A Biblical Criticism Study (1) The Author of The Torah

www.bible011.blogspot.com    the Arabic translation for the article's contents                                              

It was not the first time ,to find some attackers ,for the author of the "Torah" ,along the history , to deny his capacity in being a prophet of God, the Bible told us about " Mariam" the sister of "Moses ", the daughter of " Amram" or " Aumran" in the Arabic pronunciation . She was the author of the Exodus song (Exodus 15.1-20 ) , but she allowed to herself to interfere in correcting  some aspects in the personal affairs of "Moses " who was a prophet of God , so, she became leprous like the snow (Number 12) , After that "Korah" , "Dathan" and "Abiram" who denied the prophetic career of "Moses" (Number16), God ordered the earth to divide and swallowed them  , it is suitable to denote that the Meth of "Karon" which have known in the east , has its origin from that events , "Korah" was a rich man but the earth swallowed him and his money , the Critics neglected the events of the past , in spite of it warned the critics , they criticize the authorship of the "Torah" along different ages. One of our respectable scientists who called 1*"Young" wrote an article about the history of the criticism and recorded that " Jen Astruc" , 1553 , was the first man who criticize the "Torah", but "D.F.Payne 2*" had another opinion that the first man was "Masius" 1573 , while the great scientist "F.F.Bruce 3*" suggested that "H.B.Wetter" ,1711,was the real first man . in fact , every one of them made a definite beginning in the field of the criticism . But if we search about the post history date of Criticism we will find it referred to the "Moses" times as we saw before .It is important now to study the history of the criticism during the Christian history. There were some Church's fathers like " Irenaeus" , "Tertullian" and "Clement of Alexandria " who adopted some old stories from the old tradition , before the birth of Christ , like the story which was recorded in II Esdras 14.21,22 about "Nebuchadrezzar" ( between 602-562 B. C ) who put the "Torah" in the fire , and burned it so "Ezra" rewrite it again ( "Ezra" was about 458 B. C ) , that story did not refer to any trusted source of history , and lakes the logical bases , because"Ezra" was not in the times of "Nebeuchadrezzar", and the copy or copies which were with the Jews during the Exile , were not the only copies of the "Torah", also the Jews in the exile were not all the Jews, because some of them remained in the sacred lands, like "Jeremiah"(626-587 B.C) , the prophet who was an eye wittiness for the events of the exile in the sacred lands, and wrote his "Lamentations" , It was not logical that those pious people had not copies of the "Torah" , specially after the reformation of Josiah" (640-609 B.C) .

