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Traditionally, Christianity and Judaism have held the human author of the first five books of the Bible to be Moses, the prophet of God. How did we get to the point where this view was abandoned by much of mainline denominational Christianity and even parts of Judaism?

Things changed when Julius Wellhausen, professor of oriental languages in the faculty of philology at the German University of Halle, became aware of Karl Heinrich Graf’s view that the Mosaic law was a post-exilic addition to the religion of the prophets, and the so-called “Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis” became highly influential across Europe by the end of the 19th century.

Under the lead of Ferdinand Christian Baur, influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Tübingen school of Theology continued what became a full frontal assault on traditional Christianity, and challenged the traditional sources of the New Testament documents. These two developments carried disastrous consequences for mainline denominational churches in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as these views filtered across the ocean and into the pulpit from university and seminary trained pastors.

Wellhausen’s anti-Semitic bias and acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis led him down the path of postulating that much of the early religion of Israel was actually influenced by paganism and was mere crude superstition rather than revelation from God. He saw in the earliest stages of Israel’s religion signs of animism followed by polytheism, totemism and tabu, and then the ultimate final stage of Hebrew religious development—ethical monotheism. These different stages of Israel’s religous development, so the theory goes, are hinted at in the Old Testament in the use of names and terminology identifiable from different sources.

Therefore, when someone talks about the underlying sources of the Pentateuch, those supposedly being the Jahwistic, Elohistic, Deuteronomistic, or priestly documents (JEDP or source criticism and the documentary hypothesis), you now know from where they are coming. Of course, much of scholarship has changed the way it approaches this subject, yet the theory continues to be popular. For example, while in many respects an excellent translation, The New Jerusalem Bible presents this view in its introduction and throughout its notes. However, this documentary hypothesis itself has come under severe criticism in the past 40 years [see for example, R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch, 1987]. Unfortunately we have over one hundred years of commentaries which refer to this theory and which still influence many Christians.

Unless one has studied church history or the history of biblical criticism, he is not likely to be aware of the development of these views. When I was a young believer in high school, I relied on the newly released Broadman Bible Commentary for guidance. Our church library had just obtained the first volumes [Genesis, 1969]. It was full of JED and P source views and provided my first exposure to the theory. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit guided my thinking more than the views of the scholars in the commentary.  

Christianity for most of its existence has held to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch because that is what scripture itself represents. Exodus 17:14; 24:4, 7; 34:27-28; Numbers 33:1-2; Deuteronomy 31:9 all assert Moses to have penned the words of the Law as revelation from God. As we read elsewhere in the Old Testament, Moses is identified specifically as the one who copied the law onto the tablets, and wrote the commandments of God in the book of the law (Joshua 1:7-8; 8:31-34; 22:5). Later scripture identifies Moses’ work as a much larger corpus [note the phrase "all the law"] comparable to what we think of as the Pentateuch (1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 14:6 which quotes Deuteronomy 24 ; 21:8; Ezra 6:18 which is a reference to Numbers; Daniel 9:11-13 refers especially to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28; and Malachi 4:4.). So, the scriptural testimony is rather clear that Moses recorded and documented the revelation of God to Israel that we know as the First Five Books of Moses.

The New Testament, and our Lord himself, portray the same (Matthew 19:8; Mark 12:26; Luke 22:44; John 5:46-47; 7:19; Romans 10:5).

We could also point to other evidence such as the writer’s use of Egyptian names, words, and customs which is consistent with Moses’ early adult life and education under Pharaoh.

In my view, there is not sufficient evidence to regard the traditional view of Moses as the author of the first five books as suspect. Indeed, the traditional view is more credible than the critics’ suppositions. At some point we will have a snippet on presuppositionalism, since whether one holds to the revelation and authority of the scripture or believes in the evolutionary process is a matter of starting point and what your basic presuppositions are.

© 2007, Scott Branyan

The Jewish divisions of the books of the Old Testament are:

This is the division Jesus refers to in Luke 24.44, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was yet with you, that all the things written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled”—the Psalms refer to the division of the Ketuvim as it was the first and most prominent book in the division. Jesus’ words indicate prophecies concerning him span the entire Old Testament.

The books of 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles are considered to be one book each in the Hebrew division.  

Students of the English Bible are customarily presented with a slightly different arrangement of the divisions of the Old Testament:

It is useful to know both systems as you will see both referred to in commentaries. 

© 2007 Scott Branyan

Genesis is the book of origins—origins of the heaven and earth, the human race, the patriarchs and the nation Israel. It is helpful to bear this in mind as one looks for a structural theme of the book.

One way of outlining the book of Genesis is the simple approach of: I. The Primeval History (Chapters 1-11) and II. The Patriarchal History (Chapters 12-50). Another approach is to base the outline on the term “generations” found in the book.

The Hebrew word—commonly translated “generations”—is the word tôledôt. The word, usually found in the phrase, “These are the … ,” occurs 13 times in Genesis. R. K. Harrison [Introduction to the Old Testament], following the lead of P. J. Wiseman, believes the phrase is a colophon–or a scribe’s distinctive emblem, used as an identifying device on his “books” or tablets–and occurs at the conclusion of each of eleven tablets. According to Harrison, this points to  the genuine literary sources–as opposed to the supposed sources of the documentary hypothesis–underlying the first 36 chapters of Genesis [p.548].

However, Harrison sees three other occurrences of the term term tôledôt in 10.32; 25.13; and 36.9 as being in isolation from the stereotyped phrase. In my mind, this is less than certain. In fact, the phrase “these are the generations of Esau” in 36.9 is identical to one found in 36.1. And it is odd that Harrison allows for a tablet from 36.2-36.9 but not one from Genesis 10.1-10.32 and he offers no solution to the word being found in the adjacent verses in 25.12-13.

It does seem some of the phrases point forward like 11.10ff. and 36.10ff., while others point to the preceding material. It may be that the phrase serves as a transition hinge to join preceding and following material together. It seems best to say Moses uses it as a loose structural catch phrase to bind together identifiable sections of material.

At any rate, the phrases are important in the organizational structure of the book and lay greater claim to signaling original source divisions than any other supposed source.

© 2007, Scott Branyan