John Van Seters on the origins of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the bible:Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), arguing, with Martin Noth, that Deuteronomy was the original beginning of a history that extended from Deuteronomy to the end of 2 Kings. However, against Noth and others, he held that the so-called Yahwist, the oldest literary source in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, was written in the 6th century BCE as a prologue to the older Deuteronomistic History, and that the so-called Priestly Writer of the Pentateuch was a later supplement to this history. This approach represented a revival of the "supplementary hypothesis"
August Dillmann ihrer politischen Wirksamkeit" (1868). In 1869 appeared his commentary on "Hiob", (4th edition 1891) which stamped him as one of the foremost Old Testament exegetes. His renown as a theologian was mainly founded on the series of commentaries, based on those of August Wilhelm Knobel's "Die Genesis" (Leipzig, 1875); "Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus", 1880; "Die Bücher Numeri, Deuteronomium und Josua", with a dissertation on the origin of the Hexateuch, 1886; "Der Prophet Jesaja", 1890. In 1877 he published the "Ascension of Isaiah" in Ethiopian and Latin. He was also a contributor to Daniel Schenkel's "Bibellexikon", Brockhaus's "Conversationslexikon", and Johann