“Modern criticism has ventured to undermine and assail almost all the books of holy scripture, but none with such boldness as the Pentateuch, unless it be the prophecy of Daniel…. Let us take our stand on the fact, broad, deep, and conclusive, that the authority of Christ has decided the question for all who own Him to be God as well as man.”
—William Kelly
“The Pentateuch is an essential introduction to the entire word of God. It opens up that which is afterwards unfolded, and ever leads us on in hope to a consummation which, though distant, is certain.”
—Samuel Ridout
Before commenting on the individual Books of Moses, since this is such a basic part of biblical revelation, we would like to present a few facts on the Pentateuch as a whole.
The first five books of the Bible are commonly called “the Pentateuch.” In ancient times books were in the form of scrolls rather than bound as pages of a “codex” (book form). These scrolls, called teuchoi1 in Greek, were stored in sheath like containers. The Greek word for “five-roll” is pentateuchos, whence our word “Pentateuch.”
Jews refer to the Pentateuch as “the Torah” (Heb. tôrá, “law” or “instruction”) and treat it as the most important part of their Bible.
A third common title of these volumes is “the Books of Moses.” It is ironical that the Bibles of certain northern European countries that most widely reject the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch label these books not as “Genesis, Exodus,” etc., but as “First Book of Moses,” “Second Book of Moses,” etc.
Except for Numbers, whose name is the English translation of the Greek Arithmoi and the Latin Numeri, we retain the Greek LXX (Septuagint) titles of these five books, but anglicize the spelling and pronunciation. (See the individual books in the Believers Bible Commentary for their meanings.)
The Jews often call the books by their first few words in the Hebrew text. Thus Genesis is called Berēshîth (“In the beginning”).
The usage of our English word law is more restricted than the Hebrew meanings of tôrâ, hence the term “Pentateuch” is ideal for Christian usage to express the great importance of this five-volume set.
Genesis is well-named, as it is the Greek word for beginning. The first book of the Bible traces the origins of the universe, the earth, man, marriage, sin, true religion, the nations, diverse languages, and the chosen people. The first eleven chapters recount the broad sweep of human history, but chapters twelve through fifty narrow the story down to the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons.
Exodus, Greek for the way out, narrates how in four hundred years the family of Abraham grew to a nation under the forced labor of the Pharaohs in Egypt, and their redemption from bondage under Moses. The Law of Moses and the detailed description of the tabernacle make up the rest of the book.
Leviticus is a manual for the Levites, hence the name. It describes the rituals necessary for sinful men of that era to have fellowship with a holy God. The book contains pictures and types of the sacrifice of Christ.
Numbers, as the name suggests, includes a numbering of the people, or census—one at the beginning and another at the end of the book. The Hebrew title for the book, “in the desert” (Bemidbār), is more expressive, since Numbers recounts the historical events experienced by the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings.
Deuteronomy, Greek for second law, is more than a mere re-telling of the law to a new generation, though it is that. It is the link with the historical books that follow, since it recounts the death of Moses and his replacement by Joshua, his successor.
Griffith Thomas, in his usual lucid and concise style, summarizes the contents of the Books of Moses as follows:
The five books of the Pentateuch record the introduction of the Divine religion into the world. Each book gives one phase of God’s plan, and together they constitute a real unity. Genesis speaks of the origin of the religion, and of the people chosen by God as its medium. Exodus records the formation of the people into a nation, and the establishment of God’s relationship with it. Leviticus shows the various ways in which this relationship was maintained. Numbers shows how the people were organized for the purpose of commencing the life of the divine religion in the Promised Land. This book also tells of the nation’s failure and the consequent delay, with re-organization. Then Deuteronomy shows how the people were prepared, while on the border of the Promised Land, for the entry which was soon to follow.2
Since the whole OT, in fact the whole Bible, is based on these first five books, the importance of the Pentateuch for revealed religion can hardly be overstated. If rationalistic, unbelieving scholars can undermine faith in the integrity and authenticity of these books, the origins of Judaism become lost in a sea of uncertainty. Christians should not think that our faith is unaffected by such attacks either, since the NT and our Lord Himself also quote the Books of Moses as true and trustworthy.
Dr. Merrill Unger put the case very bluntly:
The foundation of all revealed truth and of God’s redemptive plan is based on the Pentateuch. If this foundation is unreliable, the whole Bible is unreliable.3
Except for some who in early Christian times opted for Ezra4 as the author of the Torah, by and large, Judeo-Christian orthodoxy has maintained Mosaic authorship through the centuries—and still does.
Before examining briefly the documentary theory, which largely denies Mosaic authorship, let us note the positive evidence for it.
The nineteenth-century German critic Hartmann denied Mosaic authorship on the grounds that it was quite literally impossible—writing not having yet been invented. (Or, so many thought then!) Archaeology has shown that Moses could have written in early Hebrew script, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Accadian cuneiform. Of course Acts 7:22 told believers long before archaeology confirmed it, that Moses was educated “in all the learning of the Egyptians.” When we say Moses “wrote” the Pentateuch, this allows for his using previous documents in Genesis. It also allows for inspired editorial updatings as Hebrew script changed through the centuries. Of course, the fact that Moses could have written the Pentateuch doesn’t prove that he did. However, as the father of the Jewish faith it is inevitable that he would make a permanent record of God’s revelation for future generations. And so God had commanded him.
