Mosaic authorship

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (Consider using more specific cleanup instructions.) Please help improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (June 2011)
Moses, by José de Ribera(1638).

Mosaic authorship is the traditional attribution of the first five books (Torah or Pentateuch) of the Old Testament to Moses. The tradition is first definitively stated in the Babylonian Talmud, an encyclopedia of traditional Jewish learning compiled around the middle of the 1st millennium CE. The Torah, however, does not name its author, and the tradition seems to be founded largely on the fact that it does contain five, somewhat vague, references to Moses writing various things. Other elements which went to form the tradition include the practice among later writers of referring to the "laws of Moses", (although it is not clear just what this meant), and the general sense that authoritative writings should be attached to the names of authoritative figures.[1]

Contents

[edit] Background: the Torah

In the Christian Old Testament the first five books - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - are not set apart in any way from the other books, but in Judaism they are known as the Torah, and are regarded as the most authoritative part of the entire bible.[2]

Genesis tells of the creation of the world, God's promise to Abraham of descendants and a land, and the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt. Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers follow with the story of God's deliverance of the Israelites from servitude in Egypt, their meeting with him in the wilderness where they agree to accept him as their god, and their onward journey to the border of Canaan, the land which God promised them. In these three books the central human figure is Moses, the greatest of the biblical prophets, who speaks face to face with God and receives Israel's laws from him. In Deuteronomy, Moses addresses the Israelites for the last time, recalling their history with God and delivering a new set of laws for their future life in the promised land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses and the Israelites about to take possession of the land.[3]

In addition to the Five Books, a Jewish tradition which can be dated to the 2nd century CE holds that Moses also received oral instruction from God at Mount Sinai, and that both were then passed down from generation to generation, the written law in the five books, the oral Torah in the teachings of the rabbis.[4]

[edit] Basis of the tradition

Part of a series on
The Bible
The Malmesbury Bible
Biblical canon
and books
Old Testament (OT)
New Testament (NT)
Hebrew Bible
Deuterocanon
Antilegomena
Chapters and verses
Apocrypha
(Jewish · OT · NT)
Development and
authorship
Authorship
Hebrew canon
Old Testament canon
New Testament canon
Mosaic authorship
Pauline epistles
Johannine works
Petrine epistles
Translations and
manuscripts
Samaritan Torah
Dead Sea scrolls
Masoretic text
Targums · Peshitta
Septuagint · Vulgate
Gothic Bible · Vetus Latina
Luther Bible · English Bibles
Biblical studies
Dating the Bible
Biblical criticism
Historical criticism
Textual criticism
Source criticism
Form criticism
Redaction criticism
Canonical criticism
Novum Testamentum Graece
Documentary hypothesis
Wiseman hypothesis
Synoptic problem
NT textual categories
Internal consistency
Archeology · Artifacts
Science and the Bible
Interpretation
Hermeneutics
Pesher · Midrash · Pardes
Allegorical interpretation
Literalism
Prophecy
Perspectives
Gnostic · Islamic · Qur'anic
Christianity and Judaism
Inerrancy · Infallibility
Criticism of the Bible
Wikipedia book Bible book
Portal icon Bible portal

The tradition that Moses wrote the Five Books grows within the bible and within Judaism after the biblical period (the period of the earliest Christian writings). It reaches a clear statement in the mid-1st millennium with the Babylonian Talmud, an encyclopedia of traditional Jewish lore, which discusses the authorship of all the books of the Hebrew bible and assigns all but the last eight verses of Deuteronomy, which describe the death of Moses, to Moses himself. (Those eight verses it gives to Joshua, who is noted as the author also of the Book of Joshua).[5]

The tradition preserved in the Talmud appears to rest primarily on the fact that two of the the five books do refer to Moses writing something, although none of them state that Moses is writing the entire Torah:[6]

  • Exodus 17:14: God commands Moses: "Write this, a remembrance..." The context indicates that God is commanding Moses to record Joshua's battle with Amalek described in Exodus 7:8-13.
  • Exodus 24:4: "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord." This apparently refers to the laws which God has just given in Exodus 20:21-23:33.
  • Exodus 34:28: Moses "wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, ten words." The identity of these "ten words" is not made clear, but probably is a reference to the Ten Commandments given several chapters previously, in Exodus 20.
  • Deuteronomy 31:9: "Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, the ones carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord" and Deuteronomy 31:24: "Moses ... finished writing the words of this law on a scroll." It is not clear just what Moses wrote, but it is usually taken to be the collection of laws that make up Deuteronomy 5-30.
  • Deuteronomy 31:22: "Moses wrote down this song on that day." The "song" is presumably Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses.

