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Moses is the major figure through most of these books, and early Jewish and Christian tradition held that Moses himself wrote them, though nowhere in the Five Books of Moses themselves does the text say that he was the author.
[Deut. 31:9,24-26 describes Moses as writing a scroll of the torah - but no claim that the scroll included all five books. Only later did torah come to mean the Pentateuch]
But the tradition that one person, Moses, alone wrote these books presented problems. People observed contradictions in the text. It would report events in a particular order, and later it would say that those same events happened in a different order. It would say that there were two of something, and elsewhere it would say that there were fourteen of that same thing. It would say that the Moabites did something, and later it would say that it was the Midianites who did it. It would describe Moses as going to a Tabernacle in a chapter before Moses builds the Tabernacle.
People also noticed that the Five Books of Moses included things that Moses could not have known or was not likely to have said. The text, after all, gave an account of Moses' death. It also said that Moses was the humblest man on earth; and normally one would not expect the humblest man on earth to point out that he is the humblest man on earth. (17f.)
Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible.
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This is it. The very end. These final two chapters are not read on a regular Shabbat, but on Simchat Torah. Our next Shabbat parasha will begin the new cycle of readings at Breishit, Genesis. The Torah concludes with this parasha, VeZot Habrachah, a final poem recited by Moses before his death, blessing each of the tribes. As the midrash notes, Moses spent so much of his time scolding the Israelites, he wanted his last words to be a blessing.
In Parashat Ha'azinu, we discussed what it means to read the Torah as poetry. This week we tackle the even more difficult topic of authorship. I hope, therefore, that this is not overly provocative. Last week, we saw that the Torah itself declares that Moses recorded "the words of this teaching (Torah) to the very end" (31:24). (The word Torah here, according to most modern commentators, probably refers to the book of Deuteronomy). And in many synagogues, when the Torah is raised, the congregation sings: "VeZot HaTorah....This is the Torah which Moses set before the Israelites..." Although Jews are not required to subscribe to articles of faith, Maimonides makes a list of 13 principles, and one of them is that the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai. Certainly, many Jews believe (or consider it a foundational myth) that Moses recorded the entire and exact Torah text we have today from God at Sinai and to suggest otherwise is tantamount to heresy. The Ramban's first comment on the first word of the Torah states the classic understanding: "Moshe Rabbenu (Moses our teacher) wrote this book with the rest of the entire Torah from the mouth of God".
Ramban goes on to clarify that Moses only wrote up to the laws of the Tabernacle at Sinai, and the rest of the Torah he finished 40 years later. The Talmud states, the Torah was given 'bit by bit' (literally scroll by scroll). Otherwise it wouldn't make sense. If Moses received the Torah at Sinai (back in Exodus), it would create a back-to-the future paradox where the protagonist, knowing the future, can act in a way that changes/prevents the future from happening. An example: if Moses knew that hitting the rock (insted of speaking to it) was going to get him into so much trouble, and prevent him from entering the land of Israel which he desperately wanted to do, wouldn't he have been really, really careful to speak to the rock?! If Moses writes (better would be: transcribes) the Torah, it makes better sense when Moses is on a (different) mountain here at the end of his life. But this still has problems. If he wrote it that last time he was up on Mt. Nebo, how could the Israelites have received it? He was alone for this last encounter; no one knows where he died, and the text explicitly says, "No one knows his burial place to this day" (Deut 34:6).
Modern, critical scholarship rejects that Moses wrote the Torah, or that even one person wrote the Torah, and many of you have probably heard of the 'Documentary Hypothesis' which identifies four different 'voices' in the Torah text. Today, many scholars have a renewed respect for the integrity of the Torah text, and do not see it as a poorly constructed patchwork quilt, even though they still acknowledge multiple authors. (I find it ironic that the adjective form of the word Moses is 'Mosaic' since modern scholars who believe in the Documentary Hypothesis (that the Torah was written in little pieces by different authors) subscribe to a theory of 'mosaic' authorship! It seems reasonable to think that at one point, the Torah must have been penned by a single person (like an editor), whether that person was Moses, Ezra, or some unknown author, even if the texts were from multiple sources. It seems unlikely the Torah was written by committee. But, if you've read this far, let me state clearly that believing that there might be a human aspect to the Torah text does not IMHO (in my humble opinion) preclude a Divine aspect as well.
