INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH

Daniel I. Block

T he first five books of the Old Testament, sometimes called “the books of Moses,” are also called the Pentateuch. The expression Pentateuch derives from two Greek words penta, “five,” and teuchos, “vessel, container.” This designation dates to the time of Tertullian (ca AD 200), but Jewish canons label these books collectively as the Torah, which means “teaching, instruction.” In English Bibles these first five books are commonly called “Law.” This designation is misleading. Large portions are not law at all; they are actually inspiring narratives.

THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS OF THE PENTATEUCH

The Pentateuch is one continuous narrative. For example, the first verb in Lv 1:1 (“And he called”) lacks a subject, which must be supplied from the last verse of Exodus. Because of the physical limitations of scrolls, it was necessary, probably from the outset, to divide the narrative into five segments more easily manageable on leather or vellum scrolls. This division dates at least to the second century BC in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT. The partitioning creates the unfortunate impression that these are distinct compositions to be interpreted separately. This is wrong. The story that begins in Genesis 1:1, climaxes with the making of the covenant at Sinai, and ends with Moses’s theological exposition of the covenant in Deuteronomy.

THE PLOT OF THE PENTATEUCH

The pivotal event of the Pentateuch is God’s revelation of himself at Sinai. Everything before is prologue, and all that comes after is epilogue. The patriarchal narratives look forward to Sinai. In Genesis 12:2, God promises Abraham that he would be a blessing to the whole world. Later God explains that this would involve being the recipient of the divine revelation (cp. Dt 4:5-8), being a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a special treasure “out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine” (Ex 19:5-6). At Sinai the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob formally became the God of Israel, binding Abraham’s descendants to him by confirming the eternal covenant (Ex 31:16-17; Lv 24:8; cp. Jdg 2:1). Finally, Sinai is anticipated in Genesis 26:5, where the Lord recognizes that Abraham “listened to me and kept my mandate, my commands, my statutes, and my instructions.” The expressions echo the Sinai revelation; apparently Abraham fulfilled the requirements of the Sinai covenant without the benefit of the Sinai revelation. The narratives describing Israel’s journey from Sinai to the Plains of Moab are told against the backdrop of the Lord’s covenant with Israel and Israel’s promise to do “all that the Lord had told them.” Numbers 28:6 explicitly refers to the Sinai revelation. But the book of Deuteronomy, virtually in its entirety, represents Moses’s exposition of the Sinai covenant. However, the primary character is not human; this is a record of God’s relationship with those he created in his own image, whom he elected, redeemed, and commissioned to be his agents on the earth.

Reading the Torah.

THE THEMES OF THE PENTATEUCH

The theological themes developed in the Pentateuch are virtually innumerable. These represent the theological skeleton of the narratives: God as Creator (Gn 1-2); God as Judge of sinful humanity, who spared Noah (Gn 3:1-11:26); God as the one who elected his agents of blessing the world, entered into covenant relationship with them, and promised to give the land of Canaan to their descendants as an eternal possession (Gn 11:37-50:26); God as one who redeemed his people from slavery (Ex 1:1-15:21); God as one who accompanied his people during their desert travels, providing for their physical needs and punishing the faithless (Ex 15:22-17:7; 18:1-27; Nm 10:11-20:29); God as one who entered into covenant relationship with and revealed his will comprehensively to Israel at Sinai (Ex 19:1-Nm 10:10); God as one who fights for Israel against their enemies (Ex 17:8-16; Nm 22:1-25:18); God as one who will give Israel their land and promises to be with them after the death of Moses (Nm 26:1-Dt 34:12).

LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES IN THE PENTATEUCH

Although the Pentateuch is commonly called “The Law,” formal legislative material is limited. In fact this designation is misleading, as even a cursory reading of Psalm 1 suggests. If the Pentateuch were primarily “law,” it would scarcely be the psalmist’s delight or a source of light and life (Ps 1:2-3). The Pentateuch is dominated by “gospel,” good news of God’s grace demonstrated through election, salvation, and the providential care of his people.

To be sure, law is present, if by “law” we mean commandments prescribing human behavior. The Pentateuch contains hundreds of such prescriptions (Jewish Rabbis counted 613), referred to in Hebrew as torah (“teaching”), mitswoth (“commands”), huqqoth (“statutes, ordinances, decrees”), mishpatim (“judgments, regulations, laws”), and edut (“covenant stipulations”), which may be characterized as constitutional regulations.

