Did Moses Write the Pentateuch
and What Difference Does it Make?

<by Pekka M.A. Pitkänen, last updated 12/5/2011. To see this article with footnotes and references, click here for the link>

Many Christians in particular, and probably also for example many Jews are intrigued about the question of whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch. For them, Moses often comes across as a superhuman holy figure who spends much of his time with God on a mountain, receiving revelations on the way from slavery in Egypt to the blessings of a promised land in Canaan. At the same time, at another level, many, including Jews and Christians, are not well aware of the overall contours of the narrative of the Pentateuch, not to mention many of its details. Also, many are not in essence aware of the ancient world and its way of narrating things.

At yet another level, it comes to many as a surprise that academic study of the Pentateuch is miles away from what a casual observer might expect on the topic. In particular, those beginning to study theology may find it completely befuddling when the standard source critical theory that dates back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries is presented to them, with its constituent J, E, D and P sources dated centuries after Moses is portrayed to have lived by the biblical documents (J and E traditionally early monarchy, D 7th century, P postexilic time). In this situation, many decide to completely reject the academic enterprise, whereas others who wish to follow on the path of theological study often more or less directly imbibe the results of the critical theories that have been developed over the last two hundred years or so.

This said, it is good for those who wish to approach the Pentateuch to be aware that biblical scholarship does not have an entirely uniform approach to the Pentateuch. In fact, even the standard source critical theory has been under major criticism over the past thirty or forty years or so, with some rejecting the existence of the sources J and E in particular. Even the dating of P is at least relatively open at the moment, with some suggesting that it originates from the premonarchical period. Only the (at least relatively late) dating of Deuteronomy has not been challenged widely, this author is one of those who have done so. In other words, and some rigidity with Deuteronomy still nonwithstanding, there is at least arguably no need to accept anything on Pentateuchal scholarship at face value, but those looking into the related issues can be encouraged to develop truly critical, and creative, approaches. Of course, such comments are not intended to deny that a large amount of excellent, careful work has been done on the topic in the past whatever the case.

For many of those in academic scholarship it appears that dating the Pentateuchal documents late is the only way to go. For one reason or another many if not most academics seem to view with suspicion anyone who would like to suggest the possibility of an early dating of the documents. It is not quite certain why this is the case, but, in addition to very likely cultural inertia in terms of thought patterns that have been prevalent in academic scholarship over the last two hundred years or so, perhaps this could at least partly be because such scholars might be worried that this could give fuel to those who wish to take a fundamentalist view on the bible and on religion, whether Christian, Jewish or any other.

However, even if possible, such thinking, if it exists, is not necessary, and in fact at the very least arguably reflects even a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues involved. Even if the Pentateuch, or, rather, certain parts of it, were written by Moses, that would not yet be a particularly earth-shattering piece of information. The fact that we are speaking of canonical documents that are and have been considered sacred by many can cloud one's judgment across the board, arguably including both (so-called) laymen and academics. If we for a moment (at least as if) forget about canonicity and look at the documents without such baggage (as it were), we can see that they have been written by a representative (or representatives) of a group of ancient near Eastern people. Such people have according to the documents experienced the power and presence of Yahweh, their god, under the leadership of a particular individual called Moses (Exodus-Deuteronomy), and, also, the narratives of Genesis portray the experiences of the ancestors of this group of people. Such experiences, however, are fundamentally nothing new in the context of the ancient world. We have a document showing how Gudea of Lagash already saw a dream at the end of the third millennium BC where a god advised him about building a sanctuary, and temples and sanctuaries were seen as meeting places between humans and the divine. Assyrians and Egyptians in the second millennium BC, even earlier, believed that their gods went ahead of them in war, fighting for them against their enemies. In other words, and as these and other examples demonstrate, belief in the divine and its manifestation in the lives of people was very widespread in the ancient Near East. In this context, any references to divine in the Pentateuch can ultimately simply be taken as standard convention that was being used to enhance (or, rather, simply present) the narrative of the Pentateuch. Also, we know from the ancient world, especially explicitly through Herodotus in Greece, that history writing was not necessarily accurate in a modern sense, but could contain embellishments to illustrate a point and to depict what the person being portrayed could plausibly have been doing rather than necessarily actually doing it. In fact, this and any other features of Israelite historiography that can be compared with Greek traditions could easily have reached the Israelites already in the early Iron Age if not earlier through trade contacts with Aegean peoples in the Late Bronze Age and the extensive interaction between the Israelites and their neighbouring Philistines in the Early Iron Age in particular according to narratives of the books of Judges and Samuel, keeping in mind that the Philistines were migrants from the Aegean. While the extant written Greek narrative sources are much later than this time, when we know from the Mycenaean Linear B tablets that the language used in the late second millennium in the Aegean was an archaic form of Greek and that cultural entities in the ancient Near East had a tremendous amount of inertia, it is very plausible that such Greek traditions originate from a much earlier time than their later known attestations. Thus, as there is evidence of cultural interaction throughout the ancient Near East already in the second millennium if not earlier, and our collection of materials is only a representative sample of the cultures of the time, we cannot rule out the possibility of knowledge, or in some cases even origin, of such features outside the Greek world in the ancient Near East at an early age.

