Biblical
source criticism is the attempt to understand the original authors and editors of the Bible. In
other words, it is a field of study that wants to know who wrote the various books of the Bible
and who edited and compiled them. The Deuteronomistic History is one such theory, attempting to
understand the composition and history of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and
Kings. It posits a single author, work, or source, referred to as D, behind all of these
books.
In the nineteenth century, it was recognized by some scholars that
these books shared themes and stylistic conventions. Martin Noth, a German Biblical scholar,
took this a step further and argued that a single work was behind all of these books. Noth was
building on an existing model called the documentary hypothesis, which was already beginning to
look at the Torah, or first five books of the Old Testament, as the product of different
traditions and authors edited together.
The theory gets its
name...
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