[Imagine . . . the last book of the Torah of YHWH was closed with the final warning about adding to or subtracting from the Sinai Revelation. The Israelites were reminded over and over about keeping the Law, choosing Life, motivated by the blessings for obedience, and passing on to the future generations all that they were taught by Moshe. You would think that they would forever treasure the very words of their God, all through the centuries, through the generations, through the reigns of their kings. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. And you would have to read Kings and Chronicles and the Prophets to follow the failure of Israel’s kings to uphold or even simply keep copies of the Torah of YHWH as they were commanded to do.
Image from www.visualsermons.co.uk
Then as if it weren’t enough that Israel ‘forgot’, when it finally did treasure and in fact canonized the Torah with the Prophetic books (Neviim) and Inspired Writings (Ketuviim), the non-Jewish world, particularly biblical scholars, questioned the authenticity of Deuteronomy. One could say to critics that it is their prerogative as true scholars to question the claims of Scripture as God’s word, and to be simplistic as to say that the Torah books have to be accepted as a matter of ‘faith’. But as we’ve repeatedly emphasized in our posts, a reasoning faith and not simply blind faith is what is required for TRUE faith.
The God of Israel appeals to reason, not blind acceptance. The apologists for the authenticity of Deuteronomy come out in fighting form in this backgrounder on the debate between skeptics and defenders. We all learn much just by sitting on the sideline, just by reading the arguments of each side.
This background is from additional notes: Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. J.H. Hertz; reformatting and highlighting added for this post.—Admin1.]
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DEUTERONOMY: ITS ANTIQUITY AND MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP 1. DEUTERONOMY AND THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL UNDER KING JOSIAH (621 B.C.E.)
King Josiah was the grandson of idolatrous King Manasseh, whose reign of 55 years was the longest in the annals of the Jewish People, and the darkest.
Manasseh was swayed by a fanatical hatred for the Faith of his fathers. He nearly succeeded in uprooting True Religion in Israel, and flooded the land with obscene and gruesome idolatries. The Temple itself did not escape profanation; the sacred Altar was desecrated; the Ark itself was removed from out of the Holy of Holies; and new altars were erected for various weird cults. His years were one long Reign of Terror to the loyal minority who attempted to withstand the tide of religious barbarism.
‘Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another,’ says the author of the Book of Kings; and, according to a tradition preserved by Josephus, day by day a fresh batch of the Prophetic Order was led to execution.
The aged Isaiah, it is said, met a martyr’s death by being sawn asunder in a forest-tree in which he hid himself when attempting to escape from the fury of the tyrant.
No wonder that when, two years after the death of Manasseh, Josiah, a child of eight, came to the throne, the sacred books and teachings of Israel’s Faith had been all but forgotten. However, in the group of influential persons responsible for the education and policy of the young King, there was a strong revulsion of fleeing from the apostasy of the previous two generations, and a sincere yearning for a return to the historical Jewish national worship. It was, no doubt, due to the fact of having grown to manhood under such influences, that Josiah decided in the 18th year of his reign to repair the Temple, which had been permitted under his predecessors to fall into a shameful state of neglect.
In the course of this restoration of the Temple, a discovery was made that was to prove of far-reaching importance for the spiritual revival of Israel. Under the accumulated rubbish and ruins of the decayed Temple-walls, Hilkiah the High Priest came upon a scroll, which he handed to the King’s scribe with the words, ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.’ The behaviour of the King— he is stirred to the depths of his being by the message of the Book, and yet that message is new to him—is easy of explanation.
Though during the half-century and longer of the royal apostasy the public reading of the Torah had been interrupted, and though the Book itself had disappeared or had been destroyed by idolatrous priests, men still knew of the existence of such a Book, and had sufficient idea of its contents to be able to recognize it when the old Temple copy was suddenly brought to light. But so little were its contents common knowledge that, on its first reading, the King was struck with terror at its solemn prediction of the evils which would overtake a sinful Israel.
‘The ignorance of the King, brought up by the priesthood, may well be accounted for by supposing him to have been vaguely taught the general precepts of the Law, but to have seen or heard for the first time this special Book’ (Milman).
Ancient and medieval history records several instances of codes of law or sacred documents disappearing, and of their rediscovery generations, and even centuries, later. Such, for example, was the fate that overtook the code of Charlemagne in the 9th century.
