Who Wrote the Torah?

And Were They Closer to the Divine Than We Are Now?

Synagogue on Yom Kippur - Maurycy Gottlieb - 1878

Not long ago, a friend of mine was quoting the Torah—line for line, as if the words themselves flowed directly from the mouth of the Creator. She meant it sincerely, reverently. But I found myself pausing. Not to challenge her faith, but to question the assumption that these were the unfiltered words of G-d. I asked her, gently: “But didn’t a human write those words?”

It’s not an accusation—it’s a wondering.

Historically, scholars have understood that the Torah was not written in one divine burst, but crafted over centuries by human minds and hands. This view, known as the Documentary Hypothesis, suggests that the Five Books of Moses are a woven tapestry of at least four distinct sources—each shaped by different authors, communities, and historical moments.

• The Yahwist source likely originated in the southern Kingdom of Judah around the 10th century BCE. It offers a vivid, earthy narrative style and refers to G-d as Yahweh.

• The Elohist source emerged in the 9th century BCE in the northern Kingdom of Israel, with a more abstract view of G-d, referred to as Elohim.

• The Deuteronomist source is often dated to the 7th century BCE, during King Josiah’s religious reforms, emphasizing law, covenant, and centralized worship.

• The Priestly source likely came together during or after the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), focusing on ritual, genealogy, and sacred order.

None of these were individual people with names we can trace. Instead, they were schools of thought, editorial traditions, and cultural voices shaped by their time's spiritual, political, and existential concerns. Over generations, these voices were compiled, edited, and redacted into the sacred text we now call the Torah—a profound record of humanity’s evolving relationship with the divine.

So while tradition may hold that the Torah was divinely dictated, scholarship suggests something more human—and, in its own way, no less profound: a collective striving toward the divine, expressed through story, law, poetry, and memory.

So, these words weren’t etched by lightning onto stone in a single, divine moment. Human hands wrote them. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less sacred. It just means we must wrestle with how the sacred moves through us.

This led me to something Rudolf Steiner once said—something that continues to haunt and illuminate my thoughts.

In one of his lectures, Steiner spoke about how healing in the time of Christ was different. Not necessarily because divine intervention was more accessible, but because humanity itself was different. He believed that the veil between body and spirit was thinner then. People lived more closely aligned with their soul nature. The divine wasn’t something distant—it pulsed nearer the surface.

In that era, healing was an act of remembrance—a reunion of soul, body, and spirit in harmony.

Today, healing is harder, slower, and demands effort. The soul is often buried under distraction, consumerism, digital noise, and layers of skepticism. The spiritual forces that once moved through us almost effortlessly now require intention, discipline, and inner work. Moral imagination has to be cultivated. Will must be awakened.

And that brings me back to the Torah.

What if those who wrote the earliest sacred texts were closer to the divine, not because they were perfect vessels, but because they were more attuned? What if their words, though written by humans, were infused with resonance precisely because they lived nearer to their own soul—and therefore, the soul of the world?

It’s easy to ask: Are these the words of G-d? But maybe the more relevant question is: What kind of human must one be to write words that carry the weight of the divine?

Maybe the Torah was born in a time when human consciousness could serve as a clear channel, when the noise was less and the nearness of soul more tangible. When myth, memory, and meaning were not yet sundered by the sharp scalpel of modern abstraction.

If that’s true, perhaps our job now is not to blindly believe or discard the words in the name of modernity, but to understand the state of being from which they were written.

Because we are not the same humans today.

We’ve numbed ourselves with materialism, entertained ourselves into distraction, and trained our minds to seek proof rather than presence. The soul still speaks—but its voice is muffled. And we’ve forgotten how to listen.

So the question isn’t just who wrote the Torah, but what kind of humanity wrote it?

And more importantly, can we find our way back?

Can we become the kind of people again who don’t just read sacred words, but live them? Not because they’re written in stone, but because they rise from within.

Not to recreate the past, but to remember the path.

Back to soul.

Back to Spirit.

Back to ourselves.

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I'm honored to share that ChronoSync: Science of the Soul has been featured in Review Tales Magazine, a publication that has championed exceptional storytelling worldwide since 2016.

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If you’re passionate about stories that push boundaries, blend genres, and offer something truly original, I invite you to explore the review and discover why ChronoSync is finding its place in readers' hearts and in the pages of publications dedicated to elevating powerful voices in fiction.

Thank you, Review Tales, for recognizing this story.

NYACK STREET FAIR - MAY 18TH AT MODERN DRUID