everything biblical

Anyone who has ever read through the Pentateuch immediately notices that the book of Deuteronomy’s tone, style, vocabulary, and theological message are completely unique and different from what precedes it. Hebraists have remarked that the Deuteronomic style is not found in any biblical literature prior to the 7th century BCE, and, apart from the Priestly literature of the post-exilic period, it is abundantly found in texts written after the 7th century BCE. In fact, one might confidently claim that the voice and message of the Hebrew Bible as a whole can be boiled down to that of the Deuteronomist.

The Deuteronomist’s style displays itself through a unique set of phrases, theological emphases, and rhetorical devices. Phrases that are unique to the Deuteronomic literature include: “Yahweh your god”; “the place where Yahweh sets his name”; “listen O Israel!”; “listen to the laws and the judgements”; “listen to the voice of Yahweh”; … Read more

The book of Deuteronomy, like many of the Bible’s books, was composed in stages and by different authors living in different historical eras. Despite this fact, Deuteronomy displays a remarkable unity in its style, theology, and message. This is largely because the various revisions and additions that the book of Deuteronomy underwent were done by a specific scribal school, which we shall label as the Deuteronomic school, and its authors the Deuteronomists. This scribal guild was active during a lengthy period of time, from the late monarchal period of the 7th century BCE, through the exilic period of the 6th century BCE, and into the Persian period of the 5th century BCE. Thus the making of the book of Deuteronomy was an accumulative process of editorial activity that transpired over three centuries.

The book of Deuteronomy was composed around a core or base text which now makes up the content … Read more

When the author of the book of Deuteronomy sits down to write his text, he has Moses renarrate the story of Israel’s past from the revelation at Sinai to the current narrative setting on the plains of Moab. Renarrate because this “history” was already narrated in earlier textual traditions which served as the Deuteronomist’s sources. These earlier texts now make up parts of the books of Exodus and Numbers, and scholars have identified them as belonging to the Elohist and Yahwist.

In other words, stories from the older Elohist and Yahwist traditions, which are now preserved in the books of Exodus and Numbers, were used as sources for the Deuteronomist’s composition. Yet, on every single renarration of these stories, of this “history,” the Deuteronomist’s Moses radically alters them—indeed outright contradicts them—claiming to say and do things he never said and did, and narrating things that never happened, or happened … Read more

I rarely post here anymore since my more recent and extensively more active site, contradictionsinthebible.com, has been the focus of my attention. But I think I’m going to change all that, and start posting excerpts from a recent book I’m working on. It’d be nice to get some feedback from the public on these matters.

The book is tentatively titled Conflicting Stories and Competing Histories: How and Why the Bible’s Authors Rewrote, Altered, and Contradicted Each Other’s Texts. My one-liner about the book and its aims might be laid out as follows: The Bible’s authors consciously adopted, altered, and rewrote the texts and traditions they inherited, and in so doing left behind numerous contradictory stories and even “histories” in what later generations of readers labeled the Bible. The primary purpose of this book is to demonstrate this claim and to discuss how and why this happened, and the … Read more