Read Devarim 31:26. 'Take this Torah scroll and place it to the side of the ark of God your Lord's covenant, leaving it there as a witness.'
What Torah scroll could Moshe be referring to? Surely not a Torah scroll that had not been completed yet, because he is not yet dead, and the last eight verses in the Torah describe happenings that follow his death.
Netziv says Moshe did not say קח - as in "take now." He said לקוח which means it will be taken at its proper time.
In What Manner was the Torah given to Moshe on Sinai?
We discussed different possibilities as to the form in which the Torah was given. For starters, the Torah is essentially a law book. All in attendance agreed that all of the commandments were given at Sinai. But what about the narrative of the Torah? Could the people at Sinai possibly be given the tale of the Golden Calf, or the spies, or the Korach rebellion? Could Moshe have known the cause of his punishment not to enter the land before he had done anything wrong?
Different suggestions
A. The Torah was "given" in its entirety, but presented scroll by scroll after the events transpired.
B. The Torah was given complete with narrative from creation through the Exodus, and was updated regularly, with narrative interspersed between the segments of the law.
C. The laws were given, and Moshe transcribed the entire Torah towards the end of his life, as per God's dictation.
D. As per the midrash, the Torah predated the world by 2,000 years, so this question is moot.
Obviously, each of these possibilities opens a pandoras box of questions and possibilities.
Next Step
We then read through the last chapter of the Torah which describes Moshe going up Mt. Nebo to see the land he may not enter, he dies there, is buried, and we read of the aftermath of his death down below, where the people mourn for thirty days, as they embrace Joshua, their new leader.
The Talmud (Bava Batra 15a) declares that Joshua wrote his book and the last eight verses of the Torah because Moshe could not write about his own death before it happened. (Mar says this, which is supported by either Rabbi Yehuda or Rabbi Nechemiah).
Rabbi Shimon disagrees arguing there is no way Moshe left the people with an incomplete Torah. Rather, up until that point, God would dictate and Moshe would repeat and then record. When they got to the last eight verses, God dictated, and Moshe wrote with[out repeating and using] tears בדמע instead of with the usual ink. [Others suggest Moshe wrote while crying because he was writing about his own death, but this is not the general consensus amongst rabbinic authorities.]
In this way, Moshe was not "writing" a falsehood as tears are not considered permanent and are more like a disappearing ink. With this explanation, Joshua went over the verses afterwards with real ink, but they had been written by Moshe.
Not Satisfactory
All of this is nice, but there are more obvious questions. The beginning of the chapter says Moshe went up the mountain, and it is pretty clear he did not return even for one last goodbye. Our question extends to the last 12 verses, not just the last eight, unless we want to assume Moshe wrote what God told him on the top of the mountain, and then left a Torah for people to find, so Joshua could fix up the last eight verses as described above.
Come on! If no one is supposed to follow him, no one will be going up to get the Torah. Furthermore, there is a known midrash that Moshe wrote a Torah for each tribe, and one to be placed in the ark, on the last day of his life. Could he have left all of them incomplete?
The Commentaries
We explored three commentaries who address these verses:
Ibn Ezra - Joshua must have written the last verses, and he did so through prophesy, as is clear based on the things he knew about Moshe without having seen the final moments of Moshe's life.
Rabbenu Bachaye - He feels Ibn Ezra wrote his comment because, as a rationalist, he could not justify Moshe writing about his own death in the past tense. Instead, R"B suggests Moshe was like a scribe who wrote down based on God's dictation - as if copying from a book, letter by letter. There is no problem with Moshe writing something which will come to fruition shortly.
Gaon of Vilna - Both approaches in the talmud are correct: Joshua wrote it, and Moshe wrote it. As the Torah was written 2,000 years before the world's creation, the question of 8 verses is irrelevant. None of what is written in the Torah existed when the Torah was written.
Rather, the Torah was written as the name of God, through various combinations of letters which only God understands. Only after He created the world, gave the Torah to the nation of Israel, and surrounded them with commandments which are done in limited time and space, did He reveal how the words and letters divide to make sense to humans.
Only the greatest scholars understand the innermost secrets.
The way the last verses were written was different than the other verses. Were Moshe to repeat what was dictated to him, it would look like a lie. So instead, for these last verses, Moshe wrote it in the secret form, using the combinations of God's name. In this way, Moshe is finishing all the letters, but Joshua clarifies the secrets once Moshe has died.
In this manner, the verses Moshe left did not read "And Moshe died," but the letters which spell this were there - just in a secret formulation.
The Vilan Gaon concludes: This fits in line with the other interpretation of the word which until now we've been translating "with tears" - בדמע. The words מדומע refers to something changing its status after the passage of some time. As Moshe was writing something whose status was set in motion to change from secret to revealed, there is no problem with him writing it and Joshua revealing the secret.
LESSONS LEARNED
There is tremendous depth to the Torah, on many levels. It is our task to challenge ourselves to open the texts, try to reach an understanding of what it is teaching us, and then explore deeper.
Words in the Torah can sometimes have multiple meanings, and those meanings leave us open to finding multiple interpretations.
As far as the authorship of the Torah goes, we are allowed to ask questions. We are encouraged to ask questions. The difference between our approach to the Torah and that of Bible critics is that we reconcile our problems with answers rooted in our faith and our tradition. Bible critics find a problem they can't reconcile so they claim the fault is in the Torah and not in them.
Questions are important, but a good portion of the value of our heritage is in our fundamental faith. When we ask questions, it is the attitude behind these questions that determines in which direction we will take our exploration, and where we will stand once we've found answers that satisfy us, or if we never find answers that satisfy us.
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