Mosaic Authorship
On his blog yesterday, Joseph Cathey posted a blurb from a book he is currently reading on the composition of the Pentateuch. The blurb included the following statement:
Starting as we do from the position of a Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch we may lay it down as a general rule that a given passage is of Mosaic origin unless there are decisive proofs for labeling it as post-Mosaic.
I don’t know whether Dr. Cathey agrees with this position or not. He simply posted it. But because the Pentateuch in general and source criticism in particular is one of my areas of research, I thought I wanted to comment on this statement.
It seems to me to be problematic to begin with the assumption of Mosaic authorship. If one wants to argue in favor of Moses as the author, then that is fine, but to merely start from that position is not scholarship. On the other hand, rejecting Mosaic authorship out of hand is also not a valid position. One must begin by examining the arguments in favor and against Mosaic authorship of the Torah before one can draw a conclusion. This seems rather axiomatic, but the author quoted by Cathey seems to ignore this.
The reason for attributing the writing of the Pentateuch to Moses is mostly taken from sources other than the Pentateuch, primarily statements in the New Testament. Although Deuteronomy 31:24 states that Moses wrote down the law, within its context it only refers to the law in Deuteronomy, not the entire Torah. The only other thing we are told Moses wrote is the laws given in Exodus 34. But we cannot assume that just because the text says that Moses wrote the law that he actually did. The Pentateuch is making a theological statement when it assigns the law to Moses, i.e., all of the law of Israel, regardless of its historical origin, is to be treated as the original law of God given at Mt. Sinai.
We therefor have to look at the nature of the text to determine its origins, and the text of the Pentateuch as we have it is highly composite. It comes from multiple time periods and apparently multiple hands. In addition to the evidence for multiple authors, there is also evidence against Mosaic authorship. These reasons are rehearsed in every introduction to the Old Testament, so I do not need to discuss them at length here. A few of them were noted even by Medieval rabbis, such as the question of how Moses could record his own death.
I would have issue with the conclusions of someone who examined all the evidence and decided that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but at least he or she has looked at the evidence. But to begin with the assumption of Mosaic authorship in the light of previous scholarship is an irresponsible handling of the Bible.
On April 26th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
[…] Kevin Wilson has an interesting post on assumptions concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch. This is Kevin’s particular area of interest so his comments are all the more worthy of note. […]
On April 29th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
[…] It seems that there might be a bit of higher criticism on the brain in the blogsophere. I referred you to Kevin Wilson’s thoughts a few days ago and now another Kevin, Edgecomb that is, offers his view. Edgecomb works from William Hallo’s comparative approach to ancient literature and he states that the traditional documentary hypothesis is all washed up. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but I would be interested to see what Kevin Wilson’s response to this is… […]
On January 18th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
“Although Deuteronomy 31:24 states that Moses wrote down the law, within its context it only refers to the law in Deuteronomy, not the entire Torah.”
This is false. The Book of Deuteronomy begins with an introduction stating that it contains Moses’ explanation of “this Torah”, presupposing that the “Torah” is something other than Deuteronomy. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, we read references to the Torah that Moses is conveying to Israel. And in the curses Moses pronounces in Deuteronomy, he says, “also any sickness and any plague which is not written in this Book of the Torah,” implying that the Book existed already, even before the speech was delivered, but was finished off when the orations of Deuteronomy were completed.