‘Before the close of the century in which he died, the whole body of his laws had fallen into utter disuse throughout the whole extent of his dominions. The charters, laws and chronicles of the later Carlovingian princes indicate either an absolute ignorance or an entire forgetfulness of the legislation of Charlemagne’ (Sir James Stephen).
The general neglect of the Scriptures in the age before the Reformation furnishes a partial illustration of the disappearance of Deuteronomy; even as the recovery, at the time of the Renaissance, of the original Hebrew Text of the Bible for the Western peoples is a parallel to its re-emergence under Josiah.
In our own day, wherever the extirpation of religion is part of the State policy, as in Soviet Russia, we can quite imagine men and women who may have superficial knowledge of the observances and beliefs of Judaism, but who had never read, or heard of, Deuteronomy, or any other Scripture. 2.
DOUBTS IN REGARD TO THE DISCOVERY OF DEUTERONOMY
Nothing could be simpler than the above explanation of the finding of the scroll of Deuteronomy during the repair of the Temple. Bible Critics think otherwise. For over 150 years, they have declared that Deuteronomy, the Book of the Farewell Orations of Moses, was not the work of the Lawgiver, but was a spurious production written during the generation of Josiah. Some of them maintain further that this spurious work was hidden in the Temple with the intention that it should be brought to light, reach the King, and influence him in a definite way. Not a word of all this appears in II KIngs XXII, which describes the finding of the Book of the Law in the Temple; and there is nothing in that account that can justifiably serve as a basis for so strange a hypothesis.
Hilkiah speaks of ‘the book of the law’, i.e. the well-known Torah. He could not have used such a phrase—it would not have been understood—if it were not known that such a book had been in existence before. It is clear that the finding of the book was regarded as the discovery of an old lost Scripture, a book of the Law of Moses. It was this fact alone which gave it authority.
The King, when the book had been read to him, rent his garments, and sent to Inquire of the LORD what it portended for him and his people; for ‘great is the wrath of the LORD that it is kindled against us because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book’.
The King was thus convinced of the Divine character of the Book, and also of its existence in the time of his forefathers. And it was this conviction alone that led to the religious revolution associated with his name—a revolution which succeeded despite all the machinery of heathenism that would recoil from nothing to thwart it.
Not a whisper of doubt as to the Mosaic origin of the book is heard on any side, not from priests, whose revenues it seriously interfered with, nor from prophets, on many of whom it bore hardly less severely.
‘It is plainly inconceivable that the whole nation should have at once adopted, without objection or criticism, a book of the existence of which no one knew anything before that time, a book which demanded radical modification of worship as well as of the whole religious life’ (B. Jacob).
Though many of the Critics do not hesitate to bring the grave moral charge of forgery in connection with the Book, they are themselves no at all agreed on the question whether the author belonged to the prophetic circle or to the priestly class; whether the Book was the work of one man, or of a ‘school’; whether it was produced in the time of Josiah, Manasseh, Hezekiah or even earlier; whether it originally was the same as we now have it, or it consisted of merely the code of laws—the historical orations having been added later; whether that code of laws came from one hand, or represented the gradual growth of centuries; whether some portion of the Book was Mosaic, or none of it; and whether it even claimed to be a work of Moses, or it made no such claim.
It was the English deists of the 16th century who first set afloat the theory that Deuteronomy was an essential forgery of the subtle priest, Hilkiah. That theory will not bear serious examination.
This priest, whose ministrations in the Zion Sanctuary are not marked by any particular devotion or zeal, would not be the man to undertake to make it the one and only Place of Worship in Israel; neither was he the man to write those exhortations to godliness and humanity that have made Deuteronomy pure stream of righteousness to the children of men. And surely this crafty ecclesiastic would not have invented laws (Deuteronomy XVIII,6) which seriously infringed the vested privileges of the Jerusalem priesthood—unless we are to attribute to him a height of folly that would be psychologically inexplicable.
In our generation, W.R. Smith, Dillman, Kittel, Driver and many others have repudiated this absurd theory. Even less convincing, but far more shocking to the moral sense, is the attempt to find the forger among the prophets.
A pioneer of 19th century Bible criticism in England, Bishop Colenso, thinks it likely that Jeremiah was the falsifier.
‘What the inner voice ordered him to do,’ Colenso has the shamelessness to write,’he would do without hesitation, as by direct command of God, and all considerations of morality or immorality would not be entertained.’
