The Importance Of Authorship Of The Pentateuch

As cultures have grown and evolved throughout history, so too have opinions regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch encapsulates the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As a text that is considered to be the most sacred document in history, it is within the nature of the Bible to attract strong presuppositions that have developed across centuries. Exegesis of the Bible, specifically the first five books, naturally leads to questions of its origin. Developing a definitive conclusion regarding authorship is not necessarily a prerequisite to interpret the meaning of the Pentateuch. The stance taken on authorship does, however, have the potential to skew the believability

Because the Pentateuch does not explicitly state an author, it understandable why early readers of the biblical writings would make the assumption that Moses was responsible (bible.org). “Post-Biblical Jews accepted the Pentateuch as Mosaic, considering only the passage on Moses’ death as written by Joshua” (Tenney 675). Comparably, “until the 17th century, the Christian Church held almost universally to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch” (Tenney 675). The fact that post-Biblical Jews and Christian Church were able to agree on for this period of time is a notable element of evidence for Mosaic authorship. These are two religions that are not even in accordance over whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. Another piece of evidence not taken directly from the Pentateuch is the archaeological attestations that can be found in found in the writings of ancient civilizations, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, that support “the patriarchal stories and their general historic validity” (Tenney 682). The Nuzi Tablets from Mesopotamia provide cultural confirmation of the Creation stories found within Genesis. Comparisons can be drawn between the names, laws and customs featured within some of these ancient writings. Hammurabi’s Code of Laws contains similar laws that can be found throughout the Pentateuch, specifically in Deuteronomy. Because Hammurabi’s Code is thought to have been

It was in this period of “Modern Thought” that a new interpretation of the Pentateuch’s authorship began to emerge from a culmination of higher critical methodologies. These contemporary theories can be synthesized into what is known as the Documentary Hypothesis. This hypothesis asserts that four distinctive sources, a Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P) combined documents over a period of five or six centuries in order to produce the Pentateuch. Julius Wellhausen pioneered this argument during the late 19th/early 20th century; he “denied all the supernaturalism of the Pentateuch and regarded most of its history as unreliable” and by “1900, these views were generally accepted by Biblical critics all over” (Tenney 677). This time saw many rejections of traditional church dogmas done in an attempt to restore Christianity with modern