24/01/2025
Mosaic authorship of the Torah, the belief that the five books of the Torah – including the Book of Deuteronomy – were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, is an ancient Jewish tradition that was codified by Maimonides (1135–1204 AD) as the 8th of the 13 Jewish principles of faith.[13] Virtually all modern secular scholars, and most Christian and Jewish scholars, reject the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy and date the book much later, between the 7th and 5th centuries BC.[4] Its authors were probably the Levite caste, collectively referred to as the Deuteronomist, whose economic needs and social status the book reflects.[14] The historical background to the book's composition is currently viewed in the following general terms:[15]
In the late 8th century BC both Judah and Israel were vassals of Assyria. Israel rebelled and was destroyed circa 722 BC. Refugees fleeing from Israel to Judah brought with them a number of traditions that were new to Judah. One of these was that the god Yahweh, already known and worshiped in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but the only god who should be served.[16] This outlook influenced the Judahite landowning ruling class, which became extremely powerful in court circles after placing the eight-year-old Josiah on the throne following the murder of his father, Amon of Judah.
By the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, Assyrian power was in rapid decline, and a pro-independence movement was gathering strength in the Kingdom of Judah. One manifestation of this movement was a state theology of loyalty to Yahweh as the sole god of the Kingdom of Judah. According to 2 Kings 22:1–23:30, at this time Hilkiah (the High Priest and father of the prophet Jeremiah) discovered the "book of the law" – which many scholars believe to be the Deuteronomic Code (the set of laws at chapters 12–26 which form the original core of the Book of Deuteronomy) – in the temple. Josiah subsequently launched a full-scale reform of worship based on this "book of the law", which takes the form of a covenant between Judah and Yahweh to replace the decades-old vassal treaty between King Esarhaddon of Assyria and King Manasseh of Judah.[17]
The next stage took place during the Babylonian captivity. The destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 586 BC and the end of kingship was the occasion of much reflection and theological speculation among the Deuteronomistic elite, now in exile in the city of Babylon. The disaster was supposedly Yahweh's punishment of their failure to follow the law, and so they created a history of Israel (the books of Joshua through Kings) to illustrate this.
At the end of the Exile, when the Persians agreed that the Jews could return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, chapters 1–4 and 29–30 were added and Deuteronomy was made the introductory book to this history, so that a story about a people about to enter the Promised Land became a story about a people about to return to the land. The legal sections of chapters 19–25 were expanded to meet new situations that had arisen, and chapters 31–34 were added as a new conclusion.
Chapters 12–26, containing the Deuteronomic Code, are the earliest section.[18] Since the idea was first put forward by W. M. L. de Wette in 1805, most scholars have accepted that this portion of the book was composed in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC in the context of religious reforms advanced by King Hezekiah (reigned c. 716–687 BC),[19][20] although some have argued for other dates, such as during the reign of his successor Manasseh (687–643 BC) or even much later, such as during the exilic or postexilic periods (597–332 BC).[4][21] The second prologue (Ch. 5–11) was the next section to be composed, and then the first prologue (Ch. 1–4); the chapters following 26 are similarly layered.[18]
Israel–Judah division
The prophet Isaiah, active in Jerusalem about a century before Josiah, makes no mention of the Exodus, covenants with God, or disobedience to God's laws. In contrast, Isaiah's contemporary Hosea, active in the northern kingdom of Israel, makes frequent references to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, a covenant, the danger of foreign gods and the need to worship Yahweh alone. This discrepancy has led scholars to conclude that these traditions behind Deuteronomy have a northern origin.[22] Whether the Deuteronomic Code was written in Josiah's time (late 7th century BC) or earlier is subject to debate, but many of the individual laws are older than the collection itself.[23] The two poems at chapters 32–33 – the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses were probably originally independent.[22]
Position in the Hebrew Bible
Deuteronomy occupies a puzzling position in the Bible, linking the story of the Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness to the story of their history in Canaan without quite belonging totally to either. The wilderness story could end quite easily with Numbers, and the story of Joshua's conquests could exist without it, at least at the level of the plot. But in both cases there would be a thematic (theological) element missing. Scholars have given various answers to the problem.[24]
The Deuteronomistic history theory is currently the most popular. Deuteronomy was originally just the law code and covenant, written to cement the religious reforms of Josiah, and later expanded to stand as the introduction to the full history. But there is an older theory, which sees Deuteronomy as belonging to Numbers, and Joshua as a sort of supplement to it. This idea still has supporters, but the mainstream understanding is that Deuteronomy, after becoming the introduction to the history, was later detached from it and included with Genesis–Exodus–Leviticus–Numbers because it already had Moses as its central character. According to this hypothesis, the death of Moses was originally the ending of Numbers, and was simply moved from there to the end of Deuteronomy.[24]
Themes
Overview
Deuteronomy stresses the uniqueness of God, the need for drastic centralisation of worship, and a concern for the position of the poor and disadvantaged.[25] Its many themes can be organised around the three poles of Israel, Yahweh, and the covenant which binds them together.
Israel
The themes of Deuteronomy in relation to Israel are election, faithfulness, obedience, and Yahweh's promise of blessings, all expressed through the covenant: "obedience is not primarily a duty imposed by one party on another, but an expression of covenantal relationship."[26] Yahweh has elected Israel as his special property (Deuteronomy 7:6 and elsewhere),[27] and Moses stresses to the Israelites the need for obedience to God and covenant, and the consequences of unfaithfulness and disobedience.[28] Yet the first several chapters of Deuteronomy are a long retelling of Israel's past disobedience – but also God's gracious care, leading to a long call to Israel to choose life over death and blessing over curse (chapters 7–11).
Yahweh
Deuteronomy's concept of God changed over time. The earliest 7th century layer is monolatrous; not denying the reality of other gods but enforcing only the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. In the later, Exilic layers from the mid-6th century, especially chapter 4, this becomes monotheism, the idea that only one god exists.[29] God is simultaneously present in the Temple and in heaven – an important and innovative concept called "name theology."[30]
After the review of Israel's history in chapters 1 to 4, there is a restatement of the Ten Commandments in chapter 5. This arrangement of material highlights God's sovereign relationship with Israel prior to the giving of establishment of the Law.[31]
Covenant
The core of Deuteronomy is the covenant that binds Yahweh and Israel by oaths of fidelity and obedience.[32] God will give Israel blessings of the land, fertility, and prosperity so long as Israel is faithful to God's teaching; disobedience will lead to curses and punishment.[33] But, according to the Deuteronomists, Israel's prime sin is lack of faith, apostasy: contrary to the first and fundamental commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") the people have entered into relations with other gods.[34]
Dillard and Longman in their Introduction to the Old Testament stress the living nature of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel as a nation: The people of Israel are addressed by Moses as a unity, and their allegiance to the covenant is not one of obeisance, but comes out of a pre-existing relationship between God and Israel, established with Abraham and attested to by the Exodus event, so that the laws of Deuteronomy set the nation of Israel apart, signaling the unique status of the Jewish nation.[35]
The land is God's gift to Israel, and many of the laws, festivals and instructions in Deuteronomy are given in the light of Israel's occupation of the land. Dillard and Longman note that "In 131 of the 167 times the verb "give" occurs in the book, the subject of the action is Yahweh."[36] Deuteronomy makes the Torah the ultimate authority for Israel, one to which even the king is subject.[37]