Verily, there are some things that do not deserve to be refuted: they should be exorcized. It is refreshing to turn to the words of Rudolf Kittel, written in 1925:
‘There is no real evidence to prove that a pious or impious deceit was practised on Josiah. the assumption of forgery may be one of those hypotheses which, once set up, is so often repeated that finally every one believes it has been proven. Then one seems ultra-conservative and unscientific not to believe it. Who, nowadays, would take upon himself the odium of being behind the times?”
3. INTERNAL EVIDENCE AS TO THE ANTIQUITY OF DEUTERONOMY
The internal evidence against the late composition of Deuteronomy and for its Mosaic authorship, is overwhelming. From whatever side the question is examined, we find that the Book and the history of Josiah’s times do not fit each other. To take a few examples.
- In the reign of Josiah, or in that of his immediate predecessors, the injunction to exterminate the Canaanites (XX,16-18) and the Amalekites (XXV,17-19), who had long since disappeared, would have been as utterly out of date as a royal proclamation in Great Britain at the present day ordering the expulsion of the Danes (W.H. Green).
- And how can a Code belong to the time of Josiah which, while it provides for the possible selection of a king in the future, nowhere implies an actual monarchical government? It finds it necessary to ordain that the king must be a native and not a foreigner (XVII,15), when the undisputed line of succession had for ages been fixed in the family of David.
- It furthermore prescribes that the king must not ’cause the people to return to Egypt’, as they seemed ready to do on every grievance in the days of Moses (Num. XIV,4), but which no one ever dreamed of doing after they were fairly established in Canaan.
- In brief, regarding this whole law of monarchy, H.M. Wiener rightly says, ‘As part of the work of Moses, all is clear; place it in a later age, all is confusion.’
This same judgment must be pronounced in regard to dozens of other matters in Deuteronomy.
- Thus, Israel is treated in its unbroken unity as a nation: one Israel is spoken of.
- There is not the slightest hint of the great secession of the Ten Tribes, which had rent Israel in twain.
- Furthermore, in Deuteronomy the hope and the promise is that Israel is to be ‘high above all nations and the Law actually contemplates foreign wars (XX,10-15).
- This is quite understandable of the Mosaic generation, just about to embark on the conquest of Canaan.
- In the days of Josiah, however, it was a question whether Judah could even maintain its own existence. It had been brought to the edge of ruin by the Assyrian world-power, and within two decades of Josiah’s day, its inhabitants were to be exiled to the banks of the Euphrates.
- Again, Edom is mentioned as the people to be most favoured by Israel; whereas from the time of David onwards, Edom was Judah’s bitterest enemy, and is unsparingly denounced by Jeremiah, as by Isaiah before him.
- Lastly, in a book assumed to be specially produced to effect reformation in worship, how are we to explain the presence of such laws as regulate birds’ nests or parapets upon a roof?” Or, for that matter, what relevancy is there, for such a purpose, in Moses’ historical retrospect?
‘As part of the work of Moses, all is clear; place it in a later age, all is confusion.’
4. CENTRALIZATION OF WORSHIP
The above considerations, and scores more of the same force and moment, have long been urged against the hypothesis of the late production of Deuteronomy. How is it that they have made so little impression upon the minds of the Critics?
The reason is as follows: the assumption that Deuteronomy is a product of Josiah’s age is the basis of the theory on which the Critics have built their whole reconstruction of Bible history and religion. That history—viz. the Centralization of Worship in ancient Israel—they have raised to a dogma, which it is in their opinion sheer heresy to question.
Till the time of Josiah, they tell us, the ancient Israelite could sacrifice at any place he desired; numberless local shrines, ‘high places,’ dotted the land; and, though there was a good deal of pagan revelry, natural piety was a living thing among the people. But with the appearance of Deuteronomy the local cults were uprooted, religion was separated from ‘life’, and worship was centered in Jerusalem.
There arose the idea of a Church; religion was now contained in a book; and it became an object of study, a theology. All these things, we are told, flowed from the centralization of worship; and such centralization was the result exclusively of the finding of Deuteronomy in the days of Josiah.
What is the truth in regard to centralization of worship, and these claims of the Wellhausen school of Bible Critics? Briefly, not a single one of the Critical claims in connection with their dogma of centralization is in agreement with historical facts. Centralization of worship did not originate in the age of Josiah; it was not the dominant motive of his reformation; neither was there any freedom of indiscriminate sacrifice before his day.
(a) Centralization of worship did not originate in the age of Josiah.
