Wellhausen

Julius Wellhausen's (1844-1918) 19th century classic, the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis ("JEDP Theory") explored the tradition of assigning Torah authorship to Moses.
Wellhausen's work proved very influential. He was able to correlate the development of the Torah with Israelite and Jewish history. This hypothesis became later known as the Documentary Hypothesis. The documentary hypothesis (DH) is one of three models used to explain the origins of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or Torah. All three models agree the Torah is not a unified work from a single author (traditionally Moses) but is made up of sources combined over many centuries by many writers. Modern scholars increasingly see the completed Torah as a product of the time of the Achaemenid Empire (probably 450-350 BC), although some would place its production in the Hellenistic period (333-164 BC) or even the Hasmonean dynasty (140-37 BC).

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