PENTATEUCH pĕn’ tə tōōk (Πεντάτευχος, literally five volumed [book]; Heb. תּﯴרָה, H9368, torah, law, or teaching, Deut 17:11). The term applies to the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As a division of the Heb. canon it is older than the LXX or the Samaritan Pentateuch.

1. Contents and divisions

The term Torah (law) which addresses itself to the content of the Pentateuch, gives the impression that it is all in the form of commandments. This term actually is very wide in its usage, ranging from teaching ritual details (Lev 13:59; 14:2, 54-57) to general precepts and instructions (Exod 24:12). Torah is the most commonly used word in the OT for the revelation that God gave through Moses (Josh 8:32; 23:6; 1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 23:25; 2 Chron 30:16; Ezra 7:6; Neh 8:1; etc.), although undoubtedly it included all revealed truth, for Abraham obeyed God’s Torah (Gen 26:5). The word νόμος, G3795, “law,” is used of the whole OT by NT writers, as in John 10:34 (Ps 82:6) and 1 Corinthians 14:21 (Isa 28:11, 12).

The term “Hexateuch” was used by the higher critics to imply that their theories could be carried out not only in the first five books but also in Joshua, but this is much disputed, as is the whole documentary hypothesis.

The Heb. names of the first five books of the OT are based on an ancient custom derived from Mesopotamia, of naming a document after the first few words with which it begins (cf. Enūma ēliš, the Akkadian Creation Epic, ANET p. 60). So Genesis is named from the first word, meaning “in the beginning.” The Heb. title of Exodus, however, is less meaningful since the book begins with the words meaning simply “and these are the names of.” Likewise Leviticus fares poorly, the first word “and he called.” For an unknown reason Numbers received as its title the fifth word instead of the first, which makes a title that is more descriptive of the entire contents than “Numbers,” for it means “in the wilderness.” Deuteronomy uses the first two words, “these are the words.” Except for Numbers the Heb. titles are not very descriptive of the entire contents of each book. The Eng. titles derive from the LXX and are more or less descriptive of the contents, Genesis and Numbers being less so than the other three. It should be borne in mind that the more ancient method reflected in the Heb. Bible was never meant to be a title but rather, a way of identifying a scroll or tablet.

2. Mosaic authorship

Deuteronomy states (31:9) that Moses wrote this Torah (cf. Exod 17:14; 24:4; 34:27; Num 33:1, 2). Many scholars do not take this claim seriously, despite the fact that it has the backing of Jesus Christ (John 5:46, 47; 7:19). Modern Pentateuchal criticism is based on philosophical presuppositions that rule out the possibility of God’s supernatural intervention in history. This results in an attempt to explain away not only Mosaic authorship but all supernatural events recorded in these books. The issue of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is important to anyone who takes the NT as truthful records of Jesus Christ’s words and work. Faith in Christ and faith in the books of the OT canon stand or fall together. Christ and the apostles not only took the Pentateuch as Mosaic but put their seal on it as holy Scripture, as they did for the entire Jewish canon of their day (Rom 3:2; 2 Tim 3:16). Although Jesus differed with the Pharisees on many points there was no disagreement on what constituted holy Scripture nor on the subject of Mosaic authorship (Luke 16:31; 24:44).

3. History of the higher criticism of the Pentateuch

The post-Biblical Jews accepted the Pentateuch as Mosaic, considering only the passage on Moses’ death (Deut 34:5-12) as written by Joshua, although Josephus and Philo of Alexandria even thought this section was written by Moses in anticipation of his death.

Until the 17th cent., the Christian Church held almost universally to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The non-Christian writer Celsus in the 2nd cent. however, suggested the Pentateuch did not have a single author, and Jerome around a.d. 420 was not willing to commit himself fully on Mosaic authorship. Jewish commentators of the 12th cent. such as Ibn Ezra hinted that Moses may not have written all the Pentateuch. In the 17th cent. a number began to openly doubt Mosaic authorship. The Jewish Dutch philosopher Spinoza was excommunicated from the synagogue for expressing these opinions. Others, including Christian writers, began to argue that Moses wrote only the laws but that the history was added later. The Dutch writer LeClerc taught that the priest of Samaria mentioned in 2 Kings 17:27 wrote the Pentateuch. He taught that Christ and the apostles simply accommodated themselves to the idea of Mosaic authorship. This was, however, not the major scholarly opinion of the day and many Christian scholars answered questions like the following: Why did Moses use the third person instead of the first person if he himself were writing? Why did Moses say “at that time the Canaanites and Perizzites dwelt in the land” (Gen 13:7)? Is not this a statement written by someone much later? What about Numbers 21:14, which speaks of the Book of the Wars of the Lord telling of the coming of Israel out of Egypt under Moses? Was this not written by someone much later than Moses? The claim was made that Deuteronomy obviously was written by one who lived long after the time of Moses because so much of it is from the viewpoint of those who are already in the land, for why would Genesis 14:14 say that Abraham’s men pursued his enemies as far as Dan when according to Judges 18:29 the town of Dan did not get that name until long after the time of Moses? Would not Genesis 36:31, wh ich says, “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” be from the viewpoint of a time when Israel had a king? Deuteronomy 1:1 says “These are the words that Moses spake to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness.” Was this written from the viewpoint of one who was already in the Promised Land and looking back to the other side in Trans-Jordan? Moses never crossed the Jordan. Does Deuteronomy 2:12 imply that the conquest of the land had already taken place and therefore it could not have been written by Moses? These arguments and others led some to conclude that though the laws may have been written by Moses, the historical material of the Pentateuch must have been written by others at a much later date.

