PENTATEUCH

PENTATEUCH, the name given by Origen to the first five books of the Bible, which the Jews call the Law or Five-fifths of the Law, the composition of which has of late years been subjected to keen critical investigation, and the whole ascribed to documents of different dates and diverse authorship, to the rejection of the old traditional hypothesis that it was the work of Moses, first called in question by Spinoza, and shown to be untenable by JEAN ASTRUC.