Nor am I doing better with the time at which
the Torah was written. According to our tradition (Maimonides, Foreword to the
Mishnah Commentary) Moses finished writing the Torah (as G-d dictated it to
him) just before his death, in the 40th year after the Exodus. But in Genesis
14:14 we find: "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive,
he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and
eighteen, and pursued them to Dan." The place-name Dan is mentioned once
more in the Torah: "And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to the
mountain of Nebo... and the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, to
Dan" (Deuteronomy 34:1).
But the first time a place in the Land of
Israel (where the events took place) was named Dan was long after Moses's
death, when the Israelite tribes were already conquering the land: "And the children of Dan went their way...
and came to Laish, to a people that were at peace and secure: and they smote
them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire. And there was no
deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any
man; and it was in the valley that lies near Beth-rehob. And they built a city,
and dwelt therein. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of
Dan their father, who was born to Israel: howbeit the name of the city was
Laish at the first." (Judges 18:26-29)
One can say the Torah spoke in the terms of the
future, since for G-d there is no difference between the future, the present
and the past, and Moses was a prophet to whom G-d revealed the matter of Dan.
But we believe that the whole People of Israel received the Torah in its final
form before they entered Canaan; how were they supposed to comprehend these
verses?
This question also troubled the author of
"HaKtav vehaKabbalah" commentary (on Genesis 14:14), and his
explanation, based on the Targum Yerushalmi, is that the Dan spoken of in
Genesis is not the Dan spoken of in Judges, but another Dan called "Dan
deCeysarion," and it, says HaKtav vehaKabbalah, is "a place
known to travelers." But alas, the city of Ceysarion is not Caesarea (as
the author of HaKtav vehaKabbalah most likely thought), but another
city, built in the time of Herod near the sources of the Jordan River, north of
the Sea of Galilee, exactly where the Dan of Judges was situated (see the map
in Encyclopedia Hebraica, v. 6, pp. 365-366). "Dan
deCeysarion" is the same Dan as in Judges, and the question remains:
was the Torah written years before the city of Dan was established, or -- a
painful conclusion to which I am drawn -- afterwards?
Moreover, if G-d didn't mind including in the
Torah names of cities that were not known when the Torah was given, but would
only be known to future generations, then why does the Torah include only names
known in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE? Why doesn't the Torah also
mention, for example, the names Haifa, Dimona, Kiryat-Shemona etc.?
Just another example -- in Exodus 16:35 the
Torah says: "And the Children of Israel ate manna forty years until they
came to a land inhabited; they ate manna until they came to the borders of the
land of Canaan." And the Gemara (Kiddushin 38a) says that when Moses died
on the 7th of Adar, the manna stopped falling from the sky, and the Children of
Israel ate the manna they had gathered that day until the day after Passover of
that year, when they were already in the land of Canaan.
But we believe that the Torah as a whole was
written down and presented to the people before the Children of Israel
entered Canaan -- and yet the verse speaks in the past tense:
"They ate manna..." That is, eating manna "until they
came to the borders of the land of Canaan" is described as an event which
had already taken place -- something possible only after they entered the
land of Canaan, at least 30 days after Moses's death (Deuteronomy 34:8) and not
before the day after Passover, according to the Gemara.
In Deuteronomy 34:5-12 we find: "So Moses the servant of the Lord died
there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And He buried him
in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knows of
his sepulcher to this day. And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he
died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the Children of
Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days: so the days of weeping
and mourning for Moses were ended. And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the
spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the Children of
Israel hearkened to him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses. And there arose
not a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in
all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of
Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, and in all that
mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses showed in the sight of all
Israel."
These verses, describing Moses's death,
obviously could not have been written by Moses himself. Moses could have known
about the events of his death through prophecy, but this is no help -- Moses's
funeral and the mourning for him are described here in the past
tense, so this account could not have been given to the whole People of Israel
while Moses was still alive.
Indeed, even our Sages OBM disputed whether
Moses wrote down these verses:
"As we have learned: 'So Moses the servant
of the Lord died there' -- is it possible that Moses is dead and yet writes 'So
Moses... died there'? But until here, Moses wrote, from here and on Joshua
wrote -- these are the words of Rabbi Judah, and some say: Rabbi Nechemiah.
[But] Rabbi Simeon said to him: is it possible that the Torah scroll lacks even
a single letter, and it is written 'Take this book of the Torah' (Deuteronomy
31:26)? But until here G-d spoke and Moses wrote, from here on G-d spoke and
Moses wrote in tears."
(Tractate Bava Batra 15a)
Rabbi Judah's (or Rabbi Nechemiah's) position
is quite easily understood: if it is self-evident that Moses did not write
these verses, it is reasonable to conclude that Moses's closest disciple,
Joshua, finished the work. But Rabbi Simeon's opinion seems totally implausible
-- no one can report his own funeral actually taking place and present this report
to his whole community, be it in tears or not.
