In my opinion, the most convincing interpretation is that of Rabbi Dr. Tamir Granot. In his view, what was found in the Temple was the legal collection that makes up about half of the book of Deuteronomy (Re’eh through Tavo) plus the curses in Tavo. And in the Torah itself it is called “Torah” several times.

Josiah’s behavior following the discovery of the scroll fits that collection exactly.

The idea that this collection can stand as a unit unto itself appears in the first chapter of the book Until This Day by Rabbi Amnon Bazak, which the Rabbi often quotes here on the site.

Attached is a link to an article on the Herzog College website. As I recall, the article has two follow-up articles as well (you’d have to search for them there), but the foundation appears in the first one.

http://www.hatanakh.com/articles/%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%94%D7%9C

Sorry — that the Rabbi often mentions it.

Greenz proved that many verses there are actually drawn specifically from the covenant in Leviticus, such as the slaughter of the priests and their corpses on their idols, and more. You can look him up online. And in general — it’s impossible to approach this fundamental issue without reading the dozens of articles around it. Among the earlier Israeli scholars who argued for the antiquity of Deuteronomy are Cassuto, Benjamin Oppenheimer, Greenz, and others.

I’m not familiar with the dozens of articles you mentioned.

In any case, this approach is fundamentally different from the others.

Usually people determine which composition Josiah found based on his conduct, and then because of other considerations they narrow down or expand the presumed book. All this despite the status of the Torah scroll that stands before us in its current form.
In Rabbi Tamir’s approach (and mine too, since I independently arrived at his conclusion), the approach is different. From the plain understanding of the Torah, we see that there exists a more limited composition called “Torah,” and that is what it intended in various commands (the king’s “Torah” scroll, the reading of the “Torah” at the Hakhel assembly, the writing of the “Torah” on the stones between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and so on).
That means we are not extracting sections, but claiming that the Torah itself tells us about a separate collection.

This explanation resolves many questions and difficulties. There’s a lot to gain from this interpretation. I wrote a long article on the subject, but I don’t think it would be appropriate to post it here, so I referred to Rabbi Tamir’s article.

A description of the finding of the Torah scroll in the days of Josiah, and his actions to eradicate idolatry before and after the discovery of the scroll, based on the accounts in Kings, Chronicles, and Jeremiah — in Dr. Yehuda Kiel’s article, “Finding the Torah Scroll in the Days of Josiah,” on the Da’at website.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

Thank you very much for the reply. Of course I’d be glad to read and comment on what you wrote. If you’d be willing to send me the article by email, I’d be deeply grateful. Giladstn@gmail.com Happy New Year

The article was written as a polemic between me and someone else around the question of what the “Torah” was that Moses our teacher gave the people of Israel in the plains of Moab, a discussion that was brought briefly in the book Until This Day that I mentioned. The article has gone through changes and corrections.
I’ll need to review it again. I’ll try to send it in the coming days.
In any case, for now you can read Dr. Granot’s article.

To Oren:
I didn’t quite understand your proof from the mention of “cooking” regarding the Passover sacrifice.

If you meant the semantics, the use of the verb cook rather than roast — fine. I don’t understand how strongly this proof connects Deuteronomy to Josiah.

And if you meant that the verse implies that the Passover was cooked (and that the instruction to roast it in Exodus applied only to the Egyptian Passover) — then it seems to me that the verse itself in Chronicles implies not as you say:

“And they cooked the Passover with fire according to the law, and the holy offerings they cooked in pots and cauldrons and pans, and they brought them quickly to all the members of the people.” That is: they cooked the Passover in fire, unlike the holy offerings, which they cooked in “pots.”

Oren?

Sorry for the delay,
It seems to me that the proof is more along the lines of the first possibility you suggested: that the verb “cook” is not characteristic of roasting, and therefore it is more strongly associated with Deuteronomy, where the same unique phenomenon appears as well (the use of the verb “cook” to describe roasting).

With God’s help, 7 Tishrei 5778

To Oren — greetings,

“Cooked” means ready to eat, as in: “And on the vine were three branches, and as it was budding, its blossoms came forth, and its clusters ripened into grapes” (Genesis 40:10).

