Editing Torah (section)

===Date of compilation===
The final Torah is widely seen as a product of the [[Persian period]] (539–332 BCE, probably 450–350 BCE).{{Sfn|Frei|2001|p=6}} This consensus echoes a traditional Jewish view which gives [[Ezra]], the leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation.{{sfn|Romer|2008|p=2 and fn.3}} Many theories have been advanced to explain the composition of the Torah, but two have been especially influential.{{sfn|Ska|2006|p=217}} The first of these, Persian Imperial authorisation, advanced by Peter Frei in 1985, holds that the Persian authorities required the Jews of Jerusalem to present a single body of law as the price of local autonomy.{{sfn|Ska|2006|p=218}} Frei's theory was, according to Eskenazi, "systematically dismantled" at an interdisciplinary symposium held in 2000, but the relationship between the Persian authorities and Jerusalem remains a crucial question.{{sfn|Eskenazi|2009|p=86}} The second theory, associated with Joel P. Weinberg and called the "Citizen-Temple Community", proposes that the Exodus story was composed to serve the needs of a post-exilic Jewish community organised around the Temple, which acted in effect as a bank for those who belonged to it.{{sfn|Ska|2006|pp=226–227}}

A minority of scholars would place the final formation of the Pentateuch somewhat later, in the [[Hellenistic period|Hellenistic]] (332–164 BCE) or even [[Hasmonean Kingdom|Hasmonean]] (140–37 BCE) periods.{{sfn|Greifenhagen|2003|pp=206–207, 224 fn.49}} Russell Gmirkin, for instance, argues for a Hellenistic dating on the basis that the [[Elephantine papyri]], the records of a Jewish colony in Egypt dating from the last quarter of the 5th century BCE, make no reference to a written Torah, [[the Exodus]], or to any other biblical event, though it does mention the festival of [[Passover]].{{sfn|Gmirkin|2006|pp=30, 32, 190}}