Moshe: consistently supreme or a varying visionary?

One of the first pieces of feedback I received from a Judaism Reclaimed reader noted that I’d kept the most controversial content for its final chapter. Unexpectedly for many, this content did not originate with Ralbag, Yeshayahu Leibowitz or even Rambam – it was based upon an interpretation of Rashi’s commentary to yesterday’s Torah reading and advanced by none other than the Maharal.

Writing in his Gur Aryeh super-commentary of Rashi, the Maharal interprets a fascinating statement of Rashi to mean that the Torah was not received by Moshe in an entirely uniform fashion. Rashi teaches that Moshe prophesied on two distinct levels: the exclusive "peh el peh" type mentioned above, as well as the more general "koh amar Hashem" prophecy – the level at which other prophets received their transmissions from God. Thus, while Moshe received the passages of the Torah which contained the permanent mitzvot in the unique, unparalleled manner of “peh el peh”, other parts of the Torah – those which contained narratives or specific one-time-only instructions —were transmitted through the standard form of prophecy.

The Maharal offers a possible explanation for the discrepancy that exists between the levels of prophecy granted by God to Moshe in order to transmit different parts of the Torah. He suggests that in order for a commandment from God to become eternal law, irrespective of the context of the time and place in which it was taught, it must be clearly and unambiguously identified as being God's explicit and exact word. The permanent mitzvot in the Torah, which were delivered through the precision and accuracy of the “pel el peh” process, can thereby withstand the force of claims that the applicability of those mitzvot was limited to ancient times or subject to adjustment when framed within the context of disparate social, political or cultural settings.

All this stands in stark contrast to Rambam’s more naturalistic understanding of Moshe’s prophecy, which places it on an unwaveringly supreme level of intellectual perception of God’s will. In Rambam’s theory, this heightened form of prophecy was not simply a divine gift that was to be turned on and off based on necessity – rather it was a natural result of Moshe having achieved the highest level of human refinement, both of his mind and character traits. This may be reflected in Rambam’s assertion as part of his Principles of Faith that there is no distinction whatsoever between the holiness, divinity and clarity of the Torah’s most fundamental commandments on the one hand, and its apparently mundane narratives on the other. It was all relayed with precise clarity by Moshe “as a scribe taking down a dictation”.

Judaism Reclaimed then highlights that one early Jewish thinker may benefit from Maharal’s insights. Avraham Ibn Ezra is often placed in the camp of controversial rabbinic thinkers for his apparent willingness to accept that certain passages of the Torah were added or amended after Moshe’s death.

Looking at Ibn Ezra’s introduction to his Torah commentary, a clear distinction already seems evident between the prophetic style of the legal and narrative passages. Towards the end of the introduction to his Torah commentary, he distinguishes between the methodologies for interpreting verses with legal content, which bear a single specific and immutable meaning transmitted to us via the oral law, and the narrative passages of the Torah which are capable of bearing multiple understandings — "shivim panim latorah". These "shivim panim" may be the result of God's choice to transmit these more educational narrative sections of the Torah through the standard mode of prophecy, the flexibility of which enables the Torah to guide and educate people from different societies and eras, steering them towards a common goal of human perfection.

Putting all of this together, Ibn Ezra writes that the final 12 verses of the Torah were a prophecy received and recorded by Yehoshua. Elsewhere in his commentary, Ibn Ezra cites other verses which are troubling, in that they permit the suggestion that they are the product of later, non-Mosaic, authorship. Referring to the “secret of the 12” – a phrase which is widely understood to refer to Yehoshua’s authorship of the final 12 verses of the Torah — Ibn Ezra mysteriously informs his reader that one who understands these verses will “recognise the truth”.

Manuscripts which appear to contain Torah commentary of distinguished earlier commentators such as R’ Yehudah HaChasid make similar suggestions regarding later prophetic authorship of certain verses in the Torah.

We can maintain on the basis of our analysis that, even if they do involve the suggestion that certain verses were added through the medium of a later prophecy, we can distinguish these verses, which all pertain solely to the Torah’s narrative, from verses which impart permanent mitzvot. Following Maharal’s suggestion that narrative portions of the Torah’s text were transmitted by means of regular prophecy, it may be possible for another prophet to have contributed to them, particularly if instructed to do so in a subsequent prophecy (a Tannaic opinion suggests that this was the case for the Torah’s final verses). The Torah’s permanent mitzvot, however, were transmitted through Moshe’s unique prophecy of “peh el peh”, making them immune to any form of supplementing or interference– even by a later prophet.

First posted on Facebook 16 July 2023, here.