Biblical Criticism and Mosaic Authorship

This post, the third in a series reviewing Elgin Hushbeck's Evidence for the Bible, addresses Hushbeck's comments on Old Testament criticism. Before embarking on this review, I should emphasize that source-criticism-- Hushbeck's particular concern here-- is not my specialty. I am familiar with only the broad outlines of source-critical debates. Nevertheless, I think I can contribute some missing pieces to Hushbeck's puzzle.

Hushbeck begins his chapter by erecting a dichotomy between liberal and conservative scholars. The difference, he suggests, is in their foundational assumptions. Liberal scholars hold to the somewhat arbitrary Enlightenment assumption-- typified by David Hume-- that miracles are impossible. As such, anywhere that we find predictive prophecy in the Bible it must have been written after the fact. Conservative scholars, meanwhile, assume that God can do whatever he wants, so they tend to date documents earlier (31-2). While there is some truth to this portrait, it should be emphasized that-- even in the case of the 19th-century liberals whom Hushbeck is fond of deriding-- it is not universally true. For example, Thomas Arnold, the great 19th century Anglican liberal, allowed for the possibility of miracles. He writes aptly,

Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled...For example, the understanding examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of God... These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case. (Source)

Although Arnold was unwilling to ignore the possibility of the miraculous, he still held that "the Bible consists of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate" (Source). Arnold himself believed that the Tower of Babel and a few other Bible narratives were mythical. Although he and some other 19th century liberals like Richard Whately did believe that miracles no longer occurred in the 19th century, this was because God tailors his revelation to human modes of thought, and after the biblical era mankind had progressed beyond the need for myth and miracle.

While this discussion goes well beyond anything that Hushbeck could be expected to include in his book, I think it provides a helpful counterpoint to his intimation that liberal scholars are a monolithic group, and that they have all arrived at their liberal positions due to a priori assumptions that the faithful do not share.

Hushbeck's launches his discussion of biblical criticism by attacking the documentary hypothesis. Several of his criticisms are accurate and time-honored, though there are a few inadequacies. First of all, he is incorrect to suggest that "among liberal scholars, the debate concerning the documentary hypothesis is considered to be over. They have declared victory for themselves" (43). The truth is that the debate is very much alive, especially among liberal scholars. ("The Documentary Hypothesis is dead!" one recent article abstract emphatically announces.) The four-source Documentary Hypothesis has a few modern champions, Richard E. Friedman being the most notable among them, but a large quantity of scholarly literature since 1975 has fundamentally challenged the four-source hypothesis. Certainly most scholars still consider Deuteronomy to be distinct from the remainder of the Torah, and usually attribute it to Josiah or to a Josian school of religious reformers. Many scholars also see in the other books of the Pentateuch the hand of a Priestly redactor. But for most scholars who still adhere to some form of the documentary theory, the E and J sources have all but dissolved into one another. (John Van Seters, Christoph Levin, and Erhard Blum, for example, advocate varieties of this view.) Other text-critics, like R. N. Whybray and Kenneth Kitchen, have questioned the viability of a documentary theory altogether; a revival of the work of Umberto Cassuto is symptomatic of a push in this direction.

Hushbeck summarizes the evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis in five points (35):

• Moses' death is recorded.
• Moses is referred to in the third person.
• Parallel accounts that are contradictory.
• Use of different styles.
• Use of different names for God.

The first two on the list, obviously, are evidences against Mosaic authorship rather than for the Documentary Hypothesis. The last on the list has been thoroughly problematized by recent scholars, which is a major reason the E and J sources have merged. The third and fourth on the list are matters of considerable contention. Hushbeck also mentions another reason for the emergence of the Hypothesis: the modern idea of progress suggests that religions "evolved into higher forms over a period of time." As such, the earlier sources represent a coarser and more primitive religion, which was later superceded by the later sources' "higher" religion. This is actually the opposite of the views of Wellhausen (who is usually credited as the creator of the hypothesis). Wellhausen idealized the "noble savage", and viewed the Priestly accretions as a corruption of the earlier, more romantic, story-telling-around-the-campfire faith. While both the idea of progress and the noble savage ideal are undoubtedly naive, one cannot help but wonder whether even Hushbeck would deny that religion changes over time. Change, rather than uniform progress or decline, is the basis for more recent theories concerning the composition of the Torah.

