The Pentateuch lies at the heart of the Western humanities. Yet despite nearly two centuries of scholarship, its historical origins and its literary history are still a subject of intense discussion. Critical scholarship has isolated multiple layers of tradition, inconsistent laws, and narratives that could only have originated from separate communities within ancient Israel, and were joined together at a relatively late stage by a process of splicing and editing. In effect, a number of independent scholarly discourses have emerged. Each centers on the Pentateuch, each operates with its own set of working assumptions, and each is confident of its own claims. This volume seeks to stimulate international discussion about the Pentateuch in order to help the discipline move toward a set of shared assumptions and a common discourse. Contributors:Reinhard Achenbach, Rainer Albertz, Yairah Amit, Joel S. Baden, Richard J. Bautch, Erhard Blum, Mark J. Boda, David M. Carr, Sidnie White Crawford, Thomas B. Dozeman, Cynthia Edenburg, Angela Roskop Erisman, Israel Finkelstein, Karin Finsterbusch, Georg Fischer, Tova Ganzel, Jan Christian Gertz, Shimon Gesundheit, David Ben-Gad Ha Cohen, Sara Japhet, Jan Joosten, John Kessler, Itamar Kislev, Ariel Kopilovitz, Reinhard G. Kratz, Armin Lange, Christoph Levin, Bernard M. Levinson, Risa Levitt Kohn, Michael A. Lyons, Noam Mizrahi, Christophe Nihan, Frank H. Polak, Christopher Rollston, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Thomas Romer, Konrad Schmid, William Schniedewind, Baruch J. Schwartz, Jean Louis Ska, Benjamin Sommer, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, Jeffrey Stackert, Marvin A. Sweeney, James W. Watts, Markus Witte, Jakob Wohrle, David P. Wright, Molly M. Zahn