Who Wrote The Pentateuch And When Was It Written?

Although Jewish and Christian tradition almost unanimously recognize Moses as author of the Pentateuch, few issues relating to the Old Testament now are debated as hotly, and in few issues is the gulf between critical and evangelical scholarship so wide. Many conservative scholars continue to believe that Moses wrote virtually all of the Pentateuch with his own hand. So long as critical scholars recognized Moses as an historical figure, in principle his involvement in the comp-

osition of the Pentateuch was not excluded—unless, of course he was thought to be illiterate. However, from the middle of the nineteenth century AD, especially following Julius Wellhausen, most critical scholars have rejected Moses having a significant role in the origin of the Pentateuch.

The questioning began early with doubts whether Moses recorded his own death and burial (Dt 34), knew of a place in northern Israel called Dan (Gn 14:14; cp. Jos 19:47; Jdg 18:28-29), or referred to the conquest of Canaan as having occurred in the past (Dt 2:12). Thus scholars developed an alternative explanation for the origin of the Pentateuch known as the Documentary Hypothesis. According to the classical form of the theory, the Pentateuch is the product of a long and complex literary evolution, specifically incorporating at least four major literary strands composed independently over several centuries and not combined in the present form until the time of Ezra (fifth century BC). These sources are identified as J, E, D, and P. J represents a ninth century BC (ca. 850) document that originated in Judah, distinguished by its preference for the name Yahweh (Jehovah, hence the “J”). The E source preferred the divine title Elohim, and theoretically was composed in Israel in the eighth century BC. The D stands for Deuteronomy, supposedly written around 621 BC to lend support to Josiah’s reforms. The priestly document, P, supposedly was composed ca. 500 BC by priests seeking to preserve their own version of Israel’s history. According to the theory, these sources were compiled and combined in the middle of the fifth century BC. Nehemiah 8 recounts the moment when Ezra publicly read the Pentateuch as a unit for the first time. Because Joshua describes the fulfillment of the promises of land to the patriarchs and because of stylistic links to Deuteronomy, Gerhard von Rad added Joshua to the pentateuchal corpus, calling the six books the Hexateuch.

Variations of the Documentary Hypothesis prevailed for more than a century. However, due to advances in literary studies, today the state of pentateuchal scholarship is confused, with new theories or radical modifications appearing often. The new theories push the dates for pentateuchal origin ever later. R. N. Whybray argued that the Pentateuch is a unitary composition written in the fourth century BC, inspired perhaps by the Greek Histories of Herodotus.

The internal evidence suggests that Moses kept a record of Israel’s experiences in the desert (Ex 17:14; 24:4,7; 34:27; Nm 33:1,2; Dt 31:9,11). Furthermore, many statements in the Old Testament credit the Pentateuch to Moses (see Jos 1:8; 8:31,32; 1Kg 2:3; 2Kg 14:6; Ezr 6:18; Neh 13:1; Dn 9:11-13; Mal 4:4), and the New Testament identifies the Torah very closely with him (Mt 19:8; Jn 5:46,47; 7:19; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:5). A series of additional features within the text point to an early date for its composition: (1) the forms of the names and many of the actions of the patriarchs make best sense in a second millennium BC environment; (2) the narratives suggest a thorough acquaintance with Egypt; (3) Egyptian loanwords appear with greater frequency in the Pentateuch than anywhere else in the Old Testament; (4) the name Moses itself suggests an Egyptian setting for the story; (5) the general viewpoint of the narrative is foreign to Canaan; (6) the seasons are Egyptian; the flora and fauna are Egyptian and Sinaitic; (7) in some instances the geography reflects a foreign viewpoint (see Gn 33:18 – “Shechem in the land of Canaan” is unlikely after the exile because by then Israel had been in the land for nine hundred years); (8) and archaisms in the language (like the use of the third person singular pronoun, hi, for both genders).

It is doubtful Moses wrote the account of his death in Deuteronomy 34. Frequently the text provides explanatory notes updating facts for a later audience, such as, “Esau (that is Edom),” in Genesis 36:1; the aboriginal inhabitants of the Transjordan (Dt 2:10-12). Furthermore, the form of the cursive Canaanite script that Moses probably used was still in its infancy and was replaced with the square Aramaic script in the postexilic period, and the vowels were added a millennium later. The archaic qualities of the poems (such as Gn 49; Ex 15) in contrast to the surrounding narrative suggests the latter may have been updated periodically in accordance with the evolution of the Hebrew language. This may explain why the grammar and syntax of Deuteronomy in its present form reads much like Jeremiah, who lived long after Moses. At the same time Moses could have used a scribe or secretary.

There is no reason to doubt that Moses wrote down the speeches he delivered (Dt 31:9-13), or that when he came down from Mount Sinai, he arranged for the transcription of the revelation he had received on the mountain, if he did not write it all himself. Just as the pieces of the tabernacle were constructed and woven by skilled craftsmen and finally assembled by Moses (Ex 35–40), so literary craftsmen may have composed some bits and pieces of the Pentateuch and submitted them to Moses, who then approved them. When exactly the Pentateuch achieved its present form we may only speculate (Dt suggests some time after the death of Moses), but it seems likely that by the time David organized the temple worship, the contents of the Torah were fixed.