The Second Torah

Deuteronomy requires the king to make a copy of the torah, a term with a broad range of meanings, including teaching, instruction, and law:^[1]

^{דברים יז:יח} וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ עַל כִּסֵּא מַמְלַכְתּוֹ וְכָתַב לוֹ אֶת־מִשְׁנֵה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת עַל־סֵפֶר מִלִּפְנֵי הַכֹּהֲנִים הַלְוִיִּם. ^יז:יט וְהָיְתָה עִמּוֹ וְקָרָא בוֹ כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיָּיו לְמַעַן יִלְמַד לְיִרְאָה אֶת־יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהָיו לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־כׇּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־הַחֻקִּים הָאֵלֶּה לַעֲשֹׂתָם. ^[2]

^{Deut 17:18} When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this torah written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests. ^17:19 Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere YHWH his God, to observe faithfully every word of this torah as well as these laws.^[3]

What exactly is “this torah”?

The Law of the King Itself

The most minimal possible reading of this phrase in this context is that it refers to the law of the king itself (Deut 17:14–20); in other words, the king must make a copy of this law to always remind himself what kind of king he must be. The (sectarian) Temple Scroll (11QT, ca. 2^nd/1^st century B.C.E.)^[4] seems to read the term this way, although it understands mishneh not simply as a copy of these rules, but as a set of companion rules, recorded in the Temple Scroll, and introduced by the phrase וזאת התורה, “And this is the law...”, as if to say, “and this [what follows] is the [full] law [of the king].”^[5]

These extra rules expand upon the laws of the king considerably. For example, according to the core law in Deuteronomy, the king is limited in the number of possessions he may amass, specifically horses, wives, and treasure:

^{דברים יז:טז} רַק לֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ סוּסִים... ^יז:יז וְלֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ נָשִׁים וְלֹא יָסוּר לְבָבוֹ וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב לֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ מְאֹד.

^{Deut 17:16} Moreover, he shall not keep many horses… ^17:17 And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.^[6]

The “this is the torah” section revises this rule to specify a wife from his own family, and requires the king to be monogamous:

^{מגילת המקדש נז׃טו–יט} ואשה לוא ישא מכול בנות הגויים כי אם מבית אביהו יקח לו אשה ממשפחת אביהו. ולא יקח עליה אשה אחרת כי היאה לבדה תהיה עמו כל ימי חייה. ואם מתה ונשא לו אחרת מבית אביהו ממשפחתו. ^[7]

^{Temple Scroll 57:15–19} He shall not marry a woman from among the daughters of the nations, but rather from the house of his father he shall take a wife, from the family of his father. And in addition to her he shall not take another wife, for she alone shall be with him all the days of her life. If she dies, and he marries another (woman), (she too shall be) from the house of his father, from his family.^[8]

Thus, while the Temple Scroll offers a narrow reading of the torah in the law of the king, it expands the idea of the mishneh to include material outside the Pentateuch, only available, in fact, in the Temple Scroll itself.

Septuagint: Deuteronomium, “the Second Law”

The most common understanding among scholars is that the term torah in the law of the king refers to much of Deuteronomy (or the shorter Deuteronomic Law Collection), which seems to be the meaning of torah throughout the Deuteronomistic books.^[9] In other words, the king’s writing mishneh hatorah would mean that the king should make a full copy of (some form of) Deuteronomy.

Nevertheless, the LXX (Septuagint) translates mishneh hatorah as to deuteronomium touto (τὸ δευτερονόμιον τουτο), “this Second Law” rather than “a copy of this Law.” In other words, Deuteronomy as a whole and apart from the king, is itself the copy or repetition of the laws in the previous books of the Pentateuch.^[10] This rendering (“this second Torah”) is the origin of the name Deuteronomy.

When read as part of the Pentateuch, the book of Deuteronomy can indeed be understood as a kind of second Torah. In fact, the introduction can be read to imply as much:

^{דברים א:ה} בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן בְּאֶרֶץ מוֹאָב הוֹאִיל מֹשֶׁה בֵּאֵר אֶת־הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת לֵאמֹר.

^{Deut 1:5} On the other side of the Jordan, in the Land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this torah. He said...

