The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

by Michael D. Coogan

The term torat moshe and its variants, in several late biblical books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, refers to the Pentateuch more or less as it now exists, but it is not found in the Pentateuch. In fact, the Torah never explicitly suggests that it was compiled by Moses himself. (The phrase “the Torah” in passages such as Deut 4.44, “This is the law [torah] that Moses set before the Israelites,” never refers to the complete Pentateuch.) The tradition that Moses wrote the entire Torah is likely based on the passages that suggest that Moses stayed on Mount Sinai (or Horeb) for forty days and forty nights (Ex 24.18; 34.28; Deut 9.9; 10.10).