For the source text click/tap here: Bava Batra 15
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On yesterday’s daf we learned that Yehoshua wrote his book (Sefer Yehoshua) and the last eight pesukim of the Torah. On our daf the Gemara points out that there is a difference of opinion regarding the last eight pesukim.
Rabbi Yehuda says that Moshe could not possibly have written the last eight pesukim of the Torah, which open with the words “So Moshe the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab” (Devarim 34:5). How could Moshe be alive and writing that he had died!? Therefore he concludes that Yehoshua completed the last few verses of the Torah.
We explore the rabbinic commentaries as well as the scholarship surrounding this threat to the very integrity of the biblical text.