As Jeffrey Tigay notes in his commentary, “expound” can mean both “to set forth or state in detail” and “to explain or clarify,” capturing two possible meanings of beʾer.^[11] The latter translation suggests that in Deuteronomy’s speeches, Moses is clarifying earlier teachings. Similarly, Moses will require these teachings to be inscribed on stone (27:3), read aloud every seven years (31:10–12), and even to be copied down by the king for constant study (17:18–19).^[12]

For the Septuagint, however, the reason the king is to write out Deuteronomy is because it is itself a second or revised version of the rest of the Torah.

The Torah to Be Changed

The Sifrei’s midrashic commentary on Deuteronomy (2^nd/3^rd cent. C.E.) assumes that the torah in the law of the king refers to the whole Pentateuch, and yet, the phrase teaches that this Torah was intended/destined from its inception to be changed (or even replaced) over time, whether by scribes or translators:

^{ספרי דברים קס} משנה התורה: שעתידה להשתנות.

^{Sifrei Devarim 160} ‘mishneh ha-torah’ [This refers to the Torah] which in the future will be [=is destined to be] changed.^[13]

The Sifrei’s reading is based on a subtle linguistic ambiguity or pun: the Hebrew verbal root שׁ.נ.ה/י can mean both “repeat” (hence, “copy”) and “change.”^[14] Like most covenantal constitutions, it might be said, the Torah midrashically contains within itself the possibility of and authorization for its subsequently being emended and amended, in both small and large ways.^[15]

Thus, the king’s mishneh torah is not simply an exact copy of the official Torah safe-guarded by the Temple priests, but a Torah “destined to be changed,” whether by alteration or elaboration. A single, official Torah is transmuted into a manifold Torah.

Jubilees: A Second Torah

Once the Pentateuch is firmly entrenched as the torah, many Jewish traditions envisioned a “second torah” as a revelation that exists outside the Pentateuch. The most blatant such tradition is in the book of Jubilees (2^nd cent. B.C.E.), which envisions God on Mount Sinai having an angel dictate this second revelation to Moses:

^{Jub 1:5} [God] said to him: Pay attention to all the words which I tell you on this mountain. Write them in a book so that their offspring may see that I have not abandoned them because of all the evil they have done in straying from the covenant between me and you which I am making today on Mt. Sinai for their offspring….

^1:26 Now you write all these words which I will tell you on this mountain: what is first and what is last and what is to come during all the divisions of time which are in the law and which are in the testimony and in the weeks of their jubilees until eternity—until the time when I descend and live with them throughout all the ages of eternity.^[16]

Thus, Moses receives two revelations and two books on Mount Sinai, during his forty days upon the mountains: one is recorded in the Pentateuch and the other in the book of Jubilees. Alternatively, we might think of one of them as celestial and one as terrestrial.^[17]

Hidden and Revealed Torahs

Another way some ancient forms of Judaism conceptualized a second torah was as a second, secret layer of revelation accompanying the Bible but offering new insights into its meaning. This division of revelation into esoteric and exoteric is a social demarcation between the worthy, wise, and righteous, and those who are not.

Qumran—Certain Qumran texts divide law into two categories: the נגלה (nigleh), “revealed,” and the נסתר (nistar), “hidden.”^[18] The juxtaposition of the two terms derives from Deuteronomy 29:28, where their meanings in context is different.^[19] We see their immediate juxtaposition as two forms of knowledge in the fragmentary text 4Q508 found in at Qumran, [ואתה ידעתה הנסתרות והנגל[ות [God, but by extension the community members] know [both] the hidden things and the things reveal[ed]”.^[20]

Philo and Allegory—Philo of Alexandria (early first century C.E.) differentiates between literal and allegorical levels of scriptural meaning. He emphasizes that the literal is the first step in interpretation, which proceeds, often in multiple stages, to the “higher” allegorical meaning, without the latter supplanting or superseding the former. He never speaks of these as constituting two separate bodies of revelation, but rather as the body and soul of a single revelation, even though the exercise of the latter might not be for everyone.^[21] Although Philo comments allegorically on the Torah of the king, with particular emphasis on the king’s copying the Torah for himself, he never links his two-fold understanding of revelation to the term mishneh torah / δευτερονόμιον.

