In his SOUVENIRS PERSONNELS, published posthumously in 1967,¹ Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855-1938), founder of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, comments the publication in 1906 of the answers given by the Pontifical Biblical Commission to four doubts about the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch: “On June 27, the Holy Father gave approval to the decision of the Commission on Pentateuch, by which it considered that it was opening the door a certain distance to literary criticism, either on the theory of Moses’ secretaries, as they have been called, or by the admission of additions, notes and explanation. In order to appreciate the full significance of these concessions, we must remember that scholarly champions of the authenticity of the Pentateuch had been accustomed up to then to base their arguments on the antiquity of its linguistic forms.”² A vision too optimistic, which immediately highlights the emptiness of the linguistic “proof.” As we shall see, the archaism of language had a precise apologetic purpose: to minimize the scope of certain embarrassing texts, assuming a “primitive” meaning for certain terms. But the French scholar insinuated another principle for the hermeneutics of the Vatican text: the silence on some matters. In addition to the timid opening of some doors, the document omitted to mention the “dangers” to which Catholic theology would have been exposed if it had relativized the whole belonging of the first five books of the Bible to the work of Moses. But Lagrange’s contemporaries knew well that any openings in this sense would gravely affect an apologetics based on the role of an eyewitness recognized to the ancient legislator.

Lagrange was ready to print his commentary on Genesis, and urged the approval of the Master of the Order, Jacinthe Cormier. This evidently gave quite another reading of the Vatican document and thus answered: “As for your work on Genesis, I very much doubt that it is entirely in line with the views and the spirit of the latest decree of the Commission. (…) I shall have the matter examined, and I shall hold consultations, if I can do so discretely. I shall then be all right with God.”³ The commentary therefore was not published, except as a posthumous article, in the Revue biblique of 1938.

THE DOCUMENT OF THE PONTIFICAL BIBLICAL COMMISSION

The literary and dogmatic genre of the dubia deserves a brief introduction. The answer “yes or no” is based on the main verb of the interrogative sentence and involves the possible affirmation of considered alternatives. So, in the first of those that interest us, one wonders if the reasons given by the historical philological analysis are of such magnitude (tanti sint ponderis, of such weight) to justify the opinion of those who believe that the books of the Pentateuch were composed from sources later than Moses:

Question 1: Are the arguments accumulated by critics to impugn the Mosaic authenticity of the Sacred Books that are designated by the name of the Pentateuch of such weight that, in spite of the very many indications of both Testaments taken together, the continuous conviction of the Jewish people, and also the unbroken tradition of the Church in addition to the internal evidences drawn from the text itself, they justify affirming that these books were not written by Moses but were composed for the most part from sources later than the time of Moses? Response: No. ⁴

The reasons given for countering this theory are of three types: a) the revealed texts, therefore “true” by definition, of the Old and the New Testament, say that “Moses wrote” the Torah; b) the joint traditions of Judaism and Christianity agree on this authenticity; c) there are “internal clues” (indiciis internis). The linguistic “proof” could have been one of these clues, but the Commission – as Lagrange points out – does not explicitly mention it. In any case, the answer could be seen as a sign of openness because it places on one plate of the balance those which, as we shall see, were considered irrefutable reasons and on the other the results, which are always provisional, of scientific research. The second dubium focuses on material authenticity and is organized in two parts:

Question 2: Does the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch necessarily demand such a redaction of the whole work that it must be held absolutely that Moses wrote all and each book with his own hand or dictated them to copyists; or, also, can the hypothesis be permitted of those who think that the work was conceived by him under the influence of divine inspiration and was committed to another or several to be put into writing, but in such manner that they rendered his thought faithfully, wrote nothing contrary to his wish, omitting nothing; and, finally, when the work was composed in this way, approved by Moses as its chief and inspired author, it was published under his name? Response: No, for the first part; yes, for the second.

The evident concern of this second response, even if it seems to open an opportunity to the multiplicity of the “authors”, is evidently to reaffirm, in one way or another, the physical presence of Moses at the time of writing and publishing the texts. That of the copyist or the secretary, more or less free in his literary activity, is a theory that has always been useful to explain the evident presence of more “hands” in the elaboration of ancient texts, as much as the use of “oral tradition” allows to overcome even notable voids in the chronology. Evidently, for the patriarchal accounts of the Genesis and for the events prior to his birth, it was obvious that the Commission had resorted to this to justify, in addition to inspiration, the knowledge of Moses. To oral tradition, however, it adds as a possibility that the Legislator had access to written sources (scripta documenta).

