Dear Shnitzel,
The line of questioning you mentioned, received attention from Menashe ben Yisrael. Mendelssohn wrote just about as full a thesis as there is on the subject. His ideas are mainstream to the modern day. Rav Hirsch, the Malbim, Rav Yisrael Salanter, and almost every notable jewish thinker of the nineteenth century agreed with the theory. It is still in place in the modern day, in the works of Reb Aryeh Kaplan and Reb Avigdor Miller.
