Professor Christine
Hayes: You may have heard
that post-biblical tradition
hails Moses as ancient Israel's
first and greatest law giver;
and certainly the Bible depicts
Moses as receiving law from God
and conveying it to the
Israelites.
But clearly Moses isn't the
author or compiler of the legal
traditions contained in the
Bible.
Some of the individual laws we
know are found in very,
very, very Ancient Near Eastern
laws: they're part of an Ancient
Near Eastern legal tradition.
The collections as a whole
clearly date to a much later
period of time--and we're going
to see that clearly when we talk
about Deuteronomy today--and
they have been retrojected back
to the time of Moses.
 
But nevertheless,
Moses is the central figure in
the biblical narrative,
from Exodus all the way through
Numbers and into Deuteronomy.
 
And he's going to serve as a
paradigm for Israel's leaders to
follow.
In the biblical view no one can
look upon the face of God and
live, and yet Moses,
who spoke with God "mouth to
mouth," the text says,
was an exception to this rule.
 
So why wasn't he permitted to
see the fulfillment of his
labors?
Why was he not permitted to
enter the Promised Land?
 
This is a question that plagued
ancient Israel,
and the Bible contains the
effort of tradition to explain
this great mystery,
or tragedy.
When Moses asks God if he can
enter the land--that's in
Deuteronomy 3:25--God refuses,
and he gives his reason in
Deuteronomy 32:49-52:
You shall die on the
mountain that you are about to
ascend, and shall be gathered to
your kin,
as your brother Aaron died on
Mount Hor and was gathered to
his kin;
for you both broke faith with
Me among the Israelite people,
at the waters of
Meribath-kadesh in the
wilderness of Zin,
by failing to uphold My
sanctity among the Israelite
people.
You may view the land from a
distance, but you shall not
enter it--the land that I am
giving to the Israelite
people.
So what happened at
Meribath-kadesh that made God so
angry?
Well you can read the story,
it's in Numbers 20,
the incident is described
there.
But the answer is still not
entirely clear,
it's not clear what Moses did
that was so bad as to deserve
this punishment.
Perhaps it's Moses' failure to
follow God's instructions to the
letter when he is producing
water for the Israelites or
demanding water:
perhaps that's what angers God.
 
But one gets the impression
that the story in Numbers 20 and
Deuteronomy's subsequent claim
that it was something about that
story that earned Moses God's
disapproval...
you get the impression that
these are an attempt to explain
what was probably a longstanding
tradition about a great leader
who died on the east side of the
river.
For that to have happened,
for that death to have happened
the writers seem to surmise,
he must have sinned;
there must have been some
punishment for some sin.
After a very poignant scene in
which God shows Moses the
Promised Land,
from a lookout point on the
east side of the Jordan River,
we then read about the death of
Moses in Deuteronomy 34:
God spoke to Moses on
that same day.
"Ascend this Mount Abarim,
the peak Nebo,
in the land of Moab opposite
Jericho,
and look at the Land of Canaan
which I am giving Israel for a
holding."
..
So Moses went up from the
plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to
the top of Pisgah,
opposite Jericho.
 
And God showed him all the
land, from Gilead to Dan [which
is in the north],
and all of Naphtali and the
land of Ephraim and Manasseh,
and all of Judah [in the south]
to the outer Mediterranean Sea;
and the Negev [the southern
wilderness];
and the Plain of the Valley of
Jericho, the Palm City,
as far as Zoar [the end of the
Dead Sea].
...
Then Moses the servant of God
died there, in the land of Moab,
as God had said,
and he buried him in the
valley, in the land of
Moab...but no man knows the
place of his burial,
to this day.
And the people of Israel wept
for Moses in the Plains of Moab
for thirty days...and there
never again arose in Israel such
a prophet as Moses,
whom God knew face to face,
none like him for all the signs
and wonders which the Lord sent
him to do in the land of Egypt,
to Pharaoh, to his household
and to all his land;
none like him in respect of all
the mighty power and all the
great and terrible deeds which
Moses wrought in the sight of
all Israel.
[Hayes translation]
There's no other human being in
the Bible who earns such a
tribute.
This is unusual for the
biblical writer to speak in such
glowing terms of a human
character.
I said that Moses becomes a
paradigmatic leader in the
biblical tradition.
 
And the force of Moses as
paradigmatic leader of Israel is
apparent in the very first
leader to succeed him,
and that is Joshua.
 
Deuteronomy closes with a
transfer of authority from Moses
to Joshua.
So in Deuteronomy 34:9 we read,
"Now Joshua son of Nun was
filled with the spirit of wisdom
because Moses had laid his hands
upon him;
and the Israelites heeded him,
doing as the Lord had commanded
Moses."
And in several ways Joshua's
going to turn out to be a kind
of carbon copy of Moses.
Moses crosses the Reed Sea,
the waters stand in a heap,
and the children of Israel
cross over on dry land.
We'll see in connection with
Joshua that he crosses the
Jordan River into the Promised
Land,
the waters stand in a heap,
the children of Israel cross on
dry land--that's in Joshua 3:13.
 
After crossing,
the Israelites then celebrate
the Passover,
and that makes a strong link
then to the Exodus led by Moses,
also at the time of the first
Passover.
Moses had a vision of God at
the burning bush.
 
