The first five books of the bible are commonly called “the books of Moses.” They’re also called
| ENGLISH NAME | WHICH MEANS | HEBREW NAME | WHICH MEANS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genesis | beginning | Berešít | at the beginning |
| Exodus | mass departure | Šemót | names |
| Leviticus | of the Levites | Vayiqrá | and he called |
| Numbers | numbers; duh | Bamidbár | in the wilderness |
| Deuteronomy | second law | Devarím | words |
Hebrew names tend to come from the first word of a book or psalm, and the Torah’s book titles come from verse 1 of each book. The English names are translations of
They’re called the books of Moses despite Moses not being in Genesis at all… but his ancestors were, so there’s that. Largely they tell us the creation of the Hebrew people: How they got into Egypt in the first place, how they became Egyptian slaves, how
And we don’t know who wrote ’em.
Well we don’t. In this article, for convenience, I refer to Torah’s author as “Moe.”
Moe is not Moshe ben Amram, the prophet and judge who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, whose English-language name is Moses. We know Moses wrote parts of Torah. Big huge parts. More than once the L
But Moses isn’t the person who put Torah into its current form. And most scholars, regardless of how they think Torah was assembled, agree at least one person ultimately did this. So I call him “Moe.”
Anachronisms and Moses.
I know; this revelation tends to throw some people, whose
Firstly it’s full of
Now, calling things by their present-day names is a common practice. But historians usually make it clear it wasn’t called that back then. Because whenever historians forget to say so, it confuses people. When the Byzantine emperors refer to the Roman Empire, it’s gonna confuse history students who think they must either mean the Holy Roman Empire, or the Roman Empire which (they think) fell before the middle ages. Historians gotta explain the Byzantine Empire is the Roman Empire; that long before it “fell,” the government packed up, left Rome, moved to Vyzantion, and renamed the city Constantinople. (And the Ottomans later renamed it Istanbul.) “Byzantine Empire” is a name historians coined in the 1500s. The Byzantines never called themselves that; they were “Romans.”
Same deal in Exodus. When that book states the Hebrews built “Raamses,”
It is possible Moses wrote the first draft of Torah. Then someone else got hold of the books centuries later, and updated them. But the very fact someone updated Torah means Moses isn’t their final author. And we don’t know how extensive these updates are: Moe coulda made a few small changes, or restructured ’em top to bottom. Moses’s first draft coulda been a random list of commands—and I’m not at all saying Moe removed any, but he could’ve significantly reorganized them, or added the stories about why the L
But thanks to these anachronisms, we wind up with discrepancies in Torah. Sorry;
Fr’instance God told Moses he wasn’t known as
Anyway. When you aren’t aware there are anachronisms in Torah, your interpretations aren’t gonna be historically accurate. All the Exodus movies where Raamses or Merneptah was the pharaoh Moses faced off against? Wrong guy by about 200 years. (And no, the Hebrews didn’t build the pyramids. Those things were 2,000 years old when Abraham visited Egypt. Yeesh.) All those archaeologists who went digging round the Sinai peninsula looking for where the Hebrews encamped, and found nothing? Wrong continent entirely; Sinai’s in Arabia.
Once you know your history, and pick up on the parts of the bible which aren’t anachronisms and point to when and where things really happened, you’ll find historical and archaeological evidence all over the place. Ancient writings from Assryia and Nuzi describe surrogate-parent practices much like we see in Genesis with Hagar,
(Yeah, lots of
The “documentary hypothesis.”
The most popular current theory of how Moe put together the Torah, is called the
Most of the time the hypothesis is associated with 19th-century scholar Julius Wellhausen and his 1878 book Geschichte Israels (“Israeli History”; here’s a link to the 1885 edition.) His idea about how Torah came together from multiple documents, each written by someone with a different emphasis, sounds kinda reasonable. Doubtful it came together exactly as Wellhausen imagined, but maybe it came together like this, which is why a lot of scholars still look at Wellhausen’s hypothesis.
The documentary hypothesis also gets called “the JEDP theory” because of the initials Wellhausen used to describe it. The letters reflect the four authors, editors, or redactors, whom Wellhausen figured had contributed to Torah’s composition.
- THE YAHWIST. First there’s an author who worshiped Y
HWH —which the Germanstransliterate as JHVH ,which is where “Jehovah” comes from, and also why they call this author “J.” The Yahwist, or “J,” wrote all the Torah stories which use the LORD ’s name, or emphasize how super important his name is. It’s why there are stories in Genesis which refer to the LORD , even though the LORD himself told Moses he wasn’t called that yet.Ex 6.3 - THE ELOHIST. Next there’s an author who worshiped the One God, and simply refers to him as either
אֵ֣ל /El orאֱלֹהִ֜ים /Elohím, both of which mean “God.” Hence “E.” Ever notice how some Genesis stories only refer to “God” (i.e.Genesis 1 ), and others call him “the LORD God” (i.e.Genesis 2 )? Wellhausen’s thinking was these two creation stories come from two different traditions: E told the story his fellow God-worshipers knew, and J told the story as the YHWH -followers preserved it. - THE DEUTERONOMIST. This’d be whoever composed Deuteronomy. (Who might possibly be
the Deuteronomistic historian, although Wellhausen didn’t speculate such a person existed.) Any stories in Torah which reflect the theme of Deuteronomy—namely if God’s people follow his Law, he’ll let ’em live in the promised land, and if they don’t out they go—were possibly inserted by Deuteronomy’s author. - THE PRIEST. Stories and traditions which have to do with the tabernacle, its construction, its implements, rules for its priests and Levites, ritual sacrifice,
ritual cleanliness, and anything priestly, were supposedly by a writer who wanted to make sure Torah spelled out his important job.
According to Wellhausen, these stories are so different from one another in theme and tone, they had to be composed by different guys… and Torah’s final editor simply stitched ’em together, changing very little because he wanted to keep them as intact as possible. Probably because he believed
A number of conservative scholars totally reject Wellhausen’s theory, because they really don’t like some of his other speculations as why it came together this way. Namely, Wellhausen believed Israel’s religion evolved from multiple gods to
And I should point out there are certain scholars who have bought into the documentary hypothesis way too much. They even claim they can detect multiple Elohists who wrote the “E” material—and sometimes designate them as E1, E2, E3, E4, and so forth. To be fair, it’s entirely possible every single story in Genesis originated from a unique source, which means dozens of “E” and “J” sources, and you could make yourself nuts trying to differentiate them, or guessing which of them was written by the same author. Is that really the best use of your time? Nah.
Torah scholar Richard Elliott Friedman even has an edition of Torah with the JEDP sections color-coded, called
Anyway. Regardless of what you think of the documentary hypothesis, most scholars are agreed somebody, but not Moses, ultimately put Torah in the form we translate into English. If you wanna call Moe “Moses,” it’s a good-enough shortcut. But be clear; Moe isn’t Moses.
