Professor Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton University has declared here in a lecture that he has found new evidence that the Pentateuch was written in Hebrew and by Moses.
Certain critics of the Bible have claimed that the Pentateuch could not have been written in Hebrew and by Moses because at the time when Moses is supposed to have lived, the Hebrew language was not known and in any event was not developed to the literary excellence that is shown in the Pentateuch.
These assertions have been weakened, he stated, by the recent discovery of clay tablets in Babylonia representing letters and official papers sent by the Palestinian rulers to the kings of Egypt during the period of Moses. The language used on these tablets is known as the “Sumarian dialect” which was the official language of Babylonia before its conquest by the Semites. Some of the Sumarian expressions however, are translated into Hebrew in parenthesis, thus proving, Prof. Wilson declares, that it was assumed by the writers of these tablets that Hebrew would be better understood by the Egyptians for whom they were intended than Sumarian. This, according, to Prof. Wilson, is conclusive proof that the Pentateuch could have been written in Hebrew and by Moses.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
