So Josiah's reforms were based on a priestly Deuteronomistic hoax: the Torah was never called "scroll of the Torah" before D. Was it a priestly power grab, a consolidation of authority by divesting the country/hilltop shrine priests of authority?
This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 24 Jun 2009, by Clay Burell.
-
24 Jun 09
Clay Burellfascinating: the priestly hoax that led to unified temple worship in Jerusalem under King Josiah. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Foyc.yale.edu%2Freligious-studies%2Fintroduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible%2Fcontent%2Ftran
-
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.
-
Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands upon him
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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,
-
the original core of Deuteronomy emerged in the eighth century,
-
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.
-
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.
-
So if you are in exile, then perhaps a more satisfying ending is to have Israel not in fact entering the land.
-
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.
-
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?
-
Deuteronomy revises and reforms them according to new ideas: its new notion of a centralized cultic worship, and secondly its humanitarian spirit.
-
dependent on the E source
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
what are the special circumstances and concerns that guide Deuteronomy's revisions of tradition?
-
emphasis on worship at a single, central shrine
-
in a place that God himself will choose--it's not named
-
Add Sticky Notestriking 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.
-
-
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.
-
Add Sticky NoteSo 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.
-
The plot thickens: not a hoax after all?
-
-
Add Sticky NoteSo 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.
-
So was the Assyrian religion tied more to Mesopotamia or to the Canaanite/Ugaritic tradition? Was Gilgamesh part of this culture?
This pushes back my "exilic reaction" theory by a century or so....
-
-
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.
-
he 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.
-
Add Sticky NoteDeuteronomy 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 the D priests use Moses as their mouthpiece.
-
-
Add Sticky NoteNow 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.
-
Yup. A priestly civil war.
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
Add Sticky Notewhen 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 [correction: 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.
-
Good, if followed by actual implementation.
-
-
Add Sticky NoteDeuteronomy 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.
-
Is this humanitarianism limited to Jews only, or to all people? I.e., is it racist?
-
-
Add Sticky NoteMoreover 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.
-
In other words, it's a theocracy. The priests have hog-tied the King.
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Public Stiky Notes
This pushes back my "exilic reaction" theory by a century or so....
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.