Richard Elliott

One might ask why the person or persons responsible for this did not simply exclude one or the other. Why not just make E, or more probably J, the accepted text and reject or ignore the other version?

The editor(s) clearly were not averse to applying scissors and paste to their received texts. It is therefore difficult to argue that they retained texts that they did not want simply out of reverence for documents that had been passed down

To whatever extent J and E narratives had become known by this time, to that extent it was necessary to preserve both

One may ask then: why combine them at all? Why not just preserve both J and E separately

Presumably, because preserving J and E separately would challenge the authenticity of both. If both were to be kept side by side on the same shelf, that would be a reminder of the dual history that produced two alternate versions. And that would diminish the authoritative quality of each of them

In short, the editing of the two works into one was as much tied to the political and social realities of its day as the writing of the two had been in their days. The uniting of the two works reflected the uniting (better: the reuniting) of the two communities after two hundred years of division

So let me turn to source D. We can know even more about the person who assembled it than about those who wrote J and E—perhaps even his name

WHEN the Assyrian empire destroyed the kingdom of Israel in 722, the world that had produced J and E ended forever. Judah, now left without its sister-companion-rival, changed

The land and the people were different after 722. The land was smaller. The kings of Judah ruled a territory that was about half the size of the united Israelite kingdom that David and Solomon had ruled

Judah now operated from a position of weakness