Likewise, from the wording of the verse in Exodus, “Do not eat of it raw, or cooked, cooked in water” (12:9), it follows that there is cooking even not by means of water, and therefore the Torah emphasizes that the prohibition is of cooking in water, but cooking by roasting over fire is permitted.

Likewise, from what is said concerning the manna, “What you will bake, bake, and what you will cook, cook,” it is proven that everything not included in baking is called cooking. And when Moses commanded Aaron and his sons, “Cook the flesh at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting” (Numbers 8:31) — were they forbidden to roast it?

In Deuteronomy 16 it says, “And you shall cook and eat in the place that the Lord your God will choose,” because there they are commanded, “And you shall slaughter Passover offerings to the Lord your God, from flock and herd”; the Passover offering from the flock must be accompanied by peace-offerings from the herd to increase the rejoicing, and the phrase “and you shall cook” includes both. This is explained in Chronicles II: “And they cooked the Passover with fire according to the law, and the holy offerings they cooked in pots and cauldrons and pans, and they brought them quickly to all the members of the people” (35:13).

Joy characterizes standing before God, as explained in Leviticus 23: “And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days,” and similarly in Deuteronomy 16 it says about the Festival of Weeks, “And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God,” and about Sukkot, “And you shall rejoice in your festival.” On Passover it is hard for a people whose grain is waiting in the fields for harvest to rejoice before God for seven days, and immediately after offering the Passover sacrifice, “you shall turn in the morning and go to your tents”; but the Passover of a people dwelling on its land is done calmly and not in haste, and it is eaten in fullness together with peace-offerings from flock and herd to increase the rejoicing.

King David too, who fulfilled the vision in Exodus — “the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established” — and the commandment in Deuteronomy — “to His dwelling you shall seek, and there you shall come” — made sure that bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem and the Temple service would be with song and joy. And so too his son Solomon dedicated the Temple with joy.

And following them, Josiah too — even though in the rebukes in the Torah a grim picture arose regarding the future of the people in its land, and even Huldah’s prophecy that the disaster would not happen in his days did not dispel that anxiety — nevertheless he held the Passover with joy, in the hope that serving God with joy and gladness of heart would avert the severity of the decree.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

It really is interesting that “joy” was not stated regarding Passover, and your explanation is fascinating.
At the Seder night we do mention, “as on this day, may He bring us to other festivals and holidays coming to us in peace, rejoicing in the rebuilding of Your city and glad in Your service…” — indeed it sounds like exile casts a shadow over the joy, and in Temple times there was probably a much stronger emphasis on rejoicing at Passover.
P.S. Among the Briskers, Passover is known as a holiday made up entirely of awe, fear, and meticulous halakhic precision. It is told that once the Netziv of Volozhin celebrated the Seder night together with his in-law the Beit HaLevi. At the end of the Seder, the Beit HaLevi blessed his friend and said, “May we merit to eat together of the sacrifices and the Passover offerings next year as well,” and the Netziv answered him, “Do you think I’ve gone crazy? No thanks…”

Following David, after the decline in the days of Rehoboam and Abijah, when the people returned to making “high places, pillars, and sacred trees” on every high hill and under every leafy tree — Asa arose and removed the idols and sacred trees and deposed his mother from being queen mother because she had made a horrid image for Asherah; “only the high places were not removed, yet Asa’s heart was whole with the Lord all his days” (I Kings 15:15).

It seems that Asa’s heart was not at peace with the high places, but it is hard to change and abolish what had been customary and permitted in the days of the Judges, especially since from the north Judah was threatened by the powerful kingdom of Israel, and Asa and those who came after him were afraid to “stretch the rope” too far, and fought idolatry but did not muster the courage to fight the high places and altars to the Lord. Only after the exile of the kingdom of Israel did Hezekiah stand up and destroy the high places and altars to the Lord and say to the people: “Before this altar shall you bow to the Lord in Jerusalem” (II Kings 18:22).

The commandment in Deuteronomy, “Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, nor sons be put to death for fathers; each man shall die for his own sin,” was fulfilled by Amaziah son of Joash, who did not put to death the sons of those who had killed his father, “as is written in the book of the Torah of Moses that the Lord commanded” (II Kings 14:6).