One of the main differences between an Orthodox and liberal approach to Torah is this 'issue of authorship.' Suggesting human authorship will automatically ostracize you from many Orthodox communities. But long before the radical suggestion of the Documentary Hypothesis, even the Rabbis who have no problem with the divinity of the text, recognized problems with Mosaic authorship. Duplication, contradiction, parallels with other ancient documents; the evidence that there is a human aspect to the Torah text is overwhelming. Of course, creative midrash can still be marshalled to argue with the conclusions of contemporary scholars. After all, most of the problems were recognized by the Rabbis of old.
The classic example is found in the final chapter of the Torah, we read, "And Moses died." The Talmud in Baba Batra (15a) has a discussion on the authors of biblical books and records a dispute on these verses.
The Master has said: Joshua wrote the book which bears his name and the last eight verses of the Pentateuch. This statement is in agreement with the authority who says that eight verses in the Torah were written by Joshua, as it has been taught: [It is written], So Moses the servant of the Lord died there. Now is it possible that Moses being dead could have written the words, ‘Moses died there’? The truth is, however, that up to this point Moses wrote, from this point Joshua wrote. This is the opinion of R. Judah, or, according to others, of R. Nehemiah.
Said R. Simeon to him: Can [we imagine the] scroll of the Law being short of one word, and is it not written, Take this book of the Law? No; what we must say is that up to this point the Holy Blessed One, dictated and Moses repeated and wrote, and from this point God dictated and Moses wrote with tears
I always understood that to mean 'with tears in his eyes,' a poignant observation of what it would be like to write one's own death notice or obituary in the newspaper, but the Rashba suggests: the rest of the Torah Moses wrote in ink; these last seven verses he wrote in (literally) 'tears.'
But there are other problems besides the passage that 'Moses died.' Ibn Ezra is bothered by passages that refer to Moses in the third person, or describe places where Moses had never been. He hints: "And if you understand, then you will recognize the truth." On another passage he enigmatically states: "And he who understands will keep silent."
A supra-commentary on Ibn Ezra by 14th century Joseph Bonfils, however, doesn't get the hint, and makes the implicit explicit: "And this is evidence that this verse was written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it; rather one of the later prophets wrote it."
The philosopher Baruch Spinoza also argued that the Torah could not be of Mosaic authorship, pointing out that the Torah says that Moses was the humblest man on earth; and normally one would not expect the humblest man on earth to declare that he is the humblest man on earth. For more on this topic, see Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible- highly recommended reading!
Lessons for Today
All too often, we subscribe to an 'all or nothing' approach to life. "Either every word of the Torah is Divine, or else it won't have any value." This black and white reasoning is not warranted. Recognizing that the Torah was 'transcribed' by human hands, (whether it was Moses, Ezra, or others) does not necessarily mean that that the Bible has no more worth than 'Winnie the Pooh.' It can be argued that the Bible is a collaboration between God and human beings. The biblical text itself supports that often it seems that God's message is filtered through the human prophet. Note for example even the minor changes between Revelation at Sinai (Exodus 20) and Moses' retelling (in Deuteronomy 5).
Others describe the Bible as the human record in response to God.Several [approaches] have arisen that try to simultaneously keep the Bible's special status without negating the findings of biblical criticism. Some have argued that the Bible was in some sense a collaborative effort between God and human beings. There is warrant for that in the Bible itself, which often seems to be the words of the prophets, and not directly of God. Moreover, there are times when an omniscient narrator reports on God's doings, suggesting that someone other than God wrote it.
Others have sought to argue that the Bible is a human record of response to God's self-revelation. God somehow--in ways not exactly describable in human language--was made manifest in the Sinai desert, and perhaps at other times, and human beings wrote of their struggle to comprehend that appearance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel even suggested that the Bible itself was a "midrash" (that is, an interpretation!) He argued that the cardinal sin in reading the Bible was "literal-mindedness." (see last week where we discussed Torah as poetry!)
Rabbi David Wolpe writes:
We live in a different world from our ancestors. Conclusions that seemed self-evident now seem impossible. We grapple in ways they did not with the demands of God and the conclusions of reason. Central to the struggle is the Bible, the book that after thousands of years still ignites passions, shapes societies, and stirs souls. Who penned its words often seems less important than who reads them, and its origin less compelling than its role in changing the world.
Gmar Hatimah Tovah.
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