Jean Astruc, a French medical doctor, discovered what he considered to be a clue to the documentary sources that Moses used. Each of the two divine names, Elohim and Jehovah, came from a different document. About 1780, J. C. Eichhorn expanded Astruc’s clue. Eichhorn attempted to show that from Genesis 1:1 to Exodus 6:3 one could divide the account into documents according to the names Elohim and Jehovah. He noted that on this basis there appeared to be parallel accounts of many stories and that if one took all the E (Elohim) parts as a unit and all the J (Jehovah) parts as another, one would have a continuous narrative in each from Creation to the time of Moses. For example Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a was thought to be one account of Creation whereas Genesis 2:4b to 2:24 was another account of Creation. Genesis 6:1-8 and 7:1-5 was considered to be paralleled by Genesis 6:9-22 giving therefore two accounts of the Flood. And Genesis 27:41-45 was taken as a parallel to Genesis 27:46-28:1, giving two accounts of Jacob’s going to Haran. He also thought that when these documents were examined each had its own consistent style as to diction, aims, and ideals. For example, J was thought to be primitive, much less reliable historically, and very short in style whereas the E document’s style was said to be formal, verbose, and full of details. The J document was thought to deal with altars and sacrifice in detail, and the E document was not interested in sacrifice. From the ideas of Eichhorn in 1783 to those of Graf in 1865, this “higher criticism” of the Pentateuch took many forms, all more or less based on a wholly naturalistic view of the origin of the OT. It must be noted that it is only when the original documentary views of the early chs. of Genesis were applied to the rest of the Pentateuch that the conflict came co ncerning Mosaic authorship. Exodus 6:3 (KJV), which says, “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them,” was submitted as proof that the J document did not exist before the time of Moses, for according to their interpretation of this v., the name Jehovah (Yahweh) did not exist before Moses. They claimed the redactor who put together the documents forgot this v. and put the word Yahweh into the mouths of the patriarchs. Such a blunder would make one suspicious of the accuracy of the whole account. This led critics to find contradictions between J and E showing that J was indeed unreliable as to history and was written long after the time of the reputed events which explains why it made so many mistakes.

The first of the aforementioned stages in the development of higher criticism was the fragmentary hypothesis. This view was proffered by Alexander Geddes, who believed that the Pentateuch was compiled from many documents about the time of Solomon. These documents, he thought, came from the two schools J and E, each of which gathered fragments. A little later, J. S. Vater expanded Geddes’ view into thirty-eight original documents. Such fragmentation led to a reaction toward unity. Whereas, previously most criticism had been on literary grounds, now W. N. DeWette began to use historical criteria, propounding the view held by many to this day that the book found in the Temple in the days of Josiah (621 b.c.) by Hilkiah the priest was part of the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, it was said, does not show any knowledge of laws earlier than the 7th cent., nor any knowledge of kings earlier than the 7th cent. The Deuteronomist, who lived in the 7th cent., was also responsible for some of the material in 2 Kings, whereas the writer of Chronicles rewrote the history to make it look as if they knew the laws of an earlier date. About 1830, the Heb. scholar Ewald set forth his supplementary hypothesis, which said that the basis of the Pentateuch was written by Moses using E material and that later the material was worked over and supplemented by a number of Jehovistic writers plus a number of Deuteronomists. The view was an attempt to answer the embarrassing question of why the name Jehovah was used in Elohistic passages. Later, Ewald revised his view; instead of considering J and D as supplements to E he simply taught that there was an amalgam or crystallization of five or six sources that made up the Pentateuch.

In 1853, H. Hupfeld gave up the supplementary view and went back to the old J and E idea, which he modified by considering E two documents instead of one. The second E was made up of those passages that did not correspond in style to either E or J; that is, they appeared to combine both styles. The first E Hupfeld called P, that is, the priestly writings dealing with the incidents from Creation to the Conquest. The second E he called E but it was E with a prophetic emphasis, whereas J was another prophetic type of writing covering all the incidents also from Creation to the Conquest as did P. Then, of course, there was also Deuteronomy, which he held to be written about the time of Solomon although not added to the other documents until the time of Josiah. In all this, Hupfeld maintained that it was an unknown redactor of a much later period who put all the documents together, and since this redactor allowed himself considerable freedom, any inconsistencies between the documents was blamed on the redactor. It is basically in this form that the documentary hypothesis came into the 20th cent. Through the years there have been many suggested revisions to these theories to solve inconsistencies and irregularities by further subdividing the documents or suggesting successive recensions, redactors, and glosses.

In the 19th cent., some scholars began to apply a new philosophy of history to the problems of OT criticism. This system, developed by the philosopher Hegel, insisted that history moved from the simple to the complex through a series of stages that he called thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. On this basis, E. Reuss in 1833 and Vatke in 1835 both considered the priestly code (the P document) as the most complex of the laws of the Bible and therefore the latest. In evolutionary fashion a simple religion had to precede the complex external religion of the priests. In 1866, Graf, a pupil of Reuss, developed these ideas further by attempting to show that the laws of the OT always moved from the simple to the complex. The simplest laws were the Ten Commandments (Exod 20). The so-called Covenant Code (Exod 21-23) was more complex and so it was the next to be written. Still more complex in details were the laws of Deuteronomy, which came about the time of Josiah (621 b.c.). Finally, the most complex laws were those of P, written after the time of Ezekiel. Graf showed that D knew the stories of J and E, but did not know the laws and some of the stories of P. It was in these years that Charles Darwin developed his views, which were largely Hegelian, based on the development of life from simple to complex forms. This same type of philosophy continued to be applied to the critical views of the Pentateuch. In 1874 the Dutch scholar Kuenen flatly stated that the religion of Israel was purely a man-made religion, which developed, (or evolved) like all other religions—from a simple animism to gross polytheism, then to a limited form of polytheism, which was called henotheism, and thence to the ethical monotheism of the great writing prophets such as Isaiah. Then came the cultic centralization of the Deuteronomist and finally postexilic sacerdotalism (the P document). In 1870, J. Wellhausen wrote a book that popularized Graf’s views and thus they became generally accepted in Germany. Wellhausen in his work on the history of Israel denied all the supernaturalism of the Pentateuch and regarded most of its history as unreliable. By 1900, these views were generally accepted by Biblical critics all over the world. W. Robertson Smith in Scotland, S. R. Driver in England and Francis Brown and Charles A. Briggs in America were among the men responsible for spreading these views in their respective countries. The only American scholar who attempted to answer the higher critics of the Pentateuch was William H. Green in his Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch. S. R. Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament and R. H. Pfeiffer’s Old Testament Introduction generally represent the higher criticism as it is held by many naturalistic OT scholars to this day.

