Documentary hypothesis
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Comment by LC on March 26th, 2014 at 5:53 am
What are the ‘notable exceptions’ referred to pre-17th-C BCE to the Mosaic authorship of Genesis (ref in body text relating to note 1 – leads to article on Catholic Encyclopedia which cites ‘the Valentinian Ptolemy’ as the earliest holder of the opposing view to Mosaic authorship.
Comment by Jennifer Tanabe on November 27th, 2015 at 12:32 pm
Thank you LC for your comment. The “Catholic Encyclopedia” article notes that “Catholic tradition does not necessarily maintain that Moses wrote every letter of the Pentateuch as it is today” and the “rigid view of the Mosaic authorship began to develop in the eighteenth century.” It goes on to say: “In the sixteenth century Card. Bellarmine, who may be considered as a reliable exponent of Catholic tradition, expressed the opinion that Esdras had collected, readjusted, and corrected the scattered parts of the Pentateuch, and had even added the parts necessary for the completion of the Pentateuchal history (De verbo Dei, II, I; cf. III, iv). The views of Génebrard, Pereira, Bonfrere, a Lapide, Masius, Jansenius, and of other notable Biblicists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are equally elastic with regard to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.” This seems to include sufficient critics to be called “notable.”
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