Deuteronomy Chapter 1

Finally, I am starting the last book of the Pentateuch. I’m going to try to not take a year or more to finish it.

¹THESE are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 420). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

I decided to return to the Twitter/X account of Joel Baden to give me a much-needed push on this book, and his first set of tweets were about verse 1. This single verse is proof that Moses was not the author of the Torah/Pentateuch. I’ll let him explain it:

The key phrase is “on the other side of the Jordan.” Since Moses gives his speech on the eastern side, in the Transjordan (in Moab), then whoever wrote this is writing from the western side: you know, from Canaan. Which rules out Moses, who of course never gets there (spoiler).

— Joel Baden (@JoelBaden) October 25, 2022

The rest of this thread, and his entire account, are incredibly informative. You can read the rest on your own. I’m not going into that much granular detail, I just thought that was interesting.

Moses tells the Israelites that they have spent enough time at Mount Horeb and can now go into the land of Canaan. Due to the now large number of them, Moses assigns tribal leaders to hear complaints and settle disputes.

The next section appears to be a retelling of the journey out of Egypt and the spies story which is when twelve men, one from each tribe were sent to scout out the land of Canaan. The Israelites whine about God hating them and they refuse to enter into the land. God punished then in Exodus saying that the current generation will not enter the promised land, but in Deuteronomy the writer adds an exception for the children who were too young to be accountable at that time.

Here’s the thing about the single authorship claim: We can tell by differences in writing style that these books and even sections of books were written by very different people. We’ll see later in this book that Moses’ death and burial are described in detail, which is quite difficult to write about when…you know…he’s dead.