The view of the latter two scholars may be summarized as follows: There were four historical sources, J, E, D, and P, and six codes of law. The codes were: the Covenant Code (Exod 20:22-23:33) and Ritual Decalogue (34:10-26) that came from one source, the old Canaanite civil law; the Ten Commandments (ch. 20); then the Anathemas of Deuteronomy (Deut 27:15-26) and the Deuteronomic Code (Deut 12-26); the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26); and finally various legal parts of the P document called the Priestly Code. The codes found their way into the historical sources of J, E and P. The J document, dating from about 950-850 b.c., was combined with E (dating about 750 b.c.) at about 650 b.c. D, being completed before 600 b.c., was added to JE about 550 b.c., and P, originating shortly after 500 b.c., was added to JED at about 430 b.c. The writer(s) of P also added an introduction (Gen 1-11) and a conclusion (Josh 13:15-19:51). R. H. Pfeiffer posited an S and S², which he incorporated after P, sometime between 430 and 400 b.c.

In summary, the documentary view of the Pentateuch began with dividing the documents on the basis of the two names for God. Only a part of the Pentateuch had been successfully divided on this basis until it was noted that there was a difference in the styles of the two. Then this style criterion was used to divide the rest of the Pentateuch; when the dividing was completed, the J and P documents were considered to be complete narratives from Creation to the Conquest, having many parallel stories. Hence four arguments were used: the names, the parallel narratives, the continuity of the accounts, and the style. The date of most of Deuteronomy was then established at about 621 or a little earlier. An attempt was made to show that the Deuteronomist knew the laws and history of JE but was ignorant of P, thus establishing the order of the documents as JE, D, and P. Finally the evolutionary concept was added to bolster earlier conclusions showing a development in all the laws and institutions from the simple versions in JE through the more complex of D to the most complex in P.

4. Examination of some specifics in the arguments for the documentary hypothesis

a. The use of divine names as evidence for documents. This argument began by using the various divine names as evidence for different documents. The major problem is that division into documents on this basis is not consistent. The J document often uses Elohim and the E document uses Jehovah. Such inconsistency is attributed to later redactors (those who put the documents together), but in reality this inconsistency destroys the validity of the use of divine names as an objective standard for partition of the text into documents (for further information and refutation see W. H. Green, The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, pp. 88-106, and R. D. Wilson, “Divine Names in the Pentateuch,” Princeton Theological Review, vol. 18). There may be other reasons for using different divine names. The frequent references to deity in a passage on Creation would make a single name very monotonous. Most of the names for God are titles and adjectives describing various divine qualities. A context sometimes reflects the attribute of God that the name used suggests. Instead of indicating that different documents have been pieced together, the names may simply reflect a distinctive literary mode. The mode where one god may have many names or even be given a dual name is abundantly evident in the Ugaritic lit., which dates from the middle of the second millennium, the traditional date for Moses. For example, Kothar wa-Khasis is the dual name of the Ugaritic craftsman god (ANET, p. 134).

b. Continuous narration in the several documents. The claim that division of the Pentateuch on the basis of divine names supplies us with evidence of documents each of which had a continuous narrative cannot be demonstrated for either the J document or the E document. This is more or less admitted by the documentarians, but they do claim a strong case of continuous and complete narrative for the P document. When one examines the material claimed to be P, he finds serious omissions. For example, most of the Flood story in Genesis 6-9 is P document, but one of the most important elements in the account—the reason for the Flood—is missing. Another example is Genesis 19, where one v. is attributed to P (29), which describes the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, but there is no statement of the cause of this destruction. One could hardly call this a part of a continuous narrative. Certain fragments of the stories of Jacob and Esau (27-36) are included in P. There is no mention, however, of Jacob’s posterity that he acquired in Paddan-aram, even though such statistics are supposed to be a peculiar feature of P. (Because of lack of space the reader is referred to Green, pp. 106-109, and to O. T. Allis, The Five Books of Moses, pp. 111-115.)

c. Parallel passages. Another higher critical argument claims all the so-called doublets, or parallel passages, are evidence for different documentary sources. The first of these is the alleged double account of Creation (Gen 1; 2). Genesis 1 is said to come from P during or after the Exile and Genesis 2 is from J in the 9th cent. There are alleged discrepancies between the two. That man is created at the end of the first account but at the beginning of the second account is a superficial approach to the texts. Genesis 2 is merely focussing on man and stressing man’s relationship to the rest of Creation, which Genesis 1 does not do. This is not at all an unusual literary procedure. If the hypothetical redactor who put these accounts together saw no contradictions, why should not a single author have felt the same way?

