Chapter 7 CONTESTED GROUND

Scholars disagree on fundamental questions—and may always disagree.

7.1 The Documentary Hypothesis

Who wrote the Bible?

For most of Jewish and Christian history, the answer was simple: Moses wrote the first five books (the Torah or Pentateuch), and various prophets, kings, and scribes wrote the rest under divine inspiration. The texts were ancient, authoritative, unified.

Then scholars started reading closely.

In the eighteenth century, European academics noticed oddities. Genesis tells the creation story twice, and the two accounts differ. The flood narrative seems to weave together two versions—in one, Noah takes two of every animal; in another, seven pairs of clean animals and two of unclean. God is called by different names in different passages: sometimes YHWH, sometimes Elohim. The style shifts—some sections are spare narrative, others elaborate genealogy, others legal code.

By the nineteenth century, German scholar Julius Wellhausen had synthesized these observations into the “Documentary Hypothesis.” The Torah, he argued, was not written by one person but compiled from four originally separate documents:

Source	Abbreviation	Characteristics
Jahwist	J	Uses YHWH for God; vivid narrative; likely from Judah
Elohist	E	Uses Elohim for God; more distant deity; likely from northern Israel
Deuteronomist	D	Distinctive legal style; the core of Deuteronomy
Priestly	P	Genealogies, rituals, precise dates; post-exilic origin

The hypothesis was elegant. It explained the doublets (two sources telling the same story), the contradictions (different sources with different theologies), and the stylistic shifts (different authors with different concerns). It dated the sources across centuries, with J and E earliest (perhaps 900–800 BCE), D from the time of King Josiah (around 620 BCE), and P from the Babylonian exile or after (500s BCE).

For a century, the Documentary Hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship. Students learned to color-code their Bibles, marking J passages in one color, E in another.

Then the consensus fractured.

The challenge from the right. Conservative scholars never accepted the hypothesis. They argued that stylistic variation could reflect different topics or rhetorical purposes, not different authors. They pointed to ancient Near Eastern texts with similar variation that were clearly single compositions. They insisted that the traditional attribution to Moses was not disproven, merely unfashionable.

The challenge from the left. More radical scholars argued that Wellhausen hadn’t gone far enough. The “documents” were themselves composites, edited and re-edited over centuries. There was no unified J or E—just fragments, layers, traditions that couldn’t be neatly sorted. Some proposed abandoning the four-source model entirely in favor of a “fragmentary hypothesis” that saw the Torah as a patchwork with no coherent underlying documents.

The challenge from archaeology. The hypothesis assumed that writing was widespread in early Israel, that J and E could have been composed in the tenth or ninth century BCE. But archaeological evidence suggested that Judah and Israel were largely illiterate until much later. Could complex literary documents have been produced in societies that left almost no inscriptions?

The current state. Today, no consensus exists. Some scholars defend modified versions of the Documentary Hypothesis. Others prefer a “supplementary hypothesis”—one base document with later additions. Others see the Torah as a Persian-period composition, assembled from diverse traditions during or after the exile. Still others return to traditional views, arguing that the sources are undiscoverable or illusory.

The evidence permits multiple interpretations. The doublets and contradictions are real; what they mean is contested. Scholars who agree on the data disagree on the explanation. The debate has continued for two centuries and shows no sign of resolution.

What we know: the Torah is complex, layered, bearing marks of a long compositional history.

What we don’t know: exactly how it was composed, by whom, and when.

What we may never know: the full truth. The evidence may simply be insufficient to decide.

7.2 The United Monarchy

Around 1000 BCE, according to the Bible, David united the tribes of Israel into a single kingdom. He conquered Jerusalem, defeated the Philistines, established an empire stretching from Egypt to the Euphrates. His son Solomon built the Temple, accumulated legendary wealth, and ruled in splendor until his death, when the kingdom split in two.

This is the story. What’s the history?

The maximalist view. Some scholars—and most traditional believers—accept the biblical account as substantially historical. David and Solomon were real kings who ruled a substantial territory. The empire may be exaggerated, but the core is sound. The Bible preserves genuine memory of a golden age.

Evidence cited:

The Tel Dan Stele, discovered in 1993, mentions the “House of David” (bytdwd) in a ninth-century BCE inscription. This is the earliest non-biblical reference to David and confirms that a dynasty bearing his name existed.
The Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BCE) mentions “Israel” as a people in Canaan, showing that an entity called Israel existed before the monarchy.
Monumental architecture at sites like Megiddo and Hazor suggests centralized power capable of large building projects.

The minimalist view. Other scholars argue that David and Solomon were minor chieftains, if they existed at all. The glorious empire is a later literary creation—propaganda by Judean kings seeking to legitimize their rule by inventing an illustrious past.

Evidence cited:

No contemporary inscription from David or Solomon has been found—no royal monument, no administrative record, nothing bearing their names from their own time.
Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE was apparently a small village, not a grand capital. Archaeological surveys show limited settlement.
The “Solomonic” architecture at Megiddo and elsewhere may date to later periods. Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein proposed a “Low Chronology” that redates these structures to the Omride dynasty (ninth century), shrinking Solomon’s realm considerably.
The Tel Dan Stele proves a “House of David” existed but says nothing about David’s power or the extent of his kingdom.

The moderate view. Many scholars stake out middle ground. David and Solomon were real, and they ruled something—but the biblical description is idealized, expanded, theologized. A small kingdom centered on Jerusalem and its hinterland, perhaps exercising influence over neighboring areas, later remembered as an empire.

