Q&A: Writing the End of the Book of Deuteronomy
Writing the End of the Book of Deuteronomy
Question
With God's help,
Hello and blessings to the Rabbi, strength and blessings for all your work.
There is a well-known dispute about the writing of the ending of the Book of Deuteronomy: whether Moses wrote it or Joshua did.
I understand the view that says Moses wrote it in tears, but I do not understand the second view, and I will explain the difficulty that arises.
Even according to the one who claims that Moses did not write it and rather Joshua wrote it, Joshua too wrote his words through prophecy, as Ibn Ezra notes about this (although Ibn Ezra expands the ending of the Torah to 12 verses), for how else would he know that God showed Moses the entire land?
If so, what is gained by the one who claims that Joshua wrote it? In any case, the writing was done by means of prophecy, so what difference is there between prophetic writing by Moses and prophetic writing by Joshua? Seemingly, I should specifically prefer prophetic writing by Moses, since that way the Torah scroll comes out as having been written entirely by Moses.
Thanks in advance
Answer
Hello.
There is an assumption in the Talmud that the description of a person's death was not written by that same person (this is said regarding other figures as well; see the passage there). You are assuming Ibn Ezra, but from the Talmud it seems that he is not correct. The Talmud speaks only about eight verses, and there there is no description of what was shown to Moses. From this it follows that the Talmud really held that this description was still written by Moses and not by Joshua, meaning there is no prophecy here. But it should be noted that afterward too there is a description of what happened to Moses and where he was buried, and if that was written by Joshua then it is still a matter of prophecy.
Even so, there is a difference. First, Joshua's description is purely factual, and there is no problem with that being conveyed through prophecy. But to tell Moses that he is going to die, when, how, and where, is not so plausible. Beyond that, there are descriptions there of Moses' greatness, and it is also not plausible that Moses himself wrote those (though one can always say that he was instructed to do so). And above all, the passage is written in the third person, and it does not look like something Moses himself would write. Apparently for this reason, even according to the other view, Moses did indeed write it, but in tears (and the Vilna Gaon explained: not "in tears" but "in a mixed-up form").
Discussion on Answer
Those are "prophecies" about the past.
Thank you very much for the answer. Even so, there are still difficulties with this answer.
A. There are many descriptions in the Torah of places, people, and events at which Moses was not present, yet he writes them through prophecy. The entire Book of Genesis is like this (written through prophecy), the whole story of Balaam was written through prophecy without Moses having been exposed to it, and there are many more such cases. If so, what is the problem, according to the one who holds that Joshua wrote them, with saying that Moses wrote them through prophecy just like the above cases?
B. Moses being described in the third person appears regularly throughout the Torah; it is not unusual here.
C. Even if we say that everything the Rabbi wrote is indeed correct, the question would only be resolved from the standpoint of the Talmud. The difficulty still remains for Ibn Ezra: what does he "gain" from this interpretation that Joshua wrote the end of the Torah?
Thanks in advance