[Avodah] Eyvar HaYarden

[Zvi Lampel]

Ever HaYarden

The first verse Bible critics (such as Spinoza) invoke to allegedly prove  
that the Torah was written after Moshe passed away is from last the parsha  
of last week, parshas Devarim. The first verse states, These ‎are the  
words that Moshe spoke...b’Ever HaYarden. Now, they reason, Moshe would  
not have referred to the eastern side of ‎the Jordan as the other side of  
it or the Transjordan, because that is where he was! (I suspect the  
critics were using a translation that, in order to be helpful, translated  
Eyvar ‎HaYarden as the Transjordan, which is referring specifically to  
‎the eastern side.) Only someone stationed on the western side of ‎the  
Jordan, they reason, would refer to the eastern side, where ‎Moshe was, as  
the other side of the Jordan. So it must have ‎been written by someone  
after the Hebrews entered Canaan ‎proper, and since Moshe never entered  
the land, he could not have authored that narrative.‎

Now, if this were solid reasoning, based on a tad of biblical  
‎scholarship, it might ctually serve as support for Chazal. They condemn  
the idea that Moshe, rather than Hashem, authored ‎the Torah. Hashem  
above, being Eretz-Yisroel-proper-centric, could refer to Moshe’s position  
as being on the eastern side of ‎the Jordan as the other side of the  
Jordan even though that was ‎the side Moshe was on.‎
But it is not solid reasoning, and it demonstrates lack of biblical  
‎scholarship.‎
The reasoning is loose, because the Hebrews had been living in ‎Canaan and  
Egypt for centuries. They could be expected to ‎have long labeled the east  
side of the Jordan as the other side, ‎because both Canaan and Egypt are  
to the Jordan’s west, and would likely maintain that name even when  
temporarily situated on that eastern side. After all, one refers to Chutz  
‎LaAretz regardless of whether he is in Israel or not, and one refers to  
the Lower East Side as such regardless of where he lives.

On literary grounds, Devarim 3:20 demonstrates the silliness of the  
argument. There, Moshe, who ‎is of course on the eastern side of the  
Jordan, refers to the 2-1/2 tribes on that same eastern side of the Jordon  
as dwelling b’Eyver ‎HaYarden. And a mere four verses later [3:25] relates  
Moshe beseeching Hashem, Let me pass and see the good land in the ‎Ever  
HaYarden. So Eyvar HaYarden was used by the same ‎person in the same place  
to describe either side of the Jordan.‎

Indeed, there are several other passages where one stationed to the east  
of the Jordan is still quoted as referring to it as the Ever ‎HaYarden,  
and vice versa. Likewise in narratives, Ever ‎HaYarden is used for either  
side. For there was an Eyver ‎HaYarden (Kaydmah) Mizrachah, and an Eyver  
Yarden ‎Maaravah.‎

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Examples:‎

Moshe on the eastern side of the Jordon refers to it as Eyvar ‎HaYarden:  
Bamidbar specifying Eyvar HaYarden Mizrachah) ‎‎32:19, Bamidbar 34:15  
(Eyvar HaYarden Kaydmah Mizrachah-‎‎- although this may be the narrative)  
Devarim 1:8, And of course Devarim 3:20, noted above.‎

As noted above, in Devarim 3:25, Moshe standing on the eastern side of the  
Jordan refers to the western side as Eyvar ‎HaYarden.‎

Yehoshua, on the western side of the Jordon, calls the eastern ‎side the  
Jordan, Eyvar HaYarden (Yehoshua 1:14), and then in ‎‎9:1 refers to the  
eastern side by that name.

The narrative calls the western side of the Jordan Eyvar ‎HaYarden:  
Breishis 50:10 (where the family of Yosef traveled west from Egypt to the  
Eyvar HaYarden of Canaan to bury him. Will ‎the critics claim the narrator  
must have lived on the eastern side to call it the Eyvar HaYarden?!), and  
of course Devarim ‎‎1:1 does the same, as does Devarim 11:30 which may  
either be the narrative or Moshe speaking.
‎
Zvi Lampel  ‎