But the burden of proof falls on the one claiming that the historical teaching of the Church is incorrect. One can be a faithful Catholic and accept JEPD, but we are not bound to hold to it. I choose to reject it.
has anyone ever heard of the word “hypothesis”? It is a word that refers to an idea to be tested or yet to be demonstrated.
If we were smart enough, like the real scholars who studied the Genesis document, we might be staring at the evidence that they are using to propose that there were different traditions that were stitched together to create the final document of Genesis. That Genesis is a composite, based on literary analysis alone, is indisputable.
I’m not afraid to be a name dropper, and I’ll mention Nahum Sarna’s Commentary on Genesis, published by the Jewish Publication Society. Sarna discusses the subject of the the “quilt” of the text of Genesis, far better than is being treated here. It is far more interesting how WELL the text is patched together, and how much we can learn from studying the patches.
One of the observations Sarna makes has to do with the antiquity of Genesis. There are names for God that are present in Genesis inside or alongside very old text. There are people and place names that appear in Genesis but then never again in the Bible.
It is far more interesting to study the patches in Genesis, rather than get a nosebleed about whether there are patches of text.
Sarna points out the literary structure of Genesis at many salient points. There is far more structure to the text than might appear from a straightfoward reading. In fact, aside from the JEPD stuff, there are twelve main sections in Genesis, demarked with Hebrew words that get lost in the translation shuffle. He doesn’t explore those divisions beyond demonstrating the point that Genesis is broken up into episodes quite intentionally by the narrator (redactor) of the book.
I didn’t know what to make of those cryptic footnotes in the NAB about the JEPD idea. I like the Jewish commentary because it wades into the depth of the Hebrew text.
You can pick up the JPS commentaries at a discount, if you are interested. They had a 40% off sale this year and last, at the beginning of the year.
I certainly would appreciate a recommendation for an equivalent Christian commentary on Genesis. Sarna is decidedly anti-Christian at times, to be sure, especially in his description and commentary of the “binding” of Isaac by Abraham.
