Did Moses write the Torah?

[otseng]

There are two main views regarding the authorship of the Torah (Pentateuch). The traditional view holds that Moses wrote it during the Exodus from Egypt, around the 15th or 13th century BC, depending on the early or late date of the Exodus. The scholarly view proposes that the Torah was compiled during the post-exilic period in Persia, between approximately 539 and 333 BC.

Debate topic: Did Moses write the Torah?

[POI]

Moses, though, isn't just whoever wrote the Torah, even if we can establish a single author; he's also a character in the story.

Bingo! And to add more context, I believe this topic may be a spin-off from the "Exodus" thread. We had a couple of 'tabled' topics, for which we did not discuss, since we were not done with other topics within that exchange. Another one was about a large group of 'Israelites' claimed to have 'wandered the desert', for example.

As you stated, and also what I alluded to in post 19, Moses was said to be one of the star characters in the storyline, via a part of the Torah. By what (confidence-level) can we even conclude Moses was even a real character from ancient antiquity?

[Difflugia]

So, just to start off, I'm asserting that academic consensus is certainly that Moses himself didn't write any significant part of the Torah.

OK, let's start with this. What is the evidence to support this claim?

Since it's treated as a foregone conclusion by academics, it's hard to find someone explicitly stating that the consensus is against Mosaic authorship of the Torah. I've been looking through sources, though, and found another one. Mark Zvi Brettler says this in his introductory essay to Torah in The Jewish Study Bible:

Scholars now agree that many of the reasons usually given for assigning these dates to the individual sources are problematic, and a lively debate has developed concerning such fundamental issues as the relative order of these sources and the extent to which any of them are as early as previous scholars had suggested. The scholarly consensus, however, remains that the text is composite, unlike the assumptions of pre-modern scholarship, which continue to be influential among some religious groups.

Note that he's saying exactly what I was saying: though there's no consensus over specific dates and sources, there is a consensus that the traditional assumption of Mosaic authorship is false.

[otseng]

If you haven't, I recommend reading the introduction to The Bible With Sources Revealed. It offers a concise summary of the Documentary Hypothesis and the basic form the evidence takes. It's available online in its entirety at Google Books.

Thanks for the suggestion. I think this would be a good place to start.

Those who disagreed with this hypothesis came from two opposite ends of the spectrum: the most traditional and the most radical. The most traditional scholars—mainly fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews—adhered to the ancient answers to these questions: the first five books of the Bible were written down by Moses personally, the book of Joshua was written down by Joshua himself, and so on. The most radical scholars argued that the Bible’s books were written later and later—and that they were less and less true.

One problem was that these groups of scholars only rarely engaged each other.

We have the opportunity here on this forum for people of different views to engage each other.

I hope that we have all learned that we can sit down with people with whom we disagree and learn together.

I hope that can happen here.

This should not come down to humorous disdain for the positions of others. It must come down to evidence.

I agree.

The basic hypothesis is: These biblical books were assembled from sources.

Author explains the DH hypothesis. I'll just put in the chart from Wikipedia.

J: Yahwist (10th–9th century BCE)
E: Elohist (9th century BCE)
Dtr1: early (7th century BCE) Deuteronomist historian
Dtr2: later (6th century BCE) Deuteronomist historian
P*: Priestly (6th–5th century BCE)
D†: Deuteronomist
R: redactor
DH: Deuteronomistic history (books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

He then presents seven main arguments:
1. Linguistic
2. Terminology
3. Consistent content
4. Continuity of texts
5. Connections with other parts of the Bible
6. Relationship among the sources
7. Convergence

The bulk of the book is his translation of the Torah and the sources color-coded.

I'll leave it to the DH proponents to present the arguments in detail.

[Difflugia]

I'll leave it to the DH proponents to present the arguments in detail.

I'm not sure if this is you telling us that it's our turn or not, but if it is, I'd like you to address at least one question I asked earlier. I asked this:

Moses couldn't have written all of it because it talks about him dying. Obviously if you're dead, you can't write about your death.

The traditional view among rabbis that believe in complete Mosaic authorship is that God dictated those parts to Moses while Moses wrote them "with tears in his eyes."

Now, I have no problem thinking we can rule this out for the obvious reason that gods don't genuinely interact with people, but why do you think it can be ruled out? I want to at least understand what you mean.

