Greetings in the LORD!
I’m not familiar with Collins, but I have read Lawrence Boadt’s
Reading the Old Testament, and your book sounds similar.
There were a couple of links originally provided on Scott Hahn’s website leading to works which critique the JEDP theory. The first link was to an online book,
The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes. Although written some time ago, I think that it is still timely. A more recent critique that Hahn linked to is a
lecture on the authorship of the Pentateuch. Slides 65 through 71 of the lecture lay out one of the biggest problems for proponents of the documentary hypothesis.
You can also check out Gary Rendsburg’s lectures on the
Book of Genesis where he offers some of his own critiques. The Frederick library has a copy if you’re ever in Frederick. I think his most powerful point against the hypothesis is that there is not a single Babylonian loanword to be found in the whole of Genesis. This is a decisive point because the JEDP theorists hold that the P source and its redactors provide for the final state of the text and that these authors/editors post-date the exile to Babylon. Although Babylonian loanwords could exist in a text that predates the exile due to a shared culture and other influences, it would be
extremely unlikely for Babylonian loanwords to be absent from such a lengthy text purportedly to have been redacted and added to after the exile.
Paul gives examples of some events described in Exodus and Numbers in verses 1 through 10 of 1 Corinthians 10, and he concludes this section by saying that “these things happened to them,” and “they were written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11). It goes without saying that mythology (if taken in the sense that the thing described is something of a work of fiction) cannot account for this two stage process of (1) events first
happening, and (2) these
same events subsequently being written down. Only real life works this way.
The Church teaches that the historical narrative of Sacred Scripture “is not mythology, but a true history” (
Final Propositions of the Synod of Bishops on the Bible (2008), Proposition 25). For the “Christian faith has its specificity, primarily in that it refers to historical events, or better to a coherent history, which actually took place as history. In this sense, the question about the fact, the reality of the event, is essential to” our faith; consequently, what might be styled as the deeper meaning of salvation history “must not be separated from the facts” (
Current Doctrinal Relevance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2002)).
I hope this is helpful for you. Have you been able to make it to
St. Alphonsus’?
Your brother in Christ,
Pete
And it will also provide you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the ways that others view the sacred text so that you may be able to more effectively proclaim the Gospel in a way that secularists will understand.