The composition of the Torah (or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible— Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was a process that involved multiple authors over an extended period of time.[1] While Jewish tradition holds that all five books were originally written by Moses sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE, leading scholars have rejected Mosaic authorship since the 17th century.[2]
The precise process by which the Torah was composed, the number of authors involved, and the date of each author remain hotly contested among scholars.[3] Some scholars, such as Rolf Rendtorff, espouse a fragmentary hypothesis, in which the Pentateuch is seen as a compilation of short, independent narratives, which were gradually brought together into larger units in two editorial phases: the Deuteronomic and the Priestly phases.[4][5][6] By contrast, scholars such as John Van Seters advocate a supplementary hypothesis, which posits that the Torah is the result of two major additions—Yahwist and Priestly—to an existing corpus of work.[7] Other scholars, such as Richard Elliott Friedman or Joel S. Baden, support a revised version of the documentary hypothesis, holding that the Torah was composed by using four different sources—Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly and Deuteronomist—that were combined into one in the Persian period.[8][9][10]
Scholars frequently use these newer hypotheses in combination with each other, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another.[11] The general trend in recent scholarship is to recognize the final form of the Torah as a literary and ideological unity, based on earlier sources, was likely completed during the Persian period (539-333 BCE).[12][13][14]
^Berlin 1994, p. 113.
^Baden 2012, p. 13.
^Greifenhagen 2003, p. 206.
^Viviano 1999, p. 49.
^Thompson 2000, p. 8.
^Ska 2014, pp. 133–135.
^Van Seters 2015, p. 77.
^Baden 2012.
^Friedman, Richard Elliott (25 November 2003). The Bible with Sources Revealed. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-053069-3.
^Friedman, Richard (1 January 2019). Who Wrote the Bible?. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-9240-1.
^Van Seters 2015, p. 12.
^Greifenhagen 2003, pp. 206–207.
^Newsom 2004, p. 26.
^Whisenant 2010, p. 679, "Instead of a compilation of discrete sources collected and combined by a final redactor, the Pentateuch is seen as a sophisticated scribal composition in which diverse earlier traditions have been shaped into a coherent narrative presenting a creation-to-wilderness story of origins for the entity 'Israel.'"
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