It’s very hard for me with the answer that there could have been later editing, even massive additions. If there really was later editing in periods like Hezekiah’s or by the Men of the Great Assembly, and this came through prophecy, then that’s completely legitimate. But then it means the Torah isn’t really truthful, because it tries to present things as if everything was received and sealed in the wilderness period. Why not explicitly declare that there was later editing when it was done?

Who spoke about massive? We’re talking about isolated verses (“to this very day,” and the like).
Beyond that, those verses announce themselves, so I don’t see any need for the editor to note that there are additions. The Torah isn’t trying to portray anything. It writes what it has to write, and that’s it.

It’s very hard to accept this.

Since Moses writes it and places it in the Ark, and this is the book being discussed!!!

And this is what the people of Israel copy and transmit exactly to later generations and learn Jewish law from. Why, when someone comes along with an unfamiliar edit, would they accept it from him?! Everyone already has a different book! And why wouldn’t they force him to state that he emended it?!

After all, Moses also wrote twice that it is forbidden to add or subtract.

There are Jewish laws of writing a Torah scroll that are meticulous about every single letter, and that has always been the Jewish approach. Jews died and gave up their lives so that nothing would be changed.

Why did the generation of the editor agree to this change?!
Where is the book they were holding before that?!

“Who spoke about massive”???

I understand that you do not support biblical criticism, but you’re also welcome to study the words of quite a few Torah scholars who are by no means minor figures (Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa), who hold that large parts of the Torah were written in much later periods. They don’t think this only because of academic biblical criticism, but because it makes more sense (that’s the best way to explain the differences between the laws of the maidservant, for example, as well as many other things).

Shavi,
I wasn’t talking about anything massive. Since he quoted me and not the rabbis of Ma’ale Gilboa (some of whom are friends of mine), I answered him that nobody here was talking about a massive addition. That’s all.

Elhanan,
When the editing is done with divine inspiration, it is like adding books to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and the public accepts it. I don’t see a problem with that. And as for the meticulousness not to add a letter—who told you that this is an ancient Jewish law? Even the script of the Torah changed over time, so talking about adding a letter or a word or words is obvious. Simply put, that Jewish law came after the editing and prophecy had ended, and from that point on the text is no longer touched.

But the Jewish law not to add or subtract is learned from an early verse, no?
That’s a verse where Moses commands the people of Israel.
So I didn’t understand what you meant:
The editor added it afterward as if it were Moses?!

The question is when that Jewish law was ruled, not when the verse from which it was derived came into existence. The verse “and she in her menstrual impurity” was also apparently early, and nevertheless Rabbi Akiva interpreted it differently from the earlier generations (Shabbat 64).
By the way, in straightforward Jewish law there is no prohibition against adding a verse to the Torah. There is a prohibition against adding to or subtracting from the laws. And an addition or subtraction in the biblical text invalidates the scroll, but plainly speaking that is not the prohibition of “do not add.”

But halakhic teachings are derived from the verses themselves. If there is permission to insert or remove—that is, to edit—the verses of the Torah, then halakhic rulings can de facto be derived from that. And then what will their Torah source be? How will they be the word of God? It would be nothing at all, just ordinary interpretation applied to thoughts that a person alone came up with.
That pulls the rug out from under all methods of inference.

First, as far as I remember, no Jewish laws are derived from those added verses (“to this very day,” and the like). Second, if you reached the conclusion that the verse is an addition, then indeed in principle there is room to dispute the halakhic conclusion. What is the problem with that? And third, these additions are part of the text, and the assumption is that the editing was done through prophecy. Therefore there is no problem learning even Jewish laws from them.