A multiple source for the Flood story can also be shown to be imaginary. The narrative in Genesis 6 is neither contrary to nor can it be separated from the account in Genesis 7. Chapter 6 describes a preparation for the Flood and ch. 7 the coming of the Flood itself. For example, there is an alleged discrepancy between Genesis 6:19, which calls for taking one pair of each species into the ark, and Genesis 7:2, where Noah must take seven pairs of clean animals aboard. It is obvious that 6:19 is a generalization and 7:2 is an exception concerning clean animals only. A very excellent and concise handling of these doublets as criteria for source division may be found in G. L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, pp. 117-124.

d. Division into documents on the basis of style. Differences in the literary style of passages is a principal argument for source partition. Here circular reasoning is most evident in Pentateuchal criticism. The distinctive characteristics of the alleged documents were decided upon often on the basis of preconceived notions about the evolution of Heb. religion and with complete disregard of the changes in style that a single author may use, depending on his subject matter. Most of the division into sources is done on the basis of style; and though divine names were used as the starting point, they are presently ignored, and inconsistency is blamed on the redactor. After having divided on the basis of style, one should not be surprised to find particular styles turning up in the documents he has created on that basis. Differences in style, therefore, as a proof for the documents cannot be taken seriously.

Lists often were made of various words and idioms peculiar to a particular document. It was claimed that the J document and the E document used different words for their respective designations of a “female slave.” In Genesis 20, however, which was assigned to E, both words appear. This led the Ger. critic Holzinger in his commentary on Genesis to delete the offending word from Genesis 20:14, and then again he deleted this same J word when it appears in Genesis 30:18, which he also assigned to E. Related to this is the case that employs the name Elohim exclusively (Gen 33); yet this chapter is assigned to J wholly on the basis that the J word for “female slave” is used in this ch. It seems quite obvious that either this word is not characteristic of J or else Elohim is not characteristic of E. It never occurred to these men that the necessity of such deletions and discrepancies might indicate that something was wrong with their approach to the text. Due to difficulties in clearly defining the stylistic differences between J and E, critics like S. R. Driver stressed the differences between JE as a joint source and P as another existing alongside (cf. An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 19). The style of the P document is represented as very schematic, highly ritualistic, and highly statistical with frequent use of genealogies, dates, and figures. References to the Aaronic priesthood are one of its major features. When it is pointed out that the Aaronic priesthood is mentioned thirteen times in J, this is sloughed off as the work of the redactor.

e. The date of Deuteronomy. According to the documentarians, a large part of the Book of Deuteronomy was written around the time of Josiah (621 b.c.). Opinions differ as to the exact date, but almost all agree that it was accepted by Josiah as the basis of his reform. The claim is made that the heathen practices forbidden in the Book of Deuteronomy are in harmony with Josiah’s time because his predecessor, Manasseh, fostered this kind of worship to please his Assyrian overlord. In the middle of the 8th cent., prophets such as Amos had arisen to call for an ethical monotheism and reputedly to oppose the cult of sacrifice in favor of a religion of conduct rather than of cult. R. H. Pfeiffer maintained that the author of Deuteronomy made a compromise between these two extremes of cult and conduct, and thus became the founder of Judaism (Books of the Old Testament, p. 55). The Deuteronomist delayed the appearance of his book until after the deaths of the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, and the Judean king, Manasseh, because in their day his work would have been summarily rejected. With the decline of Assyria, a reaction to Manasseh’s policy had set in. Josiah then based his religious reforms on the work of the Deuteronomist and destroyed the heathen high places all over the land as well as in Jerusalem, calling for a central shrine to be in Jerusalem. The documentarians lay great emphasis on the interpretation of those vv. in Deuteronomy that speak of a central place of worship, which the Lord would choose. They take this to be Jerusalem, although the Book of Deuteronomy itself does not even mention the Temple, much less the city of Jerusalem. Indeed, taking the following passages at their face value, one sees that they all point to a future sanctuary, not to one already in existence (12:5-end; 14:23-end; 15:20; 16:2-end; 17:8, 10; 18:6; 26:2). In Deuteronomy 16:5, 6, the people are told that they must not sacrifice the Passover in any place they might choose, but only at the place that the Lord their God would choose, to make his name dwell there. The Samaritan sect, which eventually accepted only the Pentateuch, contended that this place was not meant to be Jerusalem at all, but Mount Gerizim, and indeed the Book of Deuteronomy, if taken by itself, supports this idea (cf. 27:1-11). In all probability, the correct interpretation of those vv. that speak of the place that the Lord their God shall choose is the most obvious meaning, that the Lord had not yet revealed the place for the central altar, and that it would be wherever he chose at any given time. At various points in the subsequent history there were a number of places chosen before David captured Jerusalem; first, Gilgal (Josh 5:10); then, Mounts Ebal and Gerizim (Josh 8:33); then, Shiloh (1 Sam 1:9); and eventually, Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:16, 17).

