ÒThe generally accepted
account of IsraelÕs history and religion
produced by Wellhausen and popularized in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries survives, to be sure, today. It is especially among non-specialists
that it is accepted as indubitably valid, and
especially among those who would claim the label Òliberal,Ó religious as well as secular. Yet [it] was largely based on a Hegelian philosophy of history, not upon his literary analysis. It was an a priori evolutionary scheme that guided himÉÓ – Mendenhall in BANE, 32.