A critique of the documentary and other rationalist hypotheses of the origin of the Pentateuch in Russian biblical scholarship of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries

The article presents a brief overview of the works of Russian biblical scholars of the second half of the 19th to early 20th centuries, dedicated to the criticism of rationalistic hypotheses of the origin of the Pentateuch (primarily the documentary hypothesis). The approaches of Russian scholars to the study of the Pentateuch and the results of their research are considered. A number of examples compare these approaches and results with what modern foreign biblical scholars write on this topic. Despite the significant difference between the research paradigms of domestic pre-Revolutionary biblical scholars and modern foreign researchers of the Pentateuch, the latter often come to the same conclusions as the former, and in turn criticize the documentary hypothesis (in the classical presentation of J. Wellhausen), although they do not abandon the general critical approach to the origin of the Pentateuch. These examples of agreement in the conclusions indicate that the works of Russian biblical scholars of the 2nd half of the 19th to early 20th century have not lost their relevance. This is due to the fact that pre-Revolutionary scholars based their conclusions on a thorough historical and philological analysis of the biblical text. And, importantly, they managed to maintain their adherence to the traditional Christian views on the Pentateuch. The skeptical attitude of some representatives of modern domestic biblical studies to the works of their predecessors is not due to the fact that the latter used the wrong methodology or outdated data, but primarily to the fact that their views on Holy Scripture do not fit into the framework of the rationalistic paradigm that is currently dominant in biblical studies.