Authorship of the Pentateuch

Traditionally authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, was attributed to Moses.  There are five verses in the Pentateuch that mention Moses as having written certain passages.  For example in Exodus 24:4 we read, "And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord..."  referring to the words of the ten commandments and the commentary following them in Exodus 20:1 - 23:33.  Other books of the Old Testament refer to the "law of Moses" but it is not necessarily clear that the entire Pentateuch is referred to by this phrase.  In fact, Nehemiah 8:3 states that Nehemiah read the law of Moses to the people in the space of six hours, which is too short a period of time to read the whole Pentateuch.  In the New Testament, Jesus quotes passages from the Pentateuch and attributes them to Moses.

So the Bible itself, does attribute at least parts of the Pentateuch to Mosaic authorship.  However, there are some good arguments that Moses did not write the entire document from scratch.  Numbers 21:14 quotes a passage from a work called "The Book of the Wars of the Lord."  Though not necessarily named, it is conceivable Moses could have used other sources as well.  Numbers 12:3 describes Moses as more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.  It would seem awkward for Moses to brag about his own humility.  Also Moses could not have written the last chapter of Deuteronomy that mentions events after Moses' death.

In the 18th and 19th century, scholars developed a theory that the Pentateuch was woven together from separate, independent sources that at times were competing and inconsistent.  Most of these ideas resulted from a scholar named Julius Wellhausen who worked mostly in the 1800s.  His ideas were built upon over the years and became crystallized into what is known as the Documentary Hypothesis. The study of these sources is known as source criticism since its methodology is to examine the sources that the overall work of the Pentateuch derives from.

The Documentary Hypothesis posits that there were four authors of the Pentateuch known as the Yahwehist, the Elohimist, the Priestly source, and the Deuteronomist.  These sources are usually abbreviated J, E. P, and D (J stands for the Yahweist because most of the work was done by German scholars and the "y" sound in German is written as a "j", for example the "j" in Jagermeister is pronounced as a "y").

J is viewed as the oldest source and dates from the 10th century B.C. and is centered in Judah during the reign of king David.  E dates to the 9th century but is located in the Northern kingdom of Israel.  D dates from the 7th century and is thought to have occurred during the reign of king Josiah.  Recall that a forgotten scroll was discovered in Josiah's time.  Scholars believe this was actually not an ancient text but one that written during the time of Josiah and the story of its discovery merely a fraudulent attempt to justify its legitimacy.  P was written by a group of priests living in Babylon during the time of the exile in an attempt to preserve their traditions during the exile.  The diagram below gives a pictorial representation of this theory.

While the Documentary Hypothesis has been widely accepted among scholars at times and is often taught to students in college courses where the pentateuch is examined as literature, there are several arguments that call the theory into question.  Currently, few critical scholars promote the view and source criticism is no longer as popular an approach among academics as it was at one time.

One of the arguments against the Documentary Hypothesis is the theory presupposes a linear, evolutionary view of history.  Anything deemed primitive from the standpoint of modern scholarship is assigned to an older source.  For example, any anthropomorphic description of God is assigned to the J source.  The thinking goes that viewing God as having human characteristics is the thinking of a primitive, unsophisticated culture.  Whereas the writings of P are descriptions of a well developed highly, ritualized system of a more advanced civilization.  However, it would be naive to think that history actually progresses by such a simple model.  In addition it is also condescending to ancient people, who may lack technology but demonstrate sophistication and intelligence.

According to the Documentary Hypothesis, later editors called redactors, cut and pasted the various sources together.  However, the current text demonstrates a high degree of structure.  Genesis is divided into ten sections called toledots sort of like chapters.  Obviously, this structure could not arise merely by cutting and pasting sections together.   Another examples involves the Noah story in Genesis 6-9.  It was thought by source critics that two separate flood stories by J and P were fit together to generate the story of Noah as we find it in the Bible.  However, Dr. Gordon Wenham has demonstrated the entire flood story is arranged in a sophisticated chiastic structure.  In a separate blog post, I will post Gordon Wenham's chiasm of the Noah cycle, so you can see for yourself the remarkably consistent chiastic structure.

Further studies in archaeology have also shown the chronology of the Documentary Hyopthesis to be incorrect.  At one time it was thought that the alphabet and Semitic writing arose in the 12th-10th century B.C.  As Moses is traditionally assigned to the 15th century B.C., it would have been impossible for Moses to have written the Pentateuch.  Recent archaeological expeditions have uncovered evidence of Semitic alphabetic writing in a turquoise mine in Sinai that dates from the18th century B.C.   An excerpt from the high priestly prayer from Numbers 6:23-26 has been found on an amulet that dates from the 7th century B.C., much earlier than the 5th century B.C. time when P is dated by source critics.

It was assumed by source critics that the Deuteronomists lived some time in the 7th century B.C.  The whole book of Deuteronomy is essentially a suzerain-vassal covenant document laying out the stipulations and sanctions of the covenant between Israel and God.  In the 20th century, archaeologist uncovered many of these ancient suzerain-vassal covenants from various civilizations and time periods in the ancient near east.  From this, historians have learned that the covenants from different time periods follow specific rules and guidelines.  The book of Deuteronomy follows the pattern of Hittite covenants dating from the 15th century B.C., the time period when Moses would have lived.  At no point does Deuteronomy resemble the covenant treaties of the Assyrians that would have been followed in the 7th century B.C.

While there is certainly evidence of place names being updated, the pentateuch fits best within a 15th century B.C. world.   There exists lots of evidence for this such as the use of Egyptian words in Genesis and Exodus that would have been unknown later, customs that would have been out of place in later Judah such as decentralized worship by the patriarchs, and tribes that ceased to exist after the 11th century B.C.   Famed Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen from the University of Liverpool, has written an excellent book called "On the Reliability of the Old Testament"  that lists all of the arguments for a 15th century setting in a more complete way than I can do in a blog post.  I have a copy of this book if anyone is interested in borrowing it from me.

As Moses, a Hebrew from the 15th century educated in Pharaoh's court, would be the most likely person to have compiled the pentateuch, the tradition of Mosaic authorship seems to rest on reasonable evidence.  No doubt Moses uses various sources and possibly oral traditions, but he compiled them together in a highly ordered manner.  Of course we believe, according to 2 Timothy 3:16, that all scripture is inspired by God, so whoever the author of the Pentateuch may have been, the ultimate author was the Holy Spirit.