Likewise, in the hands of the Samaritans who were brought to the ruins of the kingdom of Israel by the king of Assyria, there is the same Torah that is in the hands of the people of Judah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, with only slight differences. The Samaritans, who opposed the Temple in Jerusalem, certainly were not under the influence of Hezekiah, Josiah, or Ezra the scribe — so how is it that they and the people of Judah have the same Torah, if there was not one Torah for the tribes of Israel and for the tribes of Judah and Benjamin — the same Torah we have, from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

On the night of Passover there is extra joy, since it is the only festival on which we recite Hallel at night, as stated in Isaiah 30:29: “You shall have a song as in the night when a festival is sanctified.” This Hallel is unique also in that it was not only the “House of Levi” who recited it as Hallel at the time of the offering of the sacrifice; rather, the Hallel at the time of eating the Passover was said in every group by all those who fear the Lord, and about this it was said, “The olive-sized piece of Passover and the Hallel split the roof” (Pesachim 85b). The masters of allusion already said that the joy of Hallel breaks the barrier separating Israel from their Father in Heaven.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

The Netziv and Rabbi Chaim of Brisk served together as heads of the yeshiva in Volozhin for many years, and it seems they got along together a bit better than the legends make it sound 🙂

David, that reminds me of the story (at the end of the Brisk Haggadah) about the Radbaz, who was hosted on the two Seder nights by the Netziv and the Beit HaLevi. Look there and enjoy…

Gil, regarding the Torah’s own testimony about its author, see also here:

http://ivri.org.il/2015/01/ani-maamin-2/

The blog of Dr. Avi Dantelsky.

See section A of the article, and the link noted there.

(The article is a follow-up article.)

Hello Aharon, thank you for the reference. In the words of that well-known doctor there is nothing new, and in my view they have no strong basis. At most, if it seems “illogical” to him that Moses would write “And Moses commanded… take this Torah scroll,” etc., then that would prove only that the Torah of Moses underwent editing, and the editor inserted into the ancient text the linking and opening sentences (such as “These are the words that Moses spoke”).

*the linking and opening sentences

Hello Gil.
On the substance of the matter and not the person, you mentioned two claims:

1. It seems “illogical” to him that Moses would write “And Moses commanded… take the Torah scroll.”

That issue seems “illogical” to most commentators. Not only because it is narrated in the past tense — Moses commanded them to take the complete book, but at the time of writing it was not yet complete.
But mainly for another reason: because of its location. The verse is written before the Song of Ha’azinu. Moses hands the Torah scroll over to the tribe of Levi, commanding them, “Take this Torah scroll,” even before the Song of Ha’azinu appears!

So of course, the commentators’ answers do not reach such far-reaching conclusions. Rashi (31:9) explains that the verse is out of place; Nachmanides (v. 21), Abarbanel (9, 11), and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (vv. 9, 14) explain that Moses went back and wrote in the scroll that he had already handed over to the priests.
As is well known, Ibn Ezra (see Rabbi Yosef Tov Elem’s commentary, Deuteronomy 1:2) understood that the verse was added later by a later editor.
And there are other answers as well.
What I wanted to say is that the problem was not invented by that “well-known doctor.” The problem is a real problem. The question is which answer satisfies us.

2. You wrote that the editor inserted opening sentences like “These are the words.”

Precisely that sentence is not problematic at all. If I’m not mistaken, Spinoza was the first to get tangled up with it.

Notice: the entire Torah speaks about Moses in the third person. So if that doesn’t bother us, and we assume Moses can write about himself that way, then there is no problem in Deuteronomy either.

Moses tells about himself that he went, wrote, spoke with God, and so on. The moment he quotes himself, he has to switch to the first person, because it is a quotation!
Therefore, the first five verses speak about him in the third person; from verse 6 the quoted discourse begins and therefore it shifts to first person. The first discourse ends in chapter 4, verse 40, and so again there is a shift, until the second discourse in chapter 5, verse 2, and so on. Usually, when the Torah says “saying,” that functions like our colon (:), and from there the quotation begins. Look in the Bible and you’ll see.
So true, some got tangled up with this, but really, if we have no problem with Moses speaking about himself in the third person, as he did in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, then there is no problem here either.

