An article in the Associated Press reports that a software developer in Israel has created software that can discern with precision the voices of the different authors who wrote the Torah. Bible scholars have believed for some time that different authors are responsible for writing different parts of these books, and an editor later compiled them into their final form. This is an area of scholarship known as “source criticism.” This explains, for example, why there are two Creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, and why they differ in tone, tenor, and emphasis.
Since the intent of these stories is not to offer a scientific or historical account of Creation—the fields of science and history as we know them today didn’t exist—both Creation stories communicate deep truths about God, humanity, and our relationship with God.
I’ve never been troubled by the likelihood that the Torah was written by different writers and later edited together. There’s nothing at stake for me, theologically, in the question. It doesn’t call into question its inspiration. The Holy Spirit was at work throughout the writing and editing process, and, since the Bible was written in an oral rather than a literary culture, the origins of the stories themselves long predate their being written down.
With that in mind, get a load of this paragraph:
For millions of Jews and Christians, it’s a tenet of their faith that God is the author of the core text of the Hebrew Bible – the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses. But since the advent of modern biblical scholarship, academic researchers have believed the text was written by a number of different authors whose work could be identified by seemingly different ideological agendas and linguistic styles and the different names they used for God.
What on earth does this first sentence even mean? It’s a “tenant of [our] faith that God is the author of the core text of the Hebrew Bible”? Even before modern Bible scholarship of the past 200 years or so, Jews and Christians didn’t believe that God was the author of scripture in the sense that these books fell out of heaven like Joseph Smith’s golden plates, nor did they believe that its human authors took dictation from God.
God’s “authorship” (if you even want to use that term—I wouldn’t) is far more indirect. Christians talk about scripture being “inspired” by God, not “authored” by God. There’s a difference.
Notice the troubling beginning of that second sentence: “But since…” The writer wrongly implies that this aspect of modern scholarship has called into question God’s “authorship.” I guess if one believes that scripture did fall out of the sky, then this would call that into question. But we Christians have never believed that, so what does it matter? Besides, many of those same “academic researchers” who accept the multiple-source theory are themselves also believers. That certainly describes all the the Old Testament faculty at the seminary I went to.
This is an example of a news story purporting to say that modern science is undermining religious faith. It’s setting the two in conflict where no conflict exists. If you watch for this mistake, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.