Authorship of Pentateuch
By Anthony M. Wanjohi
1.0 Introduction
This paper presents authorship of Pentateuch. The first part deals
with description of the key term, namely Pentateuch. The second part presents
authorship based on documentary hypothesis followed by mosaic authorship. The
paper winds up with a conclusion.
The key term in this paper is “pentateuch”. The term is used
interchangeably with “torah” which refers either to the Five Books of Moses (or
Pentateuch) or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical
religious texts. These books include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy (Malick, 1999).
These five books form a backbone for the rest of the Old Testament
and New Testament theologically:
Genesis: The origins behind the founding of the theocracy, the promised
blessing of the seed in the land and of all peoples through the seed.
Exodus: The redemptions of the seed of Abraham out of bondage and
the formation of this people to be a nation with a constitution.
Leviticus: Israel's culture is established by providing a manual of
ordinances to help with
their needs when approaching God who is going to
live among His people in holiness (Lev 26:11-12)
Numbers: YHWH orders Israel's walk (the military arrangement,
census of the tribes, transport of the sacred palladium),
but Israel disrupts YHWH's order; Nevertheless, the promised blessing
cannot be frustrated from within or from without.
Deuteronomy: The reconstitution of the nation under YHWH to enter the
land through a covenant renewal in legal-prophetic form.
3.0 Authorship of Pentateuch
Authorship of Pentateuch is discussed briefly based on two main
approaches, namely authorship by Moses and Documentary Hypothesis.
3.1 Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch
Mosaic authorship is the tradition attributing the five books of
the Torah or Pentateuch to Moses, the legendary leader, lawgiver, and prophet
of the Israelites who figures as the main protagonist in the Book of Exodus.
Mosaic authorship was accepted in scholarship throughout Late
Antiquity, the middle Ages, and most of the Early Modern period, from
at least the 3rd to the 17th century AD. The rise of secular scholarship
eventually led to its scrutiny and ultimately rejection by the 19th century.
Outside scholarly mainstream, Mosaic authorship continues to be
defended by some conservative religious scholars, who seek to reconcile it with
modern scholarly findings. Such authors tend to place Moses as a historical
figure at some time during the Late Bronze Age.
3.1.1 Biblical Evidence of Mosaic Authorship
According to Lyons (1999), there are
various scriptural verses that show Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
Deuteronomy 31:9 and Deuteronomy 31:24-26 describe how Moses
writes "torah" (instruction) on a scroll and lays it beside
the Ark of the Covenant.
Exodus 17:14, "And YHWH said unto Moses, Write this
for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, that I will
utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven;"
Exodus 24:4, "And Moses wrote all the words of YHWH, and rose up
early in the morning, and built an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars,
according to the twelve tribes of Israel;"
Exodus 34:27, "And Yahweh said unto Moses, Write thou these words,
for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and
with Israel;"
Leviticus 26:46 "These are the decrees, the laws and
the regulations that the LORD established on Mount Sinai between himself
and the Israelites through Moses."
3.1.2 Objections to Mosaic Authorship
Prior to the 17th century both Jews and Christians accepted the
traditional view that Moses had written the Torah under the direct inspiration,
even dictation of God. A few rabbis and philosophers asked how Moses could have
described his own death (Deuteronomy 34:5-10), or given a list of the kings of
Edom before those kings ever lived (Genesis 36:31-43), but none doubted the
truth of the tradition, for the purpose of scholarship "was to underline
the antiquity and authority of the teaching in the Pentateuch, not to
demonstrate who wrote the books (Gordon, 2003).
Even in the middle Ages some
rabbis had voiced doubts about the traditional view, but in the 17th century it
came under increasing and detailed scrutiny. In 1651 Thomas Hobbes, marshaled a
battery of passages such as Deut 34:6 ("no man knoweth of his sepulchre to
this day," implying an author living long after Moses' death); Gen 12:6
("and the Canaanite was then in the land," implying an author living
in a time when the Canaanite was no longer in the land); and Numb 21:14
(referring to a previous book of Moses' deeds), and concluded that none of
these could be by Moses. Others, including Isaac de la Peyrère, Baruch Spinoza,
Richard Simon, and John Hampden came to the same conclusion, but their works
were condemned, several of them were imprisoned and forced to recant, and an
attempt was made on Spinoza's life (Friedman, 1989).
