This documentary theory of the composition of the Pentateuch has been challenged by eminent 20th-century scholars who have offered alternative or additional methods of analysis and interpretation. Form criticism, for example, has stressed particular literary forms and the historical setting out of which they arose: the sagas, laws, legends, and other forms and the particular tribal or cultic context that gives them meaning. Tradition criticism centres on the pre-literary sources; i.e., on the oral traditions and the circles out of which they originated as accounting for the variety of the materials in the Pentateuch. Archaeological criticism has tended to substantiate the reliability of the typical historical details of even the oldest periods and to discount the theory that the Pentateuchal accounts are merely the reflection of a much later period. The new methods of criticism have served to direct attention to the life, experience, and religion out of which the Pentateuchal writings arose and to take a less static and literal view of the constituent documentary sources; yet most scholars still accept the documentary theory, in its basic lines, as the most adequate and comprehensive ordering of the variegated Pentateuchal materials. The following presentation rests mainly on an analysis and interpretation of the literary sources. (See below The critical study of biblical literature: exegesis and hermeneutics.)

In any case, the five books that have come down in various texts and versions have been seen as a unit in the religious communities that preserved them. Their basic content may be divided thus: (1) beginning of the world and creation of human beings—the primeval history; (2) patriarchal narratives—from Abraham to Joseph; (3) Egyptian slavery and the Exodus; (4) the revelation and Covenant at Sinai; (5) wanderings and guidance in the wilderness (divisible into two separate sub-blocks, before and after Sinai); (6) various legal materials—the Decalogue, Covenant Code, and passages of cultic and Deuteronomic laws—interspersed in the narrative, which take up the greater portion of the Pentateuch.

The primeval history

The Bible begins with the creation of the universe. It tells the story with images borrowed from Babylonian mythology, transformed to express its own distinctive view of God and of humanity. Out of primary chaos, darkness, void, depths, and waters God creates the heaven and the earth and all that dwell therein—a coherent order of things—by his will and word alone. He says, “Let there be…” and there is. Actually, there are two creation accounts: the first (1–2:4), ascribed to P, simply gives a terse day-by-day account including the culminating creation of human beings, in the divine “image and likeness,” followed by the primordial sabbath on the seventh day. The other (2:4–25), ascribed to J, starts with an arid wasteland and the creation of a particular man (Adam), described specifically as being formed by God out of dust and made into a living thing by God blowing the breath of life into him. He and the woman (Eve) created for him out of his rib are put into a paradisal garden (Eden), especially created for them to till and to tend and to sustain life. The two are forbidden only to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on pain of death (there is also a tree of life in the middle of the garden). The cosmic setting and concern of the P account is thus followed by the human setting and concern of the J account. Creation is followed by temptation, disobedience, and fall and all that follows from that for the history of humankind. At the instigation of the serpent, the shrewdest of the beasts, who holds out the possibility of attaining godlike knowledge, the woman eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and gives some to her husband to eat also. Their distinction from beasts and children manifests itself immediately by a sense of modesty about exposing their bodies, and loincloths become the first products of the higher knowledge. The primal human couple are punished by God for their disobedience by being driven out of the idyllic garden into the world of pain, toil, and death.

The reason given by YHWH to the divine beings is: “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” These words apparently point back to the polytheistic mythology (the existence of divine, magical powers; the gods’ jealousy of humankind; the tree of eternal life; etc.) from which the Yahwist drew his images and symbols explaining human suffering, frustration, and limitation. In the biblical framework and rendering (and subsequent interpretation), the archaic stories and images acquire a different meaning, suitable to the idea of a transcendent deity and an imperfect humankind.

With the exile from the garden, human history and culture begins. In the story of Adam’s sons, Cain and Abel, people have already become herdsmen and farmers and also murderers—again, probably a reflection of older mythical material and, again, one that puts an emphasis on human sin and estrangement from God. In the story of the Flood that follows there are evident borrowings from the Mesopotamian stories of a flood sent by the gods to destroy humankind, but in the biblical account it is emphasized that the extreme wickedness of human beings is the cause and that Noah is saved along with his family by God’s deliberate choice because he is a righteous man. (In the flood story in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, by contrast, there is no apparent moral reason why the gods resolved to destroy humankind, and the only reason why the hero of the Flood and his kin are saved is that he is favoured by one of the gods, who tricks the others, including the chief god.) After the Flood, God blesses Noah and bestows on human beings the earth and the things on it for sustenance and makes a covenant with Noah and all creatures that he will never again unleash a world-destroying flood. The permanent order of the world is assured, and God’s blessing and covenant make their first explicit appearance in the Bible.

In the story of the Tower of Babel, the final story in the primeval history, a primal unity of humankind in which there is only one language is shattered when, in their pride, human beings decide to build a city and a tower that will reach up to the heavens. YHWH again takes steps to check dangerous collaboration: He says (to the celestial council), “Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech,” and scatters them over the earth. Again, the Yahwist has apparently used ancient mythological motifs to explain the diversity of humankind. The story may be regarded as simply a direct borrowing from the older traditions, without any monotheistic adaptation. In its textual setting, however, it may also be taken as another instance of the ruin of primal harmony by human willfulness and pride.