To Hushbeck's list of points should probably be added at least a few more. One would be theological distinctions. The Deuteronomist, for example, obviously differs in his evaluation of the usefulness of "high places" from the other Pentateuchal author(s). Another would be the existence of other ancient Hebraic composite texts, as documented by Jeffrey H. Tigay in his JBL article "An Empirical Basis for the Documentary Hypothesis". A third would be the apparent explanatory power of the Hypothesis in some cases, as documented on another blog in two parts (here and here).

While I am not familiar enough with the debate to say for certain what I think about the Documentary Hypothesis, I do tend to agree that Deuteronomy and the Priestly material are distinct and that some of the poetic passages (like the Song of Moses in Deut 32) appear to be considerably more ancient than the surrounding text.

From his brief, moderately successful efforts to problematize the Documentary Hypothesis, Hushbeck turns to the task of making the case for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Here, I think, he fails to convince. He begins by arguing that the books of the Pentateuch themselves claim to have been written by Moses. As evidence, he cites Exodus 24:4 and Deuteronomy 31:9. Carefully read, however, these verses make no such claim. Deuteronomy 31:9 does suggest that Moses wrote the laws in Deuteronomy, and Exodus 24:4 suggests that Moses wrote down the Covenant Code (Exodus 21:2-23:33). Neither text, however, asserts Mosaic authorship for the entire Torah. In answer to the objection that Moses couldn't have written his own death account, Hushbeck suggests that this was added by Joshua. As for third-person reference to Moses, Hushbeck notes that it is not unprecedented for ancient authors to have referred to themselves in the third person. To these he adds a few archaeological and linguistic observations. For example, he suggests that the Book of Deuteronomy is modeled on Hittite suzerainty treaties. This argument has been answered by Moshe Weinfeld in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), wherein a wealth of evidence is presented linking Deuteronomy instead to Assyrian political documents of the seventh and eighth centuries.

I am of the opinion that a fairly simple prima facie case can be made in answer to Hushbeck's argument for uniform Mosaic authorship. Consider the following verses:

Gen. 12:6: Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Gen. 13:7: And quarreling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.
Gen. 14:7: Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazazon Tamar.
Gen 14:14: When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan.
Gen 36:31: These were the kings who reigned in Edom before any Israelite king reigned:
So Joseph settled his father and his brothers in Egypt and gave them property in the best part of the land, the district of Rameses, as Pharaoh directed.
Deut. 2:12: Horites used to live in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out. They destroyed the Horites from before them and settled in their place, just as Israel did in the land the LORD gave them as their possession.

These are just a few of the places in the Pentateuch where the hand of a later author clearly intrudes into the narrative. In addition to these, we might cite the following:

Josh. 24:26: And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God.
Isa. 29:13: These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.
Jer. 7:22: for when I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offering and sacrifice.
Jer. 8:8: How can you say, "We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?"

This last passage is particularly significant. Evidently Jeremiah believed that the scribes had falsely redacted the Law. This is precisely what was claimed by Wellhausen.

Beyond the biblical argument, of course, there are linguistic difficulties. As mentioned above, the language of the Song of Moses is considerably more archaic than that of the surrounding text. This strongly suggests that the majority of Deuteronomy was written much later than the Song. A full investigation of linguistic evidence, however, is well beyond the scope of this review (not to mention my abilities).

The bottom line is that these issues are much more complicated than apologetic treatments of them like Hushbeck's make them out to be.