Eran Viezel

In the second half of the fifteenth century, Isaac Abravanel addressed a question to Rabbi Joseph Hayyun, the spiritual leader of the Lisbon Jewish Community: Did God dictate the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) to Moses word for word as he did in the case of the other four books of the Torah, or was this book created independently by Moses? According to the author, Abravanel's question and Joseph Hayyun's answer mark a new chapter in the history of examining the level of creative freedom Moses had in writing the Torah.