Shalom and thank you for your question! You wish to understand who is ‘telling the story’ of the Bible.
The Bible is called, in Jewish belief, the Written Law, (the Torah) and comprises the Five books of Moses, the books of the Prophets, and other writings. These cannot be understood properly without the aid of the Oral Law. The Oral Law is mainly written down in the Talmud and commentaries that expound on the Torah according to the Thirteen Principles that were handed down by Moses from G-d. The entire Oral Law was given to Moses by G-d. We are talking about a huge body of knowledge – which actually grows constantly because as human society develops there are constantly new variables that require assessment. (For example, there is a law that we do not light fire on the Sabbath. How is that law kept in an era of electricity? Torah scholars had to arrive at a conclusion of how to keep the Sabbath both according to the letter of the law AND it’s spirit, so that we can have light, warmth, and cooked food on the Sabbath, without transgressing the above-mentioned law. Technology continues to progress, constantly bringing new quandaries.) So how can we say that all this was given to Moses on Mount Sinai? We do say it, because firstly, since Moses received the Thirteen Principles of Torah exposition from G-d and handed them down, the conclusions of a sincere Torah scholar who lives according to the Torah are considered to be a part of the Oral Law. Secondly, according to one of the accepted commentaries, Moses was granted the knowledge of the Torah as a gift from G-d, since it is so vast that a human would not have been able to learn it in time to equip the nation with it before their ascent to the Holy Land of Israel.
So in accordance with the above, Moses is the narrator of the Bible. He is telling the story, but not making it up. He received it from G-d and wrote it, as well as teaching it to the Jewish nation.
In last week’s Torah portion we get a fascinating glimpse of how this teaching process was done.
The verse in Exodus 34:27 states:
‘The L-rd said to Moses “Inscribe these words for yourself, for according to these words I have formed a covenant with you and with Israel.”‘ The foremost Torah commentator, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi, points out that the Talmud (Gittin 60b) teaches us that these words denote that Moses was not allowed to write down the Oral Torah. What G-d tells Moses to inscribe is the Written Torah, as explained above. For many generations the Oral Torah was passed down by word of mouth from one generation of scholars and laymen to the next. Eventually historical events necessitated its being codified and written down.
In verse 28 the Torah text continues to describe the process of Moses receiving knowledge of the entire Torah as follows:
“He was there with the L-rd for forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water, and he inscribed upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” There are actually six hundred and thirteen commandments for the Jewish people and Seven Noahide Laws for non-Jews, but the expression ‘Ten Commandments’ comes from this verse. The Hebrew term more accurately translates as ‘verbal statements’. These ‘statements’ are like chapter headings for the entire body of Torah teaching.
How do we know that Moses taught the people what he learned directly from G-d?
Verse 31 continues to describe the process: “But Moses called to them and Aaron and all the princes of the community returned to him, and Moses speaks to them”. In the previous verse we learn that people were afraid to approach Moses because of the radiance that emanated from his face when he descended from Sinai, and that is why he needed to call them. The commentator Rashi explains that the verse says ‘speaks’ in present tense because he is communicating a message from G-d. This message is relevant for all generations.
(It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for command also means to join. We are thus taught that by fulfilling G-d’s commandments we are actually connecting with Him, as is written elsewhere in the Torah ‘And you shall love the L-rd your G-d.’ This is how we express our love, by fulfilling the wish of the one who is loved…)
In the Torah Moses indeed refers to himself in the third person- since he is serving as G-d’s instrument of communication to the people. Thus in Genesis Moses is the narrator – of G-d’s account of Creation. There are many many questions, and many many answers, when we learn the Torah! The word Torah means teaching or instruction. The Talmud refers to it as the blueprint of Creation. For us it is an instruction manual.
