Questioning the Documentary Hypothesis, and my thoughts...

A fairly active (100+ posts) discussion is going on here, over the merits of the Documentary Hypothesis. It led me to do some more searching among the blogs, and I found another interesting read here, about the same subject.

I strongly feel that the Documentary Hypothesis seems to mesh extremely well with much of the research that Thompson describes in The Mythic Past. But to me, the full implications of all this are not explored in conventional scholarship to the extent I think they should be.

Perhaps this is because, by combining what the DH indicates (multiple 'authors' or editors of the text; several strands/branches of older tradition) with the dearth of archaelogical evidence for David, Solomon, a pre-Hasmonaen Kingdom, etc., (that is overviewed by The Mythic Past) we get... An abyss?

A huge emptiness of unanswered questions opens up before us:
From where did this monotheistic "Jewish", Judah/Israel pop-out? Where did these traditions come from? It could not have been from nowhere. And who could or would have done this; who needed such a nation-building theological construction, and why? What targeted group of people would have accepted the amalgamated texts as a 'holy' scripture? Was there a general group who might have readily recognized parts as their own, and therefore identified with it? Was there anyone at that time (circa 200BCE) who might have had a great psychological, or political need for something like this?

Maybe these are the questions that should be asked.

The DH perhaps still gets attacked because it directly leads to this abyss, the questions that no one has yet answered. And no one is comfortable with such a huge emptiness (nor with so many unanswered, seemingly unanswerable questions.)
Of course, we must contend with another, even larger elephant standing in the room: the state of Israel and the basic historical premise upon which it makes its claim to existence. It's a taboo subject.

Well, I've been pondering over these questions for some time, and while I still work on the details, I feel that I am on the trail of something. I had to widen the lens and search further afield, and fit together pieces that seemed at first glance totally unrelated...

The Phoenicians. Carthage.

Anyone intrigued by this?
:)