Composition of the Torah

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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 in Yehud.[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]

  1. ^ Berlin 1994, p. 113.
  2. ^ Baden 2012, p. 13.
  3. ^ Greifenhagen 2003, p. 206.
  4. ^ Viviano 1999, p. 49.
  5. ^ Thompson 2000, p. 8.
  6. ^ Ska 2014, pp. 133–135.
  7. ^ Van Seters 2015, p. 77.
  8. ^ Baden 2012.
  9. ^ Friedman, Richard Elliott (25 November 2003). The Bible with Sources Revealed. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-053069-3.
  10. ^ Friedman, Richard (1 January 2019). Who Wrote the Bible?. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-9240-1.
  11. ^ Van Seters 2015, p. 12.
  12. ^ Greifenhagen 2003, pp. 206–207.
  13. ^ Newsom 2004, p. 26.
  14. ^ 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.'"