He was told to remove his
shoes, his sandals,
because he was on holy ground.
 
Joshua is also going to have a
theophany--that's a
vision--after he crosses the
Jordan.
He'll see a man with a drawn
sword who's the captain of the
Lord's host and he tells him to
remove his shoes,
he is on holy ground.
 
Moses is the one to mediate a
covenant between God and Israel
at Sinai.
Joshua will mediate a renewal
of the covenant at a place
called Shechem.
Moses sent out spies to scout
out the land;
Joshua also sent out spies to
scout out the land.
Moses holds out a rod during
battle in order that Israel
prevail over her enemies,
and Joshua will do the same
with a javelin.
So these are all important
literary parallels and they
signal the importance of Moses
in Israelite tradition,
as the paradigmatic leader;
so other leaders who are
praised will be modeled on
Moses.
It's said of Joshua after the
Israelites enter the Promised
Land, it's said,
"On that day the Lord exalted
Joshua in the sight of all
Israel so that they revered him
all his days as they had revered
Moses."
So no greater praise can be
given to an Israelite leader
than to be compared to Moses.
But now we're going to take a
close look at Deuteronomy and
we'll pick up with Joshua on
Wednesday.
So Israel's wanderings in the
wilderness end on the Plains of
Moab, which is on the east bank
of the Jordan River,
and it's there that the book of
Deuteronomy opens.
There Moses is going to deliver
three long speeches prior to the
Israelites' entry into the
Promised Land,
and these three speeches
constitute the bulk of the book
of Deuteronomy.
So Deuteronomy differs very
much from the other four books
of the Pentateuch because in
those books you have an
anonymous narrator who describes
Yahweh as directing his words to
Moses to then be conveyed to
Israel.
Moses will speak to Israel on
God's behalf.
But in Deuteronomy Moses is
going to be speaking directly to
the Israelites so that the book
is written almost entirely in
the first person,
whereas the first four books of
the Pentateuch are not;
they are third person anonymous
narrative, narration.
Here we have the bulk of the
book in the first person:
direct speech.
Now Moshe Weinfeld--I've put
his name on the board as someone
who you should associate always
with the book of
Deuteronomy--Moshe Weinfeld is
one of the leading scholars of
Deuteronomy and he describes the
book as expressing ideology by
means of a programmatic speech
put into the mouth of a great
leader.
That's a very common practice
in later Israelite
historiography,
and he says it's happening here
already.
And I'll be referring quite a
bit to Weinfeld's work as we
talk about Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy differs from the
other books of the Pentateuch in
other significant ways.
 
So for example,
according to the Priestly
writer, Israel received its
laws, its Torah,
from God at Mount Sinai.
 
But in Deuteronomy the laws
were given here on the Plains of
Moab, 40 years after Sinai,
before the Israelites crossed
the Jordan.
At Sinai the Israelites heard
the Decalogue but the remainder
of the laws, it would seem,
are delivered on the Plains of
Moab.
We can look at the basic
structure of Deuteronomy in a
couple of ways.
We can do a kind of literary
division, which I have on this
side of the board,
according to the speeches.
 
So to begin we have the first
speech which is a sort of
introductory speech in the first
four chapters,
going through 4:43.
 
There's an introduction that
gives us the location,
where the Israelites are,
and also then Moses' first
sermon.
Moses in this sermon is giving
a historical review,
and the purpose of this
historical review is didactic;
he wants the Israelites to
learn something,
to infer something from this
review of their history from
Sinai to the present day.
And in that review,
as he retells the story,
which we've just been reading
about in the previous books,
we see his selective choice of
events, we see how he's
describing things in a way that
underscores God's faithful,
loyal, fulfillment of the
covenantal promise,
and he's using this to urge the
Israelites to do their part by
obeying God's laws.
 
The second speech extends from
4:44 through 28:6.
And this also contains a bit of
a historical review,
again retelling some of the
narrative of the earlier books
of the Torah and again giving us
an insight into this phenomenon
of inner biblical
interpretation,
or parts of the Bible that
review parts elsewhere are
already beginning to interpret
and present that material in a
particular light.
 
But then we have a central
section of laws being presented,
beginning at about 12;
so this is still part of Moses'
second speech,
but stretching from Deuteronomy
12 through 26 we have laws,
and this is in many ways a
repetition of much of the
revealed legislation we've
already encountered.
 
That central portion of laws,
12 through 26,
is thought to be the earliest
core of the book.
We're going to come back and
talk about that in a moment.
Now the Greek title for this
book, which is Deuteronomy,
deutero nomos,
a second law,
a repetition of the law,
and that name derives from the
fact that the bulk of the book
contains this legal core of
material which reviews the law.
 
In Chapter 27 we have a
covenant renewal ceremony.
It takes place on a mountain
near Shechem after the
Israelites have crossed the
Jordan.
It describes the ceremony that
will take place,
excuse me, after they have
crossed the Jordan.
And from ancient Greece we know
that in the ancient world
settlers who would colonize a
place,
particularly if they colonized
a place at divine instigation,
they would perform certain
ceremonies that would be
accompanied by blessings and
accompanied by curses.
They would write the laws on
stone pillars,
they would erect an altar for
sacrifices,
they would proclaim blessings
and curses for those who obey
and disobey--very similar to
what happens in chapter 27;
all of these elements appear in
chapter 27.
Chapter 28 lists the material
rewards that will accrue to
Israel if she is faithful to
God's law,
and the punishments if she
should disobey--and some of
these are very creative.
 