In more recent criticism there has been a tendency to explain the various documents and their codes of law, not on the basis of an evolutionary development but on the basis of the different geographic cultic origins. Deuteronomy, then, is said to come from a sanctuary in Shechem and is to be completely dissociated from the other four books of the Pentateuch. The fixed point in all of these views is that Deuteronomy is much later than the time of Moses. S. R. Driver, in An Introduction to the Literature of the OT, attempts to escape the objection that such a view of Deuteronomy means that the book itself is a forgery, by flatly stating that Deuteronomy does not claim to be written by Moses (p. 89). This he supports by stating that the book is written in the third person about Moses and that the speeches are Mosaic only in the sense that these are the words that the author presumes that Moses would have said, but this is to give his case away. For the question is not whether the book is sometimes in the third person, which all readily admit, but whether or not the speeches that are attributed to Moses are really Mosaic in the sense that they actually came from the mouth of Moses. Deuteronomy 31:9 says: “And Moses wrote this law, and gave it to the priests the sons of Levi.” Verse 24 of the same ch. says: “When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book....” If, in the words of S. R. Driver, these are only “represented as having been spoken” by Moses, then of course the work is fraudulent and is an example of what scholars have called pseudepigraphy. Though a common practice in the Greco-Roman world, pseudepigraphy is not known to be a custom in OT times. Even if, as W. F. Albright says, “Deuteronomy was an attempt to recapture the letter and the spirit of Mosaism, which had been neglected or forgotten by the Israelites of the Monarchy” (From the Sto ne Age to Christianity, p. 319) and is not a pious fraud, he still has to assume that the vv. quoted above in ch. 31 are fraudulent. Not only so, but the supposition throughout the book that the people were still in Trans-Jordan must be considered fraudulent. Also, 11:2-7, which says that the people have just witnessed God’s miracles in Egypt and in the desert, is fraudulent. Despite Albright’s statement that the religious and ethical point of view is definitely that of the 7th cent. (ibid., p. 320), there is still not a single historical reference to the period after Moses’ death in the Book of Deuteronomy. As has been stated, no mention is made of the city of Jerusalem. Even the kingship passage (17:14-20) is from a hypothetical point of view the assumption being that such kingship did not yet exist. Moreover the blotting out of the Amalekites which was completed by Saul (1 Sam 15), simply does not fit the 7th cent., and the command to destroy the Canaanites fits the time of Moses better than any other. To escape this problem, S. R. Driver says that “the Canaanites” simply means “the heathen” (op. cit., p. 92). The friendly attitude toward the Edomites as expressed in Deuteronomy 23:7, would have been highly unlikely in the 7th cent., when constant enmity existed between these two nations. The argument that the forms of idolatry mentioned in Deuteronomy 4:19 and 17:3 are characteristics of the middle period of the monarchy has lost much of its impact because of the increasing documented evidence that the forms of idolatry mentioned in Deuteronomy, including worship of the heavenly bodies, were early practices in the ancient Near E. Much has been made by the critics of the influence that Deuteronomy had on Jeremiah, “Second” Isaiah (chs. 40-66), and Ezekiel, whereas Amos, “First” Isaiah, and Hosea show no influence by Deuteron omy. This is part of the evidence that leads to the dating of Deuteronomy in the 7th cent. There is no doubt that Deuteronomy has been quoted in some sections of the OT more than in others, but Joshua is much closer to Deuteronomy than any other book of the OT, and Jeremiah also quotes from Numbers and other books. In addition, the style of Deuteronomy has striking similarity to the style in other parts of the Pentateuch, differing no more than one would expect from a change in subject matter or the use of preaching. Indeed there are so many stylistic features in Deuteronomy common with other parts of the Pentateuch that S. R. Driver, in his commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC), was forced to say that these places seem to be the source from which parts of Deuteronomy were taken (cf. p. lxxvii). The book of the law discovered by Hilkiah the priest in the days of Josiah must have included Deuteronomy, but there is no way of proving that it did not also include the other books of the Pentateuch.

Another key argument on this matter of the 7th cent. date of Deuteronomy is that the particular deuteronomic reforms, esp. the centralization of worship (Deut 12), were not practiced before the time of Josiah and therefore could not have been known earlier. The same argument was used of other legal sections of the Pentateuch, such as the Covenant Code (Exod 21-23). George Mendenhall, in his Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, has effectively refuted this argument by showing that Hammurabi’s Code was never referred to in later legal documents; therefore arguments from silence are weak. All periods of history attest that laws may be written and even codified and then be forgotten. The Book of Judges makes it abundantly clear that this is what the Israelites did. The idolatrous Israelite cult centers that archeologists have found at Hazor and Arad are in harmony with the Book of Judges. The fact is that many of the laws of the Book of Deuteronomy are to be found also in the other books of the Pentateuch, esp. Exodus and Leviticus. Careful examination of the law in Deuteronomy 12 certainly leads one to believe that the “law of the central sanctuary” was to show the Israelites that they were not to sacrifice anywhere they pleased as the Canaanites did, but that there would be one altar to the one God; not that it would never move, but that it would be the place that God would choose, one place at a time. When they arrived in the land they would find many altars to many gods, but their one Lord would have one altar. Deuteronomy 12:1-7 is not a contradiction to Exodus 20:24, as some maintain. The latter v. provided for an altar before the Tabernacle was built, or even for temporary altars at places where God recorded His name, where there was a divine revelation, a theophany, where God’s presence was. Even an altar of Baal could be turned into an altar of the Lord, as in the case of Elijah’s calling down fire from heaven. Such an incident is not in contradiction to the basic idea of God’s having an official sanctuary where His shekinah glory was located.

