Moses and the Pentateuch

◆  Living Water Bible Study  ◆

Moses & the Pentateuch

The man behind the first five books of the Bible — and his real name, Moshe.

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We call him Moses — but his mother, and the God who called him, knew him by a Hebrew name: Moshe. He is the towering figure of the Old Testament: drawn from the Nile, raised in Pharaoh’s palace, exiled to the desert, then sent back to lead a nation out of slavery. He is also, by the steady witness of Scripture, the human author of the Bible’s first five books. Let’s look at who Moses really was, what his name means, and how those five books came to be written — and then, below, set out the original Hebrew names of many of the Bible’s best-known figures.

His Real Name: Moshe

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In Hebrew his name is מֹשֶׁה — Moshe (sometimes written Mosheh). According to Exodus, it was Pharaoh’s daughter who named him:

“She called his name Moses… Because I drew him out of the water.”Exodus 2:10 (KJV)

The Hebrew verb mashah means ‘to draw out’, and the name carries that very picture — the child drawn out of the Nile would one day draw a whole nation out of Egypt.

There is a second layer many readers find fascinating. In the Egyptian language, the element mes or mose means ‘son of’ or ‘born of’ — the same piece found in royal names such as Thut‑mose and Ra‑messes. Raised as a prince of Egypt, the baby may well have been given an Egyptian name that Scripture then explains through its Hebrew sound. Either way, the meaning the Bible presses on us is the one his life embodied: the one who was drawn out, in order to draw others out.

What Is the Pentateuch?

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The word Pentateuch comes from the Greek for ‘five scrolls’. It is the opening section of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In Hebrew these five are together called the Torah (‘instruction’ or ‘teaching’), and each book is named from its first words rather than its theme:

בְּרֵאשִׁית Bereshit (‘In the beginning’) · שְׁמוֹת Shemot (‘Names’) · וַיִּקְרָא Vayikra (‘And He called’) · בְּמִדְבַּר Bamidbar (‘In the wilderness’) · דְּבָרִים Devarim (‘Words’).

Together they carry the story from creation to the very edge of the Promised Land, and contain the law given at Sinai.

Did Moses Really Write Them?

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The Bible presents Moses, again and again, as the one who wrote this material:

“And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD.”Exodus 24:4 (KJV)

He is told, ‘Write this for a memorial in a book’ (Exodus 17:14) and ‘Write thou these words’ (Exodus 34:27). Of the desert journey we read that ‘Moses wrote their goings out’ (Numbers 33:2). And near the end of his life he ‘wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests’ (Deuteronomy 31:9), placing the finished book beside the ark (Deuteronomy 31:24–26).

Later Scripture simply calls it ‘the book of the law of Moses’ (Joshua 8:31; Nehemiah 8:1). Most striking of all, Jesus Himself attributes these books to Moses:

“Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.”John 5:46 (KJV)

How One Man Wrote Five Books

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For most of the Pentateuch, Moses was an eyewitness. He recorded the words God spoke to him, kept a written account of Israel’s journey stage by stage, and set down the law as it was given. Writing was well established in his world; raised in the Egyptian court, Moses would have been fully literate, and the materials — scrolls of papyrus and leather — were in everyday use.

Genesis is different, because it covers events long before Moses was born. Here he worked as an inspired recorder and compiler, drawing on the accounts handed down through the generations and, above all, on what God revealed to him. The book even reads in places like a set of family records — ‘these are the generations of…’ — exactly the kind of material a careful writer would gather and arrange under God’s guidance.

One honest detail is often noticed: Deuteronomy 34 describes Moses’ own death and burial. Long tradition holds that these closing verses were added by Joshua, who finished the scroll — a small seam that has never shaken the church’s confidence that the five books are, in substance, the work of Moses. Some modern scholars have proposed other theories of authorship, yet the Bible’s own testimony, echoed by the words of Jesus, points steadily back to Moshe.

The Real Names of the Bible’s Major Figures

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Many of the names we use in English have travelled a long road — through Greek and Latin — from their Hebrew originals. Here are the true Hebrew names of some of the Bible’s best-known figures, set out alphabetically by their familiar English form, each with the Hebrew, a simple pronunciation, and its meaning.

Behind every familiar name is an older one, full of meaning — and behind every name, the God who calls each of us by name.