The Antiquity of the Books of Moses

Both Christians and Jews believe the Torah, in its present form, is the work of Moses, a belief unchallenged until two centuries ago. At that time a study called "Textual Criticism" gained popularity, asserting that most of the Old Testament was neither written by its supposed authors nor at the times indicated by the text. From this theory it was an easy step to suggest that much of the Old Testament narrative and history is legend and folklore put into written form with little or no basis in fact.

Archaeology has not favored Textual Critics. The fact that many archaeological digs have nullified most of the critics’ conclusions has not yet filtered into popular thought. In fact, some of their confident 19th century pronouncements look downright silly in the light of contemporary understandings of ancient times. Unfortunately many young and impressionable Christians are easily impressed by what seems to be a show of scholarship. They often accept such scholarly presentations without knowing how out of date they really are.

The Historical Beginning

In 1670 Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch-Jewish philosopher with pantheistic ideas, published the theory that writing was unknown prior to the 8th century BC (roughly the time of Isaiah). It was his theory that the Torah was composed by Ezra after the Exile. In 1753 Jean Astruc, a French theologian, published a book which separated those passages in Genesis where the name for God is Jehovah from those in which it is "elohim." He suggested that Moses, in compiling Genesis, had two sets of "sources" before him, the "Jehovistic" and "Elohistic," now shortened to "J" and "E" sources in scholarly circles. In 1787 Johann Eichhorn, a German historian, produced his Introduction to the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha. He endorsed Spinoza’s views and invented the term "Higher Criticism."

Some decades later theologians who accepted their views were known as "Higher Critics," the first of note being Abraham Kuenen, a Dutch theologian with a reputation as a devout and reverent scholar. He was Professor of Old Testament theology at Leyden University from 1853 onward, and did more than any man of his time to establish the "science" of Higher Criticism. He was supported by Edouard Reuss and Julius Wellhausen, both of Germany.

Wellhausen was the only one of these men to live into the 20th century. By then the theory that the Old Testament was first committed to writing in the 8th century BC was almost universally accepted by "advanced" scholars. In 1888 there were no known specimens of alphabetic inscriptions with an agreed upon date earlier than the Moabite Stone and the Siloam inscription, both dating from the 8th century, so their conclusions seemed correct. No one alive in 1888 dreamed that within another half century the world’s museums would bulge with written documents and tablets going back centuries before the time of Moses.

Principles of Higher Criticism

The five predicates for the late writing of the Old Testament were: 1) writing had not been invented before about 700-800 BC; 2) religious thought started with polytheism in the earliest times and progressed to monotheism, and not the other way around as Genesis has it; 3) the Mosaic code is too far advanced for so early a date; 4) the Levitical ritual is too sophisticated for a people just out of Egypt; 5) the historical events in Babylon and Egypt recorded in Genesis are unhistorical and never occurred.

Archaeology since 1880 has explored all of these assumptions. Each stands refuted. An examination and accompanying evidence is contained in the full text of the article "The Antiquity of the Books of Moses." It is available on line (www.heraldmag.org) or may be requested from the Pastoral Bible Institute (see address on inside back cover).