So, our respectable fathers were deceived by the story of II Esdras, some of them like "John of Damascus 4*" denied the Mosaic authorship ( J.P.Migne,PG,XCIV,688-89 ), in the "Clement Homiletics , he told us about the Satan who interfered in the writing process of the "Torah" , in order to describe "Adam" , "Noah" and the fathers in a bad figure , so "Anstasius The Sinaite" the patriarch of Antioch during the seventh century , recorded that the"Torah" has included some imaginations . (5* J.P.Migne, PG,LXXXIX, 284, 285)  . Those great fathers, we respect them for what they did to handle us the sources of the Christian principles , but as we say in the Arabic parable " Every horse has a fault and every  saint has a mistake", sometimes they failed because their desire to focus in the new testament advantages, so they did not care enough to follow the roots of the wrong sources about the writings between the testaments .
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- when the doom of the medieval ages came , the attackers of the Torah referred to the older history of criticizing the Torah , like what "Ibn Ezra" has done 1167 A.C , when he referred to what the "Rabbi Isac ben Jasus 1*" 1057 A.C , who mixed between "Hadad" in Genesis 36.35 who was before "Moses " times ,with "Hadad" in IKings 11.14 at the days of "Jehoshaphat" and suggested that the Genesis was written after the days of "Jehoshaphat". He did not care that there were habitual repeating of the popular names among the eastern people , for example there was "Eleazar the slave during the days of  Abraham " , "Eleazar the priest during the days of Moses" and "Eleazar whom Jesus Christ has arisen him from the death" .The "Rabbi " which means " The teacher and the writer"suggested that there were some texts  which were added to the Torah like Genesis 12.6, 22.14 , Deuteronomy 1.1,3.11 ...etc, He suggested that there were duplicated  mentioned for the events so , the writers collected them from many sources ( but they could not comment why the mention writers neglected that double )  .
"Spinoza 2*",1670, compared those duplicated events and assured that "Ezra" was the person who collected them . When the "Renaissance 3*" began , the reformation movements began to spread out and the leaders encouraged to deal with the Holy Bible, with more free open minded, so,the opinions increased with the increasing of the reformation schools, one of these reformers who's name was "Carlsdadt 4*", 1480-1541 , he suggested that "Moses" did not write the Torah, he said that if we observed that the book of Deuteronomy  for example was written by a mentioned writer who has one style of writing, then the epilogue which recorded "Moses's death " led us to the logical conclusion that, it was impossible for "Moses " to write that book ( it was clear that he did not believe in the inspiration and the prophetic abilities of the prophet) .
The criticism increased by the joining of the laymen, who were criticizing the Literature,the most famous one of them was "Andreas Masius 5*"1573,he was a Belgium lawyer , related to the Roman Catholic Church, and recorded his thoughts in a book of commentary of Joshuah, 1574 A.C , where he wrote that "Ezra"added some texts to the Torah, this proclamation was used after him by many critics, even they did not agree with him , if "Ezra" was the man who added them or any other person, the Spanish Jesuits had a similar attitude like "Masius" towards the Torah , the famous persons who helped him in that task were "Jack Bonfrere 6*" and "benedict - Pereira" 1535-1610 A.C , they were the most famous philosophers at their times, and used their journal to reveal their thoughts , thus, they published their thoughts , which were able to spread out rapidly , their thoughts were to assure that their were some added texts to the Torah, after the times of "Moses",thus, they paved the way for "Benedict Spinoza 7* " ,1632 - 1677 A.C , who deny completely the Mosaic authorship , and doubted in "Ezra's additions " , paving the way to tho open doubts to refer it to  latest  times ( Tractatus Theologico- politicus 8*) .
"Thomas Hobbes 9*", in 1651 A.C, published his book"Leviathan" to deny that "Moses" has written the Torah , in spite of there were some possibilities that it contained his thoughts , but he has not written it absolutely (according to his opinion).
"Richard Simon 10*", was a Roman Catholic person who gathered the criticism of the Torah along the seventeenth century paving the way for the Armenian "Jean Le Clerc 11"1985 A.C, who supported the opinions of"Richard"and added that the Torah contained man's thoughts with the divine thoughts  together and the date of its authorship was later than the exile 722 B.C during the times of "Ezra" .
The beginning of using "The Documentary Hypothesis" was by "Hans Wetter 12*" ,1711,A.C,he observed that there were two chapters in the book of Genesis , the first  chapter where he called God "Eloheem" and the second chapter where he called God "Yahoah", it was the beginning of the idea about the Elohist source and the Yahoist source , the most majority of the Christians refused his thoughts at the beginning of the eighteen century , until a French Phisician named "Jean Astruc 13*" ,1753 A.C ,  published his book about Genesis , and suggested that , there were two memories "Deux Memoires14*" in the mind of "Moses" , where he kept some information , besides 12 documents ,the two memories with the 12 documents were the real sources of the Torah .
"Astruc" did not believe in the inspiration as a source of the informations which were included in the Torah ,he could not mention to us about the "deux memoires" and the 12 documents What were the names of these sources ? ,Where they went ? or From Where did he collect them? 
It was just hypothesis , he tried to prove his theory by the imagined  reflections of both of these sources on the Torah's texts , he suggested that the first "memoire" contained the name of "Yahoah" as a name of God  while the other "memoire" contained the name of God as "Eloheem" but the other12 documents  included the story of the creation and the history of the ancestors ,so he blamed the writer ,or the author because he neglected  to follow the history of some ancestors .
At last you will amaze if you know that "Astruc " attacked the critics who denied the "Mosaic Authorship " for the Torah . 
The unbelievable idea of the inspiration ( from his point of view ) was responsible about his strange thoughts .     Dr, Rev. Joseph