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Which of the following is a conservative belief about the authorship of the Pentateuch?

(A) The Pentateuch was written entirely by Moses.
(B) The Pentateuch was written by multiple authors, but Moses was the primary author.
(C) The Pentateuch was written by multiple authors, but Moses was not one of them.
(D) The Pentateuch is a myth and was not written by any real person.

1 Answer

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Final answer:

A conservative belief about the authorship of the Pentateuch is that Moses wrote the entire text. This traditional view holds that Moses transmitted the laws and the story of Exodus as handed down by Yahweh to the Israelites, and despite scholarly debate, remains an article of faith in many religious traditions.

Step-by-step explanation:

A conservative belief about the authorship of the Pentateuch would be (A) The Pentateuch was written entirely by Moses. Conservative or traditional views often hold that Moses is the sole author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which include the laws and the story of the Exodus as handed down by Yahweh to the Israelites. This belief is based on religious traditions and interpretations of the scripture as divinely inspired and conveyed directly by Moses as the leader of the Israelites.

Despite this traditional view, historical and archaeological research presents a more complex picture of the Pentateuch's origin, suggesting influences from various Near Eastern cultures and a gradual evolution of monotheism in Hebrew culture. Moreover, biblical and archaeological scholarship has often proposed the theory of multiple authors, known as the Documentary Hypothesis, which suggests that the Pentateuch was compiled from several sources over time. Nonetheless, the conservative viewpoint upholds Mosaic authorship as an article of faith within Judaism and many Christian denominations.

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