Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. (Deuteronomy 34:5)Congratulations on reading through the Pentateuch - the Books of Moses. Although nowhere in these five books is it claimed that these words were penned by Moses, because they are called the Books of Moses, there are those who would fight you for suggesting that maybe Moses didn't write them. Most scholars would agree that these books are the product of several oral traditions and, once written down, subject to several revisions before coming to their final form sometime in the 6th century B.C.
Regarding the above verse there are basically three schools of thought. 1) Moses knew he was going to die and wrote these paragraphs prophetically; 2) Moses wrote the rest of the Pentateuch and someone else added these few verses at the end; or 3) what I said in the preceding paragraph.
None of those people are going to change their minds because of what I think.
So what do you think? After all, you've read the Pentateuch; most people have not. You're the expert now.
I prefer option #2. My most influential Bible prof at Warner Pacific College often gravitated towards a relatively conservative school of thought regarding most instances of authorship. He laid out a pretty good case for an early date of composition (or at least an early date for a reasonably finalized oral form of the Pentateuch).
ReplyDeleteMy current, non-expert take is that while Moses may not have literally written down these books, his divinely inspired words were passed along orally and meticulously compiled in written form. This included prophesy (all eventually fulfilled), but not necessarily prophesy written as a historical account.
The compiler of the Pentateuch, in my view, would have had enough knowledge of Israel's history to add verses 5-8.
I lean toward a combo of #2 and #3, that Moses wrote *some* of it, which was expanded on, etc. by the oral traditions and writings by other learned men of that era, simply because that seems the most realistic to my thinking. Hm! - Amy
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