chieftain

Not quite: among Jews it is, today, still the mainstream (Orthodox*) position that God dictated the Torah in its entirety to Moses on Mt Sinai. Including the bits which talk about Moses' death. Reform Jews tend to accept the DH.
[*]Outside the US, Orthodoxy represents the vast majority of affiliated Jews.

Dean Anderson

Evidence that Moses did not write the majority of the Torah

(Note: The biggest piece of evidence that Moses did not write the Torah is the archaeological evidence that there was no Exodus or Conquest, and therefore that it is incredibly unlikely that Moses ever existed. However, for the sake of argument, I am assuming in this thread that Moses did exist, and therefore my evidence and arguments here do not presuppose that he was merely a legendary figure.)

1) Evidence of multiple authors

The Tablet theory that Dave is promoting as an alternative to the DH ascribes Genesis 1-37 to a variety of patriarchal authors.

However, it says that it was Moses who collected and compiled their tablets, and it was Moses who wrote Genesis 38-50, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

This, of course, is contradicted by all the evidence for multiple sources that we have already mentioned. The text of the Torah is clearly written in a variety of styles and in language of a variety of ages. This is clearly not the work of a single person. Dave has tried to avoid addressing this point by stressing that the Tablet theory - like the DH - accepts that there were multiple authors.

This is very misleading of him, though.

The Tablet theory says that the only the first 20% of the Torah had multiple authors, and that the remaining 80% was written by Moses. This 80%, naturally, contains all the differences in textual style and age that indicate multiple authorship.

The Tablet theory has no explanation for these differences (and, if I may repeat myself, the consilience between the sections of text that you get when splitting the text by these different differences). Simply saying "Oh, but the Tablet theory agrees that there were multiple authors" does not work. The Tablet theory claims that the majority of the text does not have multiple authors, and therefore cannot explain the differences and the consilience between them.

2) Lack of any authorial claim

Nowhere in the Torah do any of the authors actually identify themselves. This, in itself, is not surprising. The authors of most texts do not go out of their way to introduce themselves.

Indeed, under normal circumstances this would not be considered evidence of non-Mosaic authorship.

However, the Tablet theory assumes that the ancient writers that Moses used as sources signed off their works with colophons. However, it would have us believe that despite Moses copying these works, and despite him copying their colophons - which the Tablet theory assumes were standard practice in Hebrew writing - Moses completely neglects to include any colophons of his own to indicate that any of the text is his history.

3) The Point of View of the Text

The Torah does not talk from the point of view of Moses.

Firstly, the text never talks from the first person perspective when talking of Moses. It always refers to him in the third person.

Secondly, the Torah refers to states of events that occur during the narrative, and then says that they are like that "to this day". This is a clear indication that the writer is talking about events that happened in the past, not events that are happening as they write.

Thirdly, the text talks about what Moses did "across the Jordan". Since the text is clear that Moses died before ever getting chance to cross the Jordan and enter what would become Israel, then someone talking about what Moses did "across the Jordan" would necessarily be on the other side of the Jordan to where Moses was - i.e. the Israel/Judah side - and therefore could not have been Moses.

4) Anachronisms

Moses lived - according to the Bible - from about 1660 BCE to 1440 BCE. However, as spin has already pointed out, the Torah makes many references to people and places that simply did not exist at that time. Therefore, whoever wrote about them must have lived at a later time, when they did exist.

As a side note, the time when these people and places did exist is a good match to the time periods that the Hebrew used in the different DH sources can be dated to - yet more consilience.

(Note: There are many other anachronisms in the Torah that would indicate it was written much later than the time of Moses - but to go into detail about them would derail this thread into yet another argument about archaeology and the accuracy of dating techniques.)

5) The book reports Moses's own death

This is a good indicator that he didn't write it. Of course, apologists over the centuries have often claimed that Moses could have written about his own death because he was a prophet - but this does not match the text. The Hebrew Bible is full of the utterings of prophets, and the text that includes Moses's death is not in the style of someone prophesying. It is in the matter-of-fact narrative style of the rest of the story of his life.

In fact, the style of the writing about Moses's death is such a good match for the style of the previous writing that it also makes the other common apologetic for this - that Moses wrote the majority of the Torah and then Joshua added a postscript about Moses's death - also improbable.

Codec

I also like the phrase in Numbers 12:3
"(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)" or
"(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)"
depending on translation.
It seems a little unlikely for the humblest man who ever lived to write about himself in such glowing terms!

Keith&Co.

So, they say that Moses wrote:

??
It seems to me that 'unto this day' would be freaking odd to include in a description BEFORE the event, or even immediately after by anyone present at the time. What's the minimum reasonable time between Moses contemporaries and 'unto this day?' A year? Is that really the style, to say it's been a year since Moses' death and no one remembers where we put the sepulchre? I'd expect at least a generation would be involved. The more generations, the more impressive the time.


??
Since? Same thing. If Moses wrote it, would he use past tense?
Sure, if he was a prophet, maybe he'd know that there would not be a prophet like him until some future date. But wouldhe say 'since?'

And if someone who was in the desert with him finished off his last scroll, again how long would it be before they'd add 'since?' Would it make sense to claim that there hasn't been a prophet like him in the month since? The year since? The fiscal calendar quarter?

Dean Anderson

A note about the history of the DH

Dave has repeated a few times that the DH is a 19th century "invention" and a product of "19th century occidental thinking" and "a Hegelian approach" to history.

He specifically cites Julius Wellhausen in this, as if he were the first person to come up with the idea.

In fact, the idea is not new. Tragically, it has been suppressed through history by both Christians and Orthodox Jews.

