What Is Astruc's Theory?
It took many years for scholars to notice and then it was questioned by many. Astruc was interested how Moses would know about events that happened in Genesis. He was not around for some of the events, but yet they were supposedly written by him. Astruc didn’t want to publish what he believed because he was not 100% about the findings and he was not a biblical scholar. However, he did publish his beliefs anonymously and had good feedback from an actual biblical scholar (Enns, 5). The issues and patterns that Astruc saw in Genesis, continued to be found in the Pentateuch. This helped confirm Astruc’s theory. “Astruc’s theory was the key: different documents written by different authors compiled together by a later editor—only now it was no
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Not all of his ideas and beliefs were ideal, but it was the starting point to understand how the Pentateuch came about. His explanation follows: “the Pentateuch obscures Israel’s real history. Wellhausen claimed to have rediscovered Israel’s true history by, (1) untangling the original documents from the editor’s work, and (2) putting them back in their proper chronological order. In other words, Wellhausen reconstructed Israel’s history, and that is what made his work so controversial” (Enns, 6). He believed that this work showed real Israel history and that the books were copy and pasted together to make the Pentateuch. Wellhausen identified four different sources and referenced them by J, E, D, and P. Wellhausen had to code the books and information to make sense of it. “Only after you untangle the mess created by the redactor and put the sources in their proper order can you see the progression of Israel’s religion from simple to complex, or better, from free to legalistic” (Enns, 7). His ideas and theory were not exact and others still believed differently. After many scholars and theories there is still not one theory that explains the every aspect of the Pentateuch clearly. Many scholars have taken time to look into Genesis as well as the Pentateuch. There has been many different ideas and beliefs, most in which lead another scholar to dig deeper. Even though there is not a clear understanding we do know that it seems clear that Moses did not write the book of Genesis. The information seems to be pasted together in no real order and the stories needed to be sorted
Not all of his ideas and beliefs were ideal, but it was the starting point to understand how the Pentateuch came about. His explanation follows: “the Pentateuch obscures Israel’s real history. Wellhausen claimed to have rediscovered Israel’s true history by, (1) untangling the original documents from the editor’s work, and (2) putting them back in their proper chronological order. In other words, Wellhausen reconstructed Israel’s history, and that is what made his work so controversial” (Enns, 6). He believed that this work showed real Israel history and that the books were copy and pasted together to make the Pentateuch. Wellhausen identified four different sources and referenced them by J, E, D, and P. Wellhausen had to code the books and information to make sense of it. “Only after you untangle the mess created by the redactor and put the sources in their proper order can you see the progression of Israel’s religion from simple to complex, or better, from free to legalistic” (Enns, 7). His ideas and theory were not exact and others still believed differently. After many scholars and theories there is still not one theory that explains the every aspect of the Pentateuch clearly. Many scholars have taken time to look into Genesis as well as the Pentateuch. There has been many different ideas and beliefs, most in which lead another scholar to dig deeper. Even though there is not a clear understanding we do know that it seems clear that Moses did not write the book of Genesis. The information seems to be pasted together in no real order and the stories needed to be sorted