Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Andrew C Smith <a.c.smith AT juno.com>]

My own little idea about the composition of the Pentateuch is this:

The five books we have are the results of a different groups of editors
working at different times, each taking a batch of source material from a
common pool.

The scenario is this: Moses dies, leaving behind a collection of
writings: some finished writings, some notes and drafts for uncompleted
projects, some outlines from which he lectured, letters written by him to
others, etc.

To this were added notes taken by students in his lectures.

The result was a chaotic Nachlass. At times, various editors would pull
material from this pool and shape it into a "book" - several of those
books might have been re-edited and re-shaped later on. The final
product: the five books of the Torah.

(Now, if this seems far-fetched, simply consider that exactly this
process has happended many times: Hegel, Wittgenstein, Kant, Nietzsche,
Gareth Evans, Alfred Prior, and other writers had many posthumous "books"
assembled out of their Nachlass; many of their "books" are textually very
different from each other because of this method of composition, and many
of these books are internally fragmented because of the same, e.g., where
chapter one was written by the author, chapter two is pasted together out
of notes taken by students, chapter three was the work of an editor
"fleshing out" some notes and outlines left by the author, etc.)

Anyone who has spent time studying the works of the above-named authors
will know what I am saying.

My suggestion accounts for (a) the text of the Pentateuch being so
internally differentiated, choppy, and fragmented, but (b) allows the
text to be what it is, i.e., that most of Numbers through Deuteronomy is
an account of the life and times of Moses.

a.c.smith AT juno.com
http://www.lcms.org
http://www.lcms.com
http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/5680

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