The question of whether Moses wrote the last eight verses of the Torah—the ones describing his own death—provoked one of the most poignant debates in the Talmud. Bava Batra 15a presents two positions, and neither is comfortable.
Rabbi Yehuda, and some say Rabbi Nehemya, argued that the final verses were written by Joshua. The logic is simple: "And Moses the servant of the Lord died there" (Deuteronomy 34:5). Is it possible that Moses, after dying, wrote "And Moses died"? Rather, Moses wrote everything up to that point, and Joshua completed the scroll.
Rabbi Shimon rejected this. The Torah is a unified document. Moses was commanded: "Take this Torah scroll" (Deuteronomy 31:26)—implying it was complete at that moment. Not a single letter was missing. If Joshua had to add verses later, the scroll Moses handed over would have been incomplete.
Rabbi Shimon's solution was devastating in its beauty: until the account of Moses's death, God dictated and Moses repeated the words aloud before writing them down. For the final eight verses, God dictated—and Moses wrote with tears. No repetition. No voice. Just the silent movement of a pen recording the death of the hand that held it.
This debate has a practical consequence. Rav Giddel cited Rav: when the Torah is read publicly, the last eight verses must be read by one person—they cannot be divided between two readers. According to Rabbi Yehuda, this is because Joshua wrote them and they are distinct from Moses's text. According to Rabbi Shimon, even though Moses wrote them, they differ in kind from the rest—dictated without voice, written without speech.