The Book Of Moses

The first five books of the Bible--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-- are called "The Pentateuch." For the Jews, the Pentateuch is called "Torah," a word that means "instruction." For centuries after Bibles began to be printed, they were titled, "The (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth) Book of Moses." If we are talking about the central figure in these books, that is a proper sub-title. Indeed, except for God, Moses is the towering giant! However, the references to Moses are in the third person; the word "I" is never in the text in reference to Moses. Would the most humble man on earth write of himself, "Now Moses was very meek, more so than all the men on the face of the earth!" (Numbers 12:3 RSV )

The Book

In the Garden of Eden no reference is made to a stenographer! The several accounts of “beginnings”--creation, sin (Adam, Eve, Cain), the flood and Noah, the Tower of Babel, etc. in Genesis 1-11) were written much later as God inspired an explanation of creation, sin, and cultural diversity. These chapters are theological, not geological, nor anthropological, nor even historical as we understand history. Moses could not have written Deuteronomy because most of it is written in the “third person” and it contains his obituary. As we have written in an earlier chapter, the Pentateuch as we know it today was probably compiled from old scrolls and edited while the Hebrews were exiled in

They had a considerable degree of freedom. There, "by the river Chebar," the priests revealed that they had smuggled sacred scrolls out of the Temple. The sacrificial religion in the Temple was replaced by sacred writings. In The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Vol. R-Z, p. 246 ) we learn, "the original scribe was a person able to cipher”, and from this came the words "secretary" and "scribe."

The scribes became "doctors of the law." Ezra was described as "a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses." They had to develop an alternative to the sacrificial system that depended on the Temple in Jerusalem! One internet source records that the copyists had to count the number of words of a completed scroll and compare it with the original for accuracy!

Most Bible scholars believe that it was there, in Mesopotamia, enslaved and homeless, that God inspired them with what we know as Genesis 1-11! Dr. Leonard Sweet of Drew Theological Seminary has written, "Everything we need to know about God is in the early chapters of Genesis." These chapters are not geology or anthropology or history, but theology. Those chapters are our theological foundation. In their gatherings there in Babylon, the people likely asked questions of the priests that we see answered in Genesis 1-11: “Who are we anyway?” o Where did the world come