who wrote the first five books of moses
Mosaic authorship Biblical scholars today agree almost unanimously that the Torah is the work of many authors over many centuries.[11] A major factor in this rejection of the tradition of Mosaic authorship was the development of the documentary hypothesis, which understood the Pentateuch as a composite work made up of four "sources," or documents, compiled over centuries in a process that was not concluded until long after Moses' death.[26] The documentary hypothesis aroused understandable opposition from traditional scholars. One of the most significant was David Zvi Hoffmann (1843-1921), who attempted to defend Mosaic authorship by demonstrating that the sources identified by the documentary hypothesis were, in fact, pre-exilic; if this were proven, he believed, then the hypothesis itself was dis-proven.[27] The most he would concede to the proponents of the hypothesis was that Moses may have written various scrolls over his career and that these may have been collated and united before his death.[28] Another important Jewish scholar, and one still active, is David Weiss Halivni (b.1927): he has developed a theory of Chate'u Yisrael, literally, "Israel has sinned", which states that the originally monotheistic Israelites adopted pagan practices from their neighbours and neglected the Torah of Moses, with the result that it became "blemished and maculated;" only on the return from Babylon did the people once again accept the Torah, which was then recompiled and edited by Ezra as evidenced in Ezra–Nehemiah and Talmudic and Midrashic sources which indicate that Ezra played a role in editing the Torah.[29] He further states that while the text of the Torah was corrupted, oral tradition was preserved intact, which is why the Oral Law appears to contradict the Biblical text in certain details.[29] Menachem Mendel Kasher (1895-1983), taking a different approach, accepted the documentary hypothesis but adapted it to the Mosaic tradition, pointing to certain traditions of the Oral Torah which show Moses quoting Genesis prior to the epiphany at Sinai; based on a number of Bible verses and rabbinic statements, he therefore suggested that Moses made use of documents authored by the Patriarchs when redacting that book.[30] This view is supported by some rabbinical sources and medieval commentaries which recognize that the Torah incorporates written texts and divine messages from before and after the time of Moses.[31]