Roi, the Rabbi means that there is no certainty in any field, only probability (what is probable). Link to the notebooks:
https://mikyab.net/Writings/Notebooks on Matters of Faith/

The fifth notebook talks about Judaism, but note that there is significance to the fact that we know there is God even prior to the tradition (the first notebooks); that makes revelation much more probable (certainly together with morality).

Hello. Thank you for the answer, Shmuel.
I read part of the fifth notebook. I also read about the “break in the tradition.” The Rabbi didn’t really explain whether the tradition is continuous or whether it contains breaks.
In addition, what is the book that Josiah found? I’d be happy if the Rabbi would simply answer me here.
I have another question. As stated, there is the transmission of the Torah from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the elders, from the elders to the prophets, and until the redaction of the Mishnah from Simon the Righteous onward.
But is there really any basis for this transmission? How did the Sages even know that there had been a transmission between them?
Thank you.

Both biblical scholars and Rashi explain that he found only the Book of Deuteronomy, so in any case this was not the entire Torah. Besides, think about it: suppose today an ancient book were found saying that a thousand years ago God commanded us to jump on our right leg every morning, and if not His wrath would come upon us. Would it even occur to anyone to start obeying such a book today? Obviously not. From here it is clear that they had prior knowledge of the Torah and the tradition, the patriarchs and the giving of the Torah, and we need to discuss what exactly shook the king.

Maybe M (one of the most knowledgeable commenters here) can help more with this part.

The Book of Deuteronomy was certainly known before the time of Josiah. You can see this from commandments in Deuteronomy that were observed before that discovery, from earlier quotations from it, from the language of the book, and from many other reasons that appear among various scholars. So what did Josiah find? If the book was known before then, it may have been the original manuscript that had been lost, and that is a possible and plausible interpretation of the verse. It certainly was not the first discovery of the Torah scroll; that approach used to be common in scholarship, but it is not accepted today (except on a few atheist websites that like to quote 19th-century biblical criticism and don’t update themselves with 20th-century criticism).

As for the antiquity of the Oral Torah—there is good evidence for the existence of early halakhic traditions among the Jewish people. Does that prove the specific chain? No. But it does show that there was such a tradition.

I could go on at length, but for now that’s enough.

As for “counter-proofs,” a lack of arguments or anything else you mentioned—bring a concrete claim and we can move forward from there.

Muhammad splitting the moon—and today we see that almost all Muslims believe that Muhammad really split the moon in two.

So if such a significant event, for which there is no supporting testimony at all, only contradictory testimony (in a case like this, where there is no testimony supporting it, that is contradictory),
and they still managed to implant this lie in a huge group of several billions—then it is proven that the tradition argument collapses completely.

M,
What you are writing is simply not correct, though it is written with excessive self-confidence. Even today it is accepted that the Book of Deuteronomy was composed in the days of Josiah (perhaps there were beginnings earlier, but then it emerged as a book). You can read this, for example, in Alexander Rofe. Maybe you are referring to Cassuto as 20th-century biblical criticism, but he is a minority opinion that was completely nullified (I’m discussing here what the scholarly position is, not what the truth is, and on that there is no doubt that his opinion has been completely nullified).
I also don’t understand what earlier quotations from it you are talking about. Maybe you mean what is called the Deuteronomistic editing in the books of the Prophets. Your other claims as well are just unsupported assertions referring to obscure sources that supposedly proved it.

My friend Yishai, I have the feeling you don’t know who you’re talking to (though of course maybe the reverse is also true)…

As for the claim of excessive self-confidence—the same applies to you, sir.

To the matter itself:
1. I know Rofe very well.
2. The “obscure quotations” can be found in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, the Hebrew Encyclopedia, or any other scholarly literature, and the question is whether their arguments stand or not.
3. It’s of course not only Cassuto, but also Greenitz, Hoppenheimer, Liver, Loewenstamm, Segal, Hoffmann, and many more. As you said—only Cassuto (could it be that you say that only because he is the only one Rofe refers to in his book?).
4. Indeed, newer scholarship does not attribute Deuteronomy to Moses but to a later period; but the discussion was not whether all of Deuteronomy is early, from the time of Moses, but whether it was first written in the days of Josiah. And here I claim that the statements that the whole book is from his days no longer hold water (for example—does Rofe attribute Ha’azinu to the days of Josiah? We both know he does not). Edits and additions are beside the point, because the question is whether this was an invention of Shaphan and the like, or whether it was an earlier book that existed before them as well.
5. Deuteronomistic editing (which of course is built as an absolute tautology—every time something appears that refutes the theory, they say only that part is late and ignore the argument. Great proof.) of course has trouble dealing with the linguistic strata of the book and with countless literary parallels that no simple editing can handle.

