Moses - Man or Myth? -Who Wrote the "Books of Moses"?

 Traditionally, Moses has been credited with being the author of the five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch. Moses may have drawn some of his information from earlier historical sources. Many critics believe, though, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch at all. "It is thus clearer that the sun at noonday that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses," asserting the 17th century philosopher Spinoza.  In the latter half of the 19th century, the German scholar Julius Wellhausen popularized the "documentary" theory-the books of Moses are an amalgam of the works of several authors or teams of authors. 

Wellhausen said that one author consistently used the personal name of God, Jehovah, and is thus called J. Another dubbed E, called God" Elohim." Another P, supposedly wrote the priestly code in Leviticus, and yet another, called D, wrote Deuteronomy. Though some scholars have embraced this theory for decades, the book The Pentateuch, by Joseph Blenkinsopp, calls Wellhausen's hypothesis a theory "in crisis." 

The book introduction to the Bible, by John Laux, explains: "The Documentary Theory is built up on assertions which are either arbitrary or absolutely false. . .. If the extreme Documentary Theory were true, the Israelites would have been the victims of a clumsy deception when they were permitted the heavy burden of the Law to be imposed upon them. It would have been the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in the history of the world." 

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