4 Ezra—The (late first century C.E.) pseudepigraphic text 4 Ezra (14:42–48) envisions a two-fold revelation to Ezra (and before him to Moses), dividing divine revelation of ninety-four books into two groupings. First come the twenty-four exoteric ones, for the “worthy and unworthy” to read, which would become the canonical Hebrew Bible. Then come the seventy esoteric ones, for the “wise among your people” to read, presumably including the extra-canonical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha texts.^[22]

A New Testament/Covenant

Early Christianity configured its Bible as a two-fold revelation, the Old Testament, which corresponds to the Hebrew Bible (plus apocryphal books), and the New Testament, which includes the stories of Jesus, and the teachings of Paul and other apostles of Christ.^[23] This second set of teachings (or torah) offered a prism with which to “properly” understand the message of the first.

The phrase ברית (ה)חדשה, (The) New Covenant (or “Testament”) is taken from Jeremiah, referring to a future, impending covenant that God will (re-) establish with Israel after their return from exile:

^{ירמיהו לא:לא} הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים נְאֻם־יְ־הֹוָה וְכָרַתִּי אֶת־בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת־בֵּית יְהוּדָה בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה. ^לא:לב לֹא כַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר כָּרַתִּי אֶת־אֲבוֹתָם בְּיוֹם הֶחֱזִיקִי בְיָדָם לְהוֹצִיאָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם אֲשֶׁר־הֵמָּה הֵפֵרוּ אֶת־בְּרִיתִי וְאָנֹכִי בָּעַלְתִּי בָם נְאֻם־יְ־הֹוָה.

^{Jer 31:31} See, a time is coming—declares YHWH—when I will make with the House of Israel and the House of Judah a new covenant. ^31:32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant that they broke, though I espoused them—declares YHWH.

The prophet stresses that the new covenant will be unlike the old one, which was established in conjunction with the exodus from Egypt, but which the ancestors broke. In the next verse, Jeremiah makes the connection between a new covenant and a newly inscribed torah, giving early Christians a foundation to exegetically connect the New Testament with the torah:

^{ירמיהו לא:לג} כִּי זֹאת הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר אֶכְרֹת אֶת־בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אַחֲרֵי הַיָּמִים הָהֵם נְאֻם־יְ־הֹוָה נָתַתִּי אֶת־תּוֹרָתִי בְּקִרְבָּם וְעַל־לִבָּם אֶכְתְּבֶנָּה וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים וְהֵמָּה יִהְיוּ־לִי לְעָם.

^{Jer 31:33} But such is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after these days—declares YHWH: I will put my torah into their innermost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people.^[24]

These themes are picked up and applied in the New Testament to the life and teachings of Jesus, with particular emphasis on the new covenant replacing the old covenant, which has become obsolete. The new or everlasting covenant is not so much prophesied as actualized in the life of Jesus.^[25]

The Oral Torah: Rabbinic Interpretation

The early rabbis pair the Written and Oral Torahs, with both originating in the revelation at Mt. Sinai.^[26] This may go back to the Pharisees, whom Josephus (1^st cent. C.E.) describes as valuing and transmitting the “tradition [παραδόσις] of the elders,” to which they attribute (divine?) authority,^[27] a central pillar of their disagreement with the Sadducees:

[T]he Pharisees had passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Law of Moses, for which reason they are rejected by the Sadducaean group, who hold that only those regulations should be considered valid which were written down (in Scripture), and that those which had been handed down by former generations need not be observed.^[28]

It is unclear whether these Pharisaic traditions are oral or written, but in rabbinic thinking, it is an oral tradition passed down from Moses. The earliest explicit attestation of the rabbinic idea of two Torahs is in the Sifra (3^rd cent. C.E.):^[29]

^{ספרא ויקרא כו:מו} "אלה החקים והמשפטים והתורת אשר נתן יהוה בינו ובין בני ישראל בהר סיני ביד־משה"—מלמד ששתי תורות ניתנו להם לישראל; אחד בכתב ואחד בעל פה.

^{Sifra, Lev 26:46} “These are the laws, rules, and instructions (torot—in the plural) that YHWH established through Moses on Mount Sinai, between Himself and the Israelite people”—This teaches that two Torahs were given to Israel, one written and one oral.

The anonymous exegesis is based on the common midrashic hermeneutical principle that, unless otherwise stated, a plural form denotes (at the least) a double referent. Thus, the plural noun torot denotes two Torahs, Written and Oral, having been revealed to Israel by Moses at Mt. Sinai, presumably on the same occasion. Rabbi Akiva is credited with the following (retort or aside?):

^{ספרא ויקרא כו:מו} אמר ר' עקיבא, וכי שתי תורות היו להם לישראל? והלא תורות הרבה נתנו להם – "זאת תורת העולה" "זאת תורת המנחה" "זאת תורת האשם" "זאת תורת זבח השלמים" "זאת התורה אדם כי ימות באהל."

