Endnote 3 – Taking the Biblical Text Apart

In critical scholarship, there are two main views of when it was composed. One is that P was the latest of the sources, composed in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E. The other is that P was composed not long after J and E were combined. Linguistic evidence now virtually rules out the late date for P. I have also brought evidence for the earlier date for P in The Exile and Biblical Narrative (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), in Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987), and in “Torah,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 6, pp. 605–622.