Best regards

Aharon, thank you for your enlightening comments. Unfortunately I’m not free to elaborate at length with supporting references and quotations; that will have to wait for another time. But as a heading I’ll say that I mean there is nothing especially problematic in Moses describing himself as writing the Torah, because as you noted, there are many third-person references to Moses, and it is entirely possible, in my humble opinion, that he would include himself in a book meant to be canonical and not merely biographical.
As for the location of the verse — something that the doctor from “Hatzroni University” (all mockery is forbidden, etc.) didn’t address — that is indeed no small interpretive difficulty, but it is not solved by saying that someone other than Moses wrote the Torah, because the description of Moses writing the Torah and giving it to the Levitical priests / the Levites appears twice in the same chapter in a way that contradicts itself — for how could Moses write the song into a Torah scroll that is already with the priests / in the Ark? And all that before Ha’azinu and Vezot HaBerakhah? What kind of sleepy editor was he? The solution of different sources doesn’t work either, because the priestly source there is wrapped inside those two descriptions, whose style is Deuteronomistic (see Tigay, Mikra LeYisrael). So what follows? Two editors attached similar traditions within the same circle itself (something like “destroyers and saboteurs of ancient vineyards,” these are Lithuanians and those are Lithuanians) and didn’t bother to unify them — and all that contrary to the polished editing throughout the book until now. You are forced to admit this difficulty is not simple interpretively (and apparently the difficulty is halfway to the solution, because an intentional message is embedded in it, as is the editorial solution), and it has nothing to do with late authorship. What it does show is a style darting among several aspects, and it seems that several hands touched the text. True, we find such things often among the many contradictions in the Torah, and if we assume Moses can write in several “aspects” or perspectives, then we could argue that here too, even though here Moses is spoken of in the third person. That doesn’t change the issue. And as I said, late writing does not solve the difficulties either. Only the sloppy escape hatch of saying that several writers were appended here without harmonizing editing will untangle the mess — but if so, it could fit just as easily with the assumption that Moses wrote the Torah and edits were later added to it (and here there is at least one edit if not two), and much more could be said. Happy holiday!

A. I again emphasize that I am writing about the substance of the claims, especially since that “well-known doctor” etc. is barely known to me.

B. The verse is problematic in a number of ways. The fact that it is problematic does not mean that it cannot of course be resolved, by traditional or “scholarly” methods.
Still, the difficulty here, where Moses tells of the writing and handing over of the scroll, is more severe than the “third-person” style throughout the Torah. One cannot compare the level of difficulty. Proof of that is that Ibn Ezra saw no problem in the use of the third person throughout the Torah, but in this verse (“And Moses wrote”) he did see a problem, to the point that he was forced to say it was added later.

C. Even though I know source theory to some degree, it does not seem logical to me, and I did not try to say that it resolves the difficulty in the verses.
When I wrote that the verses can be resolved in other ways, I was hinting to you at the path I have developed, which Dr. Granot and other Bible scholars also agreed with.
According to this approach, there is no difficulty to begin with. The Bible was edited after Moses’ death (perhaps even by Joshua), except for a number of collections embedded in it exactly as they were formulated by Moses. For example: the Book of the Covenant, the collection of laws and curses in Deuteronomy, the Song of Ha’azinu.
The term “Torah” within the Torah refers only to the collection of laws and curses in Deuteronomy (Re’eh, Shoftim, Ki Tetze, Ki Tavo).
Therefore there is no difficulty at all when the Torah recounts (even before the Song of Ha’azinu) that Moses wrote and handed over the “Torah.” Look carefully and analyze it.

P.S.
If you read books like Until This Day and In the Eyes of God and Man, you will see that there are ways to believe and observe the commandments without believing that the entire Torah, letter for letter, was formulated by Moses (I wrote that so you won’t mock me for idolatry, God forbid).

