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.
