Biblical Hebrew Forum

[nick osen <osennick AT yahoo.com>]

---Andrew C Smith <a.c.smith AT juno.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
> 

Though I must admit this hypothesis is interesting and to some extent
inviting there are number of points that suggest to me that it rests
on very unstable ground. 

1) the purely biblical evidence for the historical reality of Moses is
not, to my mind, convincing enough to support the hypothesis that the
character Moses was a real working author.
2) recent scholarship concerning the dating of the pentateuchal
narratives has wonderfully, and rather convincingly, brought to light
the possibility that said texts are best attributed to the period of
the Babylonian exile (which is of course well after the exodus of
Moses as it is proposed in the Bible). I am thinking here primarily of
Van Seters most recent work concerning the 'Yahwist as historian'  
3) I just can't picture the Israelites lugging a whole slew of
writings with them in the desert.

All these points put together (coupled with all others cited in the
various 'documentary hypothesis' formulations) make it clear in my
mind that, Yes, we are dealing with various sources but that none of
these can be attributed to the biblical figure of Moses.  

Nick
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