But the importance of the
Deuteronomist's view of history
in which Israel's fate is
totally conditioned on her
obedience to the covenant--this
is something that will occupy us
repeatedly at a future date.
 
I mention it here but it's
something we will need to come
back to.
The third speech of Moses is in
Chapters 29 and 30.
 
This speech emphasizes the
degree to which evil fortune is
the responsibility of the
community.
Moses enumerates additional
misfortunes and sufferings that
will befall Israel if she sins.
 
But he emphasizes the choice is
Israel's: God has been clear
regarding what's required,
and it's not beyond Israel's
reach to attain life and
prosperity.
She needs to only choose.
 
And this is all set out in a
speech in Chapter 30.
I'll read from verses 11 to 20:
Surely,
this Instruction which I enjoin
upon you this day is not too
baffling for you,
nor is it beyond reach.
It is not in the heavens,
that you should say,
"Who among us can go up to the
heavens and get it for us and
impart it to us,
that we may observe it?"
Neither is it beyond the sea,
that you should say,
"Who among us can cross to the
other side of the sea and get it
for us and impart it to us,
that we may observe it?"
No, the thing is very close to
you, in your mouth and in your
heart, to observe it.
 
See, I set before you this day
life and prosperity,
death and adversity.
 
For I command you this day,
to love the Lord your God,
to walk in His ways,
and to keep His commandments,
His laws, and His rules,
that you may thrive and
increase, and that the Lord your
God may bless you in the land
that you are about to enter and
possess.
Listen to the cadences of this
kind of language in Deuteronomy.
We haven't heard language like
this before but it's what people
often think of when they think
of biblical language.
It starts here in Deuteronomy.
 
But if your heart turns
away and you give no heed,
and are lured into the worship
and service of other gods,
I declare to you this day that
you shall certainly perish;
you shall not long endure on
the soil that you are crossing
the Jordan to enter and possess.
 
I call heaven and earth to
witness against you this day:
I have put before you life and
death, blessing and curse.
Choose life--if you and your
offspring would live--by loving
the Lord your God,
heeding His commands,
and holding fast to Him.
 
For thereby you shall have life
and shall long endure upon the
soil that the Lord your God
swore to your ancestors,
Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, to give to
them.
So all has been given.
It's simply Israel's choice to
take it or not.
The last section of the book,
chapters 31 to 34,
is a sort of miscellany of
appendices.
There's some ancient poetry
that's found in chapter 32,
which is referred to as The
Song of Moses;
scholars refer to it as The
Song of Moses.
We have the blessings of Moses
recorded in chapter 33,
and then chapter 34 is the
story of Moses' death:
I read part of that to you.
 
Now centuries ago already
scholars of the Bible noted that
Deuteronomy opens with the
verse,
"These are the words that Moses
addressed to all Israel on the
other side of the Jordan,"
that is to say the
trans-Jordan,
on the other side of the
Jordan.
So that line is obviously
written from the prospective of
someone who is inside the land,
saying Moses said that when he
was over there,
outside the land,
on the other side of the
Jordan--so he's looking
eastward.
And so that's a line that one
would think could not be written
by Moses because Moses did not
ever enter the land and would
not be in a position to talk
about something being on the
other side of the Jordan.
 
Likewise the last chapter which
describes Moses' death and
burial probably was not written
by him.
So as we shall see,
these and many other textual
features point to the period of
composition for Deuteronomy,
which was many centuries after
the time that Moses would have
been supposed to have lived,
if we are to assume he was a
historical character.
 
And so through careful analysis
you have scholars like Moshe
Weinfeld and many others--I
think Bernard Levinson is the
one has written about
Deuteronomy in your Jewish
Study Bible,
and that's a wonderful
introduction to read there,
so I encourage you to please
make sure you look at that--but
analyses of scholars like these
have led them to draw the
conclusion that the original
core of Deuteronomy emerged in
the eighth century,
and this is now where my
interesting little
mountain-shaped diagram is going
to come into play.
It was probably a scroll of
laws known as the Book or the
Scroll of the Torah.
 
Deuteronomy refers to itself
that way in Deuteronomy
17:19-20.
And so we think it was probably
something roughly equivalent to
chapters 12 to 26;
maybe there was a little
introduction,
a little conclusion.
 
And eventually these laws were
put into the framework of a
speech by Moses:
maybe chapters 5 through 11 and
maybe 28;
maybe that would've been in the
eighth, seventh century.
 
And then at some later point
several things happened,
and I will say them in the
following order,
but that doesn't mean they
happened in this order,
we really aren't sure.
 
At some point several things
happened.
You have framing chapters,
Deuteronomy 1 through 4,
the sort of introductory frame
and historical review,
as well as the appendices at
the end, chapters 31 and
34--those get added.
 