Although prescriptive material is found elsewhere, for the sake of convenience we refer specifically to six prescriptive sections: the Decalogue (Ex 20:1-17; Dt 5:6-21); the “Book of the Covenant” (Ex 21:1-23:33); the Tabernacle Prescriptions (Ex 25-31); the “Manual on Ritual Worship” (Lv 1-7); the so-called Holiness Code (Lv 17-25); and the so-called Deuteronomic Code (Dt 12-26). Leviticus and Numbers contain much additional prescriptive material, but the above are commonly recognized as self-contained units.

In addition to historiographic narrative and con­stitutional prescriptions, other literary genres are represented in the Pentateuch. These include poetic texts in the narrative (including “Jacob’s Blessing of His Sons,” Gn 49:1-27; The “Song of the Sea,” Ex 15:1-18; “Balaam’s Oracles,” Nm 23:7-10,18-24; 24:3-9,15-24; Israel’s “National Anthem,” Dt 32:1-43; and “Moses’s Blessing of the Tribes,” Dt 33:2-29), statistical material (genealogies, Gn 5; 10; 11:1-26; 25:1-4; 36; 46:8-27; Ex 6:14-27; military registration lists, Nm 1:1-3:51; 26:1-65; booty lists, Nm 31:32-47; a journey itinerary, Nm 33:1-49; boundary descriptions, Nm 34:1-12; and personnel lists, Nm 34:16-29), proverbial sayings (Gn 2:23; 3:19; 10:9; Ex 33:19), aetiologies (explanations of the origins of practices or names, Gn 2:25; 21:31; 26:33 [Beer-sheba]; Ex 2:10 [Moses]; etc.), and treaty/covenantal forms. The Decalogue itself is presented as a covenant document, complete with preamble, historical prologue, and stipulations. Covenantal forms extend to Numbers and Leviticus as well (note especially the covenant curses in Lv 26) and in particular to the book of Deuteronomy. Although Deuteronomy consists of Moses’s farewell addresses, they are arranged to reflect ancient Near Eastern (second millennium BC Hittite) treaty forms.

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PENTATEUCHAL NARRATIVES

Prior to the Enlightenment, the historicity of the patriarchal and exodus narratives was not questioned. However, this changed dramatically in the past centuries. The first casualty to higher critical scholarship was the opening chapters of Genesis. Because creation in Genesis 1-3 apparently disagrees with some modern scientific conclusions, because events of Genesis 4-11 involve prehistoric and preliterate events, and because texts like Genesis 2:7 and 6:1-8 describe divine and semi-divine beings relating directly to human beings, these texts are interpreted as mythological, akin to Babylonian creation and flood accounts rather than as a historical record. The second casualty was the patriarchs. Because these stories present idealized pictures of Israel’s ancestors and deal with preliterate times, they are largely dismissed as legendary retrojections of later Israel, created to explain the existence and unity of Israel. The third casualty was Moses and the exodus. Although until recently many critical scholars recognized a historical core in the exodus narratives (the memory of a handful of slaves who escaped from Egypt to Palestine), now even this reduction is rejected as theological historicizing. The fact that archaeology has failed to give evidence validating the characters or events in the Pentateuch is accepted as proof that none of this is true.

However, the issue is not that simple. Concerning the archaeological record, we accept the axiom, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Furthermore, while doubtful that archaeology can prove the Bible, the discoveries of the past century allow us to reconstruct patterns of life and a “skeleton” of ancient Near Eastern history, in which the events described in the Pentateuch are quite at home. As for the historicity of the exodus, just as it is impossible to explain the existence of the church without reference to the historical incarnation and resurrection of Christ, so it is impossible to explain the existence of Israel without the dramatic intervention of God on her behalf, the memory of which underlies the entire OT. With respect to the patriarchal narratives, the authors of these texts did not consider themselves to be writing fiction.

Based on ancient stories handed down in oral or written form, these narratives preserve the ancient memory of God’s gracious intervention for the purpose of bringing blessing and life to a world under the curse of death. Genesis 1:1-2:4a is composed in a lofty and elegant style, appropriate for text to be used in worship, but this does not mean that it is the product of human imagination. This text not only celebrates God as the Creator of all things, but humanity as the climax of his creation. The generic, stylistic, and substantive links between the early chapters of Genesis and the later narratives, including Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, suggest a continuous historical story line from the creation of the universe to the rise and fall of Israel.

THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH

Although Jewish and Christian traditions almost unanimously recognize Moses as author of the Pentateuch, few issues relating to the OT now are debated as hotly; indeed, in few issues is the gulf between critical and evangelical scholarship so wide. Many conservative scholars continue to believe that Moses wrote virtually all of the Pentateuch with his own hand. So long as critical scholars recognized Moses as a historical figure, in principle his involvement in the composition of the Pentateuch was not excluded—unless one doubted that he was literate.

However, from the middle of the nineteenth century AD, especially following Julius Wellhausen, most critical scholars have rejected Moses having a significant role in the origin of the Pentateuch. The questioning began early with doubts whether Moses recorded his own death and burial (Dt 34), or knew of a place in northern Israel called Dan (Gn 14:14; cp. Jos 19:47; Jdg 18:28b-29), or referred to the conquest of Canaan as past (Dt 2:12). Thus scholars developed an alternative explanation for the origins of the Pentateuch known as the Documentary Hypothesis. According to the classical form of the theory, the Pentateuch is the product of a long and complex literary evolution, specifically incorporating at least four major literary strands composed independently over several centuries and not combined in the present form until the time of Ezra (fifth century BC). These sources are identified as J, E, D, and P.

The bewildering variety of theories fosters little confidence in critical scholarship. However, the fact remains that nowhere does the Pentateuch specifically name its author. As was common in the ancient Semitic world, it is anonymous. On the other hand, the internal evidence suggests that Moses kept a record of Israel’s experiences in the desert (Ex 17:14; 24:4,7; 34:27; Nm 33:1-2; Dt 31:9,11).

Furthermore, many statements in the OT credit the Pentateuch to Moses (e.g., Jos 1:8; 8:31-32; 1Kg 2:3; 2Kg 14:6; Ezr 6:18; Neh 13:1; Dn 9:11-13; Mal 4:4), and the NT identifies the Torah very closely with him (Mt 19:8; Jn 5:46-47; 7:19; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:5).

A series of additional features within the text point to an early date for its composition: (1) the forms of the names and many of the actions of the patriarchs make best sense in a second millennium BC environment; (2) the narratives suggest a thorough acquaintance with Egypt; (3) Egyptian loanwords appear with greater frequency in the Pentateuch than anywhere else in the OT; (4) the name Moses itself suggests an Egyptian source for the story; (5) the general viewpoint of the narrative is foreign to Canaan; (6) the seasons are Egyptian; the flora and fauna are Egyptian and Sinaitic; (7) in some instances the geography reflects a foreign viewpoint (e.g., a comment like that found in Gn 33:18, “Shechem in the land of Canaan,” is unlikely after the exile because by then Israel had been in the land for 900 years); and (8) archaisms in the language (like the use of the third-person singular pronoun, hiʾ, for both genders), all point to an early date.

Moses very well could have written most of the Pentateuch himself. Having been raised in the court of Pharaoh, and given the new twenty-two-letter alphabet, Moses’s own literary qualifications for writing should not be dismissed. It is unlikely that all these considerations establish that Moses wrote all the Pentateuch as we have it. It is doubtful he wrote the account of his death in Deuteronomy 34. Frequently the text provides explanatory notes updating facts for a later audience (e.g., “Esau (that is, Edom),” Gn 36:1; the aboriginal inhabitants of the Transjordan, Dt 2:10-12). Furthermore, the form of the cursive Canaanite script that Moses probably used was still in its infancy and was replaced with the square Aramaic script in the postexilic period, and the vowels were added a millennium later. The archaic qualities of the poems (Gn 49; Ex 15; etc.) in contrast to the surrounding narrative suggests the latter may have been updated periodically in accordance with the evolution of the Hebrew language. This may explain why the grammar and syntax of Deuteronomy in its present form reads much like Jeremiah, who lived long after Moses. In addition, Moses could have used a scribe or secretary.

There is no reason to doubt that Moses wrote down the speeches he delivered (Dt 31:9-13), or that when he came down from Mount Sinai, he arranged for the transcription of the revelation he had received on the mountain, if he did not write it all himself. It is equally plausible that he authorized the written composition of many of the stories and family records of the patriarchs that had been transmitted orally or in rudimentary written form. Just as the pieces of the tabernacle were constructed and woven by skilled craftsmen and finally assembled by Moses (Ex 35-40), so literary craftsmen may have composed some bits and pieces of the Pentateuch and submitted them to Moses, who then approved them. When exactly the pieces were put together in their present form we may only speculate (Deuteronomy suggests some time after the death of Moses), but it seems likely that by the time David organized temple worship, the contents of the Torah were fixed. The Pentateuch is fundamentally and substantially Mosaic, and later Israelites accepted it as bearing the full force of his authority.