Thomas Romer traces certain scholarly trends as the guild struggles with the issue of literary works in the Hebrew Bible. He provides a brief history on how certain scholars have tried to fit the books together and ends with a few of what he calls “Open Questions.”
Martin Noth, of course, articulated the theory of the Deuteronomistic History (DH). He proposed that the end of the Pentateuch was lost and that the Tetrateuch was appended to the DH. In the light of this theory, Some scholars have rejected the original Documentary Hypothesis theory in favor of some new theories to address the problem that the DH raises with the Pentateuch (i.e. the loss of sources). John Van Seters, for instance, proposes that Genesis-Numbers operates as a prologue to the DH: “[he] considers the Yahwist to be a post-Deuteronomist author who wrote the pre-Priestly traditions of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.” According to Romer, this model does not seem to address the issue of certain passages within the “Tetrateuch” only making sense within the context of a Hexateuch.
From there, Romer moves on to the question of whether we have a Pentateuch or Hexateuch. “The most decisive argument for the existence of a Hexateuch,” Romer writes, “is Joshua 24. The final discourse is clearly later than Joshua’s last words in chapter 23, which stem from Deuteronomistic redactors.” The expressions “these words” and “Thus says the LORD” in Joshua 24 strongly link this chapter with the end of Deuteronomy. Romer sees validity in distinguishing between what he calls a “Pentateuch redaction” and a “Hexateuch redaction” within the first books of the Old Testament. The “Pentateuch redaction” seems to be concerned with a theology of founding “Israel’s identity in the Torah mediated by Moses;” whereas the “Hexateuch redaction” is primarily concerned with idea of land. Keeping in mind the evidence for the Hexateuch, we can note that much speaks in favor of the “Pentateuch redaction:” Moses’s death at 120 years, the oath formula, and the No-Prophet-Like-Moses formula.
Then, Romer raises the question of whether these two literary units point to a larger, earlier unit known as the Primary History or the Enneateuch. In fact, a number of scholars have the opinion that the an “epic story” (some form of Enneateuch) predates the Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or DH. This idea is based off a number of literary and thematic links in Genesis through Kings. Deuteronomy 34 and Joshua 24 aren’t viewed as conclusions to their respective literary unit. They are, instead, transitions to different themes in the Enneateuch. Romer also mentions literary links between the end of Kings and the beginning of the Latter Prophets which suggests that a redactor wanted to make that connection and that the Enneateuch may have been read long with these Latter Prophets. The main problem for the proponents of the Enneateuch is where Deuteronomy fits in with the literary unit. Some scholars suggest that Deuteronomy is late addition, but Deuteronomy has much more in common with Joshua-Kings than with Genesis-Numbers. Thus, the Primary History may have been read as a unit, but it wasn’t a “canonical unit.”
Finally, Romer makes this observation:
How can we distinguish comprehensive redactional activity from restrictive additions that are limited to one or two passages, or from cases of intertextuality, which do not necessarily imply redactional activities[?] One may, for instance, observe that the story of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter has many parallels with the Adequah story in Gen 22, but this does not mean that the author of Judg 11 wrote his story in the context of the Enneateuch.
We have some evidence what Romer calls historical summaries in the Psalms and Prophets that suggest the existence of a Pentateuch, Hexateuch, and Enneateuch. Romer maintains that we have little redactional evidence of the Enneateuch, but that fact does not preclude certain books being read in units.
nathanielcooley 
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