You also have laws being
updated, passages being
expanded, to reflect the
experience of exile.
You'll remember that as of 586,
Jerusalem is destroyed and the
Israelites are in exile in
Babylonia.
Additionally at some point
Deuteronomy is appended to the
other four books of the
Pentateuch.
Genesis through Numbers is made
to precede this.
It's serving therefore as their
conclusion, and by being joined
to them it confers its title as
a book of Torah,
as a scroll of Torah,
to that material as well.
They don't use the word "Torah"
in that way, in those books;
only Deuteronomy uses the word
Torah to speak of God's
instruction or revelation
overall.
So by being appended now to
Genesis through Numbers,
all of this perhaps comes to be
known as Torah,
as well.
And then finally during the
exile or sorry,
probably during the period
after the exile--no,
during the exile,
down to the end of the sixth
century, Deuteronomy was
incorporated into a larger
narrative history that runs from
Joshua through Judges,
First and Second Samuel,
First and Second Kings:
that's all a unit,
as we'll come to see in the
next lecture.
And so Deuteronomy in a way
served as an introduction to
that material looking forward;
so a conclusion to the previous
four books but also an
introduction to a long narrative
history that's going to run
through to the end of 2 Kings.
Now there's a lot of debate
over the precise timing of these
events and this process by which
this material grew and was
expanded,
but in the post-exilic period,
at some point,
the entire unit,
the Genesis through Numbers
material,
Deuteronomy,
and then the lengthy historical
narrative, all the way through 2
Kings, was solidified.
The Deuteronomistic history is
sort of an odd conclusion to the
Genesis through Numbers material
because it doesn't really have
the expected narrative climax.
 
You sort of expect the story to
end with the entry of the
Israelites into the land,
and hopefully under Moses,
and that doesn't occur.
 
Some scholars have suggested
that deferring Israel's
possession of the land to the
future may have reflected the
historical experience of exile,
an experience which challenged
the very idea of the possession
of the land as central to the
maintenance of the covenant.
 
So if you are in exile,
then perhaps a more satisfying
ending is to have Israel not in
fact entering the land.
The complex process by which
Deuteronomy was formed
underscores the fact that modern
notions of authorship cannot be
applied to biblical texts.
 
We think of an author,
we tend to think of an author,
as a discrete individual who
composes a text at a specific
time,
but this isn't the way that
texts came into being in the
ancient world,
particularly important communal
texts.
As Weinfeld points out,
the biblical authors were what
we would call collectors,
compilers, revisers,
editors, and interpreters of
ancient tradition.
Ancient texts were generally
the product of many hands over
the stretch of many long
centuries,
and during that time
modifications and
recontextualizations occurred.
 
And so we refer to those who
transmit and develop a text in
this way as a school;
but you need to understand that
we are using that in a
relatively informal way.
So when we talk about the
Deuteronomic School or the
Deuteronomistic School,
we're really talking about the
fact that we have a set of texts
that all seem to share a certain
sort of ideology or orientation;
and yet we know that parts of
them seem to date from very,
very different times.
And so we think of that text as
being preserved,
transmitted and developed by
many hands who share certain
commonalities,
common ideologies,
we call it a school.
 
It's not that we know of the
existence of a Deuteronomistic
school, and we say,
oh, well then they must have
produced this text.
 
It's the other way around.
 
We have a text,
and its features suggest to us
a longstanding tradition of
scholarship, that preserved and
transmitted the text in that
way.
Same with the Priestly school:
we're speaking about the
Priestly materials which clearly
have evidence of originating
from the eighth,
seventh, sixth and fifth
centuries, and so there must
have been a common stretch of
scholarship that would have
preserved and transmitted and
developed those traditions,
and we call that the Priestly
school.
The legal core of
Deuteronomy--so really from 5 to
26, because 5 is where some of
the legal material
begins--contains first of all a
somewhat expanded version of the
Ten Commandments,
you have that in Deuteronomy 5,
and then other laws,
really from 12 to 26,
that resemble the legal
material that's found in
Exodus--the collection of
material we've called the
Covenant Code.
And they also seem to bear some
relationship to the laws in
Leviticus and Numbers.
 
But the question is,
what is the relationship
between the different versions
of the legal material?
Some of these laws will
parallel each other quite
closely and others do not.
 
So are Deuteronomy's legal
traditions a direct response to
or modification of the laws in
Exodus and Numbers,
or are they best understood as
just different,
independent formulations of a
common legal tradition?
Weinfeld has argued that
Deuteronomy is dependent on the
previous traditions of the
Pentateuch,
that Deuteronomy revises and
reforms them according to new
ideas: its new notion of a
centralized cultic worship,
and secondly its humanitarian
spirit.
Those are two controlling
ideologies he says that shape
its revision of pre-existing
material.
He specifically argues that
Deuteronomy is dependent on the
E source, the source that some
scholars think is pretty hard to
isolate or find in the biblical
text.
But in E, Sinai is referred to
as Horeb, and in Deuteronomy
Sinai is also Horeb.
 
The author of Deuteronomy
limits the revelation at Sinai
to the Decalogue and seems to
assert that the full law was
given to Moses for the
Israelites on the plains of
Moab.
In Weinfeld's view this means
that Deuteronomy,
with its revisions,
would have been seen,
would have been presented as
and would have been seen as an
updated replacement of the old
Book of the Covenant,
rather than its complement.
It exists side by side in our
text now, but I think in his
view those who promulgated it
were understanding it as the
updated replacement of the laws
of the Book of the Covenant.
For the most part Deuteronomy
doesn't really contain much in
the way of civil law.
 
It tends to focus on the
moral-religious
prescriptions--kind of the
apodictic law in Israel--and the
few civil laws that are there
tend to be reworked in line with
Deuteronomy's humanity.
 
