The first among many moderns who would attempt to identify the specific sources of the Pentateuch was a pastor by the name of H. B. Witter. In 1711, his Jura Israelitarum in Palaestinam argued that a different divine name was used in Genesis 1:1–2:4 and 2:5–3:24, even though each chapter was parallel in terms of content with one another—an observation that every source critic has made since. Another work by the French physician, Jean Astruc, appeared in 1753 with the title, Conjectures sur les mémoires dont il paroit que Moyse s’est servi, pour composer le livre de la Genèse, where a similar argument was made. Astruc conjectured that, since two divine names were present, this meant two different sources were used by Moses to write Genesis; but since the divine names do not neatly divide into individual passages within the book, and since variations of the divine name (i.e., hwhy as opposed to Myhl) hwhy, l) as opposed to Myhl), etc.) expand beyond just the two names Elohim and YHWH, Astruc came to the conclusion that multiple sources (approximately ten) must have been used.
Astruc’s work was established by Johann Gottfried Eichorn’s Einleitung in das Alte Testament, which appeared in 1790. A further work by Karl-David Ilgen in 1798 postulated that there were seventeen distinct sources used by three different authors,[1] although the main sources consisted of two different Elohist sources and a single Yahwistic source.
This early period of the DH is often referred to by scholars as the “older documentary hypothesis,”[2] the “early source hypothesis,”[3] or simply the “documentary hypothesis.”[4] This approach believed that the sources were originally independent narratives that were complete in and of themselves, but were combined to paint a fuller picture of the events described.
Unfortunately, once the Pentateuch began to be divided with a scalpel, there was no sense in attempting to argue for such unified sources when such disparity, at least in terms of style, existed within the so-called narratives themselves. This gave rise to what is known as the Fragmentary Hypothesis.
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