He headed the Yeshiva in Berlin, and published a research on the Pentateuch and Mishna[citation needed], both in reaction to erstwhile Biblical criticism.

He is well known for his strident literary opposition to the Graf-Wellhausen theories of Biblical origin, while he quotes prominent Wissenschaft figures in his researches on Mishnah and Talmud.

He then studied philosophy, history, and Oriental languages at Vienna and Berlin, taking his doctor's degree in 1871[2] from the University of Tübingen.

[2] David Hoffmann is in some ways the prototype of the contemporary Orthodox Jewish scholar, facing the ubiquitous tension between faithfulness to tradition and the demands of critical inquiry.

A. Altmann, however, sees Hoffmann's writings on these matters (though evidencing great expertise) as pure apologetics, the cause of which may be seen as laid out in his introduction to Leviticus (Ellenson & Jacobs 1988), where Hoffmann makes the following remarks: I willingly agree that, in consequence of the foundation of my belief, I am unable to arrive at the conclusion that the Pentateuch was written by anyone other than Moses... We believe that the whole Bible is true, holy, and of divine origin.

Rapoport, and H. Graetz, he studies the influences of Ancient Near Eastern culture on the evolution of the Talmud, and he identifies problems in the transmitted text.

Hoffmann's resolution of this tension between faithfulness to tradition and textual criticism is found by Ellenson & Jacobs (1988) in the following passage from the introduction to The First Mishna: Thus, in the study of the Holy Scriptures on the one hand, we consider the authenticity and integrity to be absolute, and we can recognize as true only such results as do not question that premise.

Die Erste Mishna posits an early, uniform, undisputed, and therefore authoritative collection of the Oral Law, attempting to understand the historical development of the Mishnah from within itself and from rabbinic and non-rabbinic sources related to it.