Question 3: Can it be granted, without prejudice to the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch, that Moses for the composition of the work made use of sources, namely, written documents or oral traditions, from which, according to the particular goal set before him and under the influence of divine inspiration, he made some borrowings, and these, arranged word for word according to sense or amplified, he inserted into the work itself? Response: Yes.

Evidently, behind this statement is the observation that certain narratives of Genesis are also present in other nearby cultures. In this case, the Commission admits that Moses “arranged” to fit his global theological project, inspired by God, the material that the sources transmitted to him. Authenticity, direct or indirect, is therefore a doctrinal guarantee, but the principle of written sources “upstream” of the editorial staff was so explicitly admitted. The last question focuses on what can be placed “downstream” of the literary activity of Moses. It is the most delicate point, because it does not concern the act of writing, but the text transmitted and readable to the present day.

Question 4: Can be admitted, safeguarding substantially the Mosaic authenticity and the integrity of the Pentateuch, that over such a long course of ages it underwent some modifications, for example: additions made after the death of Moses or by an inspired author or glosses and explanations inserted in the texts, certain words and forms of the antiquated language translated into more modern language; finally false readings to be ascribed to the errors of copyists, which should be examined and judged according to the norms of textual criticism? Response: Yes, the judgement of the Church being maintained.

Textual criticism was much more useful for the New than for the Old Testament of which, at the time, the earliest known manuscripts in Hebrew were two medieval codices and in Greek the fourth century uncials. But it was already admitting a principle: error can creep into transmission, just as explanatory glosses and updates may have been added, especially in legislation.

M.J. LAGRANGE AN APOLOGIST IN CRISIS

If Lagrange was at the centre of the controversy that led to the drafting of the dubia in 1906, it was due to his famous speech at the International Congress of Catholic Scholars, held in Freiburg in August 1897, as we shall see, but his crisis was born much earlier. He tells himself, in his Souvenirs Personnels, about a trip to the Sinai that he had undertaken precisely to “read” on the ground the wonders of the Exodus:

I must here admit, however, that the journey to Sinai (1893) made a deep impression on me, which I shall even call a secret and painful anxiety. Since hardly any mention was made of it at the time in the Revue, except in order to clarify a point of epigraphy, I must say something about it now. (…) I have mentioned my low physical state because it perhaps contributed to the intensity of the impression on my spirit. I have contemplated the beauty of Sinai–the arid desert, the oases, the coloured sandstone, the pink granite, the majesty of God’s mountain bathed in celestial light; I could not begin to describe it. (…) But what I was searching for above all was the trail of the Israelites, the confirmation of the Pentateuch. It was as thought, in my mind. I began to see through a complex question: it seemed to me that the earth itself had a contribution to make to literary criticism of the Pentateuch. Substantial reality as related in the last four books appeared to me to be in perfect harmony with the nature of the country, its appearance, its culture, its traditions. (…) ⁵

Up to this line the French theologian, impregnated with romantic orientalism and apologetic spirit, is speaking. The contemplation of the rocky desert, the sense of vast solitude, the as a figure of the encounter between God and his people, the simple lives of the Bedouins: everything seemed to accompany the text like the ancient miniatures at the margin of the sacred page. But the scholar was soon faced with inconsistencies:

On the other hand, is the Pentateuch, such as we have it, in all its aspects, the historical account of the facts? How was it possible to move the millions of people referred to in the actual text around, not a limitless desert as flat as a sheet of paper, but those steep waterless valleys? And if one alleges that errors in transcription are to blame, how does one explain the solemn ordering of the tribes, drawn up as it on parade, according to the Book of Numbers? (…) Was it not necessary, therefore, to conclude that perfectly historical facts had been as it were idealized in order to become symbolic of God’s people, and of God’s Church in the future–especially since the two aspects, the historical and that which we can call juridical and figurative, seemed to tally with each other and throw limit on each other if it was accepted that two main documents were the basis for the composition of the three central books of the Pentateuch: the one which critics said was drawn up by the Elohist and the Yahwist, and the Priestly Code of Wellhausen. ⁶