So, for example,
the laws of the tithe,
the laws of the seventh year
release of debts,
the rules for the release of
slaves, the rules for the three
festivals--these are all ancient
laws;
they occur in Exodus but they
appear in Deuteronomy with
modifications,
modifications about things that
concern the Deuteronomists,
and some of you have discussed
some of these in section.
 
So in Deuteronomy the Israelite
debt slave comes out of his or
her servitude,
with generous gifts from the
owners.
This is not something that
appears in Exodus.
 
Or as another example,
Deuteronomy extends the
Covenant Code's prohibition
against afflicting a resident
alien.
In Deuteronomy there's the
insistence that the Israelites
must not just refrain from
afflicting them,
but must love the resident
alien.
It goes so far as to provide
concrete legal benefits,
food and so on,
for the resident alien.
 
So while the relationship of D
to some of the laws in the
Covenant Code is often--not
always but often--one of
revision,
the relationship between D and
the laws in the Priestly source
is more difficult to
characterize.
The Priestly source seems to
represent an equally early set
of laws, legal traditions,
that just emanated from a very
different circle and had
different concerns.
 
It tends to deal with sacral
topics, or if it's dealing with
other topics it will deal with
the sacral implications of those
topics.
Like D, P often updates and
revises laws of the Covenant
Code.
We can see that in the fact
that the Priestly source
abolishes Israelite debt slavery
altogether and insists that
slaves must be acquired only
from the nations around Israel:
no Israelite can enslave
another Israelite.
Nevertheless Weinfeld argues
that on occasion Deuteronomy
contains laws that are also
found in P,
but presents them in a more
rational manner,
is the word he uses,
or desacralized manner.
So D's treatment,
Deuteronomy's treatment of
sacrifice, we'll see in a
moment, is going to be
different, for example,
from P's.
They have different concerns
and different foci in their
presentation of that material.
 
In any event,
many scholars through their
analysis of these texts have
been led to conclude that the
Deuteronomistic School updated
and revised earlier laws,
particularly laws in the
Covenant Code,
but sometimes also in the older
legal stratum of P;
and they did so in keeping with
the circumstances of the eighth
to sixth century.
 
So Deuteronomy exemplifies a
phenomenon that occurs at
several critical junctures in
Israel's history--and we're
going to see this as we move
forward through the biblical
text--and that is the
modification and re-writing of
earlier laws and traditions in
the light of new circumstances
and ideas.
So Deuteronomy is itself an
implicit authorization of the
process of interpretation.
And the notion of canon,
or sacred canon,
that's exemplified then by
biblical texts is one that
allows for continued unfolding
and development of the sacred
tradition.
And that's an idea that I think
differs very much from modern
intuitions about the nature of
sacred canons.
I think a lot of people have
the intuition that a sacred
canon means that the text is
fixed,
static and authoritative
because it is fixed and static,
or unchanging.
That's not the biblical view or
ancient view of sacred canon.
Texts representing sacred
revelation were modified,
they were revised,
they were rephrased,
they were updated and they were
interpreted in the process of
transmission and preservation.
 
It was precisely because a text
or a tradition was sacred and
authoritative that it was
important that it adapt and
speak to new circumstances;
otherwise it would appear to be
irrelevant.
So it's a very different notion
of what it means for something
to be canonical and sacred,
from what I think some moderns
have come to understand those
terms to mean.
So what are the special
circumstances and concerns that
guide Deuteronomy's revisions of
tradition?
One of the primary changes--you
probably heard in section as
well by now--is the emphasis on
worship at a single,
central shrine.
That's going to represent a
great change in Israel's
religious practice.
 
According to Deuteronomy the
central sanctuary will be
located in a place that God
himself will choose--it's not
named in Deuteronomy--or in a
place where he will cause his
name to dwell;
that's the other phrase that's
used.
Jerusalem is never explicitly
mentioned as the site in
question but Jerusalem will
later,
in fact, fulfill this function,
according to other biblical
texts.
Now there are striking
similarities between
Deuteronomy's religious program
and the major religious reforms
that were carried out in the
eighth century by King Hezekiah,
but even more so in the seventh
century by King Josiah,
around 622: King Josiah.
 
This is a reform that's
reported in the book of 2 Kings,
in 2 Kings 22.
This reform has long been
noticed and provides scholars
with a basis for dating the core
materials of Deuteronomy,
dating them to the late seventh
century.
According to the story in 2
Kings, during temple repairs
that were being done in the time
of King Josiah,
the scroll of the Torah--that's
how it's phrased--the scroll of
the Torah was found and when it
was read the king was distressed
because its requirements were
not being upheld.
 
Now this term,
the scroll of the Torah,
as I said, does not occur in
Genesis through Numbers;
it is a phrase that occurs in
Deuteronomy, in Deuteronomy 17.
Then continuing the account in
2 Kings, Josiah is said to take
action.
He assembles the people,
he publicly reads the scroll,
the people agree to its terms
and then Josiah's reforms begin.
 
