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Vayishlach
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Parashat Vayishlach
"That is why the children of Israel do not eat, until this day, the
thigh muscle that is on the socket of the hip" (Genesis 32:33)
And in Deuteronomy 34:6, "He buried him in the valley of the land of
Moab, near Baal-peor; and no one knows his burial place until this day."
And in 3:14, "Yair, the son of Manasseh received the whole Argov
district as far as the boundary of the Geshurites and the Maacathites,
and called the Bashan after himself, Chavvot-Yair, as it is until this
day."
The meaning of the phrase "until this day" is that the situation
described happened long before the matter was written. If so, these
verses were written at a later period.
The verse in our parsha can be explained as done by Radak: "The
children of Israel forbade it (the thigh muscle) to themselves in honor
of their father who was stricken there, and they commanded their sons
and grandsons until this day, etc. And Moses wrote it in the Torah as
one of the prohibitions of the Torah, according to G-d's word."
And that explains "this day" as the time of Moshe Rabbeynu, meaning
that the thigh muscle was forbidden from the time of the sons of Jacob.
But the verse in Deuteronomy which speaks of the burial of Moses, "and
no one knows his burial place until this day" -- it is not possible
that Moses wrote these words, and therefore Ibn Ezra explains, "These
are the words of Joshua, and it is possible he wrote this at the end of
his life."
See, wise student who seeks truth, how the Ibn Ezra clearly writes that
Moses did not write these words of Deuteronomy! He did not fear the
punishment explicitly stated in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 99a), "And these
have no portion in the World to Come: one who says Torah is not from
the heavens, even if he says that the whole Torah is from the heavens
aside from this verse, which not the Holy One, blessed be He, said, but
Moses on his own."
And if this is said about 'Moses on his own,' how much more so about
'Joshua on his own'. Nevertheless, Ibn Ezra was not afraid, for the
truth was his guide. And know that the final days of Yehoshua's life
were 14 years after he entered the land, as Ibn Ezra says on Exodus
33:11, while according to the Seder Olam, brought by Rashi (Judges
11:26), "Twenty eight years did Joshua support the Israelites." And
this, to all opinions, is not a long enough period to say "until this
very day."
Come and see another proof for our claim that there are later additions
to the Torah, from Deuteronomy 3:14, "Yair, the son of Manasseh,
received the whole Argov district …and called it after himself, he
called the Bashan Chavvot-Yair, as it is until this day."
And in Judges 10:3, "After him arose Yair the Gileadite, and he led
Israel for 22 years….those were called Chavvot-Yair, as it is until
this day."
And know that, according to a calculation, Yair judged the children of
Israel some 250 years after they entered the Promised Land.
But if so, it is clear that Moses did not see him, for he was born much
later, and you understand this.
However, Radak wrote (Judges 10:4), "If they are the ones mentioned in
the Torah and this Yair is Yair the son of Manasseh, it is puzzling,
for then Yair would have lived over 300 years. But we can say that Yair
the Gileadite is not Yair the son of Manasseh, and thus, these cities
are not the Chavvot-Yair written about in the Torah." But what can we
say? That there were in the Bashan district two Chavvot-Yairs? One
named after "Yair the Gileadite" and one after "Yair the son of
Manasseh"?
But even if we accept Radak's opinion, we still will find no peace, for
it was only in the 40th year after the Exodus from Egypt -- the year in
which the Torah is considered to have been finished -- that Yair took
the district of Argov and named it after himself: "Chavvot Yair" -- so
how would Radak interpret the phrase "until this day" in Deuteronomy
3:14? Therefore, it must be that this verse was written after the 40th
year since the Exodus from Egypt -- that is, after Moses's death.
And from these our words you can learn that many verses of the Torah
were not given at Sinai, but were written in later periods, after the
time of Joshua. And do not be puzzled by our words, for one who reads
the Torah attentively can see that the Torah's author did not intend to
present this book as one written by Moses (as we wrote in Vayelech),
but only in later generations did the faithful Jews adopta belief in
the sanctity of the Torah, as though it was as a whole written down by
Moses at G-d's dictation. This change in the opinion of the
religious public is quite like the change of the notion concerning the
sanctity of all the letters in the Torah text -- the notion, of which
Prof. Menachem Cohen wrote in his paper, "The Idea of Sanctity of the
Biblical Text and the Science of Textual Criticism" (from "HaMikrah
V'Anachnu," edited by Uriel Simon, Dvir Publishing, Tel Aviv 1987),
"All the evidence we possess points to textual pluralism in the Second
Temple era, as opposed to the notion of a single sacred consonantal
text as later conceived."
We will close with the words of Prof. Cohen. "It therefore appears to
me that the notion of a sanctified text in our era must be based on a
halachic interpretation alone, i.e., it must derive its power not from
a determination that people managed to preserve the text exactly as it
was throughout the entire transmission, but from the faith that men
were given authority to determine, using halachic methods of decision,
the image of the sanctified consonantal text upon its letters." Many
signs and proofs have been given. See elsewhere in his paper, for his
words are recognizable as truth.
And the same should be said of the idea of the sanctity of the Torah
text which Moses wrote under Divine dictation -- this idea should be
based on a halachic interpretation alone, i.e., it must derive its
power not from a notion that Moses indeed wrote the text under Divine
dictation, but from the faith that men were given authority to
determine, using halachic methods of decision, the canon of the Holy
Writings, which were "dictated by G-d;" we described this issue at
great length in Pamphlet 8.
Words of True Knowledge
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