PENTATEUCH, a word derived from the Greek ∏s∣∕- τατεxχος, from vεντε, five, and τsuxog, an instrument or vo- lume, and signifying the collection of the five instruments or books of Moses, which are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Some modern critics have disputed Moses’s right to the authorship of the Pentateuch. They observe that he always speaks in the third person. “Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying,” &c. “Moses said to Pharaoh,” &c. They think that he would never have thus spoken of himself, but would at least sometimes have mentioned himself in the first person. Besides, according to these critics, the author of the Pentateuch sometimes abridges his narration like a writer who collected from some ancient memoirs, and sometimes he interrupts the thread of his discourse, as, for example, when he makes Lamech the bigamist say, “Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech; for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt,” without informing us before-hand to whom this is related. Again, when he says, “And the Canaanite was then in the land,” these observations cannot be reconciled to the age of Moses, since the Canaanites continued to be the masters of Palestine during the lifetime of the Jewish legislator. The passage from the book of the wars of the Lord, quoted in the book of Numbers (xxi. 14), is supposed to have been inserted afterwards, as also the opening verses of Deuteronomy. The account of the death of Moses, which is at the end of the same book, cannot possibly belong, to this legislator; and the same judgment may be formed of other passages, in which it is said that the places mentioned lay beyond Jordan, that the bed of Og was at Ramah to this day, and that the havoth of Jair, or the cities of Jair, were known to the author, though probably they did not receive that name till after Moses’s time.

It is also observed, that in the text of the Pentateuch there are some places which are defective; for example, in Exodus (xii. 8) we find Moses speaking to Pharaoh, but the author has omitted the beginning of his discourse. The Samaritan inserts in the same place what is wanting in the Hebrew. In other places the same Samaritan text adds what is deficient in the Hebrew; and what it contains more than the Hebrew seems to be so well connected with the rest of the discourse, that it would be difficult to separate them. Lastly, the same critics believe that they observe certain strokes in the Pentateuch which can hardly have proceeded from Moses, who was born and bred in Egypt; as, for example, what he says of the earthly paradise, of the rivers which watered it and ran through it, of the cities of Babylon, Erech, Resen, and Calnch, of the gold of Pison, of the bdellium, and of the stone of Sohem, or onyx-stone, which was to be found in that country. These particulars, observed minutely, are supposed to prove that the author of the Pentateuch lived beyond the Euphrates; and the same conclusion may be deduced from what he says concerning the ark of Noah, of its construction, of the place where it rested, of the wood with which it was built, of the bitumen of Babylon, and other matters. But in answer to all these objections, we may observe in general, that these books are by the most ancient writers, ascribed to Moses; and it is confirmed by the authority of heathen writers themselves, that they are of his writing. Besides, we have the unanimous testimony of the whole Jewish nation, ever since Moses’s time, to the same effect. Direct texts of the Pentateuch imply that it was written by Moses; the book of Joshua, and other parts of Scripture, import the same thing; and though some passages have been thought to imply the contrary, yet this is but a modern opinion, and has been sufficiently confuted by several learned men. The Samaritans receive no other Scriptures but the Pentateuch, rejecting all the other books which are still contained in the Jewish canon.