Murmuring Against Moses: The Contentious History and Contested Future of Pentateuchal Studies

For much of the history of both Judaism and Christianity, the Pentateuch—first five books of the Bible—was understood to be the unified work of a single inspired author: Moses. Yet the standard view in modern biblical scholarship contends that the Pentateuch is a composite text made up of fragments from diverse and even discrepant sources that originated centuries after the events it purports to describe. In Murmuring against Moses, John Bergsma and Jeffrey Morrow provide a critical narrative of the emergence of modern Pentateuchal studies and challenge the scholarly consensus by highlighting the weaknesses of the modern paradigms and mustering an array of new evidence for the Pentateuch's antiquity. By shedding light on the past history of research and the present developments in the field, Bergsma and Morrow give fresh voice to a growing scholarly dissatisfaction with standard critical approaches and make an important contribution toward charting a more promising future for Pentateuchal studies.

John S. Bergsma, Ph.D. is Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is the author of The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran (VTSup 115; Brill, 2007); A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: Old Testament (Ignatius, 2018), and Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Penguin Random House, 2019). His peer-reviewed scholarship on Old and New Testament topics and the Dead Sea Scrolls have appeared in the journals Biblica, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Dead Sea Discoveries, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vetus Testamentum, and in essay collections, festschrifts, dictionaries, and encyclopedias published by Brill, Continuum/T&T Clark, Eerdmans, Eisenbrauns, Harrassowitz, Kohlhammer, Oxford, and Westminster/John Knox Press.

Jeffrey L. Morrow, Ph.D. is Professor of Theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University. He is also the author of Pretensions of Objectivity and Alfred Loisy and Modern Biblical Studies.