Who really wrote the Pentateuch?

SOURCE CRITICISM: Who really wrote the Old Testament? These are the theories. When analyzing the oldest books of the Bible, scholars have identified the work of various writers and editors. But how did the final version come to be? (Javier Alonso López, National Geographic).

The headline over-promises (not the author's fault), since the article is about the origins of the Pentateuch. I would nuance this or that, but overall it is a quite good overview of the traditional Documentary Hypothesis.

That said, many specialist now have considerable reservations about elements of the traditional hypothesis. I think there is widespread agreement on a Deuteronomy source and a Priestly source. Beyond that, there is less agreement. D and P are embedded in the Pentatuech with a lot of other stuff that I like to think of as the Sticky Goo source(s) (a.k.a. JE). And some specialists want to break even D and P down into sub-sources.

For more comments on the current state of the question, see here and here.

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