Javier Alonso López, “Who really wrote the Old Testament?” National Geographic History (Mar/Apr 2026).
“In 586 B.C., the Kingdom of Judah, its capital Jerusalem, and its Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II. Part of the population of Judah was deported to Babylon where they remained in exile for decades until the Persian king Cyrus the Great allowed them to return to their land to rebuild their country and their Temple while enjoying relative political autonomy. Sometime after the return from exile, a final intervention was made in the text of the Torah, shaping it into the form we know today. A new author gathered the texts that had previously been dispersed across different works into a single volume, adapting them to give them unity.
Some scholars believe that this final author was Ezra, a Jewish scribe, expert in the Law of Yahweh, and an official of the Persian king Artaxerxes. Ezra was sent to reform the religious practice in Jerusalem, although there’s some uncertainty about when this reform happened. If the king referred to was Artaxerxes I, Ezra’s mission must have taken place shortly after 457 B.C., but if it was Artaxerxes II, it would have been in the fourth century B.C.”
The Amateur Exegete 
I’m not entirely convinced the Torah as we have it was the work of an individual, final redactor. But if it was, I can’t think of any potential candidates, y’know, better than Ezra.
😉
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Ben, what are the reasons for your skepticism regarding the empty tomb?
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For starters, I think that by-and-large the victims of Roman crucifixion were left to rot either on their crosses or in mass graves. It was part and parcel of what crucifixion was meant to be, the total erasure of the person. I’m also not sure that the Gospel accounts are rooted in historical memory so much as they are apologetic devices to prop up the belief in Jesus’s *physical* resurrection.
But on the other hand, we do know some crucifixions were buried and there is a way to read Paul’s reciting of the creed in 1 Cor 15 that Jesus being buried refers to an actual, identifiable site and not a mass grave.
Honestly, if it turns out that Jesus was buried in something akin to what we find in the Gospels, I’d be fine with that. It changes nothing for me.
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