Who wrote the book of Exodus? Who was the author of Exodus?

A Jewish rabbi of considerable learning, after a close examination of the arguments produced by the critics, has of late shown their absolute worthlessness from a literary point of view. He declares, "All these and similar analyses of the sources of Exodus and the conclusions based thereon are entirely wrong.... The theory that the book of Exodus was compiled from previous works is not sufficiently supported; and the attempt to analyze it into its component parts is a hopeless one, for all the elements of the book are closely welded together into one harmonious whole (Rabbi Dr. Benno Jacob of Goettingen , Germany).

But it does not take scholarship to discover the truth of the last sentence, that "all the elements of the book are closely welded together into one harmonious whole." Every intelligent reader of Exodus makes this discovery. The impression is at once created that only one person wrote this book, and that this person was intimately acquainted with the history of the period which Exodus treats. That the author was Moses is indisputable.

What has been said to the book of Genesis also applies to Exodus. In Genesis Moses depended on the revelations of God and possibly on the accounts of his ancestors while he was mostly able to write down the happenings of Exodus to Deuteronomy by his own view and experience under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (compare Ex. 17:14; Deut. 31:22,24).

In the New Testament Moses is mentioned several times as author of Exodus (for example Luke 20:37; Mark 7:10).

We thus come back with renewed assurance to the common faith of the people of God from the beginning, that the entire Pentateuch is the product of Moses. It was he whom God chose to be the appointed vehicle for carrying out His purposes and promises made known to Abraham and the fathers, and he is fittingly the historian of that great redemptive work recorded in the book of Exodus, together with the anticipative histories which are absolutely necessary to the right understanding of the narrative of Exodus itself.

A very important feature in the ways of God with man now appears: Moses put "all the words of Jehovah" (Ex. 24:4) into writing. "It is written" was henceforth to mark the authority of the divine communications. Tradition and legend had developed into the grossest abominations on the earth. These were no longer to rule, but a written authority was to speak in unchangeable words. From that date to the present hour, "It is written" has been the rule for faith. "The book" mentioned in which Moses wrote, was at this particular time the Book of Exodus.

Taking the Bible narrative of Israel's exodus from Egypt to their establishment before Jehovah at Horeb, as it stands — which is the only honest way for the first reading of any book — a plain though marvellous tale unfolds itself. By the aid of such side-lights as the ancient monuments and writings of Egypt afford, much of that which appears to be mysterious shapes itself into the everyday life of the past, and the movements of the Divine Hand in relation to that life are made clearly visible. The structure of the story forbids the removal of any one of its parts. To eliminate portions here and there, is to criticize the masterpiece of the sculptor by lopping off its limbs or mutilating its face. The energetic hand of the writer delineates that which he actually saw, and describes that which he himself and the men around him felt. The eye-witness is continually present in the story; none but he could describe the manner of Pharaoh in his might and pride; or the route taken by Israel from Egypt to Horeb. That the writer was a man of the day of which he writes is shown by his words, for he occasionally uses Egyptian words, which formed Israel's only means of conveying ideas that pertained to Egypt, before they became a nation. Again, none but a worker from nature could with a few rapid touches portray scenes and characters as does Moses. The work is living and energetic, painted on the spot, done from life; yet the scheme of the whole story — its grandeur and its simplicity, its unveiling of man and its revealing of God, its moral teachings and its eternal principles, its painting of the past and its picturing of the future — is to be attributed to a greater than Moses: it is the production of the Divine Mind, for its author is God.

But if Moses did not write the books that bear his name, never were books, we repeat, more honeycombed with lies. His name is woven into Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy hundred’s of times. “And the Lord spake unto Moses,” with its variations, is a formula repeated dozens of times, and it were blasphemy to write it down again and again if it were not true. As we have said, our Lord attributed these books to the authorship of Moses. The testimony of the Jews, their jealous guardianship of the sacred volume, the way it is woven into the history of the children of Israel, all bear irresistible testimony to the authorship of Moses, and hence to this memorial, beginning at the time, of the alleged fact, thus meeting the requirements of Mark No. 4.

No doubt it may, however, be said that the Pentateuch is called Moses and the Law of Moses, because it contains the history and some commands of Moses, on which was based the subsequent legislation; but that these expressions do not necessarily imply that Moses wrote the books. But the New Testament goes farther, and states distinctly that the books were written by Moses. In Matt. 22:24 the Jews said to our Lord, "Moses said;" in John 8:5, "Moses in the law commanded us;" again in Mark 12:19, and in Luke 20:28, "Moses wrote unto us." The Lord, in His reply, confirms this opinion as to the authorship of the law, saying, "Have ye not read in the book of Moses?" (Mark 12:26). In the parallel passage (Luke 20:37), our Lord says, "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called Jehovah the God of Abraham," etc. Moses can only be said to call God by that title by being the historian of what God had called Himself. The historian calls God the God of Abraham.

That Moses was the writer of the first five books of the O.T., called the Pentateuch, there are many proofs in scripture; such as "have ye not read in the book of Moses?" Mark 12:26; "If they hear not Moses and the prophets," Luke 16:31; Luke 24:27; "When Moses is read," 2 Cor. 3:15. Of course the section where his death is recorded was added by a later hand. When the inspiration of scripture is fully held, God is known as the author of His word, and it becomes a secondary question who was the instrument that God used to write down what He wished to be recorded. Respecting some of the books of scripture we know not who wrote them; but that in no way touches their inspiration. It is plain, however, from the above and other passages that Moses was the writer of the Pentateuch, which is often called "the law of Moses."

In claiming the Mosaic authorship of this book, it is not meant that no records were kept before the time of the great lawgiver. There is nothing contradictory to the truth of inspiration or the thought of Moses' authorship in the possibility, we may say probability, of genealogies having been kept, and possibly also narratives more or less full, of persons and events which took place prior to the time of the Exodus. But what historian can write a narrative of former times without making large and liberal use of the material at his disposal? Thus there is no contradiction in the thought that Moses made use of whatever lists and narratives there may have been in existence before him. There is, however, something to be said even upon this side of the subject.

It has been around this ground that the great battle has been waged between higher criticism in all its forms and the faith uniformly held by the people of God from the beginning, a faith we are assured which the word of God itself leads to. Until the attacks of infidelity, no one ever thought of questioning the universally accepted belief that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. At first it might seem as though the only question were as to his authorship of the book of Genesis, which covers the periods of time from the creation to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. All of this, as having occurred before the birth of Moses, need not necessarily have been recorded by him; but it has been found that higher criticism, another name for infidelity, is never satisfied with assailing one portion of revelation; it reaches out until all has been brought under the blight of its malign influence. Thus when it had claimed that the book of Genesis was made up of various documents and fragments, it passed on to the other books about which there could be in the mind of the believer in the word of God no question that Moses was the author, and here all this was denied. It was said that the book of Exodus, with its varied ordinances and narratives, was composed long after the time in which Moses lived; indeed, it was declared boldly for a long time, until the very stones rose up and cried shame upon them, that writing was an art practically unknown in the days of Moses. It remained for Archaeology to set aside this glaring falsehood, by showing that, so far from this being the case, the age before Moses was a time of intense literary activity and, the remains of this are now open to the inspection of the world.