In page 190 of Making of the Pentateuch, R.N. Whybray states the following about Martin Noth's search for the original oral traditions about Moses:
"For Moses, who was, according to all the Pentateuchal sources, pre-eminently a person who received divine revelations at a number of named places, was presumably on a par with the patriarchs in this respect; yet, dismissing all the accounts of these as secondary, Noth insisted that the statement about Moses's burial and grave site in Deut. 34.6 is 'the most original element of the Moses tradition still preserved' (p. 186; ET p. 169), despite the fact that, like that of Abraham, it occurs only in a very late source (P).
"The arbitrary nature of this conclusion is compounded by the fact that this text states that the precise location of the grave is unknown---a fact which removes all possibility that we have here an authentic tradition based on a custom of visiting the grave which had persisted up to the time when the tradition was recorded. Noth's attempts to overcome these difficulties are extremely forced."
For more on Whybray's discussion of Noth's search for original oral traditions, see my post here. In this post, I want to talk about Noth's discussion about Moses' grave.
In my memory of Whybray's book, I thought that Whybray simply acted as if Noth was unaware of Deuteronomy 34:6's statement that no one knew the location of Moses' grave. I thought that Whybray was doing the same thing that Richard Elliott Friedman did (according to my impression): act like Noth doesn't know his Bible (see my post here). But it turns out that Whybray actually acknowledges that Noth wrestled with that part of Deuteronomy 34:6 that was inconvenient for his (Noth's) position. Whybray just found Noth's conclusions to be wanting!
But are they wanting? I can't say that I understood all of Noth's arguments, but here are some points that I did glean, from pages 172-175:
1. Noth notes that Deuteronomy 34:6 says that Moses was buried in the land of Moab, against Bethpeor, so Noth thinks that the place of Moses' burial is being identified, at least somewhat. But, at some point---and Noth speculates that the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or Mesha may be to blame for this---"the grave site was no longer accessible to Israelites and hence its precise location had come to be forgotten."
But doesn't v 6 say that God buried Moses, which could entail that God put Moses in an undisclosed location, since Moses was special? Noth believes that the text originally said "and they (the Israelites) buried him," or "and he (Moses) was buried," rather than "and he (God) buried him, for why would v 6 present something "as extraordinary and tremendous as this...in such an unemphatic and ambiguous manner"? I'm not sure if I agree with Noth on this point, for, in Deuteronomy 34:1-4, it's just God and Moses on Mount Nebo. Why not conclude from this that Moses died in God's presence, and that God buried him in an undisclosed location? Moreover, v 6 says that no one knows the location "unto this day," not that people at one time knew it, but now nobody knows. Doesn't "unto this day" imply that no one knew the location of the grave from the time that Moses was buried?
2. Noth thinks that the tradition about the location of Moses' burial is authentic. The location was outside of the land of Israel, except for when Gad had it, for a brief time. Why would anyone assert that Moses was buried there---in such a remote location that did not even matter to the Israelites---unless he actually was? If the Israelites wanted to make up a place for Moses to be buried, why not place his fictional grave inside of the land of Israel, preferably in a prominent Israelite location?
Plus, Noth says that the land of Moab, against Bethpeor "could never have been of sufficient importance in the life of the Israelites to warrant the assumption that here Moses, after he had emerged as the great leader in the Pentateuchal tradition, usurped a grave site which originally belonged to someone of less importance." No, for Noth, the tradition said Moses was buried there because he really was buried there.
But why was the area considered so unimportant by Israelites, when Moses was buried there, and (as Noth argued) they knew where the grave was, at least for a while?
3. Noth says that Moses became part of the tradition about the Israelites entering the Promised Land "because his grave site lay on the path of the Israelites who were occupying the land." He acknowledges that there were Israelites who moved from "the southern part of the East Jordan" to central Palestine, and a figure named Moses perhaps played a leading role in "the gradual transition to their later abodes in the arable land of West Jordan..." As a result of this role, Moses got absorbed into the wilderness stories and other Pentateuchal themes, and, because of the prominence of central Palestine, Moses stories spread throughout the land, such that priests in the Danite sanctuary boasted that they were descended from Moses (Judges 18:30), and Kenites in the South "were proud of their family relationship to Moses." And yet, realizing that Moses is so absent from much of the non-Pentateuchal parts of the Hebrew Bible (which, I note, is why some have concluded that the Moses tradition is quite late), Noth says "that Moses did not enter Israel's historical consciousness so universally and deeply that his name could not customarily be completely ignored in summary recitations of Israel's prehistory."
So Moses was prominent in Israelite legend, but not prominent enough?