Did Moses write the frist 5 books of the bible?

[sam1008]

Hey dudes, I'm writing an essay on this subject and my guess is that Moses did receive from G-d and wrote the core of the 5 books of Moses but that they were then developed and added to by priests before being finally written down in the form they are now.

Any comments and/or resources would be great.

[dauer]

It depends who you ask. Those applying the same criteria to the Torah as they do to other texts and observing from a detached perspective generally say no, not by Moses, although they may suggest that there was something that went back to Moses to which the myth of the revelation is linked.

The traditional Jewish myth does not suggest that priests added to and developed the Torah but that there is an accompanying oral Torah which has been and still is applied to allow Torah to fit new situations.

[I, Brian]

If you're talking about a process of editing then you're basically talking about Redaction Theory:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/...h_torah_torah/

which is certainly not to be regarded as an accepted principle of Judaism.

[dauer]

I, Brian, it is pretty much accepted within all movements except for Orthodoxy which is not to say that it's treated as a foundational principles but that it appears in liberal chumashim and is sometimes referenced as one possible understanding of History within the statements of principles for the liberal movements. For example in Emet Ve-Emunah which is the Conservative movement's statement of principles it lists different views on revelation among Conservative Jews. The first is much like Orthodoxy, that it's a personal encounter that has "propositional content" and is "immediately normative, as defined by rabbinic interpretation." The other views are much different:

Some believe "...that revelation consists of an ineffable human encounter with God. The experience... inspires verbal formulation by human beings of norms and ideas... continuing the historical significance of the revelational encounter."

You can see how that middle one is a bit nuanced and allows for some varying views within it. And then finally we have the view of "revelation as the continuing discovery, through nature and history, of truths about God and the world. ... always culturally conditioned... nevertheless seen as God's ultimate purpose for creation. Proponents of this view tend to see revelation as an ongoing process rather than as a specific event."

For an even more clear statement, see the foreward of said document regarding the committee that came together to draft it: "We all accepted the results of modern scholarship. We agreed that historical development of the tradition had taken place, and that the tradition continues to develop."

That is all from the publication Emet Ve-Emunah by the Conservative movement, Conservative Judaism being the liberal movement furthest to the right. Orthodoxy, in rejecting the findings of modern scholarship, is the odd one out and by no means a yardstick by which to define what is normative for Judaism, if there even is such a thing.

Dauer

[sam1008]

Thanks very much for the replies guys and the link to Bob X's article. I'll have a proper read of that in a bit. I've worn myself out for the moment reading an article in the Catholic encyclopedia about Mosaic authorship. My lecturer Rabbi Dan seems to believe in the redaction theory by the way - its just i haven't found evidence of the idea that the kernal of the books come from Moses in what i've read in his works - which is what seems to me to be the most likely thing.

[bob x]

Oh my, I haven't re-read "Torah Torah Torah" since I scribbled it off (Jan. 2001 I think that was?). I was meaning to rewrite it, organizing all those tangential offshoots that are jammed into parentheses, in some more readable fashion; but I never got around to it.