The Pentateuch

This pivotal text looks both backward and forward. Reference to the exodus would naturally draw attention to Israel's past. Israel had come out of Egypt, a land of bondage, where it had sojourned for 430 years (Exod. 12:40). The reason for the long stay there had been a famine that forced the patriarchs to flee Canaan for relief. Another reason, however, was that Jacob and his sons had begun to lose their identity as the family of promise by intermingling with and becoming tainted by the Canaanites and their ungodly ways. The sordid affairs of Judah (Gen. 38) illustrate this leaning most clearly.

Moses thus had to reach back into the times of the nation's ancestors to account for the Egyptian sojourn and the exodus event itself. Beyond this he needed to explain who the patriarchs were and why God called them. The answer lay in the ancient patriarchal covenant. One man, Abraham, was called out of Sumerian paganism to found a nation that would be a blessing to all nations who recognized its peculiar nature and calling (Gen. 12:1-3). Israel was that nation, that offspring of Abraham, that now was ready to undertake the role long ago revealed to the founding father.

The purpose for the call of Abraham and the covenant promise entrusted to him are carefully spelled out as well. Humankind, which God had created to be in His image and to rule over all His creation (Gen. 1:26-28), had violated that sacred trust and had plunged the whole universe into chaotic ruin and rebellion. What was required was a people called out of that lostness to exhibit godly obedience before the world, to function as mediators and a redemptive priesthood, and to provide the matrix from which the incarnate God could enter the world and achieve His saving and sovereign purposes of re-creation. That people, again, was Israel. They surely understood their calling, but it likely had never been fully spelled out until Moses did so there on the edge of conquest.

The form this rehearsal of Israel's significance took was, of course, the Book of Genesis. Whether or not the account of these grand events had ever existed in written form cannot be known for sure, though there are strong hints of such in the Book of Genesis itself (2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12,19; 36:1). Moses, who was about to pass from the scene, shaped the story as we now have it. He wanted to provide Israel with a historical and theological basis for their status as a peculiar people (that is, God's "treasured possession").

The remainder of the Pentateuch is, for the most part, a historical narration of events contemporary with Moses and his generation. Embedded in it are the Sinaitic covenant text (Exod. 20:1-23:33), instructions for the creation of a tabernacle (Exod. 25:1-27:21; 30:1-38; 35:4-39:43; Num. 7:1-8:4), selection and setting apart of a priesthood (Exod. 28:1-29:46), a system of sacrifices and other cultic regulations (most of Leviticus), law and ritual appropriate to the people in the desert (Num. 5:1-4; 9:15-10:32), and the covenant renewal text (most of Deuteronomy). All of these non-narrative sections and the narratives themselves relate to the theme of Israel as a community of priests. The Pentateuch then tells where Israel came from and why. It tells how they entered into covenant with the Lord following their redemption from Egypt, what claims this covenant laid upon them, and how they were to conduct themselves as the servant people of a holy and sovereign God.

Interpreters take one of three broad approaches to the Pentateuch as a source for history. (1) Many interpreters read the Pentateuch as a straightforward recounting of events. (2) Radical critics disregard the Pentateuch as a source for history. For example, Julius Wellhausen and his source-critical school saw the nar-ratives—especially those of Genesis—as reflecting the first millennium era in which they were allegedly composed rather than the times of Moses and the patriarchs (second millennium). The form critic Hermann Gunkel coupled this historical skepticism with a dismissal of the supernatural. He viewed the first eleven chapters of Genesis as largely myth and legend and the patriarchal stories as folk-tale and epic. The most radical critics regarded only the core of the Mosaic traditions, the exodus event itself, as reliable history. Even that event had to be rid of all its miraculous overtones before it could be accepted as history in the strict sense. The rest of the Moses stories were regarded as embellishments of actual events or stories thought up to justify later religious belief and practice. (3) Others see the Pentateuch primarily as a theological interpretation of real persons and events. For these interpreters the narratives were written from the perspective of a later time. Such scholars differ widely over the possibility and value of recovering the "bare facts" behind the biblical interpretation of what happened.

Many scholars take the findings of scientific biblical archaeology as confirmation that the Pentateuch is most at home precisely in the second millennium setting in which the Old Testament located it. Thus the discovery of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian creation and flood stories at the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh and at other places has lent credence to their antiquity in Israelite tradition. Documents by the thousands from Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, and Nuzi confirm for some interpreters that the lifestyle, customs, and habits of the biblical patriarchs are most at home in the Middle Bronze Age (about 2000-1550 b.c.) where biblical chronology places them. The now well-understood environment of New Kingdom Egypt and Amarna Canaan (about 1570-1300 b.c.) likewise demonstrates that the account of Israel's history assigned to the time of Moses is compatible with that period. In short, the historicity of the Pentateuch is affirmed by much that has been and is being understood about its setting in the ancient world. Though this may not (and indeed cannot) prove the historicity of individual details, especially personal and private episodes and miraculous intervention, evidence suggests the Pentateuch recounts genuine historical events centered around actual historical persons.

The fundamental importance and relevance of the Pentateuch lies in its theology, not in its historicity or even its literary form and content. What truth is God communicating about Himself and His purposes? What meaning did that communication have for Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church (biblical theology)? What meaning does it have for contemporary Christian theology?

Such questions are obviously related to the matter of the Pentateuch's theme and purpose, matters dealt with previously. The historical, social, and religious setting of the Mosaic writings points to their purpose as that of instructing Israel about its past, its present, and its future. The nation had been redeemed by the great exodus event as a result of Yahweh's free choice of Israel in fulfillment of the promises to the patriarchs. Israel had to understand the context of those promises and their necessary fulfillment in light of the exodus salvation and the subsequent Sinai covenant. Israel now stood as covenant heir and servant people charged with mediating the saving purposes of Yahweh to the whole earth.

The great theme of the Pentateuch, then, is the theme of reconciliation and restoration. God's creation, having been affected by human disobedience, stood in need of restoration. Humanity, having been alienated from God, stood in need of forgiveness. God's saving plan began with a solemn pledge to bless the world through Abraham and his offspring (Israel). The pledge found expression in a covenant granting Abraham descendants and land and designating Abraham as God's instrument of redemption. Centuries later that covenant with Abraham incorporated within it a covenant of another kind. The Sinai covenant—a sovereign-vassal treaty—offered to Israel the role of redemptive mediation if Israel submitted to God's rule. Israel's acceptance of that servant role produced the whole apparatus of law, religious ritual, and priesthood. These institutions enabled the nation to live out its servant task as a holy people and by that holiness to attract lost humanity to the only true and living God. In brief, that is the theology of the Pentateuch.

The Christian is also part of a "kingdom of priests" (Exod. 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:5,9; Rev. 1:6) with privileges and responsibilities corresponding to those of Old Testament Israel. The church and each and every believer stand within the stream of God's gracious covenant promises. Believers have been made "children of God" (John 1:12), delivered from bondage to sin by an exodus of personal redemption, established on the pilgrim way to the land of promise, and provided with every means through the new covenant of serving as the instruments of God's reconciling grace. The theology of the Pentateuch is important for Christians because it models God's timeless purposes for creation and redemption.