Do you honestly believe that Moses wrote the entire Torah or Pentateuch? How could Moses have written that he was the “humblest man who ever lived,” or have written about his own death?
There are two points of view which are often espoused relating to the written origins of the Torah. Among fundamentalist Jews and Christians, it is believed that the Written Torah which exists, Genesis-Deuteronomy, was entirely written letter-by-letter by Moses himself—and has even been preserved perfectly since the Ancient Israelites were in the wilderness. The exact opposite of this, believed by liberal Jews and Christians, is that the Torah was compiled after the Babylonian exile, compiling together various sources, mainly those of: the Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly writer (P).[1] The JEDP Documentary Hypothesis widely advocates that the writings of the Torah are attributed to (a fictional) Moses, and that the Torah as it came to exist by Second Temple Judaism, was largely a product of the post-Babylonian exile. The majority in the Messianic movement believe that Moses wrote the entire Torah, whereas most in liberal Judaism and Christianity believe that Moses did not write it (if he even existed).
Our ministry affirms that Moses was the principal author or compiler of the first five books of Scripture, the Chumash or Pentateuch, either himself or with scribes via his direction. There are some parenthetical statements which were likely written at another date. Genesis 14:14 is a glaring example of this, appearing very early in the text, where Abraham pursued Lot’s kidnappers “as far as Dan” (NASU). This appeared long before the Israelites enter into the Promised Land, and ascribed geographical place names to where they settled. Some would say that since Moses was a prophet, he prophesied this into being, but that is doubtful given the fact that this was a place name, and not an event. This was obviously a textual addition added at a later date to clarify for readers where Abraham actually pursued. It does not subtract from the value of the text, nor the event which took place, nor does it subtract from essential Mosaic composition.
Numbers 12:3 says, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth” (NASU). In the NASB and NIV translations, the verse actually appears in parentheses ( ). Truly, if Moses did live as the most humble man on the face of the Earth, at least at the time of writing this, then Moses’ being so humble would have prevented him from ever having written this. This likewise appears to be a textual addition to the Torah from a later date. In a similar vein, the final chapter of Deuteronomy (ch. 34) details the death of Moses and how the Lord buried him. This is something which Moses could not have written about in such detail, but it does not immediately mean that it was written many centuries later as liberal critics of the Bible may often claim. The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics notes,
“Such scholars as R.D. Wilson, Merrill Unger, Douglas Young, R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and R.K. Harrison easily accept that the final chapter of Deuteronomy was likely appended by Joshua or someone else in Moses’ inner circle. This, in fact, supports the view of the continuity of the writing prophets, a theory that each successor prophet writes the last chapter of his predecessor’s book. The addition of a chapter on Moses’ funeral by another prophet is in accordance with the custom of the day in no sense takes away from the belief that Moses was the author of everything up to that final chapter.”[2]
There have been limited additions and redactions to the Hebrew text of the Torah, since the time of Moses and Ancient Israel in the wilderness. This does not subtract to the value of the text, the events which took place, and certainly not the message of the text. It also does not mean that Moses did not write or oversee the writing of the vast majority of the Torah, but it is to say that edits have been made along the way. We do not believe that Moses wrote that he was the humblest man on Earth, or about his own death. These were statements added by either someone in his inner circle, perhaps one of the seventy elders, or Joshua who succeeded him.[3]
NOTES
[1] How some of this works out can be witnessed in Richard Elliot Friedman, The Bible With Sources Revealed (New York: HarperOne, 2003).
[2] “Pentateuch, Mosaic Authorship of,” in Norman L. Geisler, ed., Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 587.
[3] For a further review, consult the Messianic Theology Explained installment from 25 June 2024, “Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch,” all accessible via <youtube.com/MessianicApologetics>.
