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  • From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah
  • Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:08:55 -0700

(By the way, my mail program seems not to use standard quoting characters. I am not sure why and I will investigate, but I apologize for any confusion.)

On Jul 29, 2005, at 10:55 AM, Gene Gardner wrote:
> I do believe that Moses wrote the majority of the
> Torah.

Okay, but the question "Why?" remains to be answered. As Jim observed, albeit incompletely and with his own inimitable rhetorical flourishes, the only things Moses is credited *in the text of the Torah itself* with writing down are:

(1) The book of the covenant, giving כל־דברי יהוה [KL-DBRY YHWH, "all the words of YHWH"] the most expansive possible reading reasonable in the context of Exod 24:4 (although the phrase might refer to something more immediate in the text, and much shorter, namely the prohibition against going up the mountain per Exod 24:2).

(2) The ritual decalogue, according to Exod 34:27-28 (Jim missed this one).

(3) The Israelites' itinerary from Egypt to Mount Hor, according to Num 33:2 (Jim missed this one).

(4) The laws written in the book of Deuteronomy, according to Deut 31:9, 24.

(5) The "song of Moses," according to Deut 31:22.

(6) In Exod 17:14, God tells Moses to write down the (self-defeating) words, 'I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.'" The narrator declines to mention whether Moses actually did so, though readers who assume that Moses did follow this instruction may surely be indulged.

In brief, the point of this recitation is that out of 37 occurrences of the verb כתב [KTB, "to write"], only eight or nine have reference to Moses. The canonical form of the Torah, read as a continuous narrative, ascribes to Moses *some* writing activity. Even if we were to accept these narrative claims as reliable historical testimony, we would still not be justified in inferring from those claims that Moses also wrote the claims themselves, that is, that he wrote the stories about him writing things down. In fact, I would regard the third-person narrative technique to be quite strong evidence that Moses did not write the Torah, not even the book of Deuteronomy in its canonical form. Again, for the sake of this analysis, assume that Moses wrote everything that Deuteronomy says he wrote; the book is still presented in its canonical form within a third-person narrative frame that distinguishes the author from Moses himself.

There is other internal evidence that distinguishes the author(s) of the Torah from Moses, but for now I will just stick to direct statements about Moses' writing activity. The simple fact is that the Torah does not contain any claim that Moses wrote it. The Torah does contain claims that Moses wrote a few texts that are incorporated in or served as some sort of source for the canonical Torah (and important ones at that--the Book of the Torah isn't just a "scribbling," Jim!), but even the most credulous possible reading of these texts cannot support a claim for Mosaic authorship of the canonical Torah as a whole, but only for a select few sources lying behind the canonical Torah.

As for external evidence, like Jim, I don't put much stock by traditional authorship ascriptions that are first attested centuries after the text is likely to have been composed. There are, however, a few lines in other parts of the Tanakh that probably ought to be addressed.

(a) Joshua 8:31-32 refers to "the book of the law of Moses" and to Joshua writing out a copy of "the law of Moses, which he had written." The reference would appear to be to the book Moses is said to have written according to Deuteronomy 31:9, 24, because Joshua is carrying out instructions for the recopying of the law given by Moses
(Deuteronomy 27:8) and the quotation given in Josh 8:31 is a slightly altered version of a phrase from Deuteronomy 27:5 (influenced by 27:6). The text of Joshua gives readers no reason to believe that "the book of the law of Moses" corresponds to the canonical Torah. Indeed, the (narrative) fact that Joshua writes the law on stones suggests a relatively short text, especially since he first builds an altar, then copies "the book of the law of Moses" *while the Israelites stand there and wait*, then reads *every word* of the law to the people. I don't think he could accomplish all that on one occasion if "the book of the law of Moses" were the canonical Torah (or even the canonical book of Deuteronomy).

(b) I suppose that "the book of the law of Moses" mentioned in Joshua 23:6 is either the source text or the copy-on-stones mentioned in (a).

(c) References to "the law of Moses" in 1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 14:6; 21:8; 23:25; 2 Chron 23:18; 25:4; 30:16; 33:8; 34:14; Ezra 3:2; 7:6; Neh 8:1, 14; 9:14; 10:29; Daniel 9:11, 13 certainly show that Moses was regarded as a great lawgiver--but we knew that already. In my judgment, these verses do not have much evidentiary force in determining authorship of the canonical Pentateuch, chiefly because we cannot demonstrate that the "law of Moses" referenced in these passages is identical to the canonical Torah. Moreover, only a few of these passages mention writing or a book; several have phrases more like "the law given through/by Moses" or "the law that the Lord commanded Moses," etc., which removes these data even further from the status of evidence for an authorship claim.

As far as New Testament quotations of the Torah, introduced using Moses' name, are concerned, I regard these simply as standard methods of introducing Torah quotations, not as "authorship claims." In any event, Jesus only refers to Moses *writing* on two occasions, as far as I can tell; one involves the levirate marriage law from Deuteronomy 27 and the other is the enigmatic phrase in John 5:45 "Moses ... wrote about me." These are far from being explicit claims that Moses wrote the canonical Torah.


--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info




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