Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the PeopleGladden, Washington
Religion
Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People
Gladden, Washington
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Who wrote these books? Our modern Hebrew Bibles give them the general
title, _"Quinque Libri Mosis_." This means "The Five Books of
Moses." But Moses could never have given them this title, for these are
Latin words, and it is not possible that Moses should have used the
Latin language because there was no Latin language in the world until
many hundreds of years after the day of Moses. The Latin title was given
to them, of course, by the editors who compiled them. The preface and
the explanatory notes in these Hebrew Bibles are also written in Latin.
But over this Latin title in the Hebrew Bible is the Hebrew word
"Torah." This was the name by which these books were chiefly known among
the Jews; it signifies simply "The Law." This title gives us no
information, then, concerning the authorship of these books.
When we look at our English Bibles we find no separation, as in the
Hebrew Bible, of these five books from the rest of the Old Testament
writings, but we find over each one of them a title by which it is
ascribed to Moses as its author,--"The First Book of Moses, commonly
called Genesis;" "The Second Book of Moses, commonly called Exodus;" and
so on. But when I look into my Hebrew Bible again no such title is
there. Nothing is said about Moses in the Hebrew title to Genesis.
It is certain that if Moses wrote these books he did not call them
"Genesis," "Exodus," "Leviticus," "Numbers," "Deuteronomy;" for these
words, again, come from languages that he never heard. Four of them are
Greek words, and one of them, Numbers, is a Latin word. These names were
given to the several books at a very late day. What are their names in
the Hebrew Bible? Each of them is called by the first word, or some of
the first words in the book. The Jews were apt to name their books, as
we name our hymns, by the initial word or words; thus they called the
first of these five books, "Bereshith," "In the Beginning;" the second
one "Veelleh Shemoth," "Now these are the names;" the third one
"Vayikra," "And he called," and so on. The titles in our English Bible
are much more significant and appropriate than these original Hebrew
titles; thus Genesis signifies origin, and Genesis is the Book of
Origins; Exodus means departure, and the book describes the departure of
Israel from Egypt; Leviticus points out the fact that the book is mainly
occupied with the Levitical legislation; Numbers gives a history of the
numbering of the people, and Deuteronomy, which means the second law,
contains what seems to be a recapitulation and reënactment of the
legislation of the preceding books. But these English titles, which are
partly translated and partly transferred to English from older Latin and
Greek titles, tell us nothing trustworthy about the authorship of the
books.
How, then, you desire to know, did these books come to be known as the
books of Moses?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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