. Sure, his son Christopher edited and published his posthumously published works, but that's all he did: edited and published since he had his father's papers and continued his father's legacy until his own death in 2020.

[StephensCrazyHour]

Obviously nobody ever uses different names for the same person in the same document. Incidentally, I saw that video of Joe falling off his bike the other day. It's both sad and funny to see the president humiliated like that. Hopefully the commander in chief is able to recover from his ego wound. I certainly think Biden has it in him to bounce back from this setback.

[Nameless-ptoj]

The Old Testament is a lot more complicated than the New Testament and I had no idea where to start when studying it, but I think I found the right person which was you. For that, I thank you 👍🏻

[OMGanger]

Hey InspringPhilosophy, as a physicist and agnostic, I absolutely adore your content! Your arguments are formulated, presented, and well-researched to to a much higher degree than any other theist channel and many secular channels I've come across. I particularly admire your "defending the rules of logic" video and would love to hear your perspective on how Godel's incompleteness theorem connects to John 1:1! To me it is a much sounder argument than the "qauntum woo" perspective which has fallen out of favor in academic circles

[ChristsforgivenessNYC]

There’s not enough of these extensive analyses online. Thank you, IP.

[emmanueljoseph]

Extremely common W for IP. Please keep making more of these videos. Apologists like you strengthen my faith and belief in the one true God.

[tau]

The documentary is really well done and a tremendous use of scholarly sources to balance competing arguments for and against the Documentary Hypothesis. One component of the documentary demonstrating IP's academic prowess (and crucial to the understanding of history in general, no matter the period), is his demonstrating the historical, literary tradition over time from the ancient literary forms of writing into the early first centuries A.D. (A.C.E); this creates a foundation for a strong future argument.

[LTPXQ]

As much as the shorts you produce are helpful - this is where yu shine. Keep on shining you crazy diamond.

[carolinaisabelzamudioalvar]

You have a very good point. Studying the ancient world demands to abandon many modern cultural assumptions.

[Michael-bknz]

Spectacular, finally someone mentions the fact that these arguments were once used on Homer, a fact once mentioned by CS Lewis though he provided no details

[Draezeth]

The documentary hypothesis was one of the big questions about the faith that I encountered. This takes me back to my first years of defense of the faith.

I'm really looking forward to what's to come.

[pablomarques]

The first minutes are I for Introduction, then the following is A for Arguments and the end is C for Conclusion. Good stuff, Mike!

[MythVisionPodcast]

Oh my! I seriously appreciate this video. I'm late to the party for this one Michael. I'm really impressed with the quality and the way you simplified such a complicated issue. Even if people disagree at the end of the day, this video should wet their appetite for diving into this topic.

[ramadadiver]

Btw just to make another point .

Ancient israelites had different concepts to our modern Greco Roman thought . You may remember functional Vs material creation .

Well they also didn't think In sequence when telling stories ..as in chronological sequence but In block sequence .

The biggest gap between modern western people and ancient Israelites is philosophy

Modern western language and thought Is abstract ..Hebrew language and thought Is concrete .

Western thought Is material creation ..Hebrew thought is functional

Western concept of time or sequence is chronological . Hebrew is blocks .

It's extremely difficult to evaluate a source text when your imposing your philosophy onto a text that doesn't share your philosophy

[Legendary_Detective-Wobbuffet]

I just pictured Deuteronomy as a kid just standing there by himself, waving and saying "hi".

[BluVie]

Great video. They are also ignoring the fact that Moses wasn’t trying to write a book like a novel or a history textbook. It’s more like a diary someone would keep, where different events can be mentioned more than once, and even differently in major details or reactions/conclusions as the writer mentally processes the same past memory/event in different ways. Even if he had written it start to finish in one continuous never repeating, never wavering, dry textbook way they would have argued that it was too much history to cover at once by one author so other sources must have existed to keep track of it all because they don’t trust humans to have good/reliable/accurate memory (thus why they disbelieve that oral stories can survive beyond a five person game of “Telephone”). They would never believe it was all written by Moses without video tape evidence of him writing each page (and even then there would still be debate because too many scholars have a bias against God and the Bible).

[wallaceanthony]

What immediately stood out to me as an obvious criticism of the documentary hypothesis, is that if there was a "redactor" then why would they leave in all the inconsistencies and repeat stories... I can't think of any reason at all that seems plausible.