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.