As for the claims about dating Deuteronomy late, to the days of Josiah (edited from an article by my friend Gili Stern):
1. The Book of Deuteronomy never uses the name Jerusalem; rather, in all its many occurrences it mentions only “the place that the Lord will choose.” If Deuteronomy had truly been written only toward the end of the First Temple period, it is very hard to understand why it does not explicitly emphasize the choice of Jerusalem.
2. Although the book speaks a great deal about the chosen place, there is no mention in it whatsoever of the chosen house—the Temple. Even though ascent to the chosen place is conditioned on “rest and inheritance,” it is not conditioned on kingship or on the cedar house, which is not mentioned in Deuteronomy even by hint. It is hard to believe that a book written deep in the monarchical period would omit all mention of the Temple—especially if that were its main agenda.
3. De Wette’s hypothesis gives disproportionate weight to the issue of opposing worship of God outside the place that the Lord will choose, compared to the issue’s minor place in Josiah’s reform on the one hand and in Deuteronomy on the other.
4. The main concepts and terms of “Josiah’s reform” and of the Book of Kings do not appear at all in Deuteronomy.
5. Nowhere in all of Deuteronomy is there any mention of the sin of offering incense to other gods, which occupies the chief place in Jeremiah’s rebukes and also in the prophecy of Huldah the prophetess, his contemporary.
6. Conquest of the land and the attitude to the natives: the texts that speak of conquering the land and command putting the Canaanites under the ban do not fit the days of Hezekiah and Josiah. Moreover, already in the first generation of the Judges this command no longer had practical significance, certainly not in the days of David.
7. What are we to say to a hypothesis that places Deuteronomy in the days of Josiah, when its commandments to destroy the Canaanite and Amalekite, who had long since vanished, were out of date—like a New Jersey law today offering a reward to anyone who kills wolves and bears, or like a royal proclamation in Great Britain commanding the expulsion of the Danes.
8. The geography of Canaan: the requirement and promise to conquer the land from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates indicates that the book was indeed composed in the generation of the conquest of the land. Kaufmann already recognized that after chapter 3 of Judges there is no trace of this boundary, and that this promise was not fulfilled even in the days of David (for he did not conquer the remaining Canaanite territories within the land, and he also ruled over lands whose conquest the Torah explicitly forbade, such as Edom and Moab). In addition, according to the geographical listing in Deuteronomy, it is the Amorites who live on Mount Senir (Deuteronomy 3:9), and the Arameans had not yet arrived. In the period of Saul and David the Arameans are there. From here it follows that the description of Hermon as inhabited by Amorites also indicates the antiquity of the book.
9. Joshua, written in a Deuteronomistic style, calls the territory from Lebanon to the Euphrates “the land of the Hittites” (Joshua 1:4), a term that no longer had meaning once the Philistines and their allies spread over those lands and destroyed them, and certainly not afterward, when the Arameans settled there. From this one may infer that it was indeed written in the 12th–13th centuries BCE.
10. Early commands: when Samuel ordered the war against Amalek (1 Samuel 15), he relied on the command in Deuteronomy (25:17–19). The commandment that exists only in Deuteronomy, “Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, and sons shall not be put to death for fathers; each man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16), is observed by Amaziah son of Joash when he did not kill the sons of those who killed his father, “as it is written in the Book of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord commanded” (2 Kings 14:6). Amaziah is much earlier than Hezekiah and Josiah, and from here it follows that Deuteronomy, the source of the command he cites, predates their days. In 1 Samuel (chapter 14) it is told that Israel slaughtered cattle and sheep after they were weary and hungry from the extended fast during their war with the Philistines. But the slaughter of unconsecrated meat was permitted only in Deuteronomy—until then, every eating of meat was conditioned on offering it as a peace-offering before the altar. Wellhausen and Kaufmann argued that from what is told afterward, that Saul became angry at them and set up a great stone for them to slaughter upon, it is proven that at that time they were still offering peace-offerings, and this because Deuteronomy, which permitted ordinary meat, did not yet exist. But these scholars were mistaken, because the incident described takes place at night, and at night it is forbidden to offer a sacrifice, both in Israel and among the nations generally. Hence it is proven that their slaughter was not intended as a sacrifice but for ordinary consumption, according to the permission of Deuteronomy—which therefore preceded the days of Saul (Saul’s anger stemmed from another reason—that they ate the meat with the blood, something forbidden in the Torah [Leviticus 19:26], and not from eating ordinary meat, which as stated was already permitted).
11. Jeffrey Tigay, in the scholarly “Mikra LeYisrael” commentary on Deuteronomy, lists a number of commands whose presence or absence refute the hypothesis that the book was composed in the days of Hezekiah and Josiah. Thus he writes: “Nevertheless, it seems that many elements in the book are much earlier than that. The laws of Deuteronomy reflect a society less advanced than that of Judah in the 7th century BCE, a society consisting largely of farmers and shepherds (see 14:22–29; 15:19–23; 26:2; etc.). These laws contain no directives for merchants, artisans, a professional army, or other professions. There are no laws regulating commerce, real estate, written contracts, or commercial loans (insofar as loans are mentioned, they concern individuals in economic distress forced to borrow for subsistence; see 15:1–11; 23:20–21, and their interpretation [in Mikra LeYisrael — G.S.]). There is no mention of royal officials or of royal authority to impose taxes, confiscate property, or draft subjects for forced labor, in contrast to ‘the practice of the king’ in 1 Samuel 8:11–17. Kingship itself is mentioned only once, and only as a representative institution whose establishment is optional and which is stripped of all authority or social role (17:14–20). Even the expectations of justice and social righteousness attached to the king in 2 Samuel 23:3; Isaiah 11:1–5; Jeremiah 22:2–5; Psalm 72 are absent. The government lacks powers of enforcement strong enough to save a manslayer from blood vengeance by the victim’s family, and therefore he must flee to a city of refuge to be saved (19:1–13). Nor does the legislation of Deuteronomy provide legal solutions for the deprived and oppressed: here the book must suffice with recommending compassion toward them and warning that they may cry out to the Lord for help against those who oppress them (15:9; 24:15). These and similar features characterize all the law collections in the Bible. The society reflected in them is essentially that of the period of the Judges…”
12. In the law forbidding the eating of unclean animals (Deuteronomy 14), there is no mention of the horse. Horses then existed only in kings’ chariots (“the horse of Pharaoh’s chariot” — Exodus 14:9) and were completely foreign to the people. That is, horses that came to the land in the days of King Solomon had no trace at the time these laws were given, because they preceded them.
13. In Deuteronomy, the status of the Levite is still that of the poor man, the orphan, and the stranger (see 14:29; 16:11 and elsewhere), a situation that continued until the period of the Judges. We find the Levites in this status again only in Judges (17:7–13; 19:1)—during the conquest of Laish by the tribe of Dan and in the period of the concubine at Gibeah. After this period the Levites became established at the high places and sanctuaries as priests, and remained priests forever. The treatment of the Levite as poor reveals that the period of composition of the book is much earlier than the days of the monarchy and institutionalized priesthood.
14. In addition, the whole book is shaped as a covenant treaty, but its structure fits only the agreed form of covenant treaties from before the 12th century BCE—only treaties from that period have a section of blessings alongside a section of curses, as in Deuteronomy. The language of some of the treaties in Deuteronomy is indeed problematic (I don’t know if you know this), but this has already been resolved and certainly does not indicate the rule as a whole.
15. The many textual parallels that simply do not fit with Deuteronomistic editing. I’m not going to dig into this point because it would require an article of its own; I assume you know what I’m talking about and how significant this claim is.
16. The linguistic strata identified by Avi Hurvitz, which for some reason people tend to ignore. Same here—I’m not digging in, as with point 15.
17. The centralization of worship, which in any case began in the days of Hezekiah and not Josiah.