I'd still like you to answer this question. So you know where I'm going with this, a lot of things in the Torah are anachronistic in the sense that they only apply to Israel or Judah in the seventh century or later. If we can establish that, then do the anachronistic bits become as "obviously" not written by Moses as the accounts of his death? If not, why are they different? I'm not arguing (at least yet) that they are or aren't different, but I want to know where your particular line for "obvious" is. I'm assuming that it's much closer to Mosaic authorship than mine is, but I don't actually know, even in a general way, how to read your "obviously."

As examples of things where we fall on opposite sides of the line, I think that the concepts of the seven-day week and twelve tribes are both seventh-century innovations adopted through increasing contact with the Babylonian empire. For Isaiah in the mid-eighth century, the Sabbath appears to be tied to the phase of the moon rather than periods of seven counted days. That would mean that Genesis 2:3 was proably written after that. So the question, then, is how does that compare with Moses writing about his death? If that's not enough, is it because there's not enough evidence to establish the particular anachronism or is it that an anachronism on its own isn't enough to disqualify Mosaic authorship for a particular passage? If I want to convince you personally, what's the internal harmonization process that I have to overcome?

[otseng]

I'm not sure if this is you telling us that it's our turn or not

Yes, I'm passing the ball to your court to go into the arguments and evidence of the book.

Moses couldn't have written all of it because it talks about him dying. Obviously if you're dead, you can't write about your death.

The traditional view among rabbis that believe in complete Mosaic authorship is that God dictated those parts to Moses while Moses wrote them "with tears in his eyes."

Now, I have no problem thinking we can rule this out for the obvious reason that gods don't genuinely interact with people, but why do you think it can be ruled out? I want to at least understand what you mean.

I'd still like you to answer this question. So you know where I'm going with this, a lot of things in the Torah are anachronistic in the sense that they only apply to Israel or Judah in the seventh century or later. If we can establish that, then do the anachronistic bits become as "obviously" not written by Moses as the accounts of his death? If not, why are they different? I'm not arguing (at least yet) that they are or aren't different, but I want to know where your particular line for "obvious" is. I'm assuming that it's much closer to Mosaic authorship than mine is, but I don't actually know, even in a general way, how to read your "obviously."

I'm a biblical maximalist and affirm the historicity of Biblical narratives, including the Exodus out of Egypt. For simplification, I believe Moses was the author of most of the Torah. I'm simplifying because I also believe Moses used sources and that other people (copyists, translators and redactors) took what Moses wrote and were involved in the final form of the Torah that we have today. But, we can get into more detail about that after looking into the DH. All I'm clarifying is that I'm not in the camp that Moses wrote all of the Torah. I gave one example and explained he could not have written about his own death. I also don't believe he prophetically wrote about his death.

[otseng]

A few more facts about the book:

Full title: The Bible with Sources Revealed: A New View into the Five Books of Moses
Author: Richard Elliott Friedman
Published: Jun 2009 · Harper Collins

Purpose of the work:

The purposes of this book, therefore, are:
         1.   To present the largest collection of evidence ever assembled in one place concerning this hypothesis.
         2.   To make it possible to read each of the source texts individually, to see their artistry, their views of God, Israel, and humankind, and their connection to their moment in history.
         3.   To make it possible to see the steps in the Bible’s formation out of these sources.
         4.   To help readers appreciate that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The Bible is a rich, complex, beautiful work as a result of the extraordinary way in which it was created.

The work is 553 pages long. 5% of the book is presenting the positive case for DH. 95% of the book is his own translation of the Torah. He color codes the different sources. It shows up in the web reader, but unfortunately the color coding does not show up in the iPhone Play Books app.

[Difflugia]

It shows up in the web reader, but unfortunately the color coding does not show up in the iPhone Play Books app.

This specific book as an ebook is a huge failure. If you actually want a usable copy of the book, get the paperback. The current epub is mostly OK itself, but as you noted, many ebook platforms don't display it correctly. Even so, be aware that the Priestly Source ("P") and Second Deuteronomist ("Dtr2") were inadvertantly given the same typeface in the epub (P is incorrectly Blue Bold instead of Blue Sans). Fortunately, it's only ambiguous in one place: Deuteronomy 34:8-9 should be P. Otherwise, Blue Bold means Dtr2 in Deuteronomy and P everywhere else.

For several years, the epub wasn't even color coded. Apparently, the conversion was done in some automatic way that didn't capture the typeface differences. I was fortunate enough to buy it as a PDF years ago, but it's no longer sold that way.

[otseng]

For several years, the epub wasn't even color coded. Apparently, the conversion was done in some automatic way that didn't capture the typeface differences. I was fortunate enough to buy it as a PDF years ago, but it's no longer sold that way.

