I asked this in hermeneutics.
Typical atheists think that Torah is written/compiled on Babylonian exile.
Christians and Jews believe that Torah was written by Moses or someone shortly after him, during the Exodus.
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/6061/when-is-torah-written-or-compiled
Then a guy in hermeneutics said that Jews in Elephantine do not have Torah suggesting that Torah was indeed written in the Babylonian exile.
What would be the evidence that support one or other theories?
If Jews believe that Moses wrote Torah, what are the evidences supporting that? Is there anything in the bible that Moses wrote Torah?
In fact, the end of Torah describes Moses' death.
- Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eye had not dimmed, nor had he lost his [natural] freshness.
- And the sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab for thirty days, and the days of weeping over the mourning for Moses came to an end.
That uses past tenses. So Moses wrote Torah even 30 days after he was death?
Also the idea that no prophet greater than Moses suggests that it's unlikely to have been written during Moses time because at that time it would have been too obvious.
Moreover, Jews in Elephantine do not seem to have known Torah
One should not interpret extra-biblical material through biblical data but thereverse, in this case making use of the Elephantine documents to interpret thePalestinian reality known from the Bible. 37 32 Porphyrius, De Abstinentia II 26. 33 In contrast to the votive-offering (Lev 7:16) and the peace-offering (Lev 19:5–6). 34 GLAJJ 281 (4,1–2). 35 GLAJJ , vol. II, 1–4; Schäfer, Judeophobia , 185–192. 36 Cf. Johnstone, ‘The Two Theological Versions’, 178. 37 The opposite procedure can be seen for example in J. Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt. From Ramses II to Emperor Hadrian
, Edinburgh 1995, 37–43 (original French edition, 1991);Porten, Archives from Elephantine , 122–133. Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò PALAMEDES 2(2007) 48 We can explain the situation summarized above in two ways: 1) the Jewsat Elephantine did not know the biblical legislation, including the cultic calendar,because they remained cut off from Jerusalem and Yehud society (NB: they did notknow Pentateuch at all), 38 or 2) they did not know this legislation because therewas no such legislation.The first of these possibilities looks implausible. ...
http://www.academia.edu/717022/Passover_the_Jewish_cultic_calendar_and_the_Torah