When Was the Torah Written Down?

The Aish Rabbi Replies

Thank you for raising this important issue. The Torah as we know it wasn’t given to the Jewish people at Sinai itself. Its transmission was actually a longer process which began before the Revelation at Sinai and concluded in their fortieth year in the desert. I will outline it below.

At Mount Sinai, before Moses ascended the mountain, he prepared the Jewish people for their upcoming encounter with God. Of course, the most critical prerequisite was asking the Jews if they were willing to accept the Torah. Accordingly, towards the end of the preparations, the verse states that Moses told the nation “all the words of God and all these laws,” and the Jewish people responded: “We will do” (Exodus 24:3; a few verses later they would respond more fully: “We will do and we will hear”). Moses then wrote down the information he had just imparted to the Jews. The commentator Rashi explains that the “words of God” and “all these laws” Moses wrote were: (a) the entire beginning of the Torah – i.e., the Book of Genesis and the earlier parts of the Book of Exodus, describing the bondage in Egypt and the Exodus, and (b) the laws the Jews had earlier been taught when they encamped at Marah – such as the Seven Noahide Laws, Shabbat, honoring one’s parents, and civil law. (Marah was Israel’s first encampment after the Splitting of the Sea (Exodus 15:22-26). Verse 25 there states that Moses gave the nation “statutes and laws” – i.e., some sampling of the Torah’s laws.) Thus, even before the Revelation at Sinai, the earlier parts of the Torah – namely, Genesis and the first part of Exodus – history until that time – were already written down, presumably in their current form. (See Mechilta BaChodesh 3, Sanhedrin 56b.)

Every part of the Torah which was written down was dictated directly from God to Moses (see Talmud Menachot 30a).

At Mount Sinai itself, Moses stood before the terrified yet exhilarated nation as God uttered the Ten Commandments and Moses repeated them to the nation. The first two commandments the Jews heard directly from God (see Talmud Makkot 23b-24a), while the remaining eight they witnessed God communicating to Moses, and Moses then repeated them to the nation (see Exodus 19:9, Deut. 5:4-5).

At the end of the Revelation, Moses stayed on Mount Sinai for forty days while God taught him the Torah. At the conclusion of the forty days, Moses descended with the Tablets containing the Ten Commandments. (Unfortunately, those Tablets were immediately destroyed because he came down to find a small number of people worshiping the Golden Calf and most of the nation indifferent. Moses then spent forty days praying for the Jews, and then yet another forty days studying the Torah a second time and receiving a new set of Tablets.) In any event, the Torah we have today certainly had not yet been written during or after the Sinaitic Revelation. All Moses came down with was the set of Tablets containing the Decalogue, not the entire Torah we have today.

(Of course, in one sense, the Torah preexisted the world. The Sages list the Torah as one of the entities which preceded the world’s creation (see Pesachim 54a, Bereishis Rabbah 1:4). Certainly, all the concepts and mitzvos of the Torah are eternal – Divine truths not dependent on the world’s existence. (Kabbalists explain that the Torah exists in more spiritual forms in the higher spheres of existence – where the physical mitzvos of the Torah do not apply. This too is the form in which it existed before the physical world came into being.) Similarly, the Ramban (Nachmanides; Intro. to the Torah) explains that while the Torah was still in Heaven, before it was given to Moses, it existed as an unbroken sequence of letters, not yet divided into distinct words. Thus, the Torah’s wisdom did exist in some form before it was brought down from Heaven. The question we are dealing with is when it was given to man, assuming the form it has today.)

What exactly did Moses study for the forty days he stood on Mount Sinai? It is a debate in the Talmud (Hagigah 6a-b and elsewhere). One opinion was that he studied the Torah in all its details, while another was that he studied the Torah’s general principles, while the details he learned from God later, in the Tent of Meeting, during Israel’s forty years in the desert. (Everyone would appear to agree that every last detail of the Torah had not been taught at Sinai. There were laws which came up in the desert that Moses himself did not know – such as that one who is unable to bring the Paschal Lamb on Passover can offer it a month later (on Pesach Sheni), and that if a man has no sons, his daughter inherits his property. See Numbers 9:6-12; 27:1-11)

When was the Torah recorded in writing? That too is a debate (Talmud Gittin 60a). R’ Yochanan maintains that the Torah was written one section at a time during Israel’s forty years in the desert, each section added as it was studied (and as new events occurred). Reish Lakish holds that the Torah was written down only when it was entirely complete at the end of Israel’s sojourn in the desert. Regardless, it was surely completed in Moses’s lifetime, as the Torah itself records that Moses gave the Torah scroll to his tribe (Levi) for safekeeping (Deut. 31:9,24-26).

One final issue remains. The final eight verses of the Torah describe Moses’s death and burial. There is obviously no way Moses could have written those after they occurred! The Talmud debates this as well (Bava Batra 15a, Menachot 30a). R’ Yehuda understands that God dictated them to Moses’s disciple Joshua, who transcribed them, while R’ Shimon maintains that Moses himself wrote the account of his death – “with tears.”

See here for more information on the account of the Torah’s writing and transmission.