I was thinking it'd be nice to have a way to view it in UBA. I found a site that has XML data that I can possibly convert and use it in UBA.

https://www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml

[Difflugia]

Yes, I'm passing the ball to your court to go into the arguments and evidence of the book.

Let's start with Genesis 37:18-36. This is the story of Joseph being betrayed by his brothers and sold to Pharaoh. The story as it's presented in the Bible is confusing and contains several contradictions. The current scholarly view is that this narrative is actually two stories that have been intertwined into a single event. An interesting feature of this view is that the two stories appear to be related without changing the original text of either, but in a way that sometimes changes to whom pronouns and verbs refer. If this is what happened, that would mean that the literal text itself is sacred in a way that it shouldn't be changed, but the meaning itself is allowed to be fluid.

So the questions, then, are:

• Can the narrative contradictions be reasonably harmonized into a single, non-contradictory story?
  • If so, what evidence is there that Moses wrote the story?
  • If not, are the two separated stories a reasonable solution?
• If we have two stories, can we have any confidence that Moses wrote either one?
• If Moses wrote at least one of them, can we use any similar logic to determine which things Moses wrote and which he didn't?

Here are the stories, split into what the Documentary Hypothesis calls J (blue) and E (red). I've done this before, but that was the ASV translation. Here, I'm using Richard Elliott Friedman's translation from The Bible with Sources Revealed.

And Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. ¹⁸And they saw him from a distance, and before he came close to them they conspired against him: to kill him. ¹⁹And the brothers said to one another, “Here comes the dream-master, that one there! ²⁰And now, come on and let’s kill him and throw him in one of the pits, and we’ll say a wild animal ate him, and we’ll see what his dreams will be!” ²¹And Reuben heard, and he saved him from their hand. And he said, “Let’s not take his life.” ²²And Reuben said to them, “Don’t spill blood. Throw him into this pit that’s in the wilderness, and don’t put out a hand against him”—in order to save him from their hand, to bring him back to his father. ²³And it was when Joseph came to his brothers: and they took off Joseph’s coat, the coat of many colors, which he had on. ²⁴And they took him and threw him into the pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it. ²⁵And they sat down to eat bread.

And they raised their eyes and saw, and here was a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, and their camels were carrying spices and balsam and myrrh, going to bring them down to Egypt. ²⁶And Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is there if we kill our brother and cover his blood? ²⁷Come on and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let our hand not be on him, because he’s our brother, our flesh.” And his brothers listened. ²⁸And Midianite people, merchants, passed, and they pulled and lifted Joseph from the pit. And they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty weights of silver. And they brought Joseph to Egypt. ²⁹And Reuben came back to the pit, and here: Joseph was not in the pit. And he tore his clothes. ³⁰And he went back to his brothers and said, “The boy’s gone! And I, where can I go?”

³¹And they took Joseph’s coat and slaughtered a he-goat and dipped the coat in the blood. ³²And they sent the coat of many colors and brought it to their father and said, “We found this. Recognize: is it your son’s coat or not?”

³³And he recognized it and said, “My son’s coat. A wild animal ate him. Joseph is torn up!” ³⁴And Jacob ripped his clothes and wore sackcloth on his hips and mourned over his son many days. ³⁵And all his sons and all his daughters got up to console him, and he refused to be consoled, and he said, “Because I’ll go down mourning to my son at Sheol,” and his father wept for him.

³⁶And the Medanites sold him to Egypt, to Potiphar, an official of Pharaoh, chief of the guards.

Before the stories are separated, we see at least a few contradictions. Most prominent, both the Midianites and Ishmaelites can't have taken Joseph to Pharaoh.

[otseng]

The current scholarly view is that this narrative is actually two stories that have been intertwined into a single event. An interesting feature of this view is that the two stories appear to be related without changing the original text of either, but in a way that sometimes changes to whom pronouns and verbs refer. If this is what happened, that would mean that the literal text itself is sacred in a way that it shouldn't be changed, but the meaning itself is allowed to be fluid.

Actually, I don't have much of a problem with the idea that it's two different sources combined into a single narrative.

But, what is interesting is that the sources contain both similarities and contradictions. What can account for the similarities? Either they both came from an older common source or one copied from the other. It seems the former is more likely, otherwise why the variations in detail?

And like you said, it seems like the editor took care to not reconcile any contradictions, but left the original text from each source intact. Your typical writer would've combined the ideas from the sources and write a single narrative to try to resolve contradictions. So, like you said, the editor had a sacred view of the sources and only did a cut and paste and did not significantly alter the text.

If not, are the two separated stories a reasonable solution?

I have no objection to this.