How did the first five books of the Bible come into existence?

Answer 1

Moses is attributed to writing the first five books of the Bible. Moses was present and the chosen leader of God's chosen people in the 2nd through the 5th book and so he would have had first hand knowledge of what happened. But the first book, Genesis, tells of the creation of the universe, the flood, Abraham, and the early history of the Jewish people. These things happened long before Moses was born. So how could he write of them? God led Moses by His Holy Spirit to write this part of the history of the beginnings.

Answer 2

The First five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch (or Torah), was produced over a period of several centuries in the first millennium BCE by five main sources and finalised by at least two redactors. One of these anonymous sources, now known as the Elohist, originated in the northern kingdom of Israel, but the remainder were from Judah or were Jewish exiles writng during the Babylonian Exile.

Answer 3

Tradition states that Moses wrote a scroll containing the narratives of Genesis, at God's command, before the formal Giving of the Torah (Rashi commentary, Exodus ch.24). It was this scroll which he read to the Israelites (Exodus 24:7) as an introduction to what God's covenant would entail. These narratives were not unknown to the Israelites, since they had carefully preserved the traditions of the events of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and earlier events (see Midrash, Shemot Rabbah 5:18 and 22).
The words of this scroll were soon incorporated in the complete Torah itself by God, including the ancient traditions of the Creation, the Flood etc. (These traditions had been known by mankind worldwide, except that among the other nations [the idolaters] they had become garbled with idolatrous drivel.)
When God gave the Ten Commandments (Exodus ch.19-20), He gave them in writing, inscribed on stone tablets (Exodus 31:18), while He taught the rest of the Torah to Moses orally, on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:12), without writing it.
At God's command and precise dictation (Deuteronomy 1:3), Moses penned the entire Torah (Deuteronomy 31:24) immediately before his death, so that it included events that had happened in the preceding months (such as Numbers ch.20).

No Hebrew copy of the Torah has ever been found to differ with the others, worldwide. The Torah we possess today contains the exact wording written by Moses.

See also:

What is the history of the Hebrew Bible?

Refuting Bible-criticism and the multiple-authors hypothesis

Answer 4

Traditionally, the first five books of The Bible, known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbersand Deuteronomy) are thought to have been written by Moses while wandering in the desert around 1400 BCE.

Scholars say that the real origin of these book is much more interesting, having been written later, by different authors and in stages.

The first of the books to have been written in much the form we now know, is believed to be the Book of Deuteronomy, written by an anonymous source now known as the Deuteronomist during the eighth-century-BCe reign of King Josiah of Judah. This is the book of law supposedly found in the Jerusalem Temple during renovations.

The Books of Genesis and Exodus contain material much more ancient than Deuteronomy, and include material written in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE by two anonymous authors now known as the Yahwist and the Elohist. The Yahwist recorded the traditions of the southern Hebrew kingdom of Judah, while the Elohist recorded the traditions of the northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel. These were consolidated sometime after the destruction of Israel into a single story, and further material was added in the centuries ahead, principally by an anonymous source now known as the Priestly Source.

The Book of Numbers and much of the Book of Leviticus are also attributed to the Priestly Source, although Leviticus may be the earlier of the two, with the "Priestly Source" to be considered a continuing priestly school rather than a single scribe.