And this is without even getting into Zertal’s findings about the altar on Mount Ebal, the lack of idol figurines in the hill country during the Iron Age, the disappearance of pig bones, and more and more.

Even the claims that Deuteronomy is the first to speak of centralization of worship run into difficulties:
1. From the verse in Exodus, the conclusion is actually the opposite of the accepted one: it does not permit building an altar anywhere, but in a specific place, where the Holy One, blessed be He, causes His name to be mentioned. As Ibn Ezra explains there: “In every place where I place the remembrance of My name, where My glory dwells, such as Shiloh and Nob where the Ark stood.” Therefore, the contradiction between this verse and the command in Deuteronomy concerning “the place that the Lord will choose” is an illusion, because both books say that sacrifice should be only in the place that the Lord chooses and causes His name to dwell there, namely the place of the Tabernacle, or the Temple in Jerusalem. So in Exodus too the reference is to a sacred place of worship chosen by God.
2. In Deuteronomy itself there appears the command to build an altar on Mount Ebal and to offer sacrifices there (Deuteronomy 27:4–7), from which it follows that there is no problem in the book’s basic conception with building altars and offering sacrifices in different places that are not Jerusalem, so long as God chose them too.

Well, honestly, I’m tired of dealing with nonsense by gathering for you things you could simply read in books. There are quite a few more arguments that could be brought, but I don’t have time for all this.

Indeed, scholars certainly think parts of Deuteronomy are late, but the claim that the book was first invented in the days of Josiah, as far as I know, is no longer agreed upon at all, and many, many disagree with it, and it simply does not fit the facts. Of course I have no interest in the opinions of those who disagree about its earlier dating but do not address the counterarguments.

To sum up—certainly Deuteronomy was written in the days of Josiah; this is a theory that fits the text, has no difficulties, and no one disputes it except Cassuto.

Sources for further study:
Studies in the Book of Kings by Hoppenheimer, the critical Mikra LeYisrael on Deuteronomy, Greenitz’s book, the Hebrew Encyclopedia and Encyclopaedia Biblica, Until This Day, Hoffmann’s Decisive Proofs, The Debate on Historical Truth in the Bible published by Ben-Zvi, an as-yet unpublished article by Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, the Da’at Mikra commentary, Loewenstamm’s article, in Tarbiz 28, and many more obscure sources that don’t exist and were invented by me this morning for the sake of bending reality. My mistake.

P.S. As for Muhammad—they already dealt with this here on the site. Search for it. In short: there is no agreed-upon tradition like that (ask Muslim friends), it is not a founding tradition, it testifies to a detail within a life (a specific miracle) and not to history (the very existence of Muhammad), so it has no significance for the tradition argument; it is certainly possible that some historical event stands at its basis; it is completely different from the claim about the biblical tradition (founding testimony, collective tradition); and even if it turns out to be mistaken, that is irrelevant to our tradition argument itself, just as discovering that a certain witness lied in court should not invalidate all the other witnesses who appear credible. I have not elaborated.

Of course I don’t know who I’m talking to. Maybe you’ll tell me who, and then I’ll bow to the ground before you.
Go ahead and give a reference to one source—not one that says the editing of Deuteronomy began earlier, but that it existed as a book earlier (in what you’re saying now you added “all of it” precisely in order to change your previous claim). One can accuse either side here of tautology (though the editing of the Book of Jeremiah is something hard to argue about, but of course whoever doesn’t like it can sophisticate). But that is not the discussion. The point is that most biblical scholars today definitely think there was a D school, that most of Deuteronomy belongs to it, that it was edited as a book in the days of Josiah, and that the school’s scribes edited the Former Prophets and Jeremiah. To present the scholarship otherwise is apologetic demagoguery.
One can of course argue that the scholars are mistaken and raise various arguments. It seems to me that a critical scholar would address the arguments and sharpen his theory accordingly, and that is what some scholars are trying to do (some prefer to dig in), but it seems to me that specifically on the other side there is no one willing to have an open discussion of the arguments, but only to view arguments in favor of Torah from Sinai as proofs, and the opposing arguments as difficulties for which some answer must be found. Of course that is not how one arrives at the truth. (I’m not saying there aren’t people who were genuinely open to the claims and reached an Orthodox conclusion, but someone who comes from an Orthodox position is not conducting an open discussion, and in that academia has a big advantage.)

