But this "documentary hypothesis," as it is called, was too conservative and too rational for some critics. Vater, in his Commentar iiher den Pentateuch (1815), and A. T. Hartmann. in his Linguist. Einl. in d. Stud, der Biicher des A. Test. (1818), maintained that the Penta- teuch consisted merely of a number of fragments loosely strung together without order or design. The former supposed a collection of laws, made in the times of David and Solomon, to have lieen the foundation of the whole: that this was the book discovered in the reign of Josiah, and that its fragments were afterwards in- corporated in Deuteronomy. All the rest, consisting of fragments of history and of laws written at different periods up to this time, were, according to him, collect- ed and shaped into their present form between the times of Josiah and the Babylonian exile. Hartmann also brings down the date of the existing Pentateuch as late as the exile. This has been called the " fragmentary hypothesis." Both of these have now been superseded by the " supplementary hypothesis," which has been adopted with various modifications by De Wette, Bleek, Stiihelin, Tuch, Lengerke, Hupfeld, Knobel, Bunsen, Kurtz. Delitzsch, Schultz, Vaihinger, and others. They all alike recognise two documents in the Pentateuch. They suppose the narrative of the Elohist, the more ancient writer, to have been the foundation of the work, and that the Jehovist, or later writer, making use of this document, added to and commented upon it, some- times transcribing portions of it intact, and sometimes incorporating the substance of it into his own work.
Yet though thus agreeing in the main, they differ widely in the application of the theory. Thus, for in- stance, De Wette distinguishes between the Elohist and the Jehovist in the first four books, and attributes Deuteronomy to a different writer altogether {Einl. ins A. T. § 150 sq.). So also Lengerke, though with some differences of detail in the portions he assigns to the two editors. The last places the Elohist in the time of Solomon, and the Jehovistic editor in that of Heze- kiah ; whereas Tuch puts the first under Saul, and the second under Solomon. Stahelin, on the other hand, declares for the identity of the Deuteronomist and the Jehovist, and supposes the last to have written in the reign of Saul, and the Elohist in the time of the Judges. Hupfeld (Die Quellen der Genesis) finds, in (iencsis at least, traces of three authors, an earlier and a later Elo- hist, as well as the Jehovist. He is peculiar in regard- ing the Jehovistic portion as an altogether original
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document, written in entire independence, and without llie knowledge even of the Elohistic record. A later editor or compiler, he thinks, found the two books, and threw them into one. Vaihinger (in Herzog's EncyUo- pdJie) is also of opinion that portions of tliree original documents are to be found in the first four books, to which he adds some fragments of the 32d and 34th chapters of Deuteronomy. The fifth book, according to him, is by a different and much later writer. Tlie pre-Elohist "he supposes to have flourished about 1200 B.C., the Elohist some 200 years later, the Jehovist in the first half of the 8th century B.C., and the Deuter- onomist in the reign of Hezekiah.
Delitzsch agrees with the writers above mentioned in recognising two distinct documents as the basis of the Pentateuch, especially in its earlier portions; but he entirely severs himself from them in maintaining that Deuteronomy is the work of Moses. His theory is this : the kernel or first foundation of the Pentateuch is to be found in the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xix-xxiv), which was written by Moses himself, and afterwards incorporated into the body of the Penta- teuch, where it at present stands. The rest of the laws given in the wilderness, till the people reached the plains of Moab, were communicated orally by Moses and taken down by the priests, whose business it was thus to provide for their preservation (Deut. xvii, 11, comp. xxiv, 8; xxxiii, 10; Lev. x, 11, comp. xv, 31). Inasmuch as Deuteronomy^ does not pre-suppose the existence in writing of the entire earlier legislation, but on the contrary recapitulates it with the greatest freedom, we are not obliged to assume that the proper codification of the law took place during the forty years' wandering in the desert. This was done, how- ever, shortl}' after the occupation of the land of Canaan. On that sacred soil was the first definite portion of the history of Israel written ; and the writing of the historj' itself necessitated a full and complete account of the Mosaic legislation. A man, such as Eleazar the son of Aaron, the priest (see Numb, xxvi, 1 ; xxxi, 21). wrote the great work beginning with the first words of Gen- esis, including in it the Book of the Covenant, and per- haps gave only a short notice of the last discourses of Moses, because Moses had written them down Avith his own hand. A second — who may have been Joshua (see especially Deut. xxxii, 44; Josh, xxiv, 2(5; and comp. on the other hand 1 Sam. x, 25), who was a prophet, and spake as a prophet, or one of the elders on whom Moses's spirit rested (Numb, xi, 25), and many of whom survived Joshua (Josh, xxiv, 31) — completed the work, taking Deuteronomy, which jMoses had written, for his model, and incorporating it into his own book. Some- what in this manner arose the Torah (or Pentateuch), each narrator further availing himself when he thought proper of other written documents.