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Julius Wellhausen proposed a “sharp break” between ancient Israelite religion and early Judaism: for him, the eighth-century prophets were the “spiritual destroyers of old Israel” and the forerunners of early Judaism. The biblical theologian Brevard Childs rejected Wellhausen’s reconstruction and insisted instead that “very strong theological continuity” characterized the development of Israelite religion from its outset. Numerous contemporary theological interpreters share Childs’s perspective. However, a “Wellhausen renaissance” is currently underway in the study of Israelite religion and early Judaism. This situation poses an unresolved challenge for theological interpretation, at least of the kind that Childs advocated. The present article addresses this dilemma. It first inventories Childs’s reasons for opposing Wellhausen’s sharp break, which emerge from Childs’s vision for scriptural “theo- referentiality.” Secondly, it tests whether Childs’s theological insights, the very same that led to his repudiation of Wellhausen, might accommodate Wellhausen’s historical claim. The final result is to set Wellhausen and Childs, historical reconstruction and theological interpretation, in a noncompetitive relationship.

In the first edition of his now fabled Golden Bough, James George Frazer began with the tale of an unnamed priest-king waiting for his slayer and successor in the sacred grove at Nemi. “A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest,” wrote the armchair anthropologist, “and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.” Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have often cast their own history in these terms: if the established August Dillmann or Franz Delitzsch fell to a trailblazing Julius Wellhausen, Wellhausen himself succumbed to a pathfinding Hermann Gunkel. For the period after “the triumph of Wellhausen”—to use language from John Rogerson's classic history—the scope then usually narrows, with Wellhausen and Gunkel forming legendary foils. Which of them, exactly, has rightful claim to the crown or represents the true hierarch of the Hebrew Bible muse depends upon the narrator's own disposition. Indeed, experts in biblical studies have long juxtaposed the two as intellectual opposites. In the process, they appear, ofttimes, as almost mythic figures, largely bereft of context—historical milieu otherwise being a crucial component of biblical scholarship for well over a century.

Over a hundred years ago, Wellhausen's revolutionary aim in his \"Prolegomena\" was to prove that the Priestly legal sections of the Pentateuch reflect postexilic Judaism and must be considered a deviation from the prophetic religion which preceded it.

Julius Wellhausen the thoughts of an Old Testament scholar. The purpose of this article is to examine the life, influence and greatest works of Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen. Wellhausen was influenced by the findings of other Old Testament critics that preceded him, as well as the new environment that the Enlightenment has created. These influences can be seen in his three major works: Die Komposition des Hexateuchs here an idea of the method he used in the recognition, grouping and dating of the sources can be found. Wellhausen made use of these sources to construct a history of Israel which can be viewed in his Geschichte Israels. His greatest work was most certainly his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels and he makes significant findings in the part on the Geschichte des Kultus. The question to be answered though is: Does Wellhausen s source hypothesis still has a part to play in our modern research on the Pentateuch?

The controversy between Wellhausen and Kaufmann concerning the history of ancient Israel and the question of historical reconstruction has prompted this study. While Wellhausen's hypothesis introduces a synthesis of the religious development of ancient Israel, Kaufmann's work emphasizes the singularity of the Israelite religion. Their respective works, which represent the methodologies, presuppositions and the ideologies of their times, remain an impetus to further inquiry into the history of ancient Israel and its religion. Both Wellhausen and Kaufmann applied the historical-critical method, but were divided as to its results. They agree that the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is the primary source on which to base writing about the history of ancient Israel, but differ concerning the authority of its text. This book illustrates the real clash between Wellhausen and Kaufmann, with the aim of providing some basis for reaching a middle ground between these two poles. As becomes clear in this study, Wellhausen reconstructed the religion of Israel in the framework of its history. Kaufmann, by contrast, proposed that monotheism emerged in Israel as a new creation of the spirit of Israel.

Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) is in many ways the ancestor of modern Hebrew Bible scholarship. His Prolegomena to the History of Israel condensed decades of source critical work on the Torah into a documentary hypothesis that is still taught today in almost all Hebrew Bible courses in some form. What is not taught as frequently is the anti-Judaism that underpins his hypothesis. This is in part due to unapologetic apologetics regarding Wellhausen’s bias, combined with the insistence that a nineteenth-century scholar cannot be judged by twenty-first century standards. These calls for compassion are made exclusively by white male scholars, leaving Jewish scholars the solitary task of pointing out Wellhausen’s clear anti-Judaism. In a discipline that is already overwhelmingly white, male and Christian, the minimizing of Wellhausen’s racism suggests two things. First, those who may criticize contextual biblical studies done by women and scholars of color have no problem pleading for a contextual understanding of Wellhausen while downplaying the growing anti-Judaism and nationalism that was a part of nineteenth-century Germany. Second, recent calls for inclusion in the Society of Biblical Literature may be well intentioned but ultimately useless if the guild cannot simply call one of its most brilliant founders the biased man that he was.

Julius Wellhausen’s work on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and early Arabic sources had and still has a fundamental impact on how modern scholarship portrays Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this article I consider his methodology of Higher Criticism. Wellhausen’s motto was: ‘Not only the spectacles are important, but also the eyes.’ Following this motto I first describe what Wellhausen saw with his eyes and how he used them. Secondly, I consider Wellhausen’s spectacles and ask how the nineteenth century determined his viewpoint. Lastly I address the legacy of Wellhausen’s Higher Criticism in current scholarship.

In the recent past, Wellhausen's classic Documentary Hypothesis has been developed and refined by a group of scholars who identify as \"Neo-Documentarians.\" Their approach has been aptly described in a list of seven points published by both Joel S. Baden and Jeffrey Stackert. This list is labeled the \"Neo-Documentarian Manifesto\" here and will be critically discussed. The evaluation will particularly highlight the methodological separation between literary and historical perspectives and the notion of a mechanical compiler.

For most of the nineteenth century, German Jewish scholarship ceded the critical study of the Hebrew Bible to Protestant scholars at German universities. Sporadic efforts by the likes of Krochmal, Luzzatto, Geiger, and Zunz failed to overcome the ideological constraints that impeded the mounting of a Jewish response. To fill that void with a Jewish voice, Heinrich Graetz devoted the last twenty years of his life to a sustained critical study of the history and literature of biblical Israel. Given the dominance of Wellhausen's scholarship at the time, scholars have paid scant attention to the legacy of Graetz's prodigious output. The purpose of this essay is to assess his achievement and its shortcomings. In the end, Graetz legitimated the application of critical scholarship to the Hebrew Bible.

The purpose of this article is to examine the life, influence and greatest works of Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen. Wellhausen was influenced by the findings of other Old Testament critics that preceded him, as well as the new environment that the Enlightenment has created. These influences can be seen in his three major works: Die Komposition des Hexateuchs--here an idea of the method he used in the recognition, grouping and dating of the sources can be found. Wellhausen made use of these sources to construct a history of Israel which can be viewed in his Geschichte Israels. His greatest work was most certainly his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels and he makes significant findings in the part on the Geschichte des Kultus. The question to be answered though is: Does Wellhausen's source hypothesis still has a part to play in our modern research on the Pentateuch?