As for the legal materials, the code of Hammurabi from early second millennium BC has often been compared with the so-called Covenant Code, a good-sized set of legal material in the book of Exodus. Hammurabi himself describes how his laws derive their ultimate authorisation from the gods Anum and Enlil, and there is a very short step from here to the depiction that Moses himself directly received many of the Pentateuchal laws from Yahweh, the god of Israel. Seen this way, the depiction of the Pentateuchal events can be seen as relatively standard narration about a group of slaves who escaped Egypt under the leadership of Moses and made an initial conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua, and established a foundational set of principles for the emerging nation along the way. Considering that ethnicity includes such features as shared history and common ancestry, the Genesis narratives about the creation of the world and the patriarchs can easily be added to the mix as foundational to the ancient Israelite identity. See this way, the Pentateuch, and one may argue that Joshua should be included here as a kind of completion to the Pentateuchal story before its continuation from the book of Judges on, can be seen as a piece of ancient Near Eastern narrative and historical writing that could easily originate from the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age as implied by the narrative itself. In this, there is no inherent need to hold on to an approach in academic scholarship whose foundations stem from a time when nothing was known about ancient Near Eastern backgrounds to the Pentateuch, even when such an approach has been prevalent for some two hundred years. Of course, the Pentateuch itself indicates that it was completed after the death of Moses (Deuteronomy 34), and its compilation does not exclude the possibility, or even likelihood, of utilising sources of some kind as part of the enterprise. The narrative history in fact includes such very human features as genealogies and itineraries, and war reports. In order to account for many of the problems reflected by biblical source criticism, including a break in style between Numbers and Deuteronomy and the existence of Priestly material throughout the Pentateuch and Joshua, with little of it in Deuteronomy and its form different in Joshua, one possible hypothesis might be that the Pentateuch was written by two authors working together, with the first author writing Genesis-Numbers and the second Deuteronomy and Joshua. These authors incorporated the legal materials in their narratives, including the Covenant Code, the Priestly and Holiness Codes and Deuteronomic laws and created the overall narrative framework. Some editing, additions and updates were made to the material as it was transmitted through the centuries and also joined with the later historical books of Judges-2 Kings.

One feature that in fact ostensibly speaks for an early rather than a late date of origin of the Pentateuch is the conquest tradition. In the Pentateuchal narrative, after the Exodus from Egypt, the main targets of Israelite wrath are the Amalekites and the Midianites. These people groups particularly feature in Judges and Samuel as enemies of Israel, and therefore the Pentateuchal interest in them suggests an early rather than a late date for the work. At the same time, when reading these reports, some of them may actually sound difficult for a number of modern readers. For example, and not to mention the book of Joshua, even the Pentateuch in its insistence to destroy Amalek (Exodus 17) attests ideology that us moderns might label as genocidal. Of course, this is in addition to such uncontestedly great features as love, justice, mercy and provision for others that are part of the traditionally discussed features of the Pentateuch and its legal material. In other words, the Pentateuch includes both commendable and problematic aspects from an ethical perspective.

Where does this all then leave religious groups, including Jews and Christians? Ultimately, it is a matter of faith whether and to what extent one accepts the claims about divine attested by the text(s). This is where academic scholarship cannot decide on the matter. The transmission of the texts through centuries as canonical and sacred, and their incorporation into the Christian bible with its new covenant and Jesus as the second Moses has ensured their veneration when most other remains of ancient Near Eastern thinking were lost in the mists of history, even when the equivalents of belief in the divine certainly were and have been attested in one way or another in environments where the text spread through the centuries and millennia of its transmission and propagation. This in itself is a very significant matter that should be reflected on in interpretation. And, in the modern world, where we for example reflect on its recent history of colonialisation, and on violence in general, in addition to many of the agreed great features of the Pentateuch that already have rightly been discussed extensively, the violent, and any other potentially negative aspects of the text also need careful reflection, whether one considers the texts as sacred and foundational for oneself or not. In this way, arguably the religious, and, considering the influence that religion has had on the wider society, for example in the West, and any other communities that are the continuation of the story of the Pentateuch can look for a way forward into the future.