INTRODUCTION:
The Portuguese Torah commentator Rabbi
Yitzchak Abravanel (1437-1508) was an interesting exegete who was not afraid to pose penetrating questions
or even criticise earlier texts.
During the 1460s, Abravanel wrote
to R. Yosef Hayyun (d. 1497), the rabbi of Lisbon and presented a challenging question
to him:
“My
question and request is whether this book of Deuteronomy was given by the Lord
from heaven, and its contents are like the rest of the Torah that Moses placed
before the Israelites and everything from ‘in the beginning’ through ‘in the
sight of all Israel’ are the words of the living God; or whether Moses himself
composed Deuteronomy in order to expound what he understood of the divine
intent in the elucidation of the precepts?”[1]
In other words, was Deuteronomy essentially
the work of Moshe or was the authorship of purely Divine origin?
This article, based extensively
on the research by Professor Eran Viezel[2],
deals with some of the related issues that arise from this fascinating piece of
rabbinic communication.