He was certainly not the first to realize that the environment could not agree with the literal sense of the story as it was meant then. It was believed, with St. Thomas, that the words were first understood in their immediate sense,⁷ literally, then that they could be interpreted in a theological or spiritual sense. In the unintentionally fictitious narratives, the literal meaning was conceived as “historical”. In our perception, the “historical” term of a story means “historicized”, in the Catholic tradition, and not only, instead it was required that the text be of a well-noted author and worthy of faith, better if eyewitness of the facts, that his text was intact, not manipulated, unitary and non-contradictory. As for the narrative, in the case of the Pentateuch, this presupposed that the truth of certain stories, such as that of Creation, was fruit of divine inspiration; that other stories had been collected from oral or written traditions, such as patriarchal cycles; and that of certain events, in particular the prodigies of the Exodus, the narrator was also the protagonist. Without prejudice to the conscience that an ancient historian did not possess our instruments of investigation and that, if personally involved, was easily transported by the impetus to give an epic dimension to his narration, the obvious and natural content of his statements had to be considered factual.

In the case of Moses, the first difficulties arose from the fact that one tended (and still tends) to date the exit from Egypt around 1250 BC. In which language did Moses write? With which alphabet? The Phoenician of Byblos, considered the oldest of those close to Hebrew in historical times, dates back to the 10th century. On what support, apart from the famous Tables of the Law? A second series of questions concerns the verisimilitude of the story, not in its miraculous dimensions, but in the more concrete traits. The case explicitly referred to by Lagrange is Es 12.37: “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children” (NIV). 600,000 infantrymen, if an approximate calculation assigns to each a wife, two sons and a parent or other relative, constitute the nucleus armed within a population of 3,000,000 individuals. If you think that, in the first century AD, Rome had 1,000,000 inhabitants and needed about ten aqueducts in addition to the Tiber for water supply and that its empire was defended by no more than 150,000 legionnaires, we understand the perplexity expressed from Lagrange: “How was it possible to move the millions of people referred to in the actual text around, not a limitless desert as flat as a sheet of paper, but those steep waterless valleys?”

The archaeology and the epigraphy do not allow then to confirm the death by drowning of any pharaoh of the time, nor that the Sea of Reeds can be identified with the Red Sea. What then remains of the story founding not only Jewish history, but also the Easter liturgy that Christians then adopted in memory of the passage of Christ from death to life? An answer still in vogue in literal circles is based on the number 1,000, eleph. The term is taken from the same root as aleph, ox, and is used in Jud 6:15 with the archaic meaning of “family group.”⁸ A few hundred families may well have crossed a swamp (the Sea of Reeds) on foot, while the Egyptian police carts got bogged down and failed to pursue. A bit of rhetorical emphasis and a certain misunderstanding about the initial figure would have made the story unlikely in the eyes of the modern poorly inclined to poetry. Perhaps this is why Lagrange exulted that the Commission did not adopt the easy thesis of archaic language.

Lagrange then appeals to the well-known documentary theory of Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), until then refuted in the French Catholic environment as a product of the Protestant mentality of the Beyond the Rhine. In fact, following Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), recognized as the initiator of scientific historiography, the opinion according to which much in the Pentateuch is due to subsequent mythologies, had already been supported in the Wissenschaft des Judentums, by Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860), Leopold Zunz (1794-1886) and Abraham Geiger (1810- 1874). In fact, the nascent Jewish historiography, which among other things wanted to show that the Jews were an integral part of Germanic history, looked with suspicion on the Mosaic mythology, in favour of the birth of a religious and national conscience in contact with the Persian and Alexandrian empires.

 THE FREIBURG ACCIDENT

Father Lagrange poured his concerns into the famous Freiburg conference. Alfred Loisy who has left us a savoury story of the event, greatly limits the originality of Lagrange:

At the International Congress of Catholic Scholars, held in Freiburg in August 1897, two important communications were presented concerning the question of the Pentateuch in the section of religious sciences. One by an English scholar, Baron Hügel, the other by the Reverend Father Lagrange, director of the Revue Biblique. In the first, the problem of the Pentateuch, or better, of the Esateuch, was directly approached, in the second it was taken to the side through a critique of the traditional saying. While von Hügel’s writing, already published in English and French for several months and reported in time to the attention of Catholic exegetes, does not seem to have been noticed by the defenders of Mosaic authenticity, that of Father Lagrange has been strongly criticized after its publication. ⁹

