Who Wrote the Pentateuch?

Most Christians were taught in Sunday school that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are referred to as the Pentateuch. Those of the Jewish faith call them the “Torah.” It is reasonable to assume that Moses could have written the Pentateuch during the 40 years, from the Exodus until the Hebrew nation ended their desert wanderings and prepared to enter the Promised Land (1445–1405 B.C.). However, except for conservative seminaries and churches, it is commonly held that Moses did not write these books, that they are a compilation of works by numerous writers dating from 950 B.C. to 400 B.C. 

In support of the Mosaic authorship are numerous biblical references to the Pentateuch as the “Book of Moses” or the ‘Law of Moses.” Exodus 24:4 states that “Moses wrote down everything the Lord had commanded.” In Matthew 19:8, Jesus cites laws in Deuteronomy regarding marriage and credits Moses with writing them. In John 5:46, Jesus says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.”  Moses was fully qualified to write the Pentateuch. He received a royal Egyptian education in Pharaoh’s household (Acts 7:22) and was an eyewitness to Hebrew history. To write Genesis, since he did not know about creation or the patriarchs, Moses may have resorted to records (inscribed on clay tablets) passed down from Adam to Noah to Abraham. 

Among the chief arguments against Mosaic authorship are the two separate creation stories in Genesis, chapters 1 and 2, and Moses recording his death in Deuteronomy 34. Also, there are contradictory statements. One involves the number of animals Noah took into the ark. In Genesis 6:19, Noah is told to take two of every kind of living creature: one male and one female. In Genesis 7:2, God instructs Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals and seven pairs of birds. Such disparities point to the conflation of two different source records. 

Further, due to different writing styles in the Pentateuch, scholars developed the documentary hypothesis, called the J-E-D-P model. “J” was assigned to texts that use the Hebrew name “Jahweh” (Jehovah) to refer to God. Its author wrote in the southern Kingdom of Judah about 950 B.C.  The “E’ documents refer to texts that use the name “Elohim” for God. They were written in the Northern Kingdom of Israel around 750 B.C. “D’ stands for Deuteronomy whose author wrote around 650 B.C. “P” identifies the texts in Leviticus that were written by priestly sources during the Babylonian exile following the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. Then, during the time of Ezra, about 400 B.C., redactors (or editors) combined the four independently written texts to form the Pentateuch as it was known in Jesus’ time and as it reads today.

In summary, the weight of evidence suggests that Moses did not compose the Pentateuch in its final form. The Pentateuch appears to be an edited work and not a piece of literature penned by a single individual.  This is not to say that the records produced by Moses were not used as prime source records by the final redactors. Regardless of who wrote the Pentateuch, it is still the inspired word of God.