The Limits of Orthodox Theology by Shapiro Marc B.;

Author:Shapiro, Marc B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

It is possible that some of the scholars we have quoted understood this passage as condemning, not the denial of complete Mosaic authorship, but the denial of divine inspiration. That is, what the Talmud regards as heresy is the assertion that Moses composed the Torah on his own, without receiving it from God.160 Yet once the Torah’s divinity is acknowledged, it is not heretical to posit that some verses were revealed to post-Mosaic prophets. Indeed, the Mishnah includes in its list of heretics ‘he who says that the Torah is not from Heaven’.161 In other words, the stress is on the divine origin of the Torah, not on whether Moses alone received the revelation.

To be sure, there are a number of rabbinic sources that mention that Moses said (and did) certain things mipi atsmo (of his own accord), without having been commanded to do so by God.162 One famous talmudic passage states that the curses in Deuteronomy were offered by Moses of his own accord.163 There is even a zoharic statement that Moses composed the entire book of Deuteronomy on his own.164 Whatever their original meaning(s), which are far from clear and, as Heschel has shown, may reflect a variety of views, as far as later rabbinic authorities were concerned, passages such as these were not regarded as relevant to the issue discussed here, and thus were not seen as contradicting the passage in Sanhedrin cited above. These authorities have always stressed that when these portions, originally stated independently by Moses, were later included as part of the Torah given to the Children of Israel, it was done at God’s direction. This, and only this, is what sanctified the text.165

Nevertheless, despite this explanation we still find views that seem to contradict Maimonides’ Principle. For example, in discussing the talmudic view that the curses in Deuteronomy originated with Moses, not God, R. Nissim Gerondi writes: ‘God agreed that they be written in the Torah.’166 It is hard to see how this approach, in which God is no longer directing but concurring, can be brought in line with Maimonides’ insistence that the entire Torah was prophetically revealed. Even if one asserts that God’s prophetic concurrence satisfies Maimonides’ Principle, R. Nissim’s comment still seems to contradict another of Maimonides’ statements, namely that, upon receiving the revelation, Moses ‘acted as a scribe to whom one dictates and who writes all of it including its chronicles, its narratives, and its commandments’. Yet according to R. Nissim, this was not the case with regard to the curses, since here God simply permitted Moses to include his own curses in the Torah.

It is possible that R. Nissim’s view was anticipated in the following passage from Shemot rabah:167

Another explanation for Write thou these words (Exod. 34: 27): The angels began to say before the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘Dost Thou grant permission to Moses to write down anything he wishes, so that he may then say unto Israel, “I have given the Torah to you and it

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