In these collected essays, Joel Baden explores the history of the Pentateuch's literary composition. Including detailed analyses of specific passages as well as broad theoretical and methodological reflections, these essays offer a glimpse of both the mechanisms by which the Pentateuch came into being and the scholarly frameworks through which the Pentateuch is viewed. Spanning the first fifteen years of his career, this volume also represents a record of the recent trends in pentateuchal scholarship, especially the growth of the neo-documentary hypothesis.