Development of documentary hypothesis came in to shed more light
on the authorship of Pentateuch.
The idea that Moses did not write the Pentateuch actually has been
around for more than a millennium. However, until the mid-seventeenth century,
the vast majority of people still maintained that Moses was its author. It was
in the mid-1600s that the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza began to seriously
question this widely held belief (Longman, 1994). French physician Jean Astruc
developed the original Documentary Hypothesis in 1753, and it went through many
different alterations until Karl Graf revised the initial hypothesis in the
mid-nineteenth century. Julius Wellhausen then restated Graf’s Documentary
Hypothesis and brought it to light in European and American scholarly circles
(McDowell, 1999). It thus has become known to many as the Graf-Wellhausen
Hypothesis.
Since the “Period of Enlightenment,” the Graf-Wellhausen
explanation of the origin of the Pentateuch has been thrust consistently into
the faces of Christians. Liberal scholars teach that the Pentateuch was
compiled from four original “source documents” designated as J, E, D, and P.
These four documents supposedly were written at different times by different
authors, and eventually were compiled into the Pentateuch by an editor
(McDowell, 1999).
The J, or Jehovahist, document (usually known as the Yahwehist
document) supposedly was written around 850 B.C., and was characterized by its
use of the divine name Yahweh. It is the oldest source, concerned with
narratives, making up half of Genesis and half of Exodus, plus fragments of Numbers.
J describes a human-like God, called Yahweh (or rather YHWH) throughout, and
has a special interest in the territory of
the Kingdom of Judah and individuals connected with its
history.
E parallels J, often duplicating the narratives. Makes up a
third of Genesis and half of Exodus, plus fragments of Numbers. E
describes a human-like God initially called Elohim, and Yahweh subsequent to
the incident of the burning bush, at which Elohim reveals himself as Yahweh. E
focuses on the Kingdom of Israel and on the Shiloh
priesthood, has a moderately eloquent style. It was purportedly written around
750 B.C.
D in the Pentateuch is restricted to the book of Deuteronomy,
although it continues into the subsequent books of Joshua, Judges and Kings. It
takes the form of a series of sermons about the Law, as well as recapitulating
the narrative of Exodus and Numbers. Its distinctive term for God is YHWH
Elohainu, traditionally translated in English as "The Lord our God."
Originally composed c. 650-621 BCE
P is preoccupied with lists (especially genealogies), dates,
numbers and laws. P describes a distant and unmerciful God, referred to as
Elohim. P partly duplicates J and E, but alters details to stress the
importance of the priesthood. P consists of about a fifth of Genesis,
substantial portions of Exodus and Numbers, and almost all of Leviticus.
According to Wellhausen, P has a low level of literary style. It was allegedly
was written around 500 B.C.
This hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship for much of the
20th century, and, although increasingly challenged by other models in the last
part of the 20th century, its terminology and insights continue to provide the
framework for modern theories on the origins of the Torah.
References
Dillard,
R.B. and Longman, T. (1994), An Introduction
to the Old Testament. Grand
Rapids,
MI: Zondervan.
Friedman,
R.E (1989). Who Wrote the Bible? London: HarperCollins
Gordon,
W. (2003). Exploring the Old Testament: Vol. 1, the Pentateuch,
p160.
Harris,
S.L. (1985). Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield.
Malick,
D. (1999). An Introduction to the Pentateuch. London:
McDowell,
J. (1999), The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Nashville, TN:
Nelson)
Wenham,
G. (1996). Pentateuchal Studies Today, Themelios 22.1
Suggested
Citation in APA
Wanjohi,
A.M. (2010).Authorship of
Pentateuch.KENPRO Publications.
Available online at http://www.kenpro.org/papers/authorship-of-pentateuch.htm
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