We hear that he purges the
temple of vessels that had been
made for Baal and Asherah,
that were in the Temple of
Yahweh.
He removes all foreign elements
from the cult,
he prohibits sacrifice to
Yahweh anywhere but in the
central sanctuary.
He destroys all of the high
places--this refers to sort of
rural shrines that were
scattered throughout the
countryside where local priests
and Levites might offer
sacrifices for people--ritual
shrines and pillars being used
in the worship of Yahweh:
these are deemed to be quite
legitimate in the J and E
sources.
The patriarchs are doing this
sort of thing all the time,
building altars all around the
country,
but it's Deuteronomy that
contains commandments to destroy
the worship, first of all the
worship of other gods but also
the worship of Yahweh in high
places or in rural shrines.
So this is evidence again that
what Josiah found to base his
reforms on was something like
the Book of Deuteronomy:
it's Deuteronomy that contains
the prohibitions of high places
and so on.
After these reforms it's
reported that the Passover was
celebrated.
It was celebrated not as a
family observance in individual
homes;
it was celebrated as a national
pilgrimage festival,
celebrated by everyone in
Jerusalem.
That's how its celebration is
described in the Book of
Deuteronomy.
It's described as a family
celebration in individual homes
in the other books of the Bible.
 
So again this is another basis
for the conclusion that the
scroll of the law,
found by Josiah and guiding his
reforms, was something like the
legal core of Deuteronomy.
Scholars now think that that
legal core of Deuteronomy was
produced in the Northern
Kingdom,
the Northern Kingdom of Israel
which fell in 722,
you'll recall.
It was probably produced there
in the eighth century,
and that is supported by the
fact that Deuteronomy has
affinities with the writings of
some prophets we'll be looking
at later from the Northern
Kingdom of the eighth century,
such as the prophet Hosea,
and we'll see this when we look
at Hosea's writings.
It also has affinities with the
E source, which is also
connected with the Northern
Kingdom.
In the ninth and eighth
century, the Northern Kingdom
was the site of a struggle,
a struggle against Baal
worship.
It was also home to certain
prophets such as Elijah and
Elisha, who are known for their
zealotry and their exclusive
Yahwism.
So some scholars think that was
going on in the ninth/eighth
century in the north,
the sort of Yahweh-only party
that was working hard and
struggling against Baal worship.
And they think that those
Yahweh-only traditions were
brought south;
after the fall of the Northern
Kingdom in 722,
you have refugees coming south,
they brought these traditions
with them.
Some of these written materials
were put into the Temple and
then about a century later,
during Josiah's time,
when the Temple was being
refurbished, they were found.
Possibly this material was then
worked into a larger scroll,
given its Mosaic introductions
and so on, and that all
contributed to Josiah's reform.
 
So the centralization of the
cult also needs to be understood
against the larger political
backdrop of the late seventh
century.
The Assyrian threat loomed
large.
You have to remember that the
Northern Kingdom has already
been completely destroyed:
ten tribes exiled,
deported, and essentially lost.
The Southern Kingdom managed to
escape destruction but only by
paying tribute as a vassal to
Assyria.
So Judah, the Southern Kingdom,
is a tribute-paying vassal
state to the Assyrian overlord.
 
And of course there's a great
deal of Assyrian cultural
influence and religious
influence in Judah as a result.
So 2 Kings tells us that there
were foreign forms of worship
being introduced right into the
Temple.
Josiah's reforms have been
interpreted by some as an
attempt to assert the political
and the cultural and religious
autonomy of Judah.
 
Unregulated worship throughout
the land was no longer going to
be acceptable;
the people were going to be
united around a central,
standardized Yahweh cult,
which would be purged of any
Assyrian influence or foreign
influence.
And this was deemed as
necessary to stand up against or
to survive the Assyrian threat.
So it's in that context that we
can look at the very strong
parallels that exist between the
Book of Deuteronomy and certain
Assyrian treaties,
from the seventh century.
We already talked about the
Hittite vassal treaties as a
model for the Israelite
covenant, when we were talking
about Exodus.
But Deuteronomy is clearly
dependent on another model and
that is the Assyrian vassal
treaty.
The best exemplars of these
treaties are the treaties of the
Assyrian emperor Esarhaddon.
He was a seventh century ruler
of Assyria, down to about 669.
These treaties were discovered
about 50 years ago,
and Moshe Weinfeld is one of
the people who's done a
tremendous amount of work with
these treaties.
He's argued at great length
that Deuteronomy reworks the
second-millennium Hittite model
in accordance with the
covenantal patterns that are
evident in the first-millennium
vassal treaties of Esarhaddon.
 
We see history being used as a
motivational tool and we see
laws being reinforced by curses;
and it's fascinating,
if you line up some of the
curses in Esarhaddon's treaties
with the curses in Deuteronomy,
there's an amazing
correspondence.
Deuteronomy also includes
blessings;
the Assyrians didn't do that.
Weinfeld notes that the
Assyrian treaties are really
loyalty oaths that are imposed
upon vassals,
rather than true covenants.
 
And Deuteronomy is also
something of a loyalty oath,
except that the people are
pledging their loyalty to a god
rather than to a human king.
 
So you have the exhortation to
love the Lord your God--and
think back to some of that
language that we heard as I read
Deuteronomy 30 -- he exhortation
to love the Lord your God,
to go after God,
to fear God,
to listen to the voice of God:
these are all typical of
pledges of loyalty,
and they are paralleled in the
Assyrian treaties where the
vassal has to love the crown
prince,
he has to listen to the voice
of the crown prince.
 
