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DEUTERONOMY | 30:11 far — DEUT1591 Moses is addressing the community at the...

DEUT1591 Moses is addressing the community at the end of his life. His final address asserts that the commandments will preserve the community even without his leadership. The rule of law requires an access to that law, in a merely human place. The COMMANDMENT is available to the community. It requires neither an ascent nor a crossing of the sea because it is placed not far but near. Indeed, when the text asserts that the word is IN YOUR MOUTH, we cannot but think both of the performance of readers and declaimers, who find this word in their mouth, and also of Levinas’ text where he claimed that the commandment came out of the mouth of the one commanded. The speech itself serves as a transition of authority from the leader to the community, who readily can speak the commandments. [R.] Joshua cites it [Baba Metsia 59b - AJL], in the simplest sense, to say that the rulings have to be made within the community and not by a heavenly voice. But the deeper issue is precisely the insistence that the text which he quotes is a text about citation and re-citation: a text that was constructed to transfer authority for legal reasoning to the community. The greatest revelation from heaven is the injunction to cite and interpret the law.

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Source KeyWESOR
Verse30:11
Keyword(s)far
Source Page(s)219-20
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