Who Wrote the Torah

The issue of the authorship of the Torah is important for at least this one reason: since the book claims to have been written by a certain writer, it is simply a matter of integrity that that claim is verified. If this claim to authorship is not substantiated, then why should we trust what that book says? In short, if the Torah claims to be written by Moshe, and we find that it is, in fact, not written by him, then there is no reason to trust whatever else the Torah may say — perhaps it is also deceiving us on other issues as well. Before we proceed with examining the identity of the writer of the Torah, we need to make one important distinction. The real Author of the Torah is God. Because of this, we say that the Torah is the Word of God and, therefore, Divinely inspired. However, God used human agents to inscribe His Word. In this study, we are using as our presupposition the fact that God is the Author — that the Torah is from His very mouth. Our purpose, therefore, is not to debate the Divine inspiration of the Torah, but merely to examine who it was that God used to inscribe He precious Words.