The same phraseologies are used.
 
So it is a political literary
form, but it's borrowed and it's
referred to God.
The Assyrian treaties also will
warn against prophets or
ecstatics or dream interpreters
who will try to foment sedition.
 
If you'll notice in Deuteronomy
13 we have something quite
similar: a warning against false
prophets who will try to foment
sedition,
and lead the people to the
worship of other gods.
 
Some scholars refer to
Deuteronomy as a kind of counter
treaty, if you will,
right?
A subversive document that's
trying to shift the people's
loyalty from the Assyrian
overlord to God,
the true sovereign,
and it's part of a national
movement.
Deuteronomy differs in style,
in terminology,
in outlook and in theological
assumptions from the other books
of the Torah.
As a series of public speeches
it adopts a highly rhetorical
tone, a very...
sometimes an almost artificial
style.
It's a style of a very skilled
preacher almost.
It employs direct address:
you, you;
sometimes in the singular,
sometimes in the plural,
but Moses is constantly
speaking in a very personal
tone, direct address.
And there are all sorts of
hortatory phrases,
phrases that exhort you:
to do this with all your heart
and soul,
do this in order that it may go
well with you.
The land is described as a land
where milk and honey flow,
and if only you will obey the
voice of Yahweh your God.
 
This is the kind of language
that's used here,
and not so much in the other
books.
So let's isolate now some of
the major themes of Deuteronomy,
before we close our study of
the Pentateuch.
First of all as I've mentioned,
the centralization of the cult:
that's a key theme in the book
of Deuteronomy and it had very
important effects.
 
It brought Judean religion
closer to monotheism because you
have the insistence of
worshiping one god in his one
central sanctuary.
 
Sacrifice was offered only on
pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
which meant that slaughter of
animals for meat in the
countryside no longer has a
sacral component to it.
It's just ordinary,
common, profane slaughter.
There's evidence that that
wasn't true before this reform,
that if you wanted to kill an
animal for meat you had a kind
of a makeshift altar out there
in the field,
and you would pour out the
blood and give it back to God
and so on.
You might still pour out the
blood, obviously,
but there was previously a more
sacral element to it.
 
Now slaughter in the
countryside was simply common,
profane slaughter.
 
As a result you have a lot of
rural Levites who are out of
business now,
a lot of people who would have
officiated at local shrines,
and they're out of business:
that probably explains the fact
that Deuteronomy makes special
provision for the Levites and
includes them in its...
in legislation,
sort of social welfare
legislation.
There are provisions that are
made for the Levites,
who are not going to be able to
earn their income anymore at
these local shrines.
So many of them would have gone
up to Jerusalem and a real
tension is going to develop
between the Jerusalem priests
and this class of Levites who
are newcomers;
and we'll see some of that
tension played out in some other
texts.
So centralization of the cult
and that has some social
ramifications.
We also have a greater
abstraction of the deity;
this is something many people
point to in the Book of
Deuteronomy because Deuteronomy
and books that are related to
it--those that are going to
follow--consistently refer to
the sanctuary as the place where
Yahweh chose to cause his name
to dwell.
God himself isn't said to dwell
in the temple,
nor is the temple described as
a house of God.
The temple is always the
dwelling of his name.
 
The house is built for his name.
 
Weinfeld asserts that this is
in order to combat the ancient
popular belief that God actually
dwells in the sanctuary.
Likewise to eradicate or guard
against the idea,
which is implicit in earlier
sources,
that God sits enthroned on the
cherubim, on the cherubim,
who guard his ark,
Deuteronomy emphasizes that the
function of the ark is
exclusively to house the
tablets,
the tablets of the covenant;
that's its purpose.
 
The ark cover isn't mentioned,
the cherubim aren't mentioned.
We don't have the image of this
as a throne with the ark as
God's footstool.
So it seems to be a greater
abstraction of the deity.
 
Some abstraction is also
apparent in the shift from
visual to aural imagery in
describing God's
self-manifestations or
theophanies.
One hears God but one doesn't
see God, in Deuteronomy.
And that's very different from
earlier texts where we're seeing
a sort of a cloud encased fire
and so on.
So the sanctuary is understood
to be a house of worship,
as much as it is a cultic
center,
in which Israelites and
foreigners alike may deliver
prayers to God who dwells in
heaven.
So he is in heaven;
this is a place of worship.
That's not to say that
sacrifice is abolished,
it's not to say that sacrifice
isn't important to
Deuteronomy--very far from it,
it's an essential part of God's
service for Deuteronomy.
 
But Deuteronomy is less
interested in cultic matters and
in any event when it focuses on
sacrifices it focuses on a
different aspect of those
sacrifices.
The sacrifices it talks about
consist primarily of offerings
that are consumed by the offerer
in the sanctuary,
or are shared with the
disenfranchised in some way:
the Levite, the resident alien,
the orphan, the widow--portions
are given to them.
 
So by emphasizing the
obligation to share the
sacrificial meal with
disadvantaged members of
society,
Deuteronomy almost gives the
impression that the primary
purpose of the sacrifice is
humanitarian,
or at least personal--the
fulfillment of a religious
obligation or the expression of
gratitude to God and so on.
 
These are aspects of the
sacrifices that are emphasized
in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy also emphasizes
social justice and personal
ethics and neighborly
responsibility.
God's own righteous behavior on
behalf of the weak and the
oppressed is a model for
Israel's righteous behavior.
 
