The Relationship between Moses and Aaron and the Question of the Composition of the Pentateuch

Abstract

There is no doubt that Moses is the most important human figure in the Torah, which could almost be understood, as suggested by Rolf Knierim, as a "biography of Moses. " 1 Indeed, the book of Exodus starts with Moses's birth story in chapter 2, and the last chapter of the Pentateuch, Deut 34, reports the death of Moses, so that the books of Exodus to Deuteronomy are tied together by the life of Moses and cover, on the narrative level, the 120 years of his life. If the Pentateuch can be understood as a life of Moses, the book of Genesis would constitute a prologue of sorts to the Moses story. 2 There are, of course, other actors in the books of Exodus to Deuteronomy, especially Aaron, although he shows up only after Moses's call in Exod 4 and in a quite unexpected and unprepared way. The reader of Exod 4 may indeed be puzzled because the text had not yet mentioned that Moses had a brother. In Moses's birth story in Exod 2, there is no allusion at all to an older brother. On the contrary, Moses appears to be the firstborn. And it is also quite clear that the appearance of the sister in Exod 2 is due to a later redactor who wanted to show that Moses was not abandoned by his family when he was discovered by Pharaoh's daughter. 3 The 1. Rolf P. Knierim, "The Composition of the Pentateuch, " in Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers, SBLSP 24 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985, 393-415.2. In the so-called final form of the Torah, this is certainly the case. Gen 15 already introduces a summary of the events described in the following books, and several texts in Genesis allude to the descent to Egypt, especially Gen 12:10-20 and Gen 37-50. When the term Pentateuch is used, it refers to the collection of five books that is the first part of the Hebrew Bible. The term Torah refers to the foundation document of nascent Judaism, which for some would have been a Hexateuch.3. The verses mentioning Moses's daughter are quite commonly assumed to be -55 -This e-offprint is provided for the author's own use; no one else may post it online.