A. You say I don’t know what I’m talking about, and I claim that I know these sources and that your dismissive attitude is based on unfamiliarity.
B. The fellow, who probably read online, was influenced by the old view that the book was first discovered in the days of Josiah and was the handiwork of Shaphan and the like (de Wette’s claim)—a claim that you and I both know is no longer accepted, and yet it is still quoted on atheist websites with complete dishonesty. That is what all the outrage was about, and I referred to sources for this specific claim. I indeed noted afterward that scholars have not now concluded that Deuteronomy was written in the days of Moses, but rather that the claim that all of it is from the 8th century is incorrect. Really, go to those sites and you will see that they present 19th-century biblical criticism and not its updated versions.
C. There is no change of claim here. He made de Wette’s claim and I said it is no longer accepted—which it definitely isn’t. The question is whether this was the first discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy, and I claim it was not, because it is earlier than that. Are you really surprised that I think there are also late passages (as I wrote in one of the arguments above)? And don’t you think there are late passages in Deuteronomy even after Josiah? What does the wholeness of the book have to do with the matter? My claim is that its basis is not an invention of Josiah’s days to promote centralization of worship and nothing more (again, de Wette). If you think I changed the argument, you are welcome to think so.
D. The discussion is not about the final editing but about the antiquity of the source, and therefore everything you wrote about sources is irrelevant. I did not claim otherwise.
E. The claims about lack of objectivity ignore the pressure in academia against those who make traditional claims, and there is no doubt that it exists (would a scholar who wrote against evolution not be fired from his position? I personally accept evolution. It’s just an example).
F. There are scholars who do indeed oppose the argument for the Deuteronomistic school—schools of scholars that produced source theory, layer theory, or tradition theory. These are indeed schools more common abroad, but they exist whether we like it or not.
G. Unfortunately, you didn’t address the actual arguments?

I don’t know what is written on atheist websites (a waste of time). The core of de Wette’s hypothesis is still accepted today, namely that Deuteronomy was composed as a book in Josiah’s period. No one here made de Wette’s claim (just read above), so you didn’t answer it. A question was asked about the book Josiah found, and to that you said, “The Book of Deuteronomy was certainly known before the period of Josiah,” and that scholars today also agree to this. That is completely incorrect. Scholars today think that the book did not exist before the period of Josiah, but only parts of it—not as a book. It’s not that today they think there was an early version of Deuteronomy before Josiah, but that there were materials that were edited into the Book of Deuteronomy.
There are scholars who argue against evolution. In any case, I did not claim there is absolute freedom in academia. I claimed there is much more room there for free thought. Plenty of biblical scholars were not fired when they did not accept the Documentary Hypothesis.
I did not address the actual arguments because I do not pretend to determine anything regarding the time of composition of Deuteronomy. And if we’re already talking about ignoring arguments, you forgot the editing of Jeremiah.

Yishai, if it was not known as a book, how do you explain this verse that M brought: “as it is written in the Book of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord commanded”??
Even if there were many additions and edits, it seems quite clear there was a core of the Book of Deuteronomy.

de Wette’s claim is about the conspiracy of Shaphan, which is still heard online. It is very important to be familiar with what is going on on those sites, because you discover that the presentation of disputed existing arguments is all over the place there. People do not ask about Josiah’s book because they found it by using the Vilna Gaon’s lottery method on the Bible.

As for the matter:
1. Do we agree that today, unlike before, most scholars agree that Deuteronomy was not first written in the days of Josiah and that broad sections of it (which are not just 4–5 chapters) preceded his period?
2. Do we agree that the finding of the Torah scroll was not the first time these scrolls were found?
3. Do we agree that this is what they said in the 19th century and that today they think differently?
4. Do we agree that what I said about the antiquity of the book’s core is not only Cassuto’s view? Or that of a few fringe scholars or obscure sources?

If so—we’re done.

That there were later additions and edits is certainly possible (Ibn Ezra), but Deuteronomy was not written by Shaphan (the process of canonization continued after him as is known; see Menachem Haran).

Beyond that, I claimed that scholars brought various proofs for this, and I was accused of babbling, so I brought some of those proofs and showed that they are not obscure quotations.

As for the claim about Jeremiah—it may be correct. So what?

(Shmuel—they answer that with the claim of tautological editing; its problem is the linguistic strata, the parallels, signs of antiquity, Zertal’s findings, and so on, which I brought.)

1. I don’t know. 2. As I understand it, it is fairly accepted that the finding of the Torah scroll in Josiah’s days was the first time some sources were edited into something resembling the Book of Deuteronomy in its current form. What existed before was not an early Book of Deuteronomy but parts of the commandments that appear in it.
3. The change since the 19th century is not dramatic, as I understand it. Of course there is a difference, but the question is whether it is relevant for our purposes. As I understand it, it is not (as if someone were to say that today no one thinks like Darwin anymore. That is true—the theory developed—but regarding the question of the creation of the world, etc., it doesn’t really matter).
4. Again, it is not the basis of the book, but parts of the commandments in it. Rofe too would agree to that.

You brought your own arguments. Apart from linguistic arguments, which you yourself wrote are not addressed (that is, they are not accepted in scholarship, regardless of whether they are correct). Zertal’s claim, too, is not really addressed (even if [as far as I know] there is no rejection of it beyond pilpul by scholars who do not have truth in their hearts [though it should be stressed that even evidence that has no good alternative explanation does not by itself decide such issues]).
When you say that the claim of Deuteronomistic editing is a tautology, and then an early book is discovered without this editing, that constitutes confirmation of the theory.

1. The evidence I brought is not correct only for the list of commandments (which, as is known, is most of the book…). And the songs are early even according to Rofe.
2. Ignoring is not an argument. If they explained why he is wrong, great—but they just ignored it.
3. I think there was editing prior to Shaphan. Certainly according to those who date the Torah at latest to the days of David, like Cassuto, Greenitz, Segal and others.
4. The change since the 19th century is significant. Wellhausen’s historical theory is no longer accepted, and there is another theory, even though they keep presenting the old one as truth. If the book preceded the days of Josiah, it can no longer be presented as a conspiracy to trick the gullible king.

I claim this is a tautology and that there is no decisive proof that there was such an editing at all. Here too and there too. I did not understand your claim.

I’m not claiming anything. I don’t know.
I only know that even today the theory dividing the Torah into four sources is very widely accepted, and that even today it is very widely accepted that the formation of the Book of Deuteronomy is connected to the reform in the days of Josiah (and this need not be a conspiracy against the king; one can think about reality in a somewhat more complex way). Of course one can disagree with this, and one can bring statements of non-mainstream scholars, and say that the mainstream did not properly address their arguments. That’s fine. But if atheists want to present a picture of scholarship in which Deuteronomy was composed as part of the reform in the days of Josiah, then that is a correct picture of the scholarship.
As for Jeremiah, I didn’t understand how you explain its short version. Certainly there was editing, and the question is only whether from the short to the long or from the long to the short; and as I understand it there are not really good arguments for the idea of going from the long to the short.

