cellio | survey followup

Ok, here's why I asked my question a couple days ago: the account I think I know isn't what's written in torah, and this was true of everyone in class Monday night when we discussed it, and I was curious about how widespread that is. Pretty widespread, as it turned out. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Mind, every year I read the relevant passages and have some reaction along the lines of "huh, that's odd", but that thought never seems to stick around long enough for me to actually do something about it. So I'm glad our teacher pointed it out.

A summary:

God speaks the ten commandments
the people say "hey Moshe, we can't handle this -- you go" (20:16)
Moshe goes to talk with God
Moshe comes back and says "here's what God said", the people say "we're in", and Moshe "wrote down God's words" (24:3-4)
Moshe does a ritual with sacrifices and blood
Moshe reads "the book of the covenant" to the people and they make the famous reply "we will do and we will obey" (24:7)
Moshe and some others go up and have their vision of God, and only then does Moshe go up, spend 40 days (really 47), get the (first) tablets, and come down to see the calf party

(I'm sorry the golden calf served as a distraction for people. I was trying to find a way to mark this end point without giving anything away. I could have done that better.)

I, like many of you, have this deep-seated notion of God speaking, the people saying "you go", and Moshe going and getting the tablets. I know that "we will do and we will obey" is in there, but I always manage to misplace it.

But what's with the other one or two documents that Moshe (not God) wrote and the people agreed to? What was in them? Moshe eventually comes down with the tablets of the covenant and this -- the torah -- is the real agreement, but I wonder about the preliminaries. If they were just going to get replaced, why were they there? If they were just a preview ("here's what I've got so far; I'm going back for more"), why did Moshe write it down and why did the people make a sacred covenant?

The best interpretation I can come up with is that this is the people signing a "letter of intent" before the main parties spend time crafting the final contract, but that feels a little weak to me.

Tangentially (though this was a significant topic in class), at the end of Deuteronomy Moshe writes "this torah" and gives it to the priests (to keep with the ark, not in it). I read this as a copy; the original tablets are in the ark, where the priests can't easily refer to it, so here's a copy they can use to look things up in (even though Joshua can handle those questions). I've never really thought about that passage before.

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