Mosaic authorship

Mosaic authorship is the traditional ascription to Moses of the authorship of the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch - Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.The belief in Mosaic authorship of the Torah is found in the Torah itself which states, "So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel." The belief of Mosaic authorship excluding the Torah's testimony is first found explicitly expressed in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish traditions and exegesis said supposedly to date to the time of Moses himself. The commentary section of the talmud though dates to 500 AD, and indicate that the authors of the later books of the Hebrew bible already accepted the idea that Moses had written the Torah. The Talmudic commentators advanced several versions of just how Moses came to write the Torah, ranging from direct dictation by God to a less direct divine inspiration stretching over the forty years in the wilderness. Later rabbis (and the Talmudic rabbis as well see tractate Bava Basra 15a) and Christian scholars noticed some difficulties with the idea of Mosaic authorship of the entire Torah, notably the fact that the book of Deuteronomy describes Moses' death. The later versions of the tradition therefore held that some portions of the Torah were added by others - the death of Moses in particular was ascribed to Joshua.
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