.

The discovery in 2012 of an eleventh copy of Esarhaddon’s succession adê at Tel Tayinat, a Neo-Assyrian provincial seat, has allowed a reassessment of the hypothesis, based on the nine copies naming city-lords from the Zagros mountains previously found at Kalḫu in 1955, that all Assyrian vassals, including Judah, had been required to swear to uphold the specified terms in addition to Assyrian citizens. It is now understood that the nine Zagros rulers were formally part of the Assyrian Empire, under the control of local governors, not vassals. Thus, there is no evidence that vassals had been included in the empire-wide oath-swearing, eliminating the likelihood of Judahite scribal access to a copy of the adê locally. In addition, a review of the proposed parallels in Deut 6:5; 13:1–12; 28:15–45; 13 that point to dependency on the adê document demonstrates that instead, the proposed wordings were part of a wider ancient Near Eastern koine associated with curse formulae, themes of political loyalty, and contexts of asserted authority in the present and future.

Comparative ancient Near Eastern terminology suggests that the Hebrew term berît (ברית) designated a formal, oath-bound agreement with two constituent elements: the ‘edut, “written specifications,” and the ‘edut, “oath” or “curse.” Its use in Deuteronomy can be construed either as an example of a formal vassal treaty entered into between Yhwh and Israel, or as the written terms of formal contracts, whose Hittite examples have been dubbed “instructions,” being entered into by various groups of “royal” (divine) employees, who participated in an oath-swearing ceremony to uphold the stipulated terms. In Deut 12:1–26:15, haḥuqqîm wehammišpāṭîm represent the directives for behavioral norms of the berît being entered into in the storyworld. They do not adhere to the formulation of known units in ancient Near Eastern legal collections; they are best construed either as treaty stipulations or instructions to royal employees. Finally, explanations for why Yhwh’s people are designated Israel, not Judah, are examined.

The very heart of Deuteronomy, chs.12–26, is comprised of legal discourse. Early critical scholarship identified the “Deuteronic Code” in chs. 12–26 as a “core,” distinct in some sense from the surrounding narrative frames in chs. 1–11 and 27–34. Subsequent scholarship has detected a complex literary history in the book’s legal and narrative chapters, positing pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic layers. There is considerable debate regarding what might be identified as the first layer of Deuteronomy and the dating of this stratum. Some scholars theorize that select Deuteronomic laws, especially from chs. 21–25, may have circulated separately prior to their integration into the “Deuteronomic Code,” as one among a number of ancient law collections that, despite being produced by various peoples and cultures of ancient West Asia or the ancient Near East (ANE), share certain characteristics in form and content. Yet, when we put Deuteronomy’s legal writings in dialogue with the cuneiform laws, it reveals intriguing contrasts and continuities, prompting all sorts of questions regarding the dating, compositional history, character, purpose, and function of Deuteronomic law. Comparing Deuteronomy’s laws on different forms of adultery and sexual violation (Deut 22:22–29) with their ANE counterparts reveals that at least portions of Deut 21–25 are part of a broader ANE legal tradition. Nonetheless, Deuteronomy also presents a unique legal ideology and theology, promoting exclusive loyalty to Yhwh’s law, rather than to a foreign empire or native king.

A number of geographical issues relating to Deuteronomy are explored. The physical characteristics of Cisjordan are described before moving on to the implications of Israelitizing the promised land and the phenomenon of cities of refuge. The chapter ends with an examination of three geographical anomalies. First is the use of the designation Seir/Mt. Seir vs. Edom in the book. Second is the favoring of (Mt.) Horeb instead of (Mt.) Sinai as the name of the site of the giving of the law and covenant-making after leaving Egypt. Finally, why the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal next to Shechem are the place where the words of the Moab covenant are to be inscribed and a commemorative ceremony is to take place, rather than the town of Shechem, Mt. Zion, or Jerusalem, is considered.

In the “frames” of Deuteronomy (chs. 1–11 and 27–34), “Israel” is portrayed as an ethnic entity. What do we mean when we characterize Israel in this way, and why might the scribe(s) who created the book have chosen this strategy for conceiving Israel? This article argues that different aspects of what may be called “ethnicity” first and foremost serve the social power and the exclusive position of an elite group of literati standing behind this biblical book. The ethnic ideology of the book is part of a utopian vision that primarily is concerned with Israel as a religious, learning community. It makes sense to regard Deuteronomy as an attempt to present “Israel” as an “ethnic” entity in order to situate themselves vis-à-vis the Achaemenid imperial administration or at least to serve an “internal-Israelite” purpose. The vision serves to establish and legitimate the informal authority of the authorial group, which probably belonged to Deuteronomy’s “Levitical priests.”

