<P> More serious were a few passages which implied an author long after the time of Moses, such as Genesis 12: 6, "The Canaanite was then in the land," implying a time when the Canaanites were no longer in the land . Abraham ibn Ezra (c. 1092 - 1167) made a celebrated comment on this phrase, writing that it contains "a great secret, and the person who understands it will keep quiet;" the 14th century rabbi Joseph ben Samuel Bonfils responded that Moses had written this and similar passages, as he was a prophet, but that it made no difference whether they were by him or some later prophet, "since the words of all of them are true and inspired ." Rashi, a French medieval Jewish commentator on the Bible, wrote, in the name of Torat Kohanim, an agada that the passage should be understood to mean that the Canaanite was in the middle of' conquering' the land . </P> <P> Finally, there were a few passages which implied that Moses had used pre-existing sources: a section of the Book of Numbers (Numbers 10: 35--36) is surrounded in the Hebrew by inverted nuns (the equivalent of brackets) which the rabbis said indicated that these verses were from a separate book, the Book of Eldad and Medad . </P> <P> Biblical scholars today agree almost unanimously that the Torah is the work of many authors over many centuries . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . </P> <P> The Christian scriptures showed Jesus himself recognised Moses as the author of at least some portions of the Pentateuch (e.g., the Gospel of John, verses 5: 46 - 47), and the early Christians therefore followed the rabbis . Like them, they addressed those passages which seemed to cast doubt on the Mosaic tradition: Saint Jerome, for example, felt that "unto this day" implied an author long after the time of Moses, presumably the 5th century BCE sage Ezra . Martin Luther similarly concluded that the description of Moses' death was by Joshua--but believed that the question itself was of no great importance . </P>

Who wrote the first five books of moses