5. Survey of modern approaches to Pentateuchal criticism

In general, higher critical views on the origin of the Pentateuch have moved in the direction of the old fragmentization theory. Hermann Gunkel came to the conclusion that the peculiar characteristics of the separate documents are really meaningless. He stressed the need for examining short pieces of Biblical lit., thereby tracing variant schools of oral tradition. The Dutch scholar B. D. Eerdmans rejected the documents, but continued with the concept of the evolutionary development of Heb. religion. He adopted the view of G. A. Klosterman that the divine names could be no criteria for dividing the books into documents because they were based solely on the MT, where the LXX often gave different readings. Through the early part of the 20th cent. almost all phases of the documentary hypothesis have been questioned. There have come attacks on the Josianic date of Deuteronomy, some giving philosophical and archeological reasons why Deuteronomy could not have come from this time. Others have questioned whether the Bible says Josiah’s primary purpose was to limit the sanctuary to Jerusalem. R. H. Kennett and G. Hölscher put Deuteronomy after the Exile, since to have stoned those who committed idolatry (Deut 13; 17) would have killed off most of the people at the time of Josiah. Today there is no unanimity of opinion as to the date of Deuteronomy. Others in the 20th cent. have questioned the late date of the P document. Smend and Eichrodt agreed with Eerdmans in rejecting the characteristics of the P document. On the basis of careful exegesis, M. Löhr showed that there was no reason to maintain an independent P document at all. Löhr held that the Pentateuch was composed by Ezra in Babylon using many materials. In 1933, two scholars, Volz and Rudolf, denied that there was even a separate source called E in Genesis. Later, Rudolf published a similar study for the other books of the Pentateuch. U. Cassuto called into quest ion all the major arguments in favor of the documentary view in his work entitled The Documentary Hypothesis. Cassuto maintained that Genesis was written by one author, although he dated it in the time of David (1000 b.c.). R. Dussaud, on the basis of the documents from Ras Shamra (Ugarit), sought to show that the documentary view was false in two major points: first, its sources were too late; and second, it underestimated the value of Israelite tradition. F. Dornseiff, a student of Gr. philology, showed quite effectively that Homer could be divided on the basis of dual names. His conclusion was that repetitions and parallelisms were really simply a literary mode and that legal portions were often found in the midst of narratives in the Gr. texts and are not to be looked upon as separate documents. He also questioned the notion that Deuteronomy was a priestly fraud and also the notion that a firstrate literary work could emerge from the hands of multitudinous redactors as they cut sources into small pieces.

In 1930, S. Mowinckel also rejected the E document as separate from J. Like Gunkel, he laid stress on oral tradition, which he tied to his own ideas of divine kingship and cultic prophecy in Israel. Related to this was the British myth and ritual school. J. Pedersen, of the University of Copenhagen, while accepting some of the documents, opposed the 19th-cent. evolutionism of the Wellhausian hypothesis, esp. as it applied to culture. In the so-called late and artificial priestly material of the Pentateuch some laws, such as the laws regarding redemption, Pedersen said, came from real-life situations. Many of the social laws were considered to be of this class. J and E contain much “living material” according to Pedersen, esp. in the Genesis stories. The parallel narratives were not the result of documents, but were based on Israelite psychology and so all the so-called sources were both pre- and postexilic. Pedersen viewed Exodus 1-15 as a cultic legend of the Passover reflecting the annual reliving of the historical events. The material was passed on in this way from generation to generation. According to Pedersen, the Exodus narrative was a cultic glorification of God at the Paschal feast, an exposition of the historical event that created the nation. The narrative was not a report of historical events. As a cult legend, it is impossible to reconstruct the historical events from it. On this basis the Exodus accounts and the Genesis stories have very little relationship to each other. Both have marks of being pre- and postexilic. In 1945, I. Engnell, of the same Scandinavian school, accused the documentary theory of artificial interpretation based on modern philosophy without taking into view the ancient Sem. literary techniques, views, and psychology. He absolutely denied that there were any continuous documents out of which the Pentateuch was composed. He looked upon Deuteronomy as north-Israelite and claimed it had noth ing to do with Jerusalem. His view was that there were different schools of tradition. There was a P school of tradition in the Tetrateuch (Genesis through Numbers) and a D school of tradition in Deuteronomy and 2 Kings. There were individual oral stories and legend cycles that were cultic in origin and connected with the sanctuary. Basically P was a Judahite tradition, whereas D was an northern Israelite tradition, which in its final form got into the hands of the people of Judah. So to Engnell there were no written documents at an early time at all, nor redactors, but units of oral tradition, circles of tradition, and schools within these circles.

Two more scholars should be mentioned. First there is G. von Rad, who held that the Hexateuch (the first six books) was put together as a literary unit. He worked with the traditional documentary dates, but saw in them (esp. in P) much that was very old and archaic in form. He claimed that J gave the Pentateuch its definitive form and that E and P brought nothing really new. The other scholar is M. Noth, who also was an “orthodox” higher critic, but he denied the idea of the Hexateuch and followed the notion that the original book of Moses was Genesis through Numbers and perhaps some of Deuteronomy 31-34. He also stressed oral tradition, putting J and E together as a common base and calling them G (the “Ground”).

One of the major trends in modern criticism of the Pentateuch is away from any schematic and determinant system of development. A. Weiser, in his Introduction to the Old Testament, says some strata in the Pentateuch cannot be defined in detail, but can be understood only in light of the cult. In other words, the origin of the lit. lies in the cult and even after the tradition was fixed many alterations came about to conform to cultic changes. Weiser is willing to admit that oral and written tradition existed side by side through many centuries, but he insists that individual authors were responsible for these strata and not just schools, as Gunkel held.

