Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
The prevailing line of thought among Bible scholars (to which I also subscribe) is that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—traditionally ascribed to Moses' authorship—were in fact mainly composed by four different authors; the Yawist ("J"), the Elohist ("E"), the Deuteronomist ("D"), and the Priestly author ("P"), along with a later editor known as the Redactor, who put them all together. This is usually referred to as the "Documentary Hypothesis". In an entertaining and informative book put forth years ago by Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, the authors put forth an interesting take on the Yawist. In "The Book of J", they state their belief that "J" was a woman who probably lived around the time of Soloman. They believe she composed the book not as holy scripture, but as fanciful history more in line with modern fairy tales.
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