CX

Just a quick note. I presumed the OP was a serious question and one which is interesting or may be interesting to some posters. As such could we please refrain from flip contentless remarks about the states of mind of those who accept Mosaic authorship of the pentateuch or individual posters here who might hold that position?

Thanks,

CX - BC&H Moderator

CJD

Thanks for doing your job, mod.

Many Hebraists take the "Moses and Ur-Genesis" route. For example, Bruce Waltke (if not Wenham first) claims that …Despite this conviction, however, Waltke goes on to suggest that if one assumes Mosaic authorship of Ur-Genesis, the anachronisms (14:14; 36:31) then show that the scribe, the offical revisers of the text, modernized and supplemented as needed the putative Ur-text of Moses. Maybe they added 36:9–29 (Esau's line), 38 (the Judah interlude", and the "Joseph Story" during the monarchy? The historical books are at best anonymous, according to Waltke.

Thus he argues that … Thus the answer to the OP for at least one scholar is yes, but not in full.

Regards,

CJD

mightyjoemoon

Fundamentalist Christians do. I would assume that Orthodox Jews do, but I could be wrong about that. I'd be curious to know what the typical Muslim view of this is, or the fundamnetalist view, for that matter. I know they distrust the New Testament's take on Jesus, but I don't really know their attitude toward the Pentateuch.

Chili

I don't think it is important at all who wrote what. The purpose of the bible is that we understand the message and we do not need to know the author to do this.

The whole bible is like a vehicle that is supposed to get us from A to B, like a wheel barrow, for example, and once we get to B the bible will have served its purpose and can be abandonned as a thing of the past. I even think that it is wrong to study the author to better understand the message because the messengers tried to remain obscure so we would look for the reality behind the metaphor. Important, however, is that it is inspired and for us to know this we must trust those who have reached the end and lived to tell us about it.

Sgent29

I wanted to point out that although Orthodox Jews do believe in the literal word -- what they make of it is likely to be very different tha many others. They don't just consider the Moasic texts to be the word of God, but also the Oral Tradition (including Talmud), which modifies by interpretation whole sections of it from where many christians stand.

In addition, the consider the literal meaning of the text to be the lowest form of knowledge, and place a much greater emphasis on the symbolic and multiple meanings within the text.

KevinE

I'm pretty sure that the Roman Catholic "higher-ups" don't currently require that one accept Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. I can't remember all the details, but it's my impression that at the beginning of the twentieth century the Catholic Church was pretty antagonistic toward higher criticism. Nevertheless, there was some decision (perhaps by one of the popes named Pius?) in the course of the twentieth century, after which the official position of the Church has been that higher criticism (and, I assume, the well-substantiated conclusions that accompany it, like non-Mosaic authorship) is OK.

I definitely think that if you were to ask the average Roman Catholic biblical scholar in the U.S. right now, there's a good chance that he or she would reject Mosaic authorship. I also think that if you were to ask the average Roman Catholic in the pew, there's a very good chance that he or she would accept Mosaic authorship. This illustrates one of my pet peeves with current sermons in even the mainline and Catholic churches--the pastors know about current biblical scholarship, but most of them don't raise the complexities of it with their parishioners.

Thus, it's probably helpful to distinguish official Church teaching (probably allowing one to reject Mosaic authorship), opinion among Catholic scholars (probably almost uniformly opposed to Mosaic authorship), and average Catholics (probably almost uniformly accepting Mosaic authorship).

Can anyone flesh out the official Catholic position for me?

Mageth

Here's a page on the Torah from an online Catholic Encyclopedia:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14779c.htm

It's a bit ambiguous to me, but seems to be arguing in support of Mosaic authorship.

The following page, on Monotheism, actually seems to argue a bit more strongly for Mosaic authorship of the Torah:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10499a.htm

This page states the RCC's position more clearly:

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt94.html

Chili

It is quite obvious that Moses did not write anything because the poor guy wasn't inspired to start with. In my view he was a forerunner of Billy Graham who led searching believers into the promised land where they did not belong and therefore they died/will die nonetheless. The point here is that it was wrong for him to lead others into a "personal relationship" with God (which is equal to the "promised land") that is expressed in the "parting of the sea" metaphor. The reality here is that we must learn to walk on water and go by our intuition to get into the promised land (intuition is the memory of our soul).

If we take this one step further it can be argued that Moses misled the 'children of Is-ra-el' and deserves the millstone according to Jesus who showed us how to walk on water.

Jehanne

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/pentateuch.htm

Jehanne

Check out the index:

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/index.html

Here's a good one:

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt100.html

Regards,

Don