A second fact which appears to have formed the idea that Moses wrote the entire Five Books is the tradition among biblical writers of referring to the "laws of Moses" (Joshua, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel, as well as a wide range of New Testament writings from the Gospels and Acts to the Epistles). In most cases, however, it is not clear what body of writing this refers to. Nehemiah 8:3, for example, tells of Nehemiah reading the Law of Moses "from early morning till the middle of the day" - about six hours. This would require a reading speed faster than one verse every four seconds, without allowing for the interpreters who Nehemiah says were translating his words as he read.[7]

A final factor underpinning the tradition is the sense that authoritative writings must have authoritative authors - thus David came to be associated with the Psalms, Solomon with the Song of Songs, and, within the Christian tradition, the name of the Apostle Paul became attached to the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews.[8]

[edit] Text of the Torah in Talmud and rabbinic tradition

Main article: Moses in rabbinic literature

The first unequivocal statement of Mosaic authorship is contained in the Talmud, c. 200–500, where the rabbis discuss exactly how the Torah was transmitted to Moses.[9]

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Gittin 60a), R' Yochanan asserted that "the Torah was given in a series of small scrolls." This implies that the Torah was written gradually and compiled from a variety of documents over time. This may be an attempt to account for the composite appearance of the five books, but a contrary Talmudic opinion[citation needed] holds that the entire Torah was given at one time.[10]

The Babylonian Talmud (tractate Shabbat 115b)[who?] states that a peculiar section in the Book of Numbers (10:35 — 36, surrounded by inverted Hebrew letter nuns) in fact forms a separate book. On this verse a midrash[citation needed] on the book of Mishle states that "These two verses stem from an independent book which existed, but was suppressed!" Another (possibly earlier) midrash, Ta'ame Haserot Viyterot[who?], states that this section actually comes from the book of prophecy of Eldad and Medad.[11]

Abaye, a Rabbi who died in the year 339, said that the speeches Moses gave in the first two books were God's words and were said on God's behalf, while the speeches in Deuteronomy where prophetic, but said in his own words and on his own behalf.[12]

Also in the Talmud, Rabbi Judah ben Ilai held that Joshua must have written the final verses of the Torah (Talmud, B. Bat. 15a and Menah. 30a, and in Midrash Sipre. 357).[13]

David Weiss Halivni writes that parts of the ancient Midrash literature retain evidence of the redactional period during which Ezra redacted and canonized the text of the Torah as it survives today. A rabbinic tradition states that at this time (440 BCE), Ezra edited the text of the Torah, and found ten places in the Torah where lacked certainty as to how to fix the text; these passages appear marked with special punctuation marks called the eser nekudot.[14]

In the Middle Ages, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (ca. 1092 - 1167 CE) and others observed that some phrases in the Torah present information that people should only have known after the time of Moses. For example, see Ibn Ezra's comments on Gen 12:6; 22:14; Deut 1:2; 3:11; and 34:1, 6. Rabbi Joseph Bonfils elucidated Ibn Ezra's comments in his commentary on Ibn Ezra's work.[15] (see below.)

In the 12th century the commentator Rabbi Joseph ben Isaac, known as the Bekhor Shor, noted close similarities between a number of wilderness narratives in Exodus and Numbers, in particular, the incidents of water from the rock and the stories about manna and the quail. He hypothesised that both of these incidents actually happened once, but that parallel traditions about these events eventually developed, both of which made their way into the Torah.[16]

In the 13th century Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah (known as the Hizkuni) noticed the same textual anomalies that Ibn Ezra had noted; thus R. Hezekiah's commentary on Gen 12:6 notes that this section "is written from the perspective of the future".[17]

In the 15th century, Rabbi Yosef Bonfils, while discussing the comments of Ibn Ezra, noted: "Thus it would seem that Moses did not write this word here, but Joshua or some other prophet wrote it. Since we believe in the prophetic tradition, what possible difference can it make whether Moses wrote this or some other prophet did, since the words of all of them are true and prophetic?"[18]

A review of these issues from an Orthodox Jewish perspective can be found in Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations, edited by Shalom Carmy (Jason Aronson, Inc.), and Handbook of Jewish Thought, Volume I, by Aryeh Kaplan (Moznaim Pub.)[19]

