Assuming biblical inerrancy as a starting point, this paper provides a reconstruction of the composition of the Pentateuch that charts a “via media” between the Documentary Hypothesis and the traditional view of comprehensive Mosaic authorship.
The available data can be grouped under five headings:
(1) The Pentateuch credits Moses with writing several of Israel’s “constitutional documents” (D. Block). It also cites numerous historical witnesses to corroborate this assertion (e.g., memorial stones, eyewitnesses, handwritten copies, public recitation). Other biblical authors strongly affirm the historicity of Moses and his writing activities.
(2) As G. Wenham observed, the authorship of Deuteronomy is the “lynchpin” of the debate. Recently, N. Huddleston has shown that Deuteronomy stands closest to second-millennium BCE Hittite treaties but transforms its genre.
(3) Like many ANE documents, the Pentateuch is an anonymous work, and Scripture nowhere explicitly states that Moses was the final editor of the Torah. The text bears signs of post-Mosaic scribal supplementation. Expansions of this sort are consistent with well-documented scribal practices elsewhere in the ANE.
(4) Recent computational studies have validated the critical-scholarly consensus that “P” and “non-P” are linguistically-distinct strata. Passages like Exod 38:21; Num 1-4; 26; and 31:26-54 hint at the compositional uniqueness of P, for they describe the writing of early priestly documents as a collaborative effort between Moses, the priests, and sometimes civil leaders.
(5) Occurrences of the phrase “the (scroll of) the law of Moses” in the Former Prophets refer exclusively to Deuteronomy, while later biblical authors use the same title to designate the entire Pentateuch. This shift in usage implies that Deuteronomy and the Tetrateuch were once separable but were combined at some point after Deuteronomy was rediscovered (2 Kgs 22-23; ca. 622 BCE). Meanwhile, the terminus ad quem for the Torah’s final form is the end of the exile (ca. 539 BCE), for in Ezra 3:2, the first wave of returning exiles found both Num 29 and Deut 27 in “the law of Moses.”
Taking all of the foregoing points into consideration, we arrive at the conclusion that the composition of the Pentateuch likely involved a three-stage process (cf. the Epic of Gilgamesh). First, it is plausible to think that Moses authored the earliest forms of non-P, P, and D. Second, Spirit-inspired scribes transmitted, supplemented, and modernized the text(s) over many centuries. Third, exilic scribes combined Deuteronomy with the Tetrateuch to forge the composite Torah. Thus, the Pentateuch is both Mosaic (i.e., Moses stands behind the sources) and a mosaic (i.e., the final edition weaves together multiple Mosaic traditions).
The final phase of this paper sketches out two hermeneutical implications of the above hypothesis. First, there are striking typological similarities between the original audience of the Pentateuch (the exodus generation), the readers of its final form (exilic returnees), and the new covenant reader. Second, the hermeneutical situation of the Pentateuchal reader is like that of the Gospel reader: the dominant voice is that of Moses/Jesus, and yet his sayings are placed within a larger literary framework by the redactors/evangelists.