Of course, nobody can prove that
Moses or another prophet or a group of priests wrote Lev 1-16 or other parts of
the Pentateuch. Conversely, however, neither can anyone definitively rule out
any of these possibilities as an assured result of scholarship. In this section,
I probe some weaknesses of the pseudonymous authorship theory in relation to
the question of a historical Moses. My goal here is to question the confidence
of those who assume that the Pentateuchal narrative could not possibly be
factual.
First, why do ANE scholars accept
the historicity of Gudea, the ruler of Lagash about 2100 BC, but biblical
scholars reject the historicity of Moses, whom the biblical narrative framework
places over half a millennium later? A detailed Sumerian composition on two
cylinders of Gudea recounts his building and dedication of a new Eninnu temple
for the god Ningirsu, in which he claims to have received communication from
his deity Ningirsu to build a temple. This does not make him legendary or
fictional or use of his name pseudonymous. So what is the difference between
him and Moses who is said to have received analogous information from his deity
YHWH (Exod 25:8-9, 40)? To be consistent, this should not be enough to neutralize
or diminish real existence of Moses as a historical person. There have been
plenty of other prophets or alleged prophets from biblical times up to the
present who are readily accepted as historical.
It is true that we have the original
cylinders that date to the time of Gudea and other early artifacts pertaining
to him, most notably a number of well-crafted black diorite inscribed statues
of this ruler. By contrast, “currently there are no existing nonbiblical contemporary
sources that specifically mention Moses and the exodus. Furthermore, the
Pentateuch lacks the type of information that contemporary historians demand: a
clear witness to the use of sources close to the period described (i.e.,
annals, chronicles, inscriptions) and a backing of chronology that lines up
with contemporary material” (Mark W. Chavalas, “Moses,” DOTP 571). So a
case would be made against the historicity of Moses on the basis of silence,
but this kind of argument is logically weak. As if often said, “absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Second, the argument for silence
against the historicity of Moses is weakened by the fact that there are several
plausible explanations for lack of earlier extant evidence for him. For one
thing, it is likely that early written copies of pentateuchal books or portions
of what is now the Pentateuch would have been relatively few. This could partly
explain the importance of the discovery of the “Book of the Law (תּוֹרָה)” in
the temple by Hilkiah the high priest during the religion of Josiah (2 Kgs
22:8, 10-11; 23:2-3; 21, 24). The few texts would have been vulnerable because
they were likely written on papyrus, parchment (e.g., Jer 36:22-23), or other
materials that would not survive for centuries and could easily be destroyed by
fires, such as those kindled by invading armies (Kitchen, On the Reliability,
305; Garsiel, “Book of Samuel,” 28).
Moreover, the Bible and
archaeology attest to widespread departure from the religion mandated by the
Pentateuch throughout much of the preexilic era. There is abundant archaeological
evidence of idolatry, during this period, and 2 Kgs 23 reports concerning the
Passover that was observed in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of Josiah (v.
23): “For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who
judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of
Judah” (v. 22; cf. 2 Chr 35:18) (Second Chronicles 30 records a Passover
celebration during the reign of Hezekiah, but the whole event was delayed from
the fourteenth day of the first month [Lev 23:5] to the fourteenth day of the
second month [2 Chr 30:15; cf. Num 9:11] and most of the people were ritually
impure [2 Chr30:18; contrast Num 9:6-13]. Second Chronicles 30:26 reports that “since
the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like
this in Jerusalem”). It appears that the few existing copies of parts of the
Pentateuch were neglected, as indicated by the fact that the Book of the Law
found by Hilkiah had been lost in the temple during the previous years of apostasy.
It appears that this neglect could
at least partly explain the paucity of evidence in the historical and prophetic
writings of the Hebrew Bible for the impact of Lev 1-16 on Israelite life
during the preexilic period. Other explanations are less convincing. It is true
that the priests were the custodians of the ritual legislation, which was
idealistic and applied to the inner world of the cult. However, this body of
instruction was not intended to be a priestly secret, as ritual knowledge was
in at least some other ancient Near Eastern cults. Much of it was addressed to
all Israelites (Lev 1:2; 4:2; 7:23, 29, etc.), and the priests were to teach it
to them (Lev 10:11) (cf. “It is telling that the Bible never depicts priests or
scribes as jealous or protective of their writing skills. The notion of scribes
feeling . . . that it is a tragedy if divine knowledge falls into the wrong
hands, as Ipuwer put it in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom . . . is alien to biblical
knowledge” [Berman, Created Equal, 116]). (Roy E. Gane, “Was Leviticus Composed
by Aaronide Priests to Justify Their Cultic Monopoly?,” in Exploring the
Composition of the Pentateuch, ed. L. S. Baker Jr., Kenneth Bergland,
Felipe A. Masotti, and A. Rahel Wells [Bulletin for Biblical Research
Supplement 27; University Park, Pa.: Eisenbrauns, 2020], 207-9)
After discussing other evidence for the historicity of Moses
(ibid., 207-11), Gane notes that:
It would be argued that a mask of
Moses in Leviticus draws on the personality of this character portrayed in an
earlier book, such as Exodus. But then the question of historicity versus
persuasive pseudonymity simply shifts so that book, and if he is historical
there, why not in Leviticus? Authority must be established somewhere before it
can be credibly extended by pseudonymity, especially when so much weight is
placed on the authority. (Ibid., 211)