The Documentary Hypothesis

I have to admit, I know nothing about the DH except the very high level ideas. Multiple documents, one redactor... Perhaps it is time to educate myself.

The blogger that seems to be most pedantic about the DH, who seems to have an infinite amount of patience to analyze every chapter and verse of the Tanach is littlefoxling. As I was re-reading some of his older posts, I came across this quote:

I stumbled upon S. R. Driver’s “Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,” which was published in 1913.

I was mortified. The book was absolutely chock full of completely irrefutable proof for the DH.

This seems like an incredibly strong statement. Irrefutable proof?

Anyway, I found this introduction to the book on GoogleBooks - it is interesting that while the DH seems like a fatal blow to Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians, Driver and many others seem to have no problem with reconciling their religiosity with their denial of the literal Divine origin of the text.

It is objected however that some of the conclusions of critics respecting the Old Testament are incompatible with the authority of our blessed Lord and that in loyalty to Him we are precluded from accepting them. That our Lord appealed to the Old Testament as the record of a revelation in the past and as pointing forward to Himself is undoubted but these aspects of the Old Testament are perfectly consistent with a critical view of its structure and growth. That our Lord in so appealing to it designed to pronounce a verdict on the authorship and age of its different parts and to foreclose all future inquiry into these subjects is an assumption for which no sufficient ground can be alleged. Had such been His aim it would have been out of harmony with the entire method and tenor of His teaching. In no single instance so far as we are aware did He anticipate the results of scientific inquiry or historical research. The aim of His teaching was a religious one it was to set before men the pattern of a perfect life to move them to imitate it to bring them to Himself. He accepted as the basis of His teaching the opinions respecting the Old Testament current around Him. He assumed in His allusions to it the premises which His opponents recognised and which could not have been questioned even had it been necessary to question them without raising issues for which the time was not yet ripe and which had they been raised would have interfered seriously with the paramount purpose of His life. There is no record of the question whether a particular portion of the Old Testament was written by Moses or David or Isaiah having been ever submitted to Him and had it been so submitted we have no means of knowing what His answer would have been. The purposes for which our Lord appealed to the Old Testament its prophetic significance and the spiritual lessons deducible from it are not as has been already remarked above affected by critical inquiries. Criticism in the hands of Christian scholars does not banish or destroy the inspiration of the Old Testament it presupposes it it seeks only to determine the conditions under which it operates and the literary forms through which it manifests itself and it thus helps us to frame truer conceptions of the methods which it has pleased God to employ in revealing Himself to His ancient people of Israel and in preparing the way for the fuller manifestation of Himself in Christ Jesus.

S.R.D.