One of the major themes of the modern critic is called “tradition history.” This is not just the memory of past events in history, but is the kind of history that originates in cultic festivals and continues in sacramental cultic acts. This results in a trend away from literary criticism to questions of interpretation of OT religion. C. R. North, in his discussion of modern Pentateuchal criticism in The Old Testament and Modern Study, feels that the modern critic has two major problems: One is the historical value of the Biblical account of Creation down to the death of Moses, and the second is the value of the Pentateuch as a source for the history of Heb. religion from the time of the Exodus down to the postexilic period. This latter is based on the principle that the Pentateuch comes from all different periods in Israel’s history and is therefore really an epitome of the history of Israel’s religion. One can easily see that such a position assumes that the results of Pentateuchal criticism are generally correct. The old scholars were interested in rationalizing out all of the miraculous elements of the text to discover what these historical events were, but the newer concept of “tradition history” stresses the fact that the lit. in the Pentateuch reflects a community experience coming from generations of people who transfigured the bare facts of history by their faith. One, therefore, should not look on the history in the Bible from creation to the death of Moses as having any substantial reality, although there may be a nucleus of history behind it, but it must be interpreted as “salvation history,” as “sacred history,” or “tradition history.” The second problem mentioned by North—the value of the Pentateuch as a source for the history of OT religion down to postexilic times—grew directly out of the old documentary approach to the Pentateuch; but there is a marked diff erence between the old critical position and this more recent approach. The old view asserted that the religious history of a millennium was telescoped within the Pentateuch by means of the documents, J, E, D, and P, which reflected the evolutionary development of OT religion. The old view held that it was possible to show how and when the OT ideas and institutions came to be. To many modern scholars, all evolutionism and logicism is considered a modern invention imposed on the OT. They are very skeptical about the results and about all attempts to date the documents. Pedersen was not even interested in OT religion as much as he was in the psychology of OT religion. Engnell decided there were no documents at all, but only a mass of traditions from which different types of material originated. Many who still accept the basic outlines of the documentary hypothesis use oral transmission as a way to solve the problems of inconsistency. They claim that the oral forms from different periods existed parallel to one another and thus form the reason why the same documents may have both pre- and postexilic material in them. By and large, literary criticism of the Pentateuch at the present time is in a state of chaos. C. R. North also suggests that we must now be less precise about the history of Israel’s religion and stress rather the theology of the OT. Despite all of this divergence of opinion, the modern critical approach to the Pentateuch still clings generally to the terminology of the old documentary hypothesis, simply because the modern critic has nothing else to take its place as a humanistic explanation of how these books came into being. Indeed it has become an “orthodoxy” among OT scholars. If these general tenets are accepted, then the Pentateuch as it now stands cannot be accepted as an authentic witness to events in space and time that took place in the days of the patriarchs and Moses. Against this, the question must be asked: are there archeological and literary evidences that bear witness to the authenticity of the history and cultural institutions reflected in the Pentateuch?

6. Archeological witness to the Pentateuch

It must be recognized that there are some exaggerated claims as to what archeology can affirm. As to the documents: not long ago scholars of the OT would have considered it extravagant to talk of documents of the Heb. OT that date to the 3rd cent. b.c. Nonetheless this is what the Dead Sea texts are. Preexilic written documents from Pal. are very few because the people wrote on perishable materials. However, written materials from Egypt, where the climate is exceedingly dry and Mesopotamia, where the writing was on clay, are profuse from all periods, and they throw considerable light on the Pentateuch. As to subject matter: the early chapters of Genesis purport to tell of prehistoric events, that is, events before the advent of written history (3,000 b.c.). It should not be surprising that the Heb. names of characters of this early age are not found in foreign written documents. In the case of the Noahic flood, for example, the Babylonian account is remarkably similar to the Biblical account even as to details, and yet the names of the characters are Babylonian or Sumerian depending on the cuneiform document being read. It should not seem strange that both the Babylonian account and the Biblical account had their origins in the same prehistoric event. The time of Abraham opens a period of human history in which written documents had already existed for more than a millennium. Indeed, it is from this patriarchal period that a flood of archeological information supports the patriarchal stories and their general historic validity. Though the patriarchs themselves are not mentioned in extra-Biblical documents—their names, names of places, and other personal names mentioned in the accounts appear in documents from Mesopotamia. Some 20,000 tablets from the Middle Euphrates town called Mari contain many names familiar to the patriarchal stories, for they were written by NW Semites, whose laws and customs were very similar to those of the Hebrew patriarchs. (“Mari” by G. E. Mendenhall, Biblical Archaeologist Reader [2]. The same may be said for the slightly later Nuzi tablets, which also come from Mesopotamia (“Biblical Customs and the Nuzi Tablets,” by C. H. Gordon, ibid.). They supply abundant cultural confirmation of the stories in Genesis. Abraham’s adoption of Eliezer as the “son of his house” (Gen 15:2) is reminiscent of the adoption tablets from Nuzi. One tablet confirms the custom of selling one’s birthright, as Esau did (Gen 25:33). Also, the binding effect of the verbal oath made by Isaac to Jacob is attested in the Nuzi tablets, where a man wins a law suit by proving that his father had made such a death-bed will. Rachel’s interest in her father’s teraphim (household idols) is explained in a Nuzi court case, where a man is able to prove his claim to his father’s estate by possession of the family teraphim (Gen 31). Hammurabi’s Code also comes from Mesopotamia in the patriarchal age, and it throws much light on the laws of the various parts of the Pentateuch. Many of the civil laws mentioned in the Pentateuch, esp. in the Mosaic legislation (Exod 21-23), really go back to ancient case law that the patriarchs brought from Mesopotamia. These were the common laws of the Mesopotamian world of the second millennium. God allowed the Israelites to use these laws with some variations and improvements. For example, the death penalty was prescribed for both adulterer and adulteress when caught in the act, as well as for kidnaping (Exod 21:16; Deut 24:7; Hammurabi’s Code no. 14, ANET, p. 166). Numbers 5:11-28, which deals with a woman suspected of adultery, has real affinity with a similar law in Hammurabi’s Code, where a trial by ordeal is also used (ANET p. 171, Law no. 132). Such detail as Leviticus 19:23-25, which speaks of a five-year prohibition for the eating of fruit of a newly-planted orchard, is found also in Hammurabi’s Code (ANET, p. 171, no. 132). Even some legislation that is peculiarly Deuteronomic is found in Hammurabi’s Code. Compare Deuteronomy 19:16-21 with Law no. 1 in the Code, and Deuteronomy 22:23-27 with Law no. 130.