1. The Documentary Hypothesis is indeed accepted, but that is not the issue here. I did not claim that biblical criticism was disproven, but that the claim that the book was first composed in the days of Josiah is no longer accepted, and it seems to me we have not found evidence contradicting that statement.
2. I definitely still stand behind the statement that writing the book for Josiah’s reform is not accepted as it once was (and you can find evidence in the sources to which I referred. The Encyclopaedia Biblica was edited, obviously, by leading biblical scholars in Israel) and presenting it as the scholarly view today is a distortion. But it seems we remain in disagreement on this.
3. We began with my claim (among other things) that scholars had refuted this view, and you said there was one-and-a-half scholar and obscure arguments without real sources. We are now in a somewhat different place, aren’t we? There are scholars and there are arguments.
4. Could it not also be that the prophet shortened it? What kind of proof is that?

The only state of affairs that changed is that you changed your claim. I have no interest in arguing about that.
I didn’t understand point 4. Are you claiming that the prophet himself shortened the composition, or did you mean it was shortened? In any case, as I already said, the claim (which seems correct, though I cannot sign off on it because I have not really studied it) is that from examining the versions it is hard to understand the logic of shortening, whereas one can understand the logic of editing that expanded.
I would have expected a great biblical scholar like yourself (for some reason you think I’m being dismissive, and I’m not; I’m simply relating to the content and not to gangster-style boasting like “you don’t know who I am”) to know this basic issue of the two versions in Jeremiah.

No. See point 1 again, but let the reader judge. We’ve exhausted this.

Indeed I have not dealt with Jeremiah (the canonization of the prophetic books did not occupy me).
The “you don’t know who you’re talking to” referred to your claim, “you’re speaking confidently but don’t know.” In any case, it seems to me you did not understand my argument. I am not claiming that the prophet shortened it, but that he originally wrote the book in a shorter form, and there is no proof here for the correctness of the canonization theory.

Indeed there is no doubt that the question whether there is a Deuteronomistic document should not be connected to the question whether there is such editing in other books. Truly a model of engagement with the issue.
The question whether you are mistaken or correct is not connected to the question of who you are. What you wrote was mistaken, and I commented on that. For some reason you brought into the discussion the question of who you are, meaning that people are supposed to accept your opinion ad hominem, and even without knowing who you are, only on the basis of your own testimony that you are an expert.
It seems you don’t really understand the situation in the Book of Jeremiah. It has a short version and a long version. Indeed it seems that the prophet (or his scribe) wrote the short version, and a later editor added to the book. This editing resembles the hypothesized Deuteronomistic editing of the Former Prophets. If there really was Deuteronomistic editing of Jeremiah, it stands to reason that there was such editing also of the Former Prophets, and consequently it stands to reason that there was a school of Deuteronomistic scribes, and then it stands to reason that it also wrote the Book of Deuteronomy itself. Of course your answer that the prophet wrote in a short form does not really answer the question (it’s worth understanding the question before answering).

The Jeremiah issue I indeed did not know. In that you found the place of my disgrace. Thank you. From the little I looked at now (Segal and Rofe), some of it can be explained by documents from which the book may have been composed, or by much later editing than the Deuteronomistic one (like additions in the Septuagint that are certainly later than the First Temple period), and not necessarily by the kind of editing you are talking about. Therefore I still claim that this does not prove the later editing of the Prophets, and I have already explained the difficulty in dating the book late and in saying that it is indeed first dated to the days of Josiah. But on the Jeremiah issue I will look into it in more detail, and indeed I did not know it (and therefore it is possible that what I said about it was mistaken. If I reach a different conclusion, I’ll update here).
As for my statements about the opinions on Deuteronomy, I do not retract them.

There is no ad hominem here, and I did not say to accept my opinion because of expertise. I said, regarding the sentence—“What you are writing is simply not correct, though written with excessive self-confidence. Even today it is accepted…” —that I know exactly what I am talking about concerning the rejection of the views about the book being written in the days of Josiah.

It doesn’t matter from when the editing is. If its characteristics are similar to what is hypothesized as Deuteronomistic editing in the Former Prophets, then it is reasonable that it is the same thing; and if you want to say that their editing is from the Second Temple period, that will not change it. By the way, in the Septuagint there are not only additions but also “omissions,” some of which are apparently the original wording. For example, the early chapters in Judges, and here too they have a Deuteronomistic character, so from here there is additional external evidence for the existence of such editing. It is certainly not mere tautology. It seems that specifically on the other side there is no external evidence at all, and it is what you call mere tautology.
Textual criticism is an important foundation in literary criticism, not only because one needs a good text in order to study it (I’m not sure how significant that is), but because some textual variants do not reflect scribal mistakes or minor corrections, but significant editing. One cannot dismiss the literary-critical claim about editing without knowing textual criticism at all.

1. I did not say the editing was from the Second Temple period, but that some of it is late, or an amalgamation of earlier texts, and not necessarily editing in the style under discussion. See Segal’s remarks on the matter.
2. I do know textual criticism of the Torah and in general; I just did not know the duplication in Jeremiah specifically, and I never denied that there are late additions (as I’ve already written here several times).
3. As for the Septuagint—that is what I meant regarding the additions. The Septuagint is late, and that means that the specific editing is also later than the classical Deuteronomistic editing.

I don’t know how we got to Jeremiah. The phenomenon of tautology and throwing out everything inconvenient to the editor exists, and I’m sure you’ve run into it, and I’d be surprised if all those cases exist in Jeremiah. In any case, that still does not change the basis of my claim about the antiquity of Deuteronomy (and again, not only quotations we can blame on the editor, but also parallels).

