Gressmann and more recent proponents of the documentary hypothesis
    (a virtual Who's Who of Old Testament scholarship) obviously feels
    that a rejection of the documentary hypothesis entails a rejection
    of all the scholarly research done under its aegis, and therefore a
    rejection of the cumulative results of more than a century's work. A
    rejection of the documentary hypothesis becomes tantamount to a
    rejection of modern biblical scholarship, a *reductio ad absurdum*
    for any but the most reactionary of fundamentalists.

MacKie