It was present from the beginnings of Israel as a nation (Baxter). One need not be a great Bible scholar to know that, 400 years before Josiah, the splendid Temple of Solomon was built on Mount Zion. That Temple was built by ‘a levy out of all Israel’ (I Kings V,27); and for its dedication, Solomon assembles ‘the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes’ (VIII,1). It is the central shrine of the whole House of Israel.
(Wellhausen says, ‘this view of Solomon’s Temple is unhistorical,’ because no king after Solomon is left uncensured for having tolerated the continuance of ‘the high places’. It is the old familiar argument—that the Law could not have existed because it can be shown that it was broken! According to such logic, there could never have been any Prohibition law in America).
And for centuries before Solomon, there was the Central Sanctuary at Shiloh. Elkanah, the father of Samuel, ‘went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh’ (I Samuel I,3). We are told of ‘all the Israelites coming thither (II,14); and that the presiding priest represented ‘all the tribes of Israel’.
But even centuries before Shiloh, we have the Sanctuary at Sinai. Nothing in Scripture is more minutely or more solemnly described than the building of the Mosaic tabernacle. Hypercritics have, in obedience to their programme, denied its existence. However, the study of comparative religions and their sacred structures has rendered their position absurd. Kittel’s considered opinion is: ‘It is part of the knowledge which has been confirmed in recent times, that in Moses’ day and during the Desert wanderings there was a sacred tent (Tent of Meeting), which was the religious centre of the congregation in the Desert.
(b) Centralization of worship was not the dominant motive in Josiah’s reformation.
Josiah’s reformation from beginning to end was a crusade against the idolatry which had flooded the land, the Jerusalem sanctuary included; and the ‘high places’ were put down as part of the stern suppression of all idolatrous practices. Of a movement of centralization of worship as such, the narrative gives not a single hint.
The whole condition of Jerusalem and Judah, as described in II Kings XXIII, was in flagrant violation of far more fundamental statutes than that of the central Sanctuary in Deuteronomy. And it cannot be repeated with sufficient emphasis that there are far more fundamental laws in Deuteronomy than this law concerning the Sanctuary. It has its place in Chap. XII, and recurs in the regulations for feasts, tithing, and priestly duty; but it is quite incorrect to say that this is the one grand idea which inspires the Book.
(c) There was no freedom of indiscriminate altar-building in early Israel. The alleged legitimacy, before the reformation of Josiah, of sacrificing wherever one desired is based upon a wrong interpretation of Exodus XX,21 (in English Bibles, XX,24).
‘An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen; in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come unto thee and bless thee’ (the last clause should be translated, ”in whatever place I record My name, I will come unto thee, and will bless thee’).
This law does not authorize worship ‘at the altars of earth and unhewn stones in all corners of the land’, as claimed by W. Robertson Smith and those of his school. The law does not speak of ‘altars’, but only of ‘an altar’; and that altar was to be erected ‘in whatever place I record My name’: i.e., in any place sanctified by a special revelation of God.
There is here nothing that conflicts with the command concerning centralization of worship in Deut. XII. There we have the general rule of worship at the Central Sanctuary; but that general rule does not forbid that, under proper Divine authority, exceptional sacrifices might be offered elsewhere.
The clearest proof of this is that Deuteronomy itself orders the building of an Altar on Mount Ebal, precisely in the manner of Exodus XX,21. Critics unanimously assign Exod. XXX,21 to what they call ‘the Book of the Covenant’, which they deem to be many centuries older than Josiah. But the ‘Book of the Covenant’ has the same ideal of centralization as Deuteronomy! It takes for granted a Central Shrine, and prescribes that three times in the year all males shall present themselves there before the Lord (Exod. XXIII,17).
In view of all the above, one need not be surprised to learn that the alleged evil effects which followed the eventual enforcement of this ancient law of centralization of worship are purely imaginary.
‘Centralization is the necessary consequence of monotheism and of the actual or ideal unity of Israel. The regulation of life according to Divine Law, the rise of a canon and a theology are incidental to the development of every religion that has ever controlled and modified the life of a people’ (B. Jacob).
Not all Scholars have remained blind to the true facts regarding the alleged lateness of the law of Centralization summarized above. From the very first, the hollowness of the Critical hypothesis was recognized by Sayce (Oxford), Hoffmann (Berlin), Naville (Geneva), Roberson (Glassgow), and W.H. Green (Princeton). Their protests were disregarded, but new recruits were found in Hommel, Dahse, Wiener, Moeller, Orr, Jacob and many others. In recent years, several outstanding Critics—Max Lohr, Th. Oesterreicher, W. Staaerk–have come to realize that especially this fundamental pillar of the Bible Critical view has proved a delusion and a snare.