The text of the Torah says specifically that Moses did write down at God’s command on occasion. See, e.g., Exodus 17:14; 24:4; 34:27; Numbers 33:2; Deuteronomy 31:19.
The rest of God’s Word accepts Mosaic authorship as well. See, e.g., Joshua 1:7 and 1 Kings 2:3; and in the NT, Luke 24:44 and 1 Corinthians 9:9.
For Christians the fact that our Lord Himself accepted Mosaic authorship should settle the matter. The notion that in His humanity Jesus was ignorant of science and history, or that He knew better but accommodated Himself to the ignorance and prejudice of His countrymen is unworthy of a believer’s consideration.
Many customs, words, names, and historical and cultural details that liberal critics once said were “too late” to be Mosaic have now been found to predate Moses by centuries. While this doesn’t “prove” Mosaic authorship, it tallies much better with the traditional view than it does with the theory that “redactors” or editors living many centuries later knew all these (by then largely lost) details and pieced them together so nicely.
In 1753 Jean Astruc, a French doctor, set forth the theory that Moses compiled Genesis from two documents. Those passages that used the name Jehovah for God came from one source, he wrote, and those using Elohim another. These supposed sources he labeled “J” and “E” respectively.
Later, liberal scholars developed the theory much further, eventually putting all their supposed sources much later than Moses. Other proposed documents were “D” (“Deuteronomic”) and “P” (“Priestly”). The Pentateuch was viewed as a patchwork of sources built up between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C. Popularly, the hypothesis became known as the “JEDP theory.”
Several things made the hypothesis attractive to nineteenth-century scholars. First of all it fitted in well with Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was being applied to many fields other than just to biology. Next, the anti-supernaturalistic spirit of the day found delight in trying to put the Bible down on a merely human level. Thirdly, the humanistic trends that replaced divine revelation with man’s efforts dovetailed with this theory.
In 1878 Julius Wellhausen popularized the documentary hypothesis in a clever and deceptively plausible way.
In this short Introduction we can only mention a few of the main points against the theory.5
Serious problems with the theory include the following:
There is no manuscript evidence that any of the editorial work proposed in the “JEDP” theory ever occurred.
Scholars divide the Pentateuch up into fragments quite differently, which exposes the extreme, personal viewpoints and lack of concrete, objective evidence for the theory.
Archaeology has tended to support the writing, customs, religious knowledge, etc., of the Pentateuch as being very ancient, and definitely not from the much later period of composition proposed by the Wellhausen theory.
Supposedly “late” language forms and personal names found in the Pentateuch have been found in sources well before the time of Moses. An example is the recently unearthed “Ebla tablets,” which contain many Pentateuchal names.
Editorially, the five books of Moses hold together very well and exhibit a unity and coherence that is most difficult to reconcile with the alleged evolutionary “scissors and paste” origins of these books.
Finally, from a spiritual viewpoint, the documentary theories, even as modified by archaeology and other similar theories, are unworthy of the great and beautiful truths enshrined in these books. If these theories were true, the Pentateuch would be, in the words of Dr. Unger, “unauthentic, unhistorical, and unreliable, a fabrication of men, not the work of God.”6
The contents of the Pentateuch take us back to creation, but the actual writing, of course, was thousands of years later. Obviously the date for the writing that we choose is dependent upon who wrote it.
Liberal scholars date the various theorized stages of the work largely as follows: The so-called “J document” is dated about 850 B.C.; the “E document” about 750 B.C.; the “D document” about 621 B.C.7; and the “P document” about 500 B.C.
Conservative scholars generally date the Pentateuch around the time of the Exodus, in the fifteenth century B.C. Some prefer a date for this event of about a century and half later.
Probably the best date to fit all the biblical data is sometime between 1450–1410 B.C. See the individual books in the BBC for more details.
We conclude our Introduction to the Pentateuch with the words of Canada’s foremost OT scholar:
The Pentateuch is a homogeneous composition in five volumes, and not an agglomeration of separate and perhaps only rather casually related works. It described, against an accredited historical background, the manner in which God revealed Himself to men and chose the Israelites for special service and witness in the world and in the course of human history. The role of Moses in the formulation of this literary corpus appears pre-eminent, and it is not without good reason that he should be accorded a place of high honor in the growth of the epic of Israelite nationhood, and be venerated by Jews and Christians alike as the great mediator of the ancient Law.8
ENDNOTES
1. The word teuchos originally meant a tool or implement, and then a roll of material to write on.
2. W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Pentateuch, p. 25.
3. Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Handbook, p. 35.
4. The Jewish philosopher Spinoza also chose Ezra as the author.
5. A Christian approach can be found in R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1966). The Jewish American novelist Hermann Wouk exposes the theory in This Is My God (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1959).
6. Unger, Handbook, p. 35.
7. Many liberals posit such a specific date from the mistaken belief that Josiah conveniently “found” (fabricated) what is now called Deuteronomy in order to promote a central sanctuary in his capital, Jerusalem.
8. Harrison, Introduction, p. 541.