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Cover of: Where is Moses? The Temple Scroll's Claim to Authority
Sidnie White Crawford

Where is Moses? The Temple Scroll's Claim to Authority

Section: Articles
Volume 11 (2022) / Issue 1, pp. 49-59 (11)
Published 31.05.2022
DOI 10.1628/hebai-2022-0006
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  • 10.1628/hebai-2022-0006
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Summary
Although the Temple Scroll is set on Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received God's revelation of the Torah, remarkably enough Moses is silent throughout the Temple Scroll. Instead, the entire revelation of the Torah, including the book of Deuteronomy, comes directly from God speaking in the first person to a silent Moses. The question is why did the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll choose this pseudepigraphical strategy for his composition. The answer lies in the composer/redactor's desire to remove the revelation of Deuteronomy from the mouth of Moses on the plains of Moab and retroject it back into the of mouth God on Mount Sinai. Thus there is only one revelation of the entire Torah on Sinai, of which Moses is only the mediator.