Loisy does not fail to notice that the scandal was caused by being the founder of the Ecole, a French Dominican friar. What could be accepted by an English layman, was not admissible on the lips and in the writings of a religious, son of the “firstborn daughter of the Church”. Loisy continues by summarizing the reasons Lagrange attributes to the traditionalists and their answers: ¹⁰

The first ‘reason’ is the difficulty that finds a Westerner, nurtured in the classical idea of a book, in conceiving the idea that an Oriental has, or the repugnance of the theologian who has, so to speak, accommodated his theory of inspiration to the idea of a homogeneous book, one-handed work, faithfully transmitted according to the primitive tenor, when it is then necessary to adapt the notion of divine inspiration to a secular work of editing, to a book to which a hundred people have contributed.

The second ‘reason’ is the difficulty in admitting a legislative evolution that seems to contradict the constant formula ‘God told Moses …’ This evolution is due to the nature of things, but is the formula not the guarantee of the divine and Mosaic origin of all the laws contained in the Pentateuch? Of course – replies father Lagrange – but it is a ‘mediated’ guarantee, if it deals with more recent laws, promulgated according to the principles of primitive legislation (…): ‘The two provisions contradict each other in the sense that one repeals the other, but the editor does not contradict himself by reporting two successive laws’ (…).

But there is the formula ‘Moses wrote’  This is the third ‘reason’. This formula, ‘Moses wrote’ should not be interpreted more strictly than the formula ‘God said to Moses ’ [since it applies only to certain parts] (. ) It could be objected, it is true, that the New Testament contains verses in which it is stated that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, and above all the words of the Savior in John 5.45-46: ‘there are already those who accuse you: Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you believed in Moses, you would believe me too. For about me he wrote.’ Father Lagrange states that Moses is not mentioned here to represent the Law (. ).

 Catholics still hold to the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch out of respect for the Christian tradition, which attributes it to Moses. This is the fourth ‘reason.’ Is it a tradition of faith? Because if it is not, the unanimity of the Fathers would not be enough to make it certain (…).

 The apologists of the Bible, since the time of Bossuet, have gladly considered the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch as an indispensable condition of its historical authenticity: it is the fifth ‘reason.’ Father Lagrange affirms that it is important, on the contrary, to separate the question of historical authority from that of the editorial unit (…). Introducing the question of the Pentateuch by an indirect way, as it did in the text we have analyzed, the Dominican scholar has not avoided a certain darkness that exposed him to being misunderstood. As if to say that the attack was inevitable.

 The reader will have noticed that some of these “reasons” will be echoed in the document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Lagrange’s opinions were published in the Revue Biblique the following year. ¹¹

The most violent reaction is due to the Jesuit Lucien Méchineau, who considered the “historical method” to be for apologetics “a perfect method of demonstration”. Based on the declarations of Leo XIII that in the Providentissimus Deus included among the grievous errors (portenta errorum) the negation of the historical value of the Gospels, the theologian attributes to the direct testimony on the Exodus’ prodigies probationary value about the existence and the possibility of a supernatural intervention.

The Hebrews had also their apologetics, like ours; that is to say that as we had, because it is necessary having certain and credible reasons; without them they could not reasonably and supernaturally believe in the existence of Revelation. These reasons were, for them as for us, the miracles that God worked to witness to the truth of this revelation. Finally, like us they had two instruments to see the existence of these miracles: seeing them and almost touching them with their eyes, if they occurred in their presence, close to them, or historically prove their existence with documents of perfect authenticity, if it is of miracles already lost in distant times (…) the Pentateuch had therefore the same role in the apologetics of the ancient law that the Gospels in the new. ¹²

Therefore, if the authenticity of mosaics is necessary for the credibility of the prodigies, the rationalist critique, which from the lack of verisimilitude of certain details deduces that the story is late and amplified, cannot be considered “historical method”. The thesesthen indirectly adopted by the Commission are as follows: “In short, the Mosaic origin of the ancient Thora is affirmed by three irrecusable authorities: the Jewish tradition transmitted in the Holy Books; the formal teaching of Jesus Christ and the Apostles; and finally: the Christian tradition and the teaching of the Church (…) If therefore these three facts are certain, no one has the right to refuse the conclusion that derives from it: the Pentateuch is undoubtedly the work of Moses.” ¹³

