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"Silly" to me means is the notion that Moses HAD to write the Five Books or they are not authoritative.

Sounds silly to me. Of course, you might have to start questioning the New Testament as the Synoptics were "obviously" composed from Q and the Corinthians are not really just 2 letters and they might be to multiple churches. 1, 2, and 3 John were not composed by John but by some Johannine suburb which existed in Eastern Patmos. Hebrews was written by a woman. Have I covered all of em yet or should I keep em coming?

Yours is an especially radical brand of study of Scripture that would equal the radicalism of say vmatt's Christology. If only what you define as the "literal" word of God (that which has no alternate theories of composition) is theopneustos, then we've got nothing. We've built all doctrine on some shifting sand, including Catholic doctrine. You can say the Church authority remains, but without any Scriptural background (where you view swiftly leads) it crumbles soon enough into the rubble of historical-critical scholarship.

Not much of "history" can stand the acid of the historical-critical method any better than the Bible can. For instance. how could they prove that Plato actually wrote his dialogues?(By Plato, I means, of course, Aristocles, the supposed student of the supposedly historical Socrates.) You are reacting to the raw skepticism that fuels the Jesus Seminar types, or the naturalism that fuels much of it. To hell with them. The first bunch believes in nothing; the second, that everything has a natural cause. But I know enough of history to know than Ranke's notion of scientific history was doomed because the raw material is not there. The past does not exist, or exists only in fragments. All arguments about it are bound to end in debate. Hack, I couldn't prove where I was on May 15. 1965. I don't even remember myself!

Yours is an especially radical brand of study of Scripture that would equal the radicalism of say vmatt's Christology. If only what you define as the "literal" word of God (that which has no alternate theories of composition) is theopneustos, then we've got nothing. We've built all doctrine on some shifting sand, including Catholic doctrine. You can say the Church authority remains, but without any Scriptural background (where you view swiftly leads) it crumbles soon enough into the rubble of historical-critical scholarship.

Thank you, bass. This is exactly what I was wishing to express.