Deuteronomy has long been held as particularly innovative, humanitarian and kind to the poor. The legal collection in the heart of the book is read here in light of ancient economic practices. Once the basic principles of any economy are understood, the practices prescribed in Deuteronomy display much common sense and their purported humanistarian traits are not devoid of self-interest.

Changes in the conception of the divine and household religion, religious festivals, and other practices discernible from textual and archaeological materials relating to the monarchic era of the kingdom of Judah (ca. 975–586 BCE) vs. what is being espoused by the writer of Deuteronomy and in subsequent additions to the book are examined. The new conception of Yhwh Elohim vs. Yhwh Ṣeba’ot and this deity’s assumption of the roles of other deities precedes a consideration of the suppression of the ancestors and family gods in household cult, Israel as a holy people but not a nation of priests, the endorsement of dietary restrictions, advocacy of a central place of worship, and the endorsement of three annual pilgrimage festivals to the latter site.

Among the various features of Moses’ portrayal, the depiction of Moises as ancestor has received scant attention. In the following essay, I shall show that Deuteronomy portrays Moses as master-scribe and the founder of a scribal priestly class, the Levitical priests. The sefer hattorah is the legacy Moses bequeaths. It represents a fictionalized compendium of a complete scribal curriculum, reframed as Moses’s farewell speech. As his personal bequest, the torah-scroll legitimized the authority of its keepers in relation to other priestly groups. In addition, Levitical priests use the sefer hattorah to put themselves forward as the authoritative and reliable guides of the community.

The following paper provides a fresh look at Torah in Deuteronomy. Rather than an inclusive and democratizing instance within Israel, the Deuteronomic Torah separates one social class (the Levitical priests) from the others. Rather than serving as a mean to separate Israel from the nations, in the context of the Persian Empire, the Torah appears to have been influenced by dāta, a concept dear to the Persian imperial elite. Moving from the scribal realm to that of public, oral reception, the Torah emerges as an ideal tool for creating religious and political cohesion through propaganda. Not only does possession of the written Torah separate and legitimize an elite (i.e. the Levitical priests) ahead of potential competing groups, but more importantly, the oral transmission of the Torah proves an effective way to build the people’s consensus.

Throughout Deuteronomy Israel is urged to learn Yhwh’s commands as it is a matter of life and death to observe them and behave accordingly instead of imitating the Canaanites once in their land. While most studies take a positive stance towards the “pedagogy” of Deuteronomy, this paper is more critical, approaching it more from the perspective of social control. Before applying modern didactical terms like “pedagogy” to the biblical text, one should investigate all the terms used for teaching/learning, and its teachers. Given the tension between the different “classrooms” and the different “teachers” in Deuteronomy, fear may indeed be the best descriptor of Deuteronomic learning. Social control may thus encapsulate Deuteronomy’s didactics as teaching, learning, and instruction that are considered more at the societal than individual level. Little interest is given to the individual mind and heart, the internalization of practical and ethical skill and knowledge, what is termed Bildung in German.

The oft-repeated view of Deuteronomy’s humanitarianism consequently gave rise to the the notion that some of its laws are devoid of practical application and depict instead a utopia. building upon the demonstration of the economic realism of Deuteronomy’s laws in chapter 6 in this volume, this chapter nevertheless identifies some utopian as well as dystopian elements, ascribing them to different groups.

Current studies of biblical laws dealing with family matters display much interest in sexual matters and rightly denounce their patriarchal bias. Focusing on parenting provides a more balanced appreciation of the role of mothers and the place of women within a male-dominated society. An analysis of the levirate law, the rebuttal of a slanderous husband, and primogeniture show that the aim of the law-givers was to maximize the chances to produce offspring and fulfill the mandate in Genesis to multiply. Procreation, however, is but the first stage of the life-long process of parenting that involves both parents, even after the death of the father, if necessary. Thus, women and mothers are shielded from abusive repudiation by the production of a bloodied sheet, while any disrespect toward parents or disobedience to their commands is liable to the death penalty, except in certain cases for daughters, who are given a chance to overturn parental opposition.

