divine names throughout Genesis, suggesting that there were different sources edited together (Davidson 4).
Eissfeldt suggests a strictly literary analysis similar to that undertaken by Davidson to ascertain which passages fit together and which do not. He says three main groups of anomalies may be formed from the passages studied, leading to the fragment hypothesis, the completion hypothesis, and the documentary hypothesis. The fragment hypothesis considers that a number of independent literary units, such as stories,maxims, lists, and poems, have been compiled at a later date by an editor. According to the completion hypothesis, Genesis is based on a continuous narrative thread completed on the basis of many previously disconnected fragments. The documentary hypothesis differs in that it holds that Genesis was constructed by the compilation of several different narrative threads. It is this latter theory that was offered by Astruc and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, and it has been the accepted view since that time ba
...