I suggest we end here because I’m already tired. The heat in which I wrote the first message was directed at the atheist websites that keep presenting the old theories as the scholarly view, and at the fact that treating me as someone who bends reality and invents arguments and sources that don’t exist is based on unfamiliarity. The arguments for the antiquity of the book before Josiah certainly do exist, and its composition in the days of Josiah is no longer accepted.

The Septuagint is not late! That is not the view in textual criticism. I even brought an example of a place where the probability is that it is earlier and the Masoretic Text was edited from it (that is: from an earlier text that in this matter was more similar to it).

Let’s just not get into a discussion of textual versions here…. The Septuagint itself is from the 3rd century BCE! And that is fairly late…. (As for its source, just a moment.) The dating of the Masoretic Text is beside the point here (see in a moment). What you say about its accuracy could sound simplistic (to someone reading who doesn’t know): generally, aside from a few specific places, its version of the Torah is regarded in the vast majority of cases as less reflective of the original text than the Masoretic Text, which is more accurate. In other books, each case is judged on its own.

Are both of them based originally on one text, or on several parallel texts? Or on different stages of editing? We both know how complex this question is to discuss here and how there is no agreed, simple, uniform model (for all books) for any of it. I don’t intend to start reproducing Ahituv here.

My claim about Jeremiah and the Septuagint was that if in the 3rd century BCE there was a text with and without additions and they lived in parallel (let us assume), then to say that all the editing of Jeremiah was in the 8th century BCE sounds strange to me, and it is likely that there was very late editing of the book (and maybe also early editing). Again, this is an incorrect interpretation of what I said. When I say the Septuagint is late, that does not mean the Masoretic Text is earlier, but that it was edited at a date much later than the Deuteronomistic school, and to that, it seems to me, you will agree.
But really. Enough.

M, can I get links for all this information?

The question is what the earlier text was (in a case where there really was one). And in that context, to say that the Septuagint text is late (that is, edited from the Masoretic Text) is not correct. I don’t think that in the Torah its version is considered less reflective; rather, each case is examined on its own merits. The question of when the translation was done is not very important for the issue.
I didn’t understand what is strange here. Of course in the 2nd century there were two Hebrew versions of Jeremiah in parallel. Presumably also in the 3rd century. Since the editing resembles another editing, one may assume it is from the same period. If you assume the other editing is from the 8th century, then this one too. You should just understand that according to your claim, the Masoretic version of Jeremiah was edited very late, and if so, you are of course undermining the reliability of the Masoretic Text (of course, if it needs to be undermined, that should not bother any person of integrity).

And one case where the evidence leans toward there having been editing in the Torah and the earlier text remaining in the Septuagint is the censorship in the Song of Ha’azinu.

The Septuagint text of the Torah is generally considered less reliable (again, the Torah only). See Emanuel Tov, though of course every case stands on its own, but that is the general rule. I have no principled problem with the Masoretic text of Jeremiah having been edited late.

I did not claim that the Septuagint was edited from the Masoretic Text, but that it was edited after the Deuteronomistic period—which you will probably agree to—and therefore I doubt whether Jeremiah was edited only in the Deuteronomistic period. And again, if the issue is the short and long versions, from the parallels I saw this could also arise from documents and not from the kind of editing you were talking about. In Jeremiah itself it is written that the prophecies were written twice, before and after the burning of the scroll. See Segal.

To the person who asked for sources—see Professor Emanuel Tov’s book Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

It seems to me we only confused the original questioner.

Maybe you looked at Tov’s previous edition. Since then a lot of water has flowed through the Jordan. Get updated.

And the same to you, sir. It is exactly the opposite.
Tov Precisely wrote in the new edition that he changed his mind and now holds that generally (again, generally), the Masoretic text of the Torah is more accurate than the Septuagint. The book is not in front of me at the moment. Maybe this evening I’ll find it.

Your example about the Song of Ha’azinu is old and well known, but one case does not indicate the rule (under the assumption that there it really is the original text), because my statement is that generally it is more accurate, not in every single place.

That is not what he says. He does say that in the Septuagint of the Torah there are harmonizations, but he does not say that generally the Masoretic Text is more accurate than the Septuagint, only that every case stands on its own.
Maybe this evening you’ll find what he says and then say that that is exactly what you meant and that I was actually referring to other claims not written by me but by atheist websites…
Of course the example proves nothing. I only brought an example.

Fine, each case stands on its own. I am not denying that. I was referring to his statement that generally, in most cases, the Masoretic text of the Torah is preferable in most cases.

As for my intent regarding Deuteronomy—you are of course welcome not to believe me, and let the reader judge. I have no interest in your opinion regarding my hidden intentions.

Yishai,

I have to be brief. More power to you for this fruitful discussion.

But regarding your actual claim against M: “Scholars today think that the book did not exist before the period of Josiah, but only parts of it, not as a book. It’s not that today they think there was an early version of Deuteronomy before Josiah, but that there were materials that were edited into Deuteronomy.”

He referred you to the comprehensive introduction by Jeffrey Tigay, one of the leading living scholars of Deuteronomistic literature, recently translated into Hebrew in the Mikra LeYisrael edition—Deuteronomy, part 1. See there, where he summarizes the compromise position of current scholarship: that Deuteronomy was most likely written sometime between Hezekiah and Josiah, and hidden away—as a book—during the reign of Manasseh, and rediscovered in the days of Josiah. One cannot ignore the school of centralization of worship (which preceded Josiah!) that gave a different interpretation to the commandment “in another place He will choose” (so according to some conservative scholars who argue for the antiquity of the commandment and the lateness of its interpretation in the time of Hezekiah-Josiah), or that invented this commandment (according to most scholars, either by original intuition or under the influence of the Holiness school H that invented it near the days of Hezekiah; see Milgrom at length).

