Overview
According to Paul Tobin, a recent commentator in the area and a self-described collator, not a biblical specialist, the full panorama appears something like this[1]:
- J originated from the southern kingdom of Judah (it has many uncomplimentary things to say about the North) and was the earliest to be documented: around 848-722 BCE (after Edom’s independence from Judah in 848 but before the fall of the northern kingdom);
- E was written in the northern kingdom of Israel somewhere between 922-722 BCE (from the time the united monarchy separated into 2 kingdoms until the fall of Israel to the Assyrians);
- P was written between 722-609 (after the fall of the northern kingdom but before the death of King Josiah in 609).
- The first edition of D is dated to before 609 BCE (before the death of King Josiah) with a final second edition dated to 587 BCE (after the fall of Judah);
- These documents were then combined into one by a “redactor” who compiled it during the days of the Second Temple (around 516 BCE).
Writing in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Canon Barnes formulated a similar table with some important interpolations as follows[2]:
Book of the Simple civil and religious laws of great Origin probably with
Covenant antiquity Moses about 1200 BCE
(Exodus chs 20-23)
J A historian of the southern Kingdom of Judah c 850 BCE
E A historian of the Northern Kingdom of Israel c 780 BCE
D The writer who inspired the reformation c 570 BCE
under King Josiah and to whom the Book
of Deuteronomy is due.
Law of Holiness A code of ritual and civil law of great c 570 BCE
(Leviticus, chs 17- religious value, as altered by the Priestly
26) writers of the Pentateuch, the final form
probably influenced by a friend or
follower of Ezekiel
P The school of priestly writers in Babylon 550 - 450
who finally gave the Pentateuch its BCE
present form
[1] Tobin 123.
[2] Table at Barnes, op cit, 80.
There may be some variations as regards themes and dates, but no critical historical scholar doubts the broad outlines of this hypothesis. For example, Friedman argues that J appeared a little before 722 BC, followed by E, and that a combined JE appeared soon after that; that P was written as a rebuttal of JE and opts for a date back in the time of Hezekiah and the First Temple (c. 715–687 BC), and that D was the last to appear, at the time of Josiah (c. 622 BC), before the Redactor, whom Friedman identifies as Ezra, collated the final Torah. Others say it was written about 500 BCE by Kohanim (Jewish priests) in exile in Babylon. So, some scholars have argued variously for compositions in the order JEPD, and others such as Friedman and Barnes, JEDP.
According to Friedman the authorship of the first four books then appears something along these lines:
Distribution of materials of Jahwist, Elohist and Priestly sources, as well as Redactor's contribution in the first four books, following Richard Friedman[1].
As noted previously when discussing different traditions surrounding the name Yahweh in the Deuteronomic record, nowadays scholarship no longer takes for granted that J represents the oldest layers in the Pentateuch. Some date it as a literary work composed just before or in the neo-Babylonian Era, in close association with the Deuteronomistic History (The Books from Joshua to Kings). On this hypothesis, J speaks of the new outlook of the Babylonian captives who retold and adapted ancient traditions in the light of their predicaments, developing a new diaspora, theology.[2]
[1] Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
[2] Meindert Dijkstra, "El, the God of Israel – Israel, the people of YHWH. On the origins of ancient Israelite Yahwism’, by in Only One God? – Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the veneration of the Goddess Asherah, by Bob Becking, Meindert Dijkstra, Marjo C A Korpel and Karel J H Vriezen, Sheffield Academy Press, London, New York (2001),