Why the Documentary Hypothesis is off the mark

This essay argues that the Torah is a divine text written by Moses at God’s command, and rejects higher biblical criticism—which claims the Torah was composed from multiple human sources (J, E, P, D) and edited much later—as historically and logically implausible. It critiques the Documentary Hypothesis on several grounds: the absence of any ancient Jewish tradition mentioning multiple Torah versions, the improbability that a nation would accept a newly-composed scripture, and the implausibility of a Redactor weaving together separate sources without any record. The author highlights archaeological, historical, and biblical evidence that Israelites in the early biblical period possessed a known “book of the Torah” and practiced its laws, implying a continuous tradition rather than late composition. Drawing on the scholarship of Umberto Cassuto, the essay argues that variations such as the divine names YHWH and Elohim reflect theological nuance and literary purpose, not multiple authors. Ultimately, the essay maintains that the Torah’s coherence, literary sophistication, fulfilled prophecies, and the historical survival and restoration of the Jewish people support its divine origin rather than human compilation.

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