Supplementary hypothesis

Historical contextMajor divergences from the documentary hypothesisThe existence of the Elohist (E) sourceThe chronology of the sourcesIndependence of the Yahwist and Priestly sourcesReferences

In biblical studies, the supplementary hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was derived from a series of direct additions to an existing corpus of work. It serves as a revision to the earlier documentary hypothesis, which proposed that independent and complete narratives were later combined by redactors to create the Pentateuch.

The supplementary hypothesis was developed over the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily deriving from a dissatisfaction with the adequacy of the documentary hypothesis, and came to a head in the 1970s with the publication of works by John Van Seters, Rolf Rendtorff, and Hans Heinrich Schmid. In their book, An Introduction to the Bible, Kugler and Hartin argue that "the work of John Van Seters best reflects the revival of the supplementary hypothesis."

Van Seters' summation of the hypothesis accepts "three sources or literary strata within the Pentateuch," which have come to be known as the Yahwist (J), the Priestly Writer (P), and the Deuteronomist (D). Van Seters ordered the sources chronologically as DJP and clarifies that he does not view the (J) and (P) sources as independent documents but as direct additions:

• the Deuteronomist source (D) was likely written c. seventh century BCE, and influenced the composition of the Deuteronomistic History (from the Book of Joshua to 2 Kings) in the early phase of the Babylonian captivity.
• the Yahwist source (J) was likely added c. 540 BCE in the late phase of the Babylonian captivity, influencing the stories from the Genesis creation narrative to the death of Moses (Book of Genesis to the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers).
• the Priestly source (P) was likely added c. 400 BCE in the Second Temple period.

While the hypothesis is not the only revision of the documentary hypothesis to be made, it is one of the few at the forefront of Pentateuch studies and has been suggested by many scholars.

5 Sources

Historical context

While documentarians originally placed the authorship of the Pentateuch in the 10th to the 6th centuries BCE, the supplementary hypothesis places the authorship of the Pentateuch later, in the 7th to 5th centuries. A major driver of this reassessment has been the evolving understanding of the historical context of the early Israelites. Biblical estimates put the earliest activity of the Israelites in Canaan in the 13th century, with Joshua's conquest.