In
Deut. 27, Moses is commanded to set up an altar on Mount Ebal, and
to write the Torah on plastered stones.
3
And thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law, when thou
art passed over; that thou mayest go in unto the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD,
the God of thy fathers, hath promised thee.
We
see in Joshua 8, that this is precisely what Joshua does when he
enters the Land of Israel.
32
And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which
he wrote before the children of Israel.
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34 And afterward he read all the words
of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is
written in the book of the law.
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35 There was not a word of all that
Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the assembly of
Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that
walked among them.
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There
is some dispute as to what was written on these stones, at least as
far as Rabbinical exegetes are concerned. Saadiah Gaon – the
great rationalist and also one of the fiercest opponents of Karaites
claims that this was in fact a summary of the Laws, in the format of
his own book of Mitzvoth! Others claim that the term מִשְׁנֵה
תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה refers to the Book of
Devarim.
Nachmanides,
who was one of the greatest rabbis of all time, and also one of the
greatest friends of the Karaites (along with Ibn Ezra) brings a
source that says the entire Torah was written on the stones, which
were every large stones.
The
ideological nature of these rabbis are quite predictive of their
comments. Saadia is of course fighting anything that has Mikra only
implications, whilst at the same time self-promoting his own book.
Nachmanides, is being intellectually honest and promoting the truth
regardless of implications.
The
last few verses of Joshua Ch. 8 state that he read all the words of
the Torah of Moses.
It
is not clear if he read from the stones or from the Torah scroll.
Although it is possible that v. 34 is suggesting that what Joshua
read from the stones was 100% in accordance with what was written in
the Torah scroll.
Verse
35 tells us that everything that Moses commanded was read by Joshua.
Nothing was left out.
This
statement explains why Rabbi Saadia Gaon, the president of the
Babylonian Gaonate, was trying very hard to degrade what is written
in the Book of Joshua. Being a great philosopher and logician
himself, Saadiah was well aware of the logical implications of this
verse. It is saying the precise opposite of what he himself believes.
It is saying there is no Torah outside of what is written in the book
of Moses. Thus there is no oral law. This makes Saadia's entire
world view redundant.
On
the other hand, Nachmanides, who was a perfect model of Rabbinic
Judaism at its best, has the trait of rigorous intellectual honesty
(which is why he often disagrees with Rashi). Hence he accepts that
the entire Torah was written on the stones, and by implication, the
entire Torah is written in the Torah.
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