Hezekiah’s reform is found again and again, and very recently in the smashing of the horns of the altars in the city of Lachish (as written at the end of Amos) and their conversion into latrines (as in the description of Jehu’s reform).

Therefore the statements of the bald clown Yigal Ben Nun, the mouthpiece of the newspaper Haaretz, about Shaphan the scribe inventing Deuteronomy, are not worth much academically. See recently in his monumental-infantile book A Short History of YHWH yet more such arguments, whose value is low—and these are the ones mainly quoted on atheist sites online. These are also the ones that repeatedly gain traction and publicity in every journalistic platform or in radio and television interviews. These are the voices with which M, as I understand it, was contending.

Now, Ben Nun’s words are not made up out of nothing—after all, he’s a doctor—but he has a special talent for gathering, in pseudo-intellectual preachiness, the extreme opinions in biblical scholarship and weaving them into a supposedly coherent manifesto. His weight in biblical scholarship is like Mica Goodman’s weight in Maimonides research—everyone in the field knows the beauty of his arguments and their academic weakness. His arguments are an expression of Mica telling the story of Maimonides. He too, like the son of a fish, gathered fringe opinions from across the scholarly literature on Maimonides and wove them all together in order to conclude that Maimonides was postmodern and sanctified doubt. The book is excellent, and God forbid it should sound like I’m slandering Mica, but he is not Maimonides, and Mica himself recognizes that. What Mica knows, Yigal Ben Nun does not know, because he is not coming from within at all. In any case, woe to you if you cite Mica’s book in an academic paper on Maimonides, or Ben Nun on biblical scholarship. These and those are good for hermeneutics and the history of interpretation.

As for other scholars from the minimalist school, this is not the place for discussion.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Instead of relating to Roi, who opened this fruitful discussion, you are busy arguing whether Deuteronomy was written in the time of Isaiah or Hezekiah and how much Shaphan edited.

It would have been fitting to address his crushing claims from the “Science and Logic” channel, instead of engaging in internal ego games.

Noam, how do you know that Roi’s question takes precedence over our discussion? 🙂

By healthy sense and understanding.

There are two solid proofs that Deuteronomy was composed in the twentieth century CE:
A. It mentions that at the end of days the Lord will return and gather the dispersed of Israel from all the ends of the earth and restore them to the land—an event that occurred only in the 20th century, and certainly could not reasonably have been foreseen.
B. Professor Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University wrote two books to prove that the myths of “the Jewish people” and “the Land of Israel” were invented only in the 19th century. Regarding “the Torah of Israel,” Sand did not write that it was invented in the 19th century—therefore, the Torah was not invented until the 20th century.

In light of these unequivocal proofs, it must be established that every text prior to the 20th century that mentions the Torah in general and Deuteronomy in particular underwent Deuteronomistic editing that inserted into it the themes of Deuteronomy. The whole matter of centralization of worship stems from a Zionist attempt to appropriate for Judaism Al-Aqsa and the other holy places in Al-Quds.

With blessings,
Dr. Shatzius von Wellinausen, Birzeit University

Hey, habibi!
There are some participants in this discussion who will swoon over your words here, so please don’t publish heresy and apostasy like this here, because in the end some of them will start chirping such things from every corner and thread….
Good thing the defender of colonialism and mysticism—the great master Rabbi Michi—will be here to supervise them and censor them when needed.

R. Rivlin — President of Zionism for Regional Rule.

A. The Documentary Hypothesis assumes that various Hebrew tribes were wandering around the land, each with its own different Torah—who was the magician who succeeded in uniting stiff-necked tribes into one people, to the point that it was not known that they had entered into its midst? There was no unified central government except for the brief period of a few decades of Saul, David, and Solomon (and even they have doubters 🙂 ), and immediately after Solomon the split returned.
B. If the Torah was invented in the days of Hezekiah or Josiah, how did the Samaritans, who opposed centralization of worship in Jerusalem, accept it too? Why didn’t the Samaritans adopt the E Torah of the northern tribes?
C. In Hezekiah’s days most of the tribes of the kingdom of Israel were exiled and scattered around the world, and a short time after Josiah the people of Judah were also scattered around the world. How is it that no zealous communities arose preserving the heritage of the separate sources?
D. The laws of family and monarchy are concentrated in Deuteronomy, while the laws of sacrifices and forbidden sexual relations are in Leviticus—how did they know how to conduct family and state life and how to offer sacrifices before these books were invented?
The fact that there is a people with a shared national consciousness and one Torah despite political and geographic fragmentation points to the Torah and the shared national consciousness of all the tribes having been formed before their entry into the land. The unifying basis built in the Exodus from Egypt and the forty years in the wilderness, and the Torah that Moses left us, are what preserved us for generations despite political and geographic fragmentation.
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger

The discussion really did get out of hand. Let’s return to the original question. We’ll move the side discussions about Deuteronomy to the forum and you can follow them there.

Original questioner—search the site’s search engine regarding Muhammad’s miracle (there is no agreed-upon tradition like that) and in discussions about the Oral Torah for evidence of the existence of early traditions.

