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189 [. . .] Moses our master, peace be on him, wrote the entire Torah from “in the­ beginning” [Genesis 1:1] to “before the eyes of all Israel” [Deuteronomy 34:12], including the final eight verses from “Moses died” [Deuteronomy 34:5] to the end of the Torah. It occurred to Rabbi Judah to say that Joshua wrote the final eight verses, but Rabbi Simeon responded to him, saying: “Is it possible that the book of the Torah lacks even one letter? Does it not say ‘take this book of the Torah’ (Deuteronomy 31:26)? Rather, up to this point, the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke and Moses repeated and wrote. From this point on, however, the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke and Moses wrote in tears, as it says in a later text (­ Jeremiah 36:18): ‘And Baruch24 said to them: [Jeremiah] recited all of these words to me from his own mouth, and I wrote them on the scroll in ink’” (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 15a; Menahot 30a). [. . .] It seems to me that [the sages] cited evidence from the words of Baruch for good reason. For it would have been possible to raise the following difficulty: if the entire Torah was spoken by the Holy One, blessed be He, and written down by Moses, why does the text consistently speak of them in the third person, rather than in the first person? For example, in every place in which it says “the Eternal spoke to Moses,” it would have been more proper for it to say “I, the Eternal , spoke to Moses” or “the Eternal spoke to me,” either from the perspective of the speaker or from the perspective of the writer being addressed. For what reason, then, did they deviate from the customary way of the language, speaking as a third person who tells of a third person? It is well known that there have already been people who found this difficult, which nearly led them to doubt the authorship of the Torah. For this reason, [Rabbi Simeon] cited evidence from Baruch, who attested that he wrote the scroll from the mouth of Jeremiah, but nevertheless always mentioned Jeremiah and Baruch in the third person and read the scroll to the people in such language, 17 | From Light for the Path (1783) 24. [Baruch ben Neriah is described in the book of Jeremiah as Jeremiah’s scribe and disciple.] 190 | w r i t i n g s o n t h e b i b l e saying “Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying” [Jeremiah 36:5] rather than “I, Jeremiah, command Baruch” or “Jeremiah commanded me.” This proves that this is the manner in which prophets write from the mouth of their masters. Moreover, Nahmanides, may his memory be for a blessing, wrote at the beginning of [his commentary on] the Torah that the reason that Moses our master neither wrote the Torah in the first person nor mentioned himself in the Torah prior to his birth,25 but rather was mentioned as if another were speaking of him, is that “the Torah preceded the creation of the world and, needless to say, the birth of Moses our master, peace be on him. As has come down to us through tradition, [the Torah] was written in black fire on white fire, and Moses was like a scribe who transcribes from an ancient book and writes.” See [Nahmanides’s words] there.26 Indeed, it is true and clear that Moses wrote the entire Torah from the mouth of the Almighty, from the beginning of the book of Genesis to “before the eyes of all Israel” [Deuteronomy 34:12]. For this reason, it is said “when Moses finished writing down the words of this Torah in a book, up to their end” (Deuteronomy 31:24), since the expression “their end (tumam)” refers to absolute completeness in all its parts. For he finished writing the poem “Give heed” [Deuteronomy 32], “The blessing” [Deuteronomy 33], and what appears afterward, up to and including “before the eyes of all Israel” [Deuteronomy 34:12], as we will explain at that point with the help of the Eternal.27 This is the evidence that Rabbi Simeon adduces [when he asks]: “Is it possible that the book of the Torah lacks even one letter? Is it not written ‘take this book of the Torah’ [Deuteronomy 31:26]?” For if the book of Moses had lacked the eight verses [that appear at the end of Deuteronomy...

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