Transcript 11 - On the Steps of Moab: Deuteronomy - Open Yale Courses - The Diigo Meta page

• 24 Jun 09
  

  Clay Burell

  fascinating: the priestly hoax that led to unified temple worship in Jerusalem under King Josiah.

  judaism judeo-christianity history religion

  • 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
  • 43 more annotations...
  • • 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
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        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?
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        The plot thickens: not a hoax after all?
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        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.
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        So the D priests use Moses as their mouthpiece.
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        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.
    • 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 [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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        Good, if followed by actual implementation.
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        Is this humanitarianism limited to Jews only, or to all people? I.e., is it racist?
    • 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.

      • 

        Clay Burell on 2009-06-25

        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

• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  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?
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  The plot thickens: not a hoax after all?
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  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....
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  So the D priests use Moses as their mouthpiece.
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  Yup. A priestly civil war.
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  Good, if followed by actual implementation.
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  Is this humanitarianism limited to Jews only, or to all people? I.e., is it racist?
• 
  Clay Burell on 2009-06-25
  In other words, it's a theocracy. The priests have hog-tied the King.

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.