The evidence is compatible with this reading. It’s also compatible with more skeptical readings. The archaeological record is sparse. The biblical texts are centuries later than the events they describe. We’re trying to see through two kinds of fog.

Why it matters. The debate isn’t merely academic. For Jewish and Christian tradition, David is the archetypal king, the ancestor of the Messiah. For modern Israel, David’s Jerusalem is a claim to ancient rootedness. For Palestinians, questioning David’s historicity challenges Zionist narratives. Scholarship here intersects with politics, faith, and identity.

The scholars continue to dig, argue, and publish. New evidence could shift the balance. But the current evidence permits reasonable people to disagree—and they do, sometimes bitterly.

Contested ground.

7.3 The Exodus

The foundational story of the Jewish people: slavery in Egypt, Moses confronting Pharaoh, the ten plagues, the parting of the sea, the giving of the Law at Sinai, forty years in the wilderness, entry into the Promised Land.

It’s one of the most influential narratives in human history. It has inspired liberation movements from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement. It structures Jewish liturgy and memory. It’s retold every Passover, generation after generation.

What, if anything, lies behind it?

The problem. Egyptian records don’t mention the Exodus. They don’t mention Moses. They don’t mention Israelite slaves building cities. They don’t mention plagues devastating the land or an army drowning in the sea.

This silence is significant. Egypt was bureaucratic; records survive in abundance. A catastrophe of the magnitude described in Exodus should have left traces. It didn’t—or the traces haven’t been found—or they were suppressed—or they were never made.

The archaeological record is equally problematic. Decades of surveys in the Sinai have found no evidence of a large population wandering for forty years—no campsites, no pottery, no bones. The cities supposedly conquered by Joshua (Jericho, Ai) were either uninhabited or destroyed at the wrong time, according to current dating.

Possible interpretations:

Interpretation 1: The Exodus is historical, but we haven’t found the evidence yet. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Egyptian records are incomplete. The Sinai is vast and largely unsurveyed. Perhaps the Exodus occurred on a smaller scale than described—a few thousand people, not millions—and left correspondingly smaller traces.

Interpretation 2: The Exodus contains a historical kernel, greatly elaborated. Perhaps a small group of Semitic people left Egypt—escaped slaves, expelled workers, migrating herders—and their story became the national epic. The numbers were exaggerated, the miracles added, the theology developed over centuries. The core memory is real; the details are legendary.

Interpretation 3: The Exodus is mythologized history of a different kind. The Hyksos—Semitic rulers who controlled northern Egypt from roughly 1650 to 1550 BCE—were eventually expelled by native Egyptian dynasties. Some scholars suggest that Hyksos descendants, living in Canaan, preserved memories of their ancestors’ time in Egypt and departure from it. The Exodus story is Hyksos history, transformed over centuries into Israelite identity.

Interpretation 4: The Exodus is largely or entirely fictional. National origin stories are often invented. The Romans claimed descent from Trojan refugees; the story served political purposes regardless of truth. Perhaps the Israelites, emerging as a distinct people in Canaan’s highlands, created an origin story that explained their identity and justified their possession of the land. The story is powerful precisely because it’s not history but myth.

What the evidence allows. We cannot prove the Exodus happened. We cannot prove it didn’t. The evidence is compatible with a historical kernel; it’s also compatible with wholesale invention. Scholars who share methods and data reach opposite conclusions based on how they weigh silence, plausibility, and tradition.

The Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BCE) proves that “Israel” existed as a recognizable entity in Canaan by that date. How Israel got there—and whether Egypt was involved—the stele doesn’t say.

The debate continues. It has continued for over a century and will continue further. Each generation brings new methods, new discoveries, new arguments. Resolution seems unlikely.

Some stories are too important to be settled by evidence.

7.4 Living with Uncertainty

What do we do with questions that can’t be answered?

One response is to pick a side and defend it. Maximalists marshal their evidence; minimalists marshal theirs. Books are written, careers built, positions hardened. The debate becomes tribal: you’re either with us or against us.

Another response is to pretend the questions don’t matter. The Torah is sacred regardless of how it was composed. David’s historicity doesn’t affect his theological significance. The Exodus is meaningful as story, whatever its factual basis. Why argue about things we can’t know?

Both responses are understandable. Neither is fully satisfying.

The first reduces scholarship to advocacy. When evidence is ambiguous, honest inquiry requires holding multiple possibilities open. Certainty in the face of insufficient evidence is not courage; it’s pretense.

The second abandons the question too easily. It matters whether events happened. The meaning of a story about slavery and liberation is different if the slavery was real than if it wasn’t. We may not be able to determine the truth, but the truth still exists. Pretending otherwise is a different kind of pretense.

A better response: live with the uncertainty. Accept that some questions may never be answered. Hold the possibilities lightly, remaining open to new evidence. Recognize that honest inquiry sometimes ends not in conclusions but in calibrated doubt.

This is difficult. Humans crave closure. We want the story to have an ending, the question to have an answer. Living in uncertainty feels like failure.

But it isn’t failure. It’s honesty. The evidence is what it is. The past is what it was. Our inability to recover the past fully is not a flaw in our methods; it’s a feature of time itself. Things are lost. Some lost things stay lost.

The contested questions of biblical scholarship are not embarrassments to be hidden. They’re reminders that knowledge has limits, that confidence must be proportioned to evidence, that humility before the past is a form of respect.

We do what we can with what we have. We keep looking. We remain open to surprise.

And we accept that some ground will stay contested.