As far as we can tell (if there are older speculations than this then they have not survived), the first tentative steps towards the DH were made by Isaac ibn Yashush, who lived in Spain during the Moorish occupation, who pointed out the anachronisms in the Torah and said that Moses couldn't have written all of it.

He was thoroughly denounced for his heretical views, and his books were mostly burned.

Later, in the 12th century, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra pointed out many places in the Torah that were clearly not Mosaic. He was more careful than Isaac, though. He called Isaac "Isaac the Blunderer" for his theories, and was careful to point out the inconsistencies only as a way of illustrating what Isaac was talking about, not as anything he personally endorsed. He did, however, make cryptic comments such as "and if you understand then you will recognise the truth" and "and he who understands will keep silent" - so it seems clear that he too was quietly proposing non-Mosaic authorship but was afraid to publicly endorse it.

In the 14th century, Bonfils of Damascus was prepared to openly say that the Torah could not be Mosaic. Even though he was careful to say that the Torah was still God's instruction and was careful to say that it was still probably written by later prophets, his books were censored and published with those parts excised.

In the 15th century, Bishop Tostatus of Avila got away with pointing out that Moses couldn't have written about his own death by claiming that Joshua had appended that part.

By the 16th century, Carlstadt was able to point out the stylistic similarity between the bits before and after Moses's death made the theory of additional information having been appended by Joshua unlikely, and point out that this "raised questions" - but either could not or dare not go further.

Also in the 16th century, Andreas van Maes was brave enough to suggest that maybe Moses wrote most of the Torah but other editors went through and "updated" place names to what would be familiar to readers in their later period. His book was placed on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books.

The first person to be able to speculate that Moses was not the author of the Torah and get away with it was Thomas Hobbes.

Unfortunately, Isaac de la Peyrere - a contemporary of Hobbes - was not so lucky. When he wrote a book presenting evidence that Moses could not have written the Torah, his book was banned and burned; and he was held under arrest until he publically converted to Catholicism and personally recanted his heretical views to the Pope.

Baruch Spinoza published a book pointing out that the Torah must have been written by a person or persons living long after Moses. Not only was he excommunicated from Judaism, his book was also placed on the Catholic Index and had 37 edicts issued against it. An attempt was even made on his life because of outrage at his views.

Richard Simon, wrote a book attacking Spinoza's views - saying it was unwarranted to think that Moses did not write the Torah, and it was far more sensible to think that it was merely edited a bit after Moses's death. Even this was considered beyond the pale, and Simon was expelled from his Catholic Order and his book was placed on the Index and burned.

Even John Hampden, who merely translated Simon's book into English, was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London until he publically recanted his views.

By the 18th century, however, the Church had lost its grip and its ability to censor any ideas that didn't match dogma.

H. B. Witter, Jean Astruc and J. G. Eichhorn were all able to independently publish works pointing out that the Torah appeared to have two sources due to the differences in style without fear of inprisonment or censorship. At first, it was assumed that one source was Moses's own hand and the other was a document that Moses used - but as more scholars took an interest in the subject, it became obvious that both sources were post-Mosaic.

It was at this point when the theory stopped being the province of dilettantes and theologians and entered the realm of serious academia.

As many scholars began taking the idea seriously, it became apparent that what was thought to be a single Elohist source - whilst it was definitely distinct from the Jahwist - still had internal stylistic differences and issues. Consensus was quickly reached that some of what had been classified as the work of the Elohist source was by a different source - a Priestly source.

W. M. L. De Wette then published a doctoral dissertation arguing that Deuteronomy did not match any of the existing three sources, and should be classified as its own source - the Deuteronomist.

So where does Wellhausen come in to all this?

Well, contrary to Dave's innuendo, he did not invent the four-source DH, and it is not dependent on whatever his 19th century views and attitudes may or may not have been. As you can see from the above, it had been under slow development (despite the suppression of the Church) for most of the millenium, and had taken off and developed naturally as soon as people were free to look at the text objectively without fear of heresy charges.

What Wellhausen actually did was to take the four sources that scholars agreed that the Torah was made from, and expand on the work of Graf and Vatke (who had both independently come up with theories on the dating of the four sources; the former based on the historical clues in the documents and the latter based on the theological development between them - and those theories matched each other) to form a coherent story of when each of the four sources of the DH were written.

Wellhausen's work was an excellent step forward in understanding the text - and is the basis for modern versions of the DH (although some of his datings have been modified in light of archaeological findings since he was alive) but the DH has its beginnings long before him.

You may notice that I have avoided discussing the datings of the four sources in any detail in this thread. This is because whereas the four-source DH itself is well established, any individual hypothesis about the actual dates of each source is by its nature somewhat more speculative.

Dean Anderson

Sorry about the length of that, folks - my "note" turned into an essay...

Coleslaw

Quite interesting, though. I wonder what our resident apologists make of the way both Catholics and Jews suppressed books that advocated the DH and harassed and imprisoned some of their authors? Do those actions represent an Occidental or Oriental way of evaluating the text, I wonder?

Dean Anderson

They'd probaly just point out that it was Catholics doing the oppressing, and not True Christians^(TM)...

Dean Anderson

Well, it's Monday morning (it is here, anyhow - America will catch up in a few hours).

I'm looking forward to the responses from our resident inerrantists and YECs - Dave is not the only one we have, but the others seem to avoid his threads - to the arguments against Mosaic authorship...

-Jay-

It deserves pointing out here that the DH is now taught without any appreciable controversy in Catholic universities, and even at high school level. It's fairly mundane now.

(Of course, there are the Christian groups that place Catholics just one step above the devil himself...)

Excellent work, by the way, Dean. Your efforts are much appreciated.

regards,

NinJay