The Vilna Gaon tried to explain that the word
"in tears" (bedema) means "in a muddle" (bedimua), that is,
the letters of the Torah's last eight verses were not separated into words and
verses, but all the letters were written in a sequence which could be
partitioned in several different ways, and each partitioning, of course, would
lead to a different variation of the text, so that it was not read as "So
Moses... died there" (see R' Eliyahu Ki Tov, Sefer HaTodaah, chapter
"HaTorah VehaMesorah"). But if the Vilna Gaon is right, then the
Torah which Moses wrote had quite a different meaning from the one we now have,
in which "So Moses... died there" is explicitly written. Who was it
who later separated the non-separated letters, thus altering the original
meaning of the Torah text? Whoever he was, he did in fact change the text after
Moses's death -- according to the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Simeon's position is
essentially no different from that of Rabbi Judah.
So we find that among the Tannaim there were
those who did not consider the Torah to be authored, as a whole, by G-d
himself. And not only among the Tannaim was there this dispute. Deuteronomy
34:6 says: "But no man knows of his [Moses's] sepulcher to this
day." The expression "to this day" implies a lot of time had
passed from when the events took place to when the verse describing them was
written. And indeed, R' Abraham Ibn Ezra (of 12th century), wrote in his
commentary on this verse: "'To this day' -- these are the words of Joshua.
And it is possible he wrote them at the end of his days." Midrashic
sources state that Joshua died 28 or even 38 years after Moses did (see Seder
Olam Rabbah, Milikowski edition, chapter 12 vs. Yalkut Shimoni on Joshua,
section 35). And, though according to Ibn Ezra on Exodus 33:11 there were only
14 years between Moses's death and Joshua's, we see that the sacred text of the
Torah was changed more than a dozen years after it was introduced, sealed, and
put "in the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord" (Deuteronomy
31:26), despite the explicit prohibition, "Do not add thereto nor diminish
from it."
Were this prohibition seen as G-d's living
word, neither Joshua nor anyone else would dare alter or add to the book. I
cannot find an explanation for this save that, in Ibn Ezra's view, the Torah
was not seen, as a whole, as the word of G-d. And not only is it Ibn Ezra's
view, it follows ultimately from the Torah verses themselves, consistently
analyzed.
Regarding your question of how the People of Israel were to
understand the verses that include the name ‘Dan’ – it would only seem reasonable
that the people of that time were well aware of Moses’ prophetic powers, and would
therefore understand these verses as referring to the lands that the tribe of
Dan would soon inherent.
This understanding seems to be forced from the verses
themselves. The verses continue: “And the Lord showed him all the Land: The
Gilead until Dan. And all of Naftali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and
all the land of Judah, until the western sea.”
Just as it is understood that the meaning of the references
to the other tribes of Naftali, Ephraim, Manasseh and Judah, refers to the land
that they were to inherit after conquering the land of Israel, the same meaning
would apply with regard to the reference of ‘Dan’.
I have difficulty understanding the basis of your question of
why the Torah doesn’t reference to Haifa, Dimona or other modern-day cities, as
I am not entirely sure why the Torah should. However, one possible answer to
that is, based on what I will discuss later on with regard to the question of
the time that the Messiah is supposed to arrive, is that theoretically, the
Messiah could have come at many points throughout history. Therefore, the Torah
chose not to reference to the names of modern cities, as it was not a must for
history to unfold the way it has, with the establishment of the State of Israel.
Regarding the Manna, your question was already discussed some
2000 years ago. The Sifri (Beha’alotcha, Section 64) states: “Rabbi Judah HaNasi
says … the verse states, “And the Children of Israel ate manna forty years
until they came to a land inhabited,” but they hadn’t eaten it yet? This comes
to teach us that there is no chronological order in the Torah.”
In other words, this verse was written in the fortieth year of
the Israelites wanderings, just before Moses’ passing, like the rest of the
Torah, but this verse was inserted among the other verses that describe an
earlier period of time.
Since this verse was written in the fortieth year, there is
seemingly no difficulty for Moses to reference to something in the past tense,
even though it would only happen in another 30 days, as for him it was a
self-understood natural outcome. It would have to be that once the Manna stops
falling – at Moses’ death – then the People of Israel would run out of it in a
relatively short time.
I will also note that Rashi in his commentary just two verses
earlier (Exodus 16:33), explains a similar idea, from where one can easily
learn to our case. On the verse: “And Moses said to Aaron, Take one jug and put
there an omerful of manna, and deposit it before the Lord to be preserved for
your generations”, Rashi explains on
the words, “And
deposit it before the Lord: Before the Ark. This verse was not said until the Tent of
Meeting was built, but it was written here in the section dealing with the
manna.”
Lastly, I fail to see any dire
theological implications whether Moses or Joshua wrote the last eight verses of
the Torah. After all, if Moses was a prophet, a man of G-d, and Joshua was a
prophet as well, what difference does it make who wrote these verses? They are
both divinely inspired.
I do not doubt that Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra viewed the Torah
as G-d’s word, but a probable explanation for why he believed that it was
permissible for Joshua to add the last verses, despite the verse, “Do not add
thereto nor diminish from it,” is because he interpreted this prohibition in
the way most Rishonim do – that this verse forbids adding or detracting from
the Torah’s commandments. This is derived from the beginning of that very verse:
“Everything I command you that you shall be careful to do it, do not add
thereto nor diminish from it.”
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