Richard Elliott

The analysis of biblical authorship is referred to in almost any standard introduction to the Old or New Testament, in hundreds of commentaries on the Bible, and in most college and seminary courses on the Bible. But it still is not widely known or understood

They were rather part of a long, painstaking search, assembling small pieces of an enormous puzzle over centuries.

It is a strange fact that we have never known with certainty who produced the book that has played such a central role in our civilization.

Rather, the effort to discover who wrote the Bible began and continued because the answer had significant implications for both the traditional and the critical study of the Bible.

The rabbis of the centuries that followed the completion of the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament or the Holy Scriptures) likewise explained the problems and contradictions within the boundaries of the tradition: contradictions were only apparent contradictions. They could be explained through interpretation—often very elaborate interpretation—or through the introduction of additional narrative details that did not appear in the biblical text

The rabbis of the centuries that followed the completion of the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament or the Holy Scriptures) likewise explained the problems and contradictions within the boundaries of the tradition: contradictions were only apparent contradictions. They could be explained through interpretation—often very elaborate interpretation—or through the introduction of additional narrative details that did not appear in the biblical text

These tradition-oriented responses to the problems in the text prevailed into medieval times

At the first stage, investigators still accepted the tradition that Moses wrote the Five Books, but they suggested that a few lines were added here or there

Isaac ibn Yashush, a Jewish court physician of a ruler in Muslim Spain

Bonfils was not denying the revealed character of the text. He still thought that the passages in question were written by “one of the later prophets.” He was only concluding that they were not written by Moses. Still, three and a half centuries later, his work was reprinted with the references to this subject deleted.