Yehezkel Kaufmann

In the 1950s, Yehezkel Kaufmann challenged the regnant Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis that the Priestly Text was the final Pentateuchal source to be written, and that it dates to the Post-Exilic Period. One pillar of his argument is that the Priestly Text seems wholly ignorant of Deuteronomy’s 7^th century B.C.E. law of centralization of worship, and thus dates to earlier in the First Temple period. And yet, a closer look at P’s laws shows that it is simply taking centralization for granted.

Israelite religion developed from a revolutionary idea: monotheism. And religion alone, not external factors, accounted for the remarkable preservation of Jewish national identity and consciousness in exile.

Was the 13^th of Adar a day when the Jews successfully defended themselves against their enemies, or was it a day when they could take vengeance against their enemies? Does Mordechai’s edict offset Haman’s edict or replace it?

Julius Wellhausen’s analysis of the Torah is perfused with the anti-Jewish sentiment prevalent in Bismarck’s Second German Reich. This adversely affected the use of the Documentary Hypothesis among Jewish scholars until Yehezkel’s Kaufmann’s introduction of a Jewish variation on the theory.