Pentateuch Essay

The question of authorship of the Bible, more specifically the Pentateuch has an important bearing upon its meaning and its reliability. The traditional notion that the Pentateuch is attributed to Moses can be derived from both biblical and extra-biblical evidence. As Gleason Archer points out in “A Survey of Old Testament,” Moses is attributed with authorship within the Pentateuch itself. Take Exodus 34:27 for example, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Other books within the Old Testament but outside the Pentateuch (Joshua 1:8, 8:32) also allude to the Pentateuch as the book/law of Moses. The New Testament also alludes

While literal hypotheses such as the Supplement Hypothesis and the Documentary Hypothesis (which are discussed and delineated by Whybray) try to account for the inerrancy of humankind as the ammunation toward dismantling the Pentateuch as a complete narrative authored by Moses, I simply look to scripture to why these theories should not influence the weightof the Bible as inspired literature from God to Moses. 2 Peter 1:21 (which Archer also points out), which states “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit,” is one reason alone why I hold to the traditional view. One can also point to scripture within Pentateuch, throughout the rest of the Old Testament and allusions iterated in the New Testament to validate Moses as the author: Exodus 34:27 and Joshua 1:8, 8:32 to name a few. Nevertheless, there are numerous albeit yet-to-be substantiated reasons why the traditional view does not hold up. For one, how can Moses be the author when he dies in the book, so how would have he written the whole thing? Another question that is often raised— how did Moses know about things that were before or after his time? For example, the Edomite Kings did not exist until after Moses’ death. There are also numerous inconsistencies that make really