Briefly, the Documentary Hypothesis is a theory about the authorship of the Torah, or the Pentateuch -- the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, often known as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The hypothesis developed over a long period of time, but came into its own in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now accepted in broad outline by many Christians and Jews. Within Chritianity, it is what most "mainstream" (read: non-fundamentalist) clergy would have learned in seminary

According to the Documentary Hypothesis, there were four authors (or groups of authors) together with a redactor or editor, who were responsible for the Pentateuch. The authors (we'll call them that even though they may not have been single individuals) are conventionally labeled

J for Jahwist
E for Elohist
P for Priestly
D for Deuteronomist

The E author is next in the usual chronology, and is associated with 722 BCE, the date of the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom. This author refers to God as "Elohim" until the Exodus story of God revealing his name to Moses. "Elohim" is usually translated in English as "God", though the Hebrew word is grammatically plural. The E author is most concerned with the northern kingdom and tends to depict interactions between humans and God as occurring in dreams. The J and E sources are sometimes difficult to separate in the text.

The D source, as the name suggests, is mainly associated with the book of Deuteronomy. God is referred to as YHWH (Jahweh). Instead of being concerned with a kingdom, D focuses on the shrine. D is sometimes associated with the discovery of a book by KIng Josiah in about 622 BCE.

The P source is the latest, and it is associated with the time after fall of Jerusalem and he destruction of the first Temple, around 586 BCE. The Jews of the southern kingdom were taken captive and brought to Babylon. The Priestly source seems to represent an attempt to maintain cultic purity in the face of this hostile situation. God is referred to as Elohim until the Exodus story, as with the E author. P describes God in more abstract, majestic terms.

There are two sorts of objections one might consider to the Documentary Hypothesis. One kind of objection is that the hypothesis is wrong not just in detail but overall. On this view, the Pentateuch was mainly written by Moses at the direction of God. The other sort of objection is far less global. It accepts the basic premise of the documentary hypothesis: the Pentateuch is a compilation from many sources. The evidence, broadly speaking, is the repetition of the same stories in different forms, with apparent biases of various sorts about how the history should be told, variations in style, inconsistencies of one sort or another, the details of historical references in various parts of the text and analysis of the language. The objection -- or objections -- would be to the details of the account of which texts came from which sources. What this less global kind of objection would agree with, however, is the claim that the Pentateuch is a document that was assembled from multiple sources.

You are, of course, free to make up your own mind about this. Our point in bringing the documentary hypothesis up is not to settle the question. It's as part of a larger point: that there are other ways of looking at the Biblical text than as a unified, literal account of ancient events. On this alternative view, the Bible is not unlike a library that contains texts of many genres and by various authors. Some texts are intended as history, some a liturgy, some as myth and some as religious fiction. The question you should ask yourself is what is lost or gained, religiously and intellectually, by taking one view or the other.

How well this sort of approach can be used with other sacred texts is a complicated question and will vary considerably from text to text. However, we can venture to suggest that approaches broadly like the one behind the documentary hypothesis could be applied to many sacred texts.

It's not unusual for people to take an "all or nothing" attitude toward sacred texts: either they are literally true in their entirety or they can't be taken seriously at all as sources of religious truth. At least within Christianity and Judaism, many religious believers don't see it that way. They believe that divine inspiration can still be found in the midst of fallible human enterprises -- including the writing and compilation of the texts that form the basis for a faith.

www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tora.htm (Background to the documentary hypothesis)

www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tora1.htm (An outline of the documentary hypothesis.)

www.religioustolerance.org/jepd_gen.htm#flood (An attempt to disentangle the P and J sources in the Flood story)

ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/jepd.html (Another outline of the Documentary Hypothesis)

ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/jp-flood.html (Another outline of the J-P strands in the flood narrative, sorted by theme.)