Julius Wellhausen

Life

Wellhausen was born in Hameln, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied theology at the University of Göttingen, where he studied the Old Testament and Semitic languages under Heinrich Ewald. In 1872 he became a professor on the theological faculty of the University of Greifswald. In 1882, however, he left the theological faculty, reportedly because he believed his research did not serve the faculty's purpose of preparing students for pastoral ministry. He subsequently taught Semitic languages at Halle and Marburg, and from 1892 he was a professor at the University of Göttingen, where he died in 1918.

Work and Contributions

His major work, History of Israel, was published in 1878 and reissued in 1883 under the title Prolegomena to the History of Israel. He held that the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses alone but a later compilation of four documents written in different periods:

• J source: the document that refers to God as "Yahweh"
• E source: the document that refers to God as "Elohim"
• D source: the document underlying Deuteronomy
• P source: the Priestly document

He argued in particular that the P source, which contains the laws and regulations governing worship and sacrifice, was the latest of the four and was written after the Babylonian exile. Because this view built on the work of the earlier scholar Karl Heinrich Graf, it is often called the "Graf–Wellhausen hypothesis." This approach, which treats the Bible as a historical document and examines the process by which it came into being, is known as historical criticism.

In his later years Wellhausen broadened the scope of his research. He studied early Islam and Arab history and also wrote studies of the Synoptic Gospels.

Influence on the Korean Church

Within Korean Presbyterianism, whether to accept the Documentary Hypothesis and historical criticism was long a matter of controversy.

• The 1934 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Chosŏn (Korea) reportedly took up the case of the Rev. Kim Young-ju, who had denied the Mosaic authorship of Genesis.
• After Korea's liberation, Kim Jae-jun's teaching of historical criticism brought him into conflict with Park Hyung-ryong and other conservatives. This conflict contributed to the separation of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea in 1953 (see Schisms in Korean Presbyterianism).

Positions still differ today by denomination and seminary. Conservative denominations that emphasize biblical inerrancy present the Documentary Hypothesis critically and uphold the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Progressive seminaries treat the Documentary Hypothesis as one of the scholarly approaches to Old Testament study.

Assessment

Wellhausen's hypothesis became the standard theory in Old Testament scholarship during the first half of the twentieth century. Since the 1970s, however, a growing body of research has questioned the dating, and even the existence, of the sources. In European scholarship in particular, the classical form of the Documentary Hypothesis has been substantially revised.

His theory has also drawn several criticisms:

• It presupposes an evolutionary view of history in which Israel's religion developed from the simple to the complex.
• By portraying postexilic Judaism as a degenerate religion of law, it reflects a bias against Judaism.
• Evangelical scholars hold that his theory undermines the authority and inspiration of Scripture.

His supporters, on the other hand, credit him with laying the foundations of modern biblical scholarship through his meticulous analysis of the discrepancies and repetitions in the biblical text.