Thanks for getting back to the original focus.
Is it really so implausible that a tradition would be formed? I’ll suggest something and you can tell me.
Once upon a time there were all sorts of tribes in the Land of Israel worshipping all sorts of gods, among them one called Y-H-W-H and his wife Asherah. There also happened to be a Semitic tribe that came out of Egypt and entered the Land of Israel. Naturally it had wonder-tales about the exodus from Egypt and the journey in the wilderness, and naturally gods were involved in these events. According to the stories, the leader of that tribe at the time was one Moses. That Semitic tribe was naturally in friction with the local tribes, but in the end it assimilated into them and even became the leading cultural factor, so that all the tribes adopted its story of the Exodus, though stories still remained that reflected that those tribes had always lived in the Land of Israel.
Naturally all these tribes had laws given by kings and scribes, similar to the laws in Mesopotamia, and some of them were influenced by or perhaps simply translated from Mesopotamian laws. As usual, the laws were attributed to the benevolence of the gods. One collection of laws was called “the Tablets of the Covenant,” and according to the story (or perhaps reality) it was displayed on two tablets in a central place (similar to law collections in Mesopotamia or the Roman Twelve Tables).
Among all the inhabitants of the land there was apparently no theological unanimity. In some places god X was stronger and in others Y. This was naturally also related to the political success of the believers in each god. One group saw Y-H-W-H as the strongest god. Over time two processes occurred: A. This group gained dominance; B. The group’s theology developed—their god became, from king of the gods or father of the gods (or both), the only God, with the other gods as His servants (except that sometimes they try to fight Him, as is common among gods, but they lose); afterward the rest were demoted to the level of angels and even disappeared, and a theology also began to develop that abstracted God, along with His responsibility for nature and history and all existence (and thus He apparently also lost the above-mentioned wife).
Naturally the members of this group adapted the prevailing stories to their faith. In this framework they claimed that the one responsible for the Exodus from Egypt was the Lord, and turned the story of the exodus and the wondrous journey into the story of the miracles He performed, and Moses, the tribal leader, into His emissary. In this framework they attributed not only the wonder-stories to the Lord, but also the laws (the ones they adopted; naturally if there were laws they rejected they did not attribute those to Him). In this framework it was told that the Tablets of the Covenant were given to Moses directly by the Lord at Mount Sinai and that the whole people saw this. The believers had no problem with the story, because they already believed in a miraculous exodus from Egypt and already believed that the laws had been given by the Lord, and all that was added was linking the two events.
It is important to note that the religious importance attributed to the Sinai revelation as the foundation of belief in God and the foundation of His worship was not then nearly as strong. That argument waited many years until Judah Halevi raised it. This greatly reduces the problematic nature of the people being convinced to accept one more detail in the story of the Exodus, which they already believed in anyway. Even the things said about this in the Torah were not necessarily there then, but were written in Deuteronomy after the Sinai revelation was already agreed upon.
(P.S. I didn’t write this proposal myself, but the idea is presented on many atheist websites.)

I’d be happy to hear why this is so illogical… and whether it really is less logical than a crazy miracle story!?

Roi—greetings,

So the unification of tribes with no common ethnic origin and no shared religion took place without unified leadership and amid political and geographical fragmentation, first in the land itself and later throughout the whole world, and in a miraculous way no traces remained of the ethnically and religiously fragmented groups, and everyone accepted the humiliating narrative of a people of slaves that came out of Egypt, and 613 commandments that were not easy and entangled them in endless conflicts with all humanity—does that sound logical to you?

With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger

Certainly; there are always narratives that take over—one group overcomes the others:
:https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%94%d7%94%d7%91%d7%93%d7%9c-%d7%91%d7%99%d7%9f-%d7%9e%d7%a2%d7%9e%d7%93-%d7%94%d7%a8-%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%A0%D7%99-%d7%9C%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95-3/

And regarding the 613 commandments, that is among the easier questions of how they were founded (or more precisely why they already existed); see at length in the explanations of Adi Abir (founder of the site One Against All Religion). I’m surprised at you for recycling such anachronistic questions. By now all scholarship knows that the 613 commandments are nothing but a copy from the peoples of the region.

A worldview can push aside other worldviews and become dominant through sheer power and rule. That is how Christianity took over the Roman Empire when the emperor adopted it and made it the state religion, and that is how Islam took over the East and North Africa, when it created an empire that endured for hundreds of years. A worldview can also take over through the absorption of the minority into the majority culture, or through the influence of a more successful and developed culture.
Judaism had none of these factors. For almost the entire history of the First Temple period (all the more so after the destruction) we were scattered and divided. We were always on the margins of empires stronger than we were, and we were opposed to the beliefs and values of the surrounding environment. An island of monotheism in an idolatrous world. How economically difficult it was to shut down all economic activity one day a week when the whole world was working, and to keep unique dietary laws that made relations with the surrounding gentiles difficult. We had every reason in the world to raise our hands and surrender to the majority culture, and yet in the test of generations we endured as a people. Can one endure on the basis of a falsehood?
And what people would invent for itself a humiliating history of slaves from a foreign land? This fact also amazed a secular jurist like Professor Daniel Friedmann; see his article “And You Shall Remember That You Were a Slave in the Land of Egypt” (on the Da’at website).
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger

Even if my idea doesn’t work because of factor X/Y, all the same, the idea I’m expressing here is very clear: one can easily interpret all of Judaism (including the commandments) as a slow evolutionary development of the Jewish nation, generation after generation, beginning as a people with one idolatrous cult or another, even jointly, until a general monotheistic acceptance that came much later.
This understanding can also be seen in the earlier books of the Torah chronologically, where there is a very concrete anthropomorphism of God. The site I linked to deals with this as well. Regarding the commandments, again, a significant portion of them was taken from earlier tradition and from the idolatrous worship of the peoples of the region (you can also see this on that site).
I see no real obstacle to assuming this idea.

As for what you mentioned in the second part, about the tradition of the Jewish people as a people of slaves from a foreign land being credible: as I mentioned above, there is a core of truth in the Torah, and that is most likely one such core. But all the rest of the additions are nothing more than a developing myth.
With blessings, Roi

A point for thought:
It may be that the question here is not philosophical but psychological.
After all, most of our beliefs are without proof, so why is it only of Jewish faith that you demand proofs?
I assume you also have no proof that it is forbidden to steal, yet you still do not consider stealing—why?
Seemingly because you believe it is forbidden to steal because that is how you were educated, and you never thought to ask what the philosophical basis for it is because you have no interest in casting doubt on it.
I would investigate what the psychological reason is for the desire to leave religion. Maybe the commandments are bothering you, or maybe you grew up in an unhealthy religious environment and you experience religion as a threat to yourself.