^{Sifra, Lev 26:46} Said R. Akiva: Were (only) two Torahs (given) to Israel, but were not many Torahs given to Israel? [For example:] “This is the ritual (torah) of the burnt offering” (Lev 6:2); “And this is the ritual (torah) of the meal offering” (6:7); “This is the ritual (torah) of the guilt offering” (7:1); “This is the ritual (torah) of the guilt offering” (7:11); “This is the ritual (torah) when a person dies in a tent” (Num 19:14).

At issue is the meaning of the word torah. In the Priestly parts of the Torah, it denotes a specific area of ritual law, practice, or teaching (torah with a lower case “t,” as it were). Beginning with the book of Deuteronomy it comes to denote a larger corpus of teaching, legal and narrative. Rabbi Akiva’s statement should not be presumed to be a rejection of the belief that two Torahs were revealed to Israel via Moses at Mt. Sinai, but a counter-statement denying the hermeneutical anchoring of that view in a kind of midrashic one-upmanship: You say “two Torahs”; I say many more.^[30]

The anonymous voice continues:

^{ספרא, ויקרא כו:מו} "בהר סיני ביד משה" – מלמד שניתנה התורה הלכותיה ודקדוקיה ופירושיה על ידי משה מסיני.

^{Sifra, Lev 26:46} “Through Moses on Mount Sinai”: This teaches that the Torah was given with its laws, and its detailed explications, and its interpretations were by transmitted Moses from Sinai.

All of the Torah’s (post-biblical) laws (halakhot) and detailed explanations and interpretations originate with the revelation on/at/from Mt. Sinai. According to our passage, the Torah, encompassing its written and oral forms, has a unitary origin, deriving from the single prophetic agency of Moses at/from Mt. Sinai. One Torah is constituted of two Torahs, which in turn are constituted of many torot.^[31]

The Mishnah: A Second Torah

Rabbi Judah the Patriarch’s collection of topically arranged rabbinic laws around 220 C.E. turned at least part of the corpus of Oral Torah into a book (even if an oral one).^[32] The name of this work, Mishnah, conveys both the sense of oral teaching—the word mishnah means “repeated,” as well as hinting at its status as משנה תורה (mishneh torah), the second (repeated) Second Torah.^[33] Certainly, its (eventual) canonical status in rabbinic Judaism, and the massive Talmudic commentary constructed around it, show that the Mishnah indeed was understood as a second foundation of revelation.

Maimonides and the Mishneh Torah

If we jump ahead to early medieval times, Moses Maimonides (ca. 1180 C.E. in Egypt) titles his comprehensive, trimmed, and updated legal code, which follows much the same structural model as that of the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, albeit profoundly augmented and revised (e.g., excluding the arguments and minority views, so characteristic of the Mishnah), as משנה תורה (mishneh torah), whether by inspiration or imitation (or both) of the book of Deuteronomy.

If Maimonides’s work is identical to the book of Deuteronomy in name (משנה תורה), it is akin to the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah in language (Mishnaic Hebrew), with both claiming (implicitly by the former and explicitly by the latter) to encompass all of Oral Torah of its time. Maimonides, like Moses (as it were), semantically denotes his radically new organization of covenantal law as mere repetitions or copies, whether as מִשְנָה or מִשְנֵה , a third Second Torah.

Maimonides intended his Mishneh Torah to both imitate and replace the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, which he considered outdated by a thousand years. He attempted to constitute the entirety of the Oral Torah, which together with the Written Torah would represent the totality of divine revelation, “from Moses to Moses,” as it were.^[34]

^{משנה תורה הקדמה} לפיכך קראתי שם חיבור זה משנה תורה, לפי שאדם קורא תורה שבכתב תחילה, ואחר כך קורא בזה ויודע ממנו תורה שבעל פה כולה, ואינו צריך לקרות ספר אחר ביניהם:

^{Mishneh Torah Introduction} This is why I named this composition Mishneh Torah, since a person can read the Written Torah first, and afterwards read this, and they will know the entire Oral Torah, and have no need to read any other work to bridge them.

Needless to say, his chutzpah riled some of his contemporaries,^[35] but his project was an ambitious attempt to coalesce the Oral Torah in line with the Second Temple concept of a second torah.