Although many of us have heard of Wellhausen's JEDP theory, I think most
evangelicals in this country assume Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. I
rarely hear it debated in our circles. Thus we probably don't think much
about how to defend this view.
Such New Testament verses as Luke 16:29,31, Luke 24:27, John 1:45, John
5:46, Mark 12:26, Acts 26:22, Rom. 10:5 are interpreted as implying that
Moses was the author of a substantial portion of the Pentateuch.
On the other hand, some verses or passages such as Gen. 14:14, Gen. 35:20,
Gen. 36:10-43, and Deut. 34:1-12 certainly appear to be the work of a
later editor. In fact Gen. 36:31 and Deut. 34:10 appear to have been
written much later.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Inge Frette wrote:
> I am just curious. Is it normal to think of Moses as the author of
> the Pentateuch. When I studied theology at the evangelical faculty
> in Oslo here in Norway I didn't learn that. I learned that the
> Pentateuch is composed of different sources edited in a later period.
>
> I don't want to trigger a big discussion on this issue. Just want to
> know whether Jan de Koning expresses a view that is common "over there",
> and to find out whether there is a "geographical" difference here among
> evangelicals, since here in Norway many evangelicals
> don't think of Moses as the author.