Bible Criticism -With the Example of Julius Wellhausen-
The Bible is a collection to which Jews and Christians ascribe sacred significance. This collection consists of two parts. The first part is the Tanakh, sacred to Jews; the second part is the New Testament, the sacred text of Christians. Divided into three parts, the first five books of the Tanakh are called the Torah and are attributed to Moses. These texts, claimed to be the product of revelation, have given rise to the field of Biblical Criticism, which has been studied and carefully studied by numerous researchers.
The criticism of the Bible, which began with the claim that Moses could not have been the author of the book called the Torah, has been debated and generated various responses to this day. In this context, the surviving Torah, while generally accepted to not have been written by Moses, appears to be a reconstructed text based on his teachings. The Torah texts are characterized as a collective work produced by various individuals. Consequently, the claim that the Bible was compiled from four primary sources (Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly) has gained strength.
As a result of the stages the Bible has gone through, Julius Wellhausen, a 19th-century scholar, sought to determine the dates between which the Bible, based on four main sources, was written. Examining each event and fact within the Bible, Wellhausen conducted extensive research. In this context, Wellhausen determined the dates of writing for all four sources. Thus, the Yahwist source was written in the 10th century BC, the Elohist source in the 8th century BC, the Deuteronomic source in the 6th century BC, and finally the Prophetic source in the 5th century BC. Ultimately, Wellhausen's view on the Torah we currently possess has been accepted by the vast majority of researchers. In this context, the surviving Torah texts were not produced by Moses; rather, they were compiled by various individuals over five centuries.
INSIDE PAGES
