Did Moshe Write the Torah? Part 2

In the past post we have noted that the Torah could have not been written entirely by Moshe. Perhaps, a little piece of if was written by Moshe (such as when it is accounted in first-person perspective) but nearly all of it was written by some other author. In fact, we have seen that it seems the Torah was written much after the death of Moshe. Here are additional problems with the Torah if we assume that Moshe wrote it.

Problem of Dan: Let us assume that New York City was called Jamestown one-hundred years ago. Now I know this is not true but let us just pretend it is for the sake of making a point. If a book was to be found that had a story of a guy arriving at Jamestown then one of the implications that we can get from this book is that it must have been written more than one-hundred years ago. Clearly, if it was less than one-hundred years old then it would mean that the story would be of a guy arriving at New York City not Jamestown. We will apply this simple concept to Genesis 14:14 to "Avram pursued them onto Dan". The location of Dan where Avram (Abram) pursued was not originally called Dan. It was called Leish. If we go to Judges 18:27 we read an incident of how the people of Leish were smote with the edge of a sword. Afterwards, in Judges 18:29, "And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father". The renaming of Leish to Dan does not take place until Judges, which is not only after the death of Moshe, it is after the death of Yehoshua (Joshua). Thus, not only does this show that Moshe cannot write the Torah because if it was written during his time then Moshe would have referred to Dan as Leish instead but it also shows a considerable amount of time must have passed after Moshe by the author who wrote this passage.

ibn Ezra Agrees: Go to Genesis 12:6 where it says, "The Canaanites was then in the land". This innocent looking statement demonstrates that Moshe is not the author of this verse. To say that "was then in the land" is to imply that there will come a time in the future when the Canaanites would not be in the land any longer. Moshe died before crossing the Jordan. It was Yehoshua (Joshua) who took lead of the Hebrew people and took them into the land of Canaan. It was under Yehoshua that the Hebrews conquered Canaan, settled there, and formed the nation of Israel. Moshe was dead during when the Canaanites will killed out from Canaan. Thus, whoever wrote "Canaanites was then in the land" would mean that this author must have lived after the supposed incident of Canaan conquest have taken place. Therefore, we see from this that not only Moshe is not the author of the Torah, but we get an idea of what time period the Torah must have been compiled under. What is surprising is that the ibn Ezra (a highly respected medievel commentary and Jewish scholar) recognized the same problem when he read the Torah. The ibn Ezra says in his commentary, "let the one who understand the mystery behind this verse be silent". What can ibn Ezra possibly be referring to? Apparently, ibn Ezra realized that this verse challenges the idea that Moshe wrote the Torah, since it was heresy to go against that notion the ibn Ezra has nothing to do but remain silent. He sees the problem with Mosaic authorship (this term means that Moshe wrote the Torah) so he hints at it but says nothing beyond it. In fact, ibn Ezra gives a few more of these hints in other locations throughout the Torah to hint at the problem with Mosaic authorship. But he does not say anything more.

This will be continued in a future post.