Scholars have long held Deuteronomy up as a classic example of utopian literature in the Hebrew Bible but have not always rigorously engaged with the implications of doing so for the interpretation of the book. This chapter sets out to redress the imbalance by asking two fundamental questions: can we in fact read Deuteronomy as a utopia and what happens if we do? In response to the first, the chapter demonstrates that Deuteronomy exhibits many of the structural features typical of a literary utopia and can consequently be read as such. In response to the second, it goes on to explore some of the hermeneutical dividends for reading, utilizing work done by Utopian Studies on the social and political function of utopias. While the interpretive outcomes are manifold, reading the book as utopia brings into particular focus how Deuteronomy works as critical literature, and how its alternative, imagined world contributes to wider discussions of ancient political discourse and theory.

Readers of the Tetrateuch encounter Deuteronomy as a disruptive experience that “bends” what is being read into a distinctive direction. The preceding journey-oriented narrative is replaced by quoted speech of Moses. Striking differences in language, tone, viewpoint, and presentation pile up. Expected plot progression is delayed. Linguistic changes, emergence of the testament genre, theological divergences, and the abrupt appearance of a book, disorient readers and grab their attention. When post-monarchical readers arrived at its last chapter, as viewed through the lens of the Song of Moses, the Pentateuch as a whole afforded them an effective metanarrative. It provided an explanatory, organizing archetype to a society existing precariously under the shadow of imperial domination and alien gods. It offered Israel a pattern for belief and the construction of meaning that made possible their survival as a people.

The version of Deuteronomy that is the canonical text of the Samaritans differs in important ways from the Masoretic version of Deuteronomy. Examining those differences yields important information regarding the textual history of Deuteronomy as well as the history of the relations between Samaritans and Jews.

The proposal that Deuteronomy exhibits northern/Israelite ideology is evaluated and found to be inconclusive. Three suggested dating indicators thought to point to the initial composition of the scroll either soon after 722 BCE or during the reign of King Josiah are then assessed: the expansion of Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE, the hypothetical dependence of small portions of Deuteronomy on Esarhaddon’s Succession Oath Documents, and the equation of the scroll of Torah purportedly found in the temple during repairs under Josiah with Deuteronomy (2 Kgs 22:8–10). The first and third are found to be inconclusive and the second erroneous. The religious worldview associated with Yhwh Elohim found in the book is argued to be a more reliable indicator of the book’s initial creation in either the Neo-Babylonian or early Persian period. Finally, options for the place of composition in Yehud or Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian period and in Yehud, Babylonia, or on Mt Gerizim in the early Achaemenid period are evaluated.

After an initial outline of the methodology I use to generate an ethics of the Old Testament and a presentation of three other recent approaches, this chapter delineates Deuteronomy’s theonomous ethics of “choosing life” and the rich blessing of God in the realization of the covenant of Israel with Yhwh. The short ethical formulations of the Decalogue are specified in the individual provisions of the Deuteronomic legal code. In the Moab covenant, Moses commits the general assembly of Israel to this ethics of the Torah for upcoming life in the promised land. Thanks to the circumcision of hearts, it can be realized even after episodes of disobedience. Israel’s basic requirement is love for Yhwh or fear of God, which is expressed in obedience to the individual commandments of the Deuteronomic collection. The justice of the ethics of the Torah is praised even by the other peoples.

After a review of the distinctive traits of each of the five books that turn the Psalter into a second Pentateuch, eight semantic or conceptual cases are identified as likely references to Deuteronomy, shoring up Jamie Grant’s view of the influence of the law of the king, but broadened to other parts of Deuteronomy.

This article is about constructions of internal territorial space and its ideological implications. It discusses the lay of the land of the Israelite society that the literati “saw” when reading Deuteronomy. It focuses on the horizontal, non-hierarchical arrangement of an array of cities that so strongly characterizes the book. Then, it addresses what the preference for this array suggests in terms of the polity that Deuteronomy conjures and how this preference relates to both central ideological tenets of the book and additional features of its imagined polity. Neither the imaginary landscape of the Israelite polity nor the polity itself evoked by Deuteronomy were consistent with those evoked by any of the “historiographical” works in Yehud. As a result, its literati had to assume either that such a landscape was never actually fulfilled in any period of the past or try to conform Deuteronomy’s landscape to other past-shaping, ideological texts (and related memories) that existed in their core repertoire, or both, in a complementary, balancing way.