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Did Moses Write the Pentateuchal Narratives?

 Tradition has often assigned the Pentateuch to Moses. The law code often referred to by the Deuteronomistic history and prophets meant, for Second Temple Judaism, that Moses must have written down the law as it resides within the narrative, and therefore, perhaps the narrative as well. 

Further muddying the waters was the assignment of the Old Testament into two or three sections: Law and Prophets, or Law, Prophets, and Psalms/Writings. This division can be seen as early as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reasoning was, then, that if Moses wrote the law, then he must have written the entire narrative to which the term “Law,” as a designation of the entire Pentateuch, now refers. The Pentateuch was sometimes called the “Books of Moses,” and a particular narrative, e.g. a book like Exodus, was referred to as the “Book of Moses.” The New Testament also takes up these designations as references to the law, books and passages within some of the Pentateuch (although I don't believe, as far as I can remember, that a passage in Genesis is ever assigned to him in the New Testament).

All of these designations have explanations, however, that do not necessitate Moses as the author. For one thing, because the law is attributed to Moses does not mean that the narrative in which that law is now placed must also be. Second to this, the law being attributed to Moses could still mean that even the law code as it has now been formed and taken its narrative shape by a subsequent scribe or author means that it did originate with Moses even if not written down by him as we now have it. Finally, designating a book or section of Scripture as “the Book(s) of Moses” does not mean that Moses wrote them anymore than designating a section of Scripture as “the Books of Samuel” means that Samuel, who dies a quarter of the way through those books, means that Samuel wrote them. 

In fact, the Pentateuch itself only states that Moses recorded a few things in writing: the law code (Exod 24:4; 34:28; Deut 4:13; 5:22; 10:4; 31:9), in whatever form that originally existed, instructions for the tabernacle (Exod 32:47), the Israelite battle with the Amalekites (Exod 17:14—although he only commands that it is to be written), the course the Israelites followed up to Canaan (Num 33:2), and the census in Numbers. There is no statement that he wrote the narrative, the levitical codes, the poetry, etc. 

Furthermore, the Pentateuch itself indicates that Moses did not write it. A phrase continually appears throughout Numbers and Deuteronomy that so and so happened “beyond the Jordan” (Num 22:1; 26:3, 63; Deut 1:1, 5; 4:46–49). There is no question that the word bĕ(ēbermeans “on the other side of,” as when the narrative quotes the Israelites who are in the Transjordan, the phrase refers to the Cisjordan. Likewise, when the narrator refers to the Israelites in the wilderness by Moab with his use of the term, he is obviously referring to the Transjordan. Hence, if the author is saying that the things in the wilderness happened to Israel while they were on the other side of the Jordan, then the author is presently where? The Cisjordan, i.e., the place where Moses never sets foot. 

On top of this, the narrative refers to Moses in the third person, speaks of him as the most humble man who ever lived, and speaks aspectually as a whole, as though the events of which the author speaks have already taken place and can be spoken of as completed events of which the author is no longer (or never was) a part. 

It is true that the author of Genesis (as opposed to Numbers and Deuteronomy) uses the term to refer to the Cisjordan, but this may indicate, as many scholars today believe, that the book is written by one of the Diaspora. In other words, it is not Moses, but one of the levitical priests writing it during the exile. There is evidence of this, since Genesis also refers to the occupation of Canaan by the Canaanites as a thing of the past (Gen 12:6)—a reality that would not have been true in Moses’ time.

Having removed the idea that Moses must be the author of the Pentateuch if we are to maintain the whole of Scriptural integrity, we are free to take into consideration other possibilities. One tradition, a common historic Jewish one, is that, during and after the exile, Ezra rewrote everything that Moses wrote because the scriptures had all been burned up by Nebuchadnezzar. Hence, he rewrote them in much the same way as Jeremiah had to rewrite his prophecies after being burned up, I.e., with edits and expansions. 

Modern scholars argued for source theories, which have proven speculative and contradictory in terms of the analysis employed to discover which source is which. Furthering this academic chaos, literary readings of the Pentateuch have proven a coherence that makes little sense to any source theory that views these texts as incoherent patchworks thrown together. All this to say that simply because one might conclude that Moses did not write down our current Pentateuch does not at all prove source theories and developments that seem to contradict the data themselves. 

Instead, the Ezra hypothesis where the text is rewritten and updated or simply the hypothesis of a couple priests as the authors of the books is a sufficient explanation that doesn’t require fanciful reconstructions that have little support from the evidence itself.