Thank you very much, Aharon. I didn’t connect that you were the one I corresponded with regarding Tamir Granot’s article. I still haven’t read it… because of the pressure of these days. I would be surprised if, according to Granot’s view, the original Torah is really that minimal. But this approach is familiar — that only the places where it says “And Moses wrote” and the like are original documents of Moses, while everything else is later editing from after his time. But the problematic verses are the hundreds of instances of “And the Lord said to Moses, saying.” Here too it is third person, and it does not say Moses wrote them. Did God really say exactly this to Moses, or are these traditions that were transmitted orally until First Temple scribes wrote them down in this style because they believed — rightly — that this is what was conveyed to Moses, in content if not in exact form? (See the introduction to Milgrom’s commentary in his book Leviticus: The Book of Ritual and Ethics.) According to this approach, the overwhelming majority of the Torah was edited hundreds of years after Moses’ death. There is no point in assuming the antiquity of the Torah unless one attributes it to its original author. Otherwise one should return to the plausible view in scholarship and see the sources in the Pentateuch as things edited over the course of centuries, very much like what we know from the Oral Torah — and that does not necessarily create a problem of faith. It only turns the Written Torah into part of the Oral Torah (as Benjamin Sommer has elaborated in his studies in English. Here is an article about it https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/study/.premium-1.2639075

I’ve read the books you mentioned cover to cover. I won’t direct the mockery of idolatry specifically at you, precisely because of the subtle but cardinal difference between you and people like you on the one hand, and the doctor from Hatzroni on the other: in content you may be claiming the same things (that the Torah is not necessarily all from Moses, etc.), but in form there is not the slightest similarity. Ever since he discovered the light of biblical criticism, that fellow waves it around under every leafy tree, and his style is cynical and dismissive — not only toward his readers, which I don’t care about, but mainly toward the Written Torah, its laws, and its way of thinking. (See, for example, his latest post on the portion Ki Tetze and “enjoy.”) He does all this as a religious person, while with tricks from the “national beit midrash of the enlightened” people work for him so that he can have it both ways — deny and believe at one and the same time. He may think he invented the wheel, but in fact all religious Bible scholars have done this, including Milgrom whom I mentioned, and many, many others. Look carefully and you’ll find that all of them, without exception, treated the object of their study with respect and wrote with admiration and love about the Torah of God, whereas this doctor — forgive my sharpness — simply writes in a way that pains a believing person; he jabs and makes fun of the Pentateuch. And for that I’ll treat him in kind — because unlike the Pentateuch, even if it is broken up into aspects and splits, he was not sanctified by all Israel.

An added support for S. Z. Levinger (above; I don’t know how to reply directly there): “And you shall cook” — “The Akkadian verb basalu may denote various kinds of cooking, and it is reasonable to suppose that in Hebrew too its meaning is equally broad,” Tigay, Mikra LeYisrael, Deuteronomy, vol. 1, p. 438. Joyous festival wishes.

These matters are explicit in our sources:

Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, Bo, Tractate of Passover, section 6:
“And you shall cook” — “cook” here means nothing other than roast, as it says, “And you shall cook and eat” (Deuteronomy 16:7), and it also says, “And they cooked the Passover with fire according to the law, and the holy offerings they cooked in pots and cauldrons and pans, and they brought them quickly to all the members of the people” (II Chronicles 35:13). From here Rabbi Yoshiyah would say: one who vows to abstain from cooked food is forbidden even roasted food.

Babylonian Talmud, tractate Nedarim 49a:
“One who vows from cooked food is permitted roasted and boiled food. Gemara: It was taught: Rabbi Yoshiyah forbids it, and although there is no proof to the matter, there is a hint to the matter, as it is said: ‘And they cooked the Passover with fire according to the law.’ Shall we say that this is what they disagree about — that Rabbi Yoshiyah holds one follows the language of the Torah, and our Tanna holds that regarding vows one follows ordinary human speech? No, everyone agrees that regarding vows one follows ordinary human speech. One sage follows his locale and the other sage follows his locale. In the locale of our Tanna, roasted food they call roasted, and cooked food they call cooked; in Rabbi Yoshiyah’s locale, even roasted food they call cooked. But he derives it from the verse! It is only a scriptural support.”

As for what S. Z. Levinger argued, that “and you shall cook” in the portion of Re’eh also refers to the festival offering, that is explained explicitly in many places, as an answer to the question why Rabbi Yoshiyah needed the verse from Chronicles and the verse in Re’eh alone did not suffice.
See, for example, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch there, Alei Tamar on Nedarim 6:1, and more.