Are there any church father who rejected Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch?
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1 Answer
None of the Church Fathers rejected Moses' authorship of the Pentateuch per se, but several raised questions about specific parts of it.
Most early Church Fathers accepted Mosaic authorship. However, Ireneaus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian all had questions about Moses' relationship to the current canonical form of Genesis.
The main issue that perplexed these churchmen was how Moses could have written of his own death in Deut. 34:
5 Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. 6 He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. 7 Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired, and his vigor had not abated. 8 The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.
Those who addressed this question tended to deal with it with reference with Jesus' predicting his own death and resurrection. Typical of this approach was Origen in Against Celsius:
As the Jew casts discredit upon the statement, that “Jesus foretold that after His death He would rise again,” another person might make a similar assertion about Moses, and would say in reply, that Moses also put on record (for the book of Deuteronomy is his composition) the statement, that “no one knoweth his sepulchre until this day.”
One Church Father who expressed openness to idea that a later editor embellished the original text was Jerome:
“So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab... but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” We must certainly understand by 'this day' the time of the composition of the history, whether you prefer the view that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch or that Ezra re-edited it. In either case I make no objection.
The phrase "to this day" appears many times in the Pentateuch, so we may presume that Jerome also saw the possibility of another hand at work in other books "of Moses" as well.
Conclusion: None of the Church Fathers rejected Mosaic authorship of the greater part of the Pentateuch, but they were aware of problems related to specific passages. At least one of them did not object to the idea that parts of the Torah were added by a later editor.
