Sublime

Despite naïve views to the contrary, the Bible was not handed down by God as a complete package but was the result of a series of decisions made over the course of centuries by the leaders of different religious groups, decisions concerning a variety of works written by many authors also over the course of centuries.

The Documentary Hypothesis is, first of all, a hypothesis, a theoretical explanation of data. The data that it explains are the inconsistencies, the repetitions, the anachronisms, and other details that suggest not one but several different authors. In its classic formulation, these are explained by the existence of hypothetical documents or source

By the end of the first century CE, these three parts—the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings—had become the Bible of ancient Judaism, its “sacred scriptures,” that is, writings believed to be divinely inspired and thus having a special authority. For Jews today, they are simply the Bible. Modern scholars often use the term Hebrew Bible to distin

Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father’s business,…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

The chapter numbers now found in Bibles are not integral to the text. Rather, they date from the…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Although scholars have differed about how many sources there are, where they are found, and when they should be dated, in its most widely accepted form the Documentary Hypothesis states that behind the present text of the first five books of the Bible lie four earlier sources, commonly identified by letter.