Traditional attribution to Moses; compiled and redacted ~5th century BCE

Biography

The Torah's authorship is one of the foundational questions of modern biblical scholarship. Traditional attribution assigns all five books to Moses, but critical scholarship since the 17th century (Spinoza, Hobbes, Richard Simon, Jean Astruc) has identified multiple literary sources woven together by editors. The Documentary Hypothesis, formalized by Julius Wellhausen in 1878, posits four major sources: J (Yahwist, ~950 BCE, southern kingdom, uses the name YHWH, anthropomorphic God, vivid storytelling), E (Elohist, ~850 BCE, northern kingdom, uses Elohim, more abstract God), D (Deuteronomist, ~621 BCE, associated with Josiah's reforms, centralized worship, sermonic style), and P (Priestly, ~550-450 BCE, post-exilic, genealogies, ritual law, systematic creation account). A final redactor (R) compiled these sources into the Torah we have, probably in the 5th century BCE during or after the Babylonian exile. While the Documentary Hypothesis has been extensively revised and challenged — some scholars now prefer supplementary or fragmentary models — the basic insight that the Torah is a composite text remains virtually universal in academic scholarship.

Traditional attribution to Moses; compiled and redacted ~5th century BCE at a glance