Question IV. (marg.) How is Joshua said, together with Moses now about to die, both to have written and to have sung the canticle? [Caput X, quest. IV.]

That knot Pagninus did not loose, but broke. For [at] Deut. 32, v. 44, he twisted the text into another sense thus: “Moses spoke all the words of this Canticle in the ears of this people, and in the ears of Hosea [Joshua] son of Nun” — so that Joshua did not sing, but Moses only, [though] in the ears of the people and of him [Joshua]. “Nor does Santes [Pagninus] interpret badly thus,” says Oleaster. Nay indeed most badly. For it clashes not only with our text, and with all the Latin Explicators, but even with the Hebrews — among whom, under [the word “hem”], is placed the mark of ending the clause, which is called atnach. It clashes even with the 70 themselves, who [render it] thus: εἰσῆλθε Μωσῆς, καὶ ἐλάλησε πάντας τοὺς λόγους τοῦ νόμου τούτου εἰς τὰ ὦτα τοῦ λαοῦ, αὐτὸς καὶ Ἰησοῦς ὁ τοῦ Ναυή [eisêlthe Mōsês… “Moses entered, and spoke all the words of this law in the ears of the people — he and Jesus [Joshua] the [son] of Nave”]. A manner, therefore, is to be found by which both wrote and sang together. And it is this: either both [did] the whole, or each [did] a part; and again, either at the same time, or at a different [one]. First, it could not be that both, divinely inspired, wrote all the same verses and words, and clearly sang together — no otherwise than if by study and labor they had learned some one song, and sang that same [song] in harmony together. Secondly, that one — Moses, for example — went before with one verse in song, [and] Joshua followed, repeating the same. Thirdly, that, by turns, Moses sang one verse, Joshua another — as, in that hymn Te DEUM laudamus, is commonly reported to have been done by St. Ambrose and Augustine. Fourthly, that Moses first sang the whole canticle, [and] Joshua straightway afterward repeated it. Fifthly, that Joshua repeated it, but not straightway — rather at a much later time, when he too was, namely, about to die. And these two latter modes the good authors embraced: the fourth indeed Cajetan, the fifth Abulensis. For [on] ch. 32, that one [Cajetan] thus: “It is agreeable to reason that Moses’s voice, [being] of one so aged, was less heard, and therefore Joshua his helper is counted-in as it were [his] interpreter.” But this one [Abulensis], on the same chapter, thus: “Joshua did not propose those words (of the Canticle) before the people, because Moses alone proposed [them]. But because he said that he too had heard those words from GOD, when both stood together before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle. And from this it happened that, when Joshua was near to death, he announced to them that, after his death, they would sin against the Lord, as is clear [in] Joshua ch. 24.” — Although the same Abulensis seems by these words to hint also at a sixth mode: namely, that Joshua is said to have written and sung this Canticle with Moses because he testified that he had heard it from GOD together with Moses.