Editing Book of Deuteronomy (section)

==Composition==
[[File:Tissot Moses Sees the Promised Land from Afar.jpg|thumb|200px|Moses viewing the Promised Land, Deuteronomy 34:1–5 ([[James Tissot]])]]

===Composition history===
[[Mosaic authorship]] of the Torah, the belief that the five books of the Torah – including the Book of Deuteronomy – were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, is an ancient Jewish tradition that was codified by [[Maimonides]] (1135–1204 AD) as the 8th of the [[Maimonides#Thirteen principles of faith|13 Jewish principles of faith]].{{sfn|Levenson|1993|pp=63}} Virtually all modern secular scholars, and most Christian and Jewish scholars, reject the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy and date the book much later, between the 7th and 5th centuries BC.{{sfn|Stackert|2022|p=136}} Its authors were probably the [[Levite]] caste, collectively referred to as the [[Deuteronomist]], whose economic needs and social status the book reflects.{{sfn|Sommer|2015|p=18}} The historical background to the book's composition is currently viewed in the following general terms:{{sfn|Rogerson|2003|pp=153-154}}

* In the late 8th century BC both [[kingdom of Judah|Judah]] and [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Israel]] were [[Vassal state|vassals]] of [[Assyria]]. Israel rebelled and [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)#Destruction of the Kingdom, 732–720 BCE|was destroyed]] circa 722 BC. Refugees fleeing from Israel to Judah brought with them a number of traditions that were new to Judah. One of these was that the god Yahweh, already known and worshiped in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but the only god who should be served.{{sfn|McKenzie|1990|page=1287}} This outlook influenced the Judahite landowning [[ruling class]], which became extremely powerful in court circles after placing the eight-year-old [[Josiah]] on the throne following the murder of his father, [[Amon of Judah]].

* By the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, Assyrian power was in rapid decline, and a pro-independence movement was gathering strength in the [[Kingdom of Judah]]. One manifestation of this movement was a state theology of loyalty to Yahweh as the sole god of the Kingdom of Judah. According to [[Books of Kings#Josiah and the Religious Reform (22:1–23:30)|2 Kings 22:1–23:30]], at this time [[Hilkiah]] (the [[High Priest of Israel|High Priest]] and father of the prophet [[Jeremiah]]) discovered the "book of the law" – which many scholars believe to be the Deuteronomic Code (the set of laws at chapters 12–26 which form the original core of the Book of Deuteronomy) – in the [[Solomon's Temple|temple]]. Josiah subsequently launched a full-scale reform of worship based on this "book of the law", which takes the form of a [[Mosaic covenant|covenant between Judah and Yahweh]] to replace the decades-old vassal treaty between King [[Esarhaddon]] of Assyria and King [[Manasseh of Judah]].{{sfn|Miller|Hayes|1986|pp=391-397}}

* The next stage took place during the [[Babylonian captivity]]. The [[Kingdom of Judah#Destruction and dispersion|destruction of the Kingdom of Judah]] by Babylon in 586 BC and the end of kingship was the occasion of much reflection and theological speculation among the Deuteronomistic elite, now in exile in the city of [[Babylon]]. The disaster was supposedly Yahweh's punishment of their failure to follow the law, and so they created a history of Israel (the books of Joshua through Kings) to illustrate this.
* At the end of the Exile, when the [[Achaemenid Empire|Persians]] agreed that the Jews could return and rebuild the [[Temple in Jerusalem]], chapters 1–4 and 29–30 were added and Deuteronomy was made the introductory book to this history, so that a story about a people about to enter the Promised Land became a story about a people about to return to the land. The legal sections of chapters 19–25 were expanded to meet new situations that had arisen, and chapters 31–34 were added as a new conclusion.

Chapters 12–26, containing the Deuteronomic Code, are the earliest section.{{sfn|Van Seters|2015|pp=79-82}} Since the idea was first put forward by [[Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette|W. M. L. de Wette]] in 1805, most scholars have accepted that this portion of the book was composed in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC in the context of religious reforms advanced by King [[Hezekiah]] (reigned c. 716–687 BC),{{sfn|Miller|Hayes|1986|pp=393-394}}{{sfn|Rofé|2002|p=4–5}} although some have argued for other dates, such as during the reign of his successor [[Manasseh of Judah|Manasseh]] (687–643 BC) or even much later, such as during the [[Babylonian captivity|exilic]] or [[Yehud Medinata|postexilic periods]] (597–332 BC).{{sfn|Stackert|2022|p=136}}{{sfn|Davies|2013|p=101-103}} The second prologue (Ch. 5–11) was the next section to be composed, and then the first prologue (Ch. 1–4); the chapters following 26 are similarly layered.{{sfn|Van Seters|2015|pp=79-82}}

===Israel–Judah division===
The prophet [[Isaiah]], active in Jerusalem about a century before Josiah, makes no mention of [[the Exodus]], covenants with God, or disobedience to God's laws. In contrast, Isaiah's contemporary [[Hosea]], active in the northern [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|kingdom of Israel]], makes frequent references to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, a covenant, the danger of foreign gods and the need to worship Yahweh alone. This discrepancy has led scholars to conclude that these traditions behind Deuteronomy have a northern origin.{{sfn|Van Seters|1998|p=17}} Whether the Deuteronomic Code was written in Josiah's time (late 7th century BC) or earlier is subject to debate, but many of the individual laws are older than the collection itself.<ref>Knight, p.66</ref> The two poems at chapters 32–33 – the [[Song of Moses]] and the [[Blessing of Moses]] were probably originally independent.{{sfn|Van Seters|1998|p=17}}

===Position in the Hebrew Bible===
Deuteronomy occupies a puzzling position in the Bible, linking the story of the Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness to the story of their history in Canaan without quite belonging totally to either. The wilderness story could end quite easily with Numbers, and the story of Joshua's conquests could exist without it, at least at the level of the plot. But in both cases there would be a thematic (theological) element missing. Scholars have given various answers to the problem.<ref name="Bandstra, pp.190–191">Bandstra, pp.190–191</ref>

The Deuteronomistic history theory is currently the most popular. Deuteronomy was originally just the law code and covenant, written to cement the religious reforms of Josiah, and later expanded to stand as the introduction to the full history. But there is an older theory, which sees Deuteronomy as belonging to Numbers, and Joshua as a sort of supplement to it. This idea still has supporters, but the mainstream understanding is that Deuteronomy, after becoming the introduction to the history, was later detached from it and included with Genesis–Exodus–Leviticus–Numbers because it already had Moses as its central character. According to this hypothesis, the death of Moses was originally the ending of Numbers, and was simply moved from there to the end of Deuteronomy.<ref name="Bandstra, pp.190–191"/>