Daily Archives: 04/02/2012

Cal’s reponse to my last post set me thinking again about both the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch, and the redaction theories of the New Testament. I guess I had in mind the idea that one can’t regard the Pentateuch as “history” because that genre didn’t really exist until Herodotus in 450BC, well after even the latest dates given for the Bible text. So, according to the received wisdom, one has to look back to the original “sources” in the category of “myth”, “heroic epic”, “court chronicle” etc. But this way of thinking leaves a massive assumption unchallenged.