God assists the orphan,
the widow and the stranger,
and that's the basis of
Israel's injunction to assist
them also.
It's the basis for the
humanitarianism that I mentioned
earlier that seems to run
through the laws of Deuteronomy
12 through 26.
A further theme in Deuteronomy
is the fact that the covenant
concept entails the idea that
each generation of Israelites
understand itself as having been
bound with God in the original
covenant.
So in Deuteronomy 5:2-3:
"The Lord our God made a
covenant with us at Horeb .
It was not with our fathers
that the Lord made this covenant
but with us, the living,
every one of us who is here
today."
Now this is interesting because
remember the generation has died
off, that saw the Exodus and
Sinai, right?
So these are the children now
and they're saying,
it was us, every one of us who
is here today.
So every generation of Israel
is to view itself as standing at
the sacred mountain to conclude
a covenant with God,
and that decisive moment has to
be made ever-present.
 
That's a process that's
facilitated by the obligation to
study, to study the laws,
to recite them daily,
to teach them to your children:
these are instructions that are
contained in Deuteronomy.
 
Moreover Deuteronomy 31
proclaims that every seventh
year the Torah is to be read
publicly, the entire thing.
And Weinfeld argues that where
many Ancient Near Eastern
cultures direct the king to
write the laws for himself,
to read them,
it's only in Israel--he's yet
to find a parallel--it's only in
Israel that the law is a manual
for both the king and the
people.
It's to be proclaimed and read
aloud to the people,
on a regular basis,
every seven years.
A further theme of Deuteronomy
is the emphasis on love.
Weinfeld points out that the
Assyrian treaties stress the
vassal's love for the crown
prince,
but there's never a reciprocal
love by the crown prince for the
vassal.
And Deuteronomy differs in this
respect.
Deuteronomy emphasizes God's
gracious and undeserved love of
Israel, and that's expressed in
his mighty acts on Israel's
behalf.
The Deuteronomist makes it
clear that God's great love
should awaken a reciprocal love
on Israel's part,
love of God.
Love of God here really means
loyalty.
The word that is used is a word
that stresses loyalty.
 
Love and loyalty are mere
abstractions,
however, without some sort of
vehicle for their expression;
and the vehicle for their
expression then is God's Torah,
the sum total of God's
teachings and instructions and
laws and guidelines,
which are supposed to ensure
long life and prosperity in the
land.
That idea is found in a very
important passage known as the
Shema.
This is a passage that's really
a central expression of the love
of God in Israel,
 
 
and it's been singled out as an
essential part of the Jewish
liturgy, at a very early,
early stage,
and continues to this day.
 
It's so called because of the
first word of the passage.
It's in Deuteronomy 6,
it begins in verse 4,
and the first word is "hear,"
Shema.
Hear, O Israel!
 
Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone.
 
You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your
might.
Take to heart these
instructions with which I charge
you this day.
Impress them upon your children.
Recite them when you stay at
home and when you are away,
when you lie down and when you
get up.
Bind them as a sign on your
hand and let them serve as a
symbol on your forehead;
inscribe them on the doorposts
of your house and on your
gates.
So love and loyalty to God is
the foundation of the Torah but
Torah is the fulfillment of this
love and loyalty:
studying it and observing it
and teaching it and transmitting
it.
Another key idea that occurs in
Deuteronomy is the idea of
Israel as the chosen people.
 
 
We find it here for the first
time.
It's an expression of the
particularity of Israel and its
unique relationship with God,
and that uniqueness is
expressed by this term,
bachar,
which means "to elect" or "to
choose."
This is the first time we
encounter this.
Yahweh has chosen Israel in an
act of freely bestowed grace and
love to be his special property.
 
Deuteronomy 10:14:
Mark, the heavens to
their uttermost reaches belong
to the Lord your God,
the earth and all that is on
it!
Yet it was to your fathers that
the Lord was drawn in His love
for them, so that He chose you,
their lineal descendents,
from among all peoples--as is
now the case.
This idea may be rooted in the
Ancient Near Eastern political
sphere in which sovereigns would
single out vassals for the
status of special property;
and in fact the word used is a
word we do find in Exodus.
 
But Deuteronomy contains
statements of national pride,
national exaltation,
and unlike the Priestly
materials which portray holiness
as a future goal to be attained
through the observance of God's
Torah--you shall be holy to me
by doing the following
things--Deuteronomy speaks of
Israel as holy now,
and thus bound to the
observance of God's Torah
because of their holiness:
you are a holy people to me,
therefore you should do...
So to put it--and this is
perhaps to put it too
crudely--for P,
for the Priestly source,
holiness is a goal to be
attained through obedience to
God's Torah.
For Deuteronomy,
holiness is a status to be lost
through disobedience to God's
Torah.
When we come back I just want
to finish up with one or two
last comments about a couple of
key ideas or themes in
Deuteronomy before we move on to
the beginning of the
Deuteronomistic history that
starts in Joshua.
 
This coming week you'll be
having midterms as part of your
section meeting and in addition
at 6 p.m.
tonight I'll be making the
essay question available online
and if it gets to 6:01 and
there's nothing online,
somebody call me real fast,
okay?
All right, good,
thanks, and good luck with the
exam.
 
