was moses really the author of the pentateuch? Mr. William Wood corroborates that most of the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses.
can we be sure that moses wrote the first five books of the old testament? if you’re talking to a conservative old testament scholar like me, almost all of us would ascribe to a view called essential or substantial mosaic authorship. This means that, in general, Moses was the actual author of the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy. and what do we use to argue for this position? if you’re thinking of some tests, here are a couple.
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internal witness
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The internal testimony of the pentateuch would seem to lead us in that direction. think of the beginning of leviticus and numbers and deuteronomy. leviticus and numbers begin with the lord coming and talking to moses. And then what’s the rest of the book? It is the word that the Lord gave Moses to give to Israel. or the beginning of deuteronomy in deuteronomy 1:1, “the word of moses given to israel.”
other things within the pentateuch itself. moses plays a key role from exodus onwards and even the relationship between genesis and exodus says that moses is this key author. what do we see with genesis that has nothing to say about moses? well, the book of exodus and the book of genesis are actually joined together in hebrew as a simple conjunction vav, “and”. shows that the exodus is really just a continuation of the genesis narrative. where does the genesis end? It ends with God’s people in Egypt under oppression. where does the book of exodus begin the people of god in egypt under oppression, and then the rise of moses in exodus 2 and exodus 3. so we see that moses, as an internal witness to the book, plays a central role and is directly seen as the one who is the author of those books as in Leviticus, numbers, and Deuteronomy.
external witness
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according to the testimony of the rest of the bible, the pentateuch is closely related to, even written by, moses himself. We also see this, an external witness, in the rest of the old testament and in the new testament. in fact, in the book of joshua, do we see references to what? the law of moses, which is a reference to the pentateuch. in the new testament we see references to the pentateuch under the broad spectrum of just “moses” or the “law of moses” as well, meaning that according to the testimony of the rest of the bible the pentateuch is closely related to, even written by the same bassinet.
essential mosaic authorship
then why do we say essential or substantial mosaic authorship instead of just mosaic authorship? well, it’s because if you look at the internal testimony of the pentateuch, it also appears that some of these portions were not written by moses. the key example is deuteronomy 34. deuteronomy 34 is the death of moses. so how can moses write it? Of course, it’s possible Moses, prophetically looking forward, wrote Deuteronomy 34. But it doesn’t read that way, does it? It doesn’t read like other prophecies in the Old Testament, it reads like history. so it seems very likely that moses commissioned someone, perhaps joshua or another scribe, to finish the book of deuteronomy for him. now we also see things in deuteronomy 34 like, “no prophet like moses has risen in israel to this day.” that would sound a little weird if moses actually wrote that about himself because he was still alive. Therefore, we attribute to Moses the essential or substantial authorship of the mosaic, saying that the vast majority of the Pentateuch was written by Moses, in addition to these small portions such as Deuteronomy 34 that Moses commissioned to update or complete upon his death.
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