ABSTRACT
In the history of scholarship on history of religion in general, and Judaism in particular, the premises of learning in the rabbinic literature of late antiquity joined new historical interest with a received theological conviction. Judaism then took shape in a passage from a philosophical, to a religious, and finally to a theological system, each one taking over and revising the definitive categories of the former and framing its own fresh, generative categories as well. Documents reveal the system and structure of their authorships, and, in the case of religious writing, out of a document without named authors may compose an account of the authorship's religion: a way of life, a world-view, a social entity meant to realize both. In order to understand the documentary method the authors must again underline the social and political character of the documentary evidence presented.
