ABSTRACT
Genesis is a much extended prologue relating to the time before Moses; and Deuteronomy is very much itself. It is true that Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Numbers, is dominated by Moses. However complicated the drafting and supplementation of the contents of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers is supposed to be, it is held that it was the same priestly authors and/or editors who had operated over the whole sweep of the material. The proposal is simply that in conception the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers are more different from each other than would be expected of three parts of a larger whole; and that they were conceived one after the other and not together. To decouple Numbers from Exodus and Leviticus and to note how much its new Levitical interests are shared with Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah is to point to a later date for the book than either Wenham or Knohl and Milgrom will find congenial.