The covenant treaty forms of the great kings of the ancient Near E throw interesting light on the format of the Book of Deuteronomy and of the Decalogue itself. Such treaty texts were found in Hitt. archives, at Ugarit, in Aram. inscrs. from Sefireh and in the later Assyrian texts of Esarhaddon. Their original classic form dates from the middle of the second millennium, and the striking similarity of format with the Book of Deuteronomy certainly lends weight to an early or second millennium composition of the Book of Deuteronomy. M. G. Kline has developed this theme for the Book of Deuteronomy in his book The Treaty of the Great King.

The Canaanite alphabetic texts from Ugarit of the 14th and 13th centuries b.c. are full of technical terms for sacrifices that at one time were all thought to be postexilic by the documentarians. The Sem. words for the whole burnt offering, the shared or peace offering, the trespass offering and the sin offering, were all in full use in the second millennium b.c. The Canaanite cult of the dead, reflected in Deuteronomy 14:1, is attested in the Ugaritic texts, as is a rain (?) cult, which is reflected in the Heb. prohibition of seething a kid in its mother’s milk (Exod 23:19; 34:26; Deut 14:21; and C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, p. 59).

The old higher critical idea that the concept of ethical dualism arose in the Near E only after the rise of the Pers. religion of Zoroaster can no longer be taken seriously in the light of the new texts. That rituals and consciousness of sin are postexilic ideas is simply no longer tenable. Offering lists and rituals far more elaborate than anything found in the Pentateuch come from documents in Egypt and Mesopotamia that date all the way back to the third millennium. That social concepts in the Mosaic writings are too high for the second millennium is now refuted by the great social consciousness expressed by the Middle Kingdom kings of Egypt and by kings of Canaan and Mesopotamia, who often acclaimed their care for the orphan and the widow and spoke of themselves as shepherds of the people. Triumph hymns attested in Egyp. texts of the 15th to the 13th centuries compare well with the song of Moses and Miriam (Exod 15). The second millennium poetry of the Ugaritic mythological texts illuminates the language of certain poetic parts of the Pentateuch, such as the poems of Balaam (Num 22-24), Moses’ poem (Deut 32), and Jacob’s blessings (Gen 49). Undoubtedly there was an updating of the language of the Pentateuch by scribes like Ezra, as Jewish tradition tells us, but most of the poetry was left archaic so as not to destroy its beauty. The Sinuhe story from Middle Kingdom Egypt corroborates many of the concepts found in the Joseph account in Genesis. Among these is the Egyp. attitude toward shepherds (Gen 46:34). The authenticity of the Joseph story can only really be appreciated by one who is well versed in Egyp. lit. of the second millennium. The possibility of a non-Egyp. like Moses being brought up in the Egyp. court is known from New Kingdom papyri. Craftsmen like Bezaleel and Oholiab (Exod 31:1-6) fit well into the Egyp. picture, as do also the Hebrews as laborers making bricks without straw. The techniques used in the construction of the Tabernacle were used in Egypt centuries before Moses. The overlaying of wood with gold sheeting, as described in the building of the Tabernacle, is evident in the treasures taken from the well-known tomb of King Tut, whose date is approximately the time of Moses.

Sometimes archeology has raised problems as well as solved them; therefore archeology cannot confirm all the details of the Bible; but certainly one of the results of the modern archeological movement has been to confirm substantially the historicity of the culture and times reflected in the narratives of the patriarchs and of Moses and the Exodus. Archeology has done this so effectively that the modern literary criticism of the Pentateuch has had to find new ways of working this new evidence into its theories of the origin of these books.

These remarks on the literary criticism of the Pentateuch may be concluded by a statement of what is and what is not meant by Mosaic authorship. Mosaic authorship means that the books of the Pentateuch came from the time of Moses and that Moses is their real author. This does not assert that Moses did this singlehandedly without help or that every word was dictated to him from heaven. The divine inspiration that God gave to Moses consisted of directing Moses in writing those materials that God wanted Moses to write and also in directing him to the sources that he needed for this purpose. There were instances, as on Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses words directly from heaven, but most of the Pentateuch does not consist of this type of material. There are legal portions, some of which reflect the common law of the day. There is the creation account, which Moses must have had by direct divine revelation, but many of the details of the Flood account are so similar to those of the Babylonian flood story that undoubtedly Moses had source materials, and God gave him divine wisdom in choosing his materials. There are poetic sections and literary formats that very much reflect the time in which Moses lived.

The much disputed third person sing. used sometimes by Moses about Moses is a literary form used by other ancient writers, such as Xenophon. In the narrative material from Exodus through Deuteronomy, the one place where Moses plays no role at all is in the Balaam account (Num 22-24). This account is strategically placed at the end of the wilderness wandering in that last year of preparation before the children of Israel were to enter the land of promise. Moses was soon to pass from the scene. There is no way of knowing how the Israelites learned what was going on among the Moabites as recorded in the Balaam account, but “the Book of the Wars of the Lord” (Num 21:14) may represent an old work contemporaneous with Moses that later was used as a historical source.

The Pentateuch, then, was composed by the great man Moses under the influence of divine inspiration with the assistance of faithful men who recorded Moses’ words and assisted him in putting into writing the great pieces of literary composition now comprising the Pentateuch. Some later modernization of the text must be admitted, in keeping with Jewish tradition, most of which dates from the time of Ezra and explains certain anachronisms and glosses that exist in the text. These are not so numerous as some think. For example, although many of the nations mentioned in Genesis 10 came into the light of history in the first millennium, they certainly had their origins in the second millennium and some even in the third millennium. Recent archeological evidence proffered by P. Lapp in the Dhahr Mirzabaneh