In 1924, W. Staerk wrote:—
‘For over 100 years Old Testament studies have been under the spell of this hypothesis (i.e. centralization of worship) which in its results has been fatal to the proper understanding of Israel’s religion.’
5. THE UNITY AND MOSAICITY OF DEUTERONOMY
No book of the Bible bears on its face a stronger impress of unity—unity of thought, language, style, and spirit—than Deuteronomy. And there is no reason to doubt that the various Discourses proceed from one hand, and that the same hand was responsible for the Code of laws.
The alleged discrepancies between some of its statements and those in other books of the Pentateuch are largely the result of what Delitzsch called ‘hunting for contradictions’. These alleged differences between the historical accounts in the earlier books and the rhetorical presentation of the same matter in the Farewell Addresses of the dying Lawgiver are all of them capable of a natural explanation.
In recent decades, attention has been called to the fact that in some portions of Deuteronomy Israel is addressed in the singular (collectively), and in other portions in the plural; and it is urged that this is evidence of dual authorship.
Anyone who is familiar with the Prophetic writings knows that the singular and the plural constantly interchange. This feature is found likewise in other literatures, English included. H.M. Wiener adduces the following from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘St. Ronan’s Well’ (the italics are Wiener’s):
‘Why, thou suspicious monitor, have I not repeated a hundred times . . . And what need you come upon me, with your long lesson. Thou art, indeed a curious animal. No man like you for stealing other men’s inventions, and cooking them up in your own way. However, Harry, bating a little self-conceit and assumption, thou art as honest a fellow as ever man put faith in–clever, too, in your own style, though not quite the genius you would fain pas for. Come on thine own terms, and come as speedily as thou canst.’
As to the Mosaic authorship, the discoveries, since the beginning of this century, of the ancient Semitic codes confirm the antiquity of Deuteronomy. Thus, when King Amaziah punished his father’s murderers, he refrained from having their families killed with them (II Kings XIV,6), because the Law of Moses (Deut. XXIV,16) forbade such procedure. Today we know that the old Hittite law of the 15th pre-Christian century—contemporaneous with Moses—contains this same principle.
Furthermore, the law concerning the rape of a betrothed or married woman in Deuteronomy has striking similarities to the law on the subject in the Hammurabi, the Hittite, and the Assyrian Codes. What reason, therefore, is there to assume that these laws of Deuteronomy are later than the Mosaic period?
Paul Volz, who—together with Benno Jacob and Umberto Cassuto–has recently dealt a staggering blow to the Documentary Theory by demolishing all proof for the so-called Elohist source, has once again recorded his conviction that, on the strictly scientific evidence now available, Moses must have been a genius of the first order, a supreme Lawgiver who shaped an inchoate human mass into a great spiritual nation. Can we deny such a genius the ability to deliver his Farewell Discourses?
‘When we carefully examine the arguments that have been collected in the work of more than a century of criticism, we find that not a shadow of a case can be made against the authenticity of the Mosaic speeches’ (Wiener).
The same holds true in reference to the Code of Laws. Max Lohr and W. Staerk see no valid reason why the Deuteronomic legislation should not be Mosaic. And they are not the only scholars who have come to see the force of Dean Milman’s words:
‘If there are difficulties in connection with the Mosaic date of Deuteronomy, endeavour to assign Deuteronomy to any other period in the Jewish annals, and judge whether difficulties do not accumulate twentyfold.’
Die-hard adherents of the Wellhausen school of Pentateuch criticism may derive what comfort they may from the following two concluding selections. the first is:
‘Speaking for all branches of science, we may say that a hypothesis which has stood for half a century has done its duty. Measured by this standard, Wellhausen’s theory is as good as the best. However, there is increasing evidence that it has had its day; and that those scholars who, from the first, expressed serious doubts of it are right’ (Kittel).
The other selection cuts at the root of the whole method of deciding historical questions merely by so-called literary tests. It reads as follows:
‘Must there not be something essentially illusory in a method which never gives, or can give any independent proofs of its conclusions; and which too leads each new set of inquirers to reject what their next predecessors had been thought to have most clearly established?’ (Speaker’s Commentary).