Verses Added to the Torah at a Later Date: The Phenomenon and its Ramifications

There are three instances where Rabbi Yehuda he-Chasid attributes verses of the Torah to the Men of the Great Assembly. While some claim that these writings are a forgery and the publications of these writings aroused great controversy, there is much evidence to the contrary and these writings represents a school of thought amongst his students.

It should be pointed out that Rabbi Yehuda he-Chasid’s approach is far more extreme than the approach of Ibn Ezra. The most startling aspect of these latter sources is that while Ibn Ezra wrote his view in very cautious and concealed language, the pietists in Germany expressed the same ideas quite openly and explicitly, and even in places where suggesting such interpretations was not the only way of addressing a textual problem. We may therefore state that the assertion that there are later verses in the Torah, based on an objective look at the simple, literal text, has support in the view of some medieval commentators, who did not regard this view as representing any contradiction or denial of faith in the Divine origin of the Torah.