In the early Christian ages, many of the most eminent Fathers of the Church had serious doubts respecting the authorship of the entire Pentateuch.  I have not space, in the limited compass of these pages, to present in detail the facts and arguments that were then and have since been adduced.  The literature of the subject is now very extensive.  I may, however, refer the reader to the work of the pious and learned Dean Prideaux, on “The Old and New Testament connected,” a work which is one of the literary ornaments of the last century.  He will also find the subject more recently and exhaustively discussed by Bishop Colenso.  The following paragraphs will convey a sufficiently distinct impression of the present state of the controversy: 

The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by Moses, under the influence of divine inspiration.  Considered thus, as a record vouchsafed and dictated by the Almighty, it commands not only scientific but universal consent.

But here, in the first place, it may be demanded, Who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in its behalf?

Not the work itself.  It nowhere claims the authorship of one man, or makes the impious declaration that it is the writing of Almighty God.

Not until after the second century was there any such extravagant demand on human credulity.  It originated, not among the higher ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid Fathers of the Church, whose own writings prove them to have been unlearned and uncritical persons.

Every age, from the second century to our times, has offered men of great ability, both Christian and Jewish, who have altogether repudiated these claims.  Their decision has been founded upon the intrinsic evidence of the books themselves.  These furnish plain indications of at least two distinct authors, who have been respectively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic.  Hupfeld maintains that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of having been a second original record, wholly independent of the Elohistic.  The two sources from which the narratives have been derived are, in many respects, contradictory of each other.  Moreover, it is asserted that the books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses in the inscriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or in printed copies of the Hebrew Bible, nor are they styled “Books of Moses” in the Septuagint or Vulgate, but only in modern translations.

It is clear that they cannot be imputed to the sole authorship of Moses, since they record his death.  It is clear that they were not written until many hundred years after that event, since they contain references to facts which did not occur until after the establishment of the government of kings among the Jews.