Méchineau did not oppose these motivations to research and scientific theories to which the Commission refers, asking whether they are cogent; for him, and for many fundamentalists even today, “historical method” is not “historical-critical method”, but attribution of factual content to the affirmations of texts. For this reason, it is necessary that Moses be a witness and writer at the same time. As Loisy rightly points out, it is the habit, not the science of Lagrange that makes a problem. Méchineau does not hesitate to use the warrior language:

But now that for some years even Catholic writers – few in number, it is true – express sympathy for documentary criticism (…) It was not a surprise that we saw brothers in the faith approaching to a field hitherto considered enemy. Many consoled themselves by claiming wrongly or rightly that these defectors were not men of theology and that, consequently, their adherence to the documentary thesis had nothing to disturb the Catholic opinion. But today this answer has no value, if ever it has had: because nobody will support, for example, that the Reverend Father Lagrange O.P. he does not handle the theologian’s and the critic’s weapons with equal dexterity. Thus, the passage of men of such value in the field of our adversaries has upset excellent spirits, and now we hear a little ‘everywhere that the thesis of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch can be freely discussed among Catholics, like any opinion that does not touch in nothing the faith or the customs. ¹⁴

 It is true that these bellicose statements would be framed in the red- hot political climate of the early twentieth century¹⁵: a Catholicism forced to defend itself could not tolerate “enemies” in their ranks. After the Second World War and the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu of Pius XII, responding to Cardinal Suhard, archbishop of Paris, on January 16th, 1948, the Commission saved only the openings of the document of 1906. If the Commission remembers some of the fragility of the documentary theory of Wellhausen, the latter attributes it to progress in studies, not to apologetic reasons:

As regards the composition of the Pentateuch–after reminding the reader of the reply of 1906, namely, that one may hold that Moses used written documents and oral traditions in composing his work, and that there have been alterations and additions made after the time of Moses, the Commission goes on to say ‘Nobody nowadays doubts the existence of these sources or denies that there has been a progressive development or growth (accroissement progressif) of the Mosaic laws as a consequence of the social and religious conditions of later ages–a progress which may be seen also in the historical narratives.’ However as there remains the greatest division of opinion as to the character and dates of the documents contained in the Pentateuch, and as some scholars totally reject the ‘documentary hypothesis’ and attempt a solution along different lines, the Commission invites Catholic scholars to further unbiased study of these questions in the assurance that such an examination will doubtless bring into greater relief the large part payed by Moses and his profound influence as author and legislator. ¹⁶

CONCLUSION

 What should we understand today, especially in comparison with the other “mosaic” monotheisms, by “profound influence”? Moses is the author of the Pentateuch as Dante can say of Virgil “You are my teacher and my author?” As we have endeavoured to show in these pages, in a good part the problem is more theological than historical in the sense of today’s term.

 On the level of historical analysis, the Moses of the Book has a relationship with Egypt, he is a legislator, has close ties with the temple and with worship, is brother of the high priest Aaron, but with decidedly “secular” traits if not royal ones. His desert is more a sealed chamber between the divine and the human, from the metahistorical characters of the legends of foundation, than a place that can be placed on the map of the ancient Near East.

 Many of the “historical” traits that Lagrange and the scholars of the time attributed to an eventual “historical” Moses, beginning with the dating of Exodus in the 13th century BC, today make us smile and are not considered necessary for reading the Book. The exit from Egypt is a beginning of the people like the Mesopotamian origin referred to in patriarchal tales or the autochthonous one of the Book of Judges, not to mention the Garden of Eden. Such completeness, as Jost, Wellhausen and Lagrange had well seen, is difficult to think before the fifth century. For his part, today M.-J. Lagrange can be presented as an apologist. This is at least considered by today’s author, above all in his studies on historical Jesus, to attribute the foundation of the École to anti-rationalist ends:

By establishing the school in Jerusalem, Lagrange also responded to the way that academic Orientalists such Renan, rather than Catholic priests, had become the metropolitan authorities on the Holy Land. (…) At the same time that such efforts made an effective symbolic riposte to Renan’s implicit mastery of the Holy Land, they exemplified the extent to which Catholics felt, in the aftermath of Vie de Jésus, that secular popularizers must be emulated if they were to be defeated. (…) Despite Lagrange’s optimism, other figures in the church believed that if Catholics were truly to confront Renan’s legacy they would need to take biblical criticism further that the cautious Vatican recommended. Alfred Loisy, for example… ¹⁷