Reflections on Genesis 37 and Efforts to Resuscitate the Documentary Hypothesis

Although the classic documentary hypothesis still has a number of advocates, many leading Pentateuchal scholars have abandoned some of its key tenets. Some reject the existence of J as a continuous, coherent text, and some who still hold to the existence of J treat it as an exilic or postexilic redaction instead of an early source document. In some respects, source criticism has returned to a fragmentary or supplementary hypothesis. Standing against this trend, Joel S. Baden advocates a return to a pristine form of the documentary hypothesis, one in which all four sources are fully recoverable and in which redactors play a minimal role. He seeks to demonstrate that J, E, D, and P best explain the formation of the Pentateuch. Genesis 37:18–36 is a key passage for Baden, as he believes it demonstrates the explanatory power of the documentary hypothesis. Upon close examination, however, Baden’s arguments collapse. Baden makes a number of other arguments for the four documents, and Philip Yoo makes a similar case for Deuteronomy 34. These claims, too, are unpersuasive