[edit] Modern scholarship

Biblical scholars prior to the Renaissance and Reformation were generally not much concerned with the question of who wrote the bible. This began to change as the new field of Classical studies (meaning the study of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome) put the examination of ancient texts on a scientific footing. When these same critical tools were applied to the Torah the numerous duplications in the five books led Richard Simon (1638-1712) to argue that they had not come from one author. Simon proposed that it was Ezra, in the post-Exilic period (5th century BCE), who had produced the Torah in its final form, albeit using documents produced by Moses. Jean Astruc (1684-1766), accepting Simon's evidence but rejecting his conclusion, argued that Moses was indeed the author of the Torah, and that he had used two major sources and ten additional fragments as the basis for his work.[20]

[edit] Modern Orthodox Jewish scholarship

David Zvi Hoffman, in his commentary to Leviticus, made use of rabbinic homiletic and exegetical interpretations as well as some of his own insights to explain the difficulties noted by Wellhausen and other critics and to defend Mosaic authorship. His Die wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese (2 vols., 1903/1916)[21] pointed out several difficulties in the Wellhasuen hypothesis, most notably in his theory that the Priestly code, and hence the Jewish conception of monotheism, was of late post-exilic redaction. His approach to biblical investigation is still studied.[22]

Rabbi Mordechai Breuer believes that "the Torah must speak in the language of men." Therefore Breuer postulates that the Torah resorts to a technique of multi-vocal communication: texts that appear dissimilar in fact offer a powerful counterpoint.[23]

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher points to certain traditions of the Oral Torah which show Moses quoting Genesis prior to the epiphany at Sinai; based on a number of Bible verses and rabbinic statements, he suggests that Moses made use of documents authored by the Patriarchs when redacting that book.[24]

In Revelation Restored, Rabbi David Weiss Halivni develops a theory of Chate'u Yisroel (literally, "Israel has sinned"): "According to the biblical account itself, the people of Israel forsook the Torah, in the dramatic episode of the golden calf, only forty days after the revelation at Sinai. From that point on, until the time of Ezra, the scriptures reveal that the people of Israel were steeped in idolatry and negligent of the Mosaic law. Chate'u Yisrael, as a theological account, explains that in the period of neglect and syncretism after the conquest of Canaan when the originally monotheistic Israelites adopted pagan practices from their neighbours, the Torah of Moses became "blemished and maculated." According to Halivni, this process continued until the time of Ezra (c.450 BC), when finally, upon their return from Babylon, the people accepted the Torah. It was at that time that the previously rejected, and therefore maculated, text of the Torah was recompiled and edited by Ezra and his “entourage.” This is attested in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and Halivni supports his theory with Talmudic and Midrashic sources which indicate that Ezra played a role in editing the Torah. He further states that while the text of the Pentateuch was corrupted, oral tradition preserved intact many of the laws, which is why the Oral Law appears to contradict the Biblical text in certain details.

[edit] A-Mosaica and post-Mosaica

Some who maintain that the Pentateuch is mainly the writing of Moses distinguish some passages as a-Moasiaca or post-Mosaica. As an example of a-Mosaica, there is Numbers 12:3, "(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)" (NIV), for a humble man would not be expected to claim that superlative of himself. As an example of post-Mosaica, the standard example is the description of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34.[25]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ McEntire, pp.8-11
  2. ^ Van Seters (1998), p.3
  3. ^ Bandstra (2004), pp.11-12
  4. ^ Gooder (2000), p.5
  5. ^ McEntire, pp.10-11
  6. ^ McEntire, p.9
  7. ^ McEntire, p.10
  8. ^ McEntire, pp.10-11
  9. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  10. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  11. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  12. ^ http://halakhah.com/pdf/moed/Megilah.pdf
  13. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  14. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  15. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  16. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  17. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  18. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  19. ^ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf
  20. ^ Campbell, O'Brien (2003), pp.1-2
  21. ^ translated into Hebrew and available here
  22. ^ See Carla Sulzbach, David Zvi Hoffmann's Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf- Wellhausensche Hypothese, MA theses McGill Univ, 1996
  23. ^ "Emunah U-Madda Be-Parashanut Ha-Mikra," Deot, Cheker Ha-Mikra Be-Machshavah Ha-Yehudit Ha-Datit He-Chadashah, 11 (1959):18–25, 12 (I960): 13–27. See also Hirhurim for some articles on this approach
  24. ^ See Torah Shelemah, Mishpatim Part 3 summarised by Gil Student here
  25. ^ pages 41-42, 93-94 Tremper Longman III and Raymond B. Dilland, An Introduction to the Old Testament, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2nd edition: 2006 ISBN 978-0-310-26341-8.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mosaic_authorship&oldid=462512509"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox
Print/export