[File:Modern document hypothesis.svg|thumb|240px|Diagram of the Documentary Hypothesis. The
documentary hypothesis (
DH), sometimes called the
Wellhausen hypothesis, proposes that the
Torah (the first five books of the
Bible) was derived from originally independent, parallel, and complete
narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of
redactors. The number of these narratives is usually set at four, but the precise number is not an essential part of the
hypothesis.