![]() ![]() Scholars have repeatedly returned to this point, to fortify it against opposing views. The primary justification for this conclusion is the number of parallels between the narrative of Josiah’s reforms (2 Kings 22-23) and the book of Deuteronomy. The early Church Fathers – Jerome, among others – held this view, as did the commentator printed as Rashi on Chronicles, as well as Hobbes in the late medieval period. The first part of this argument goes back to long before De Wette, and he himself was apparently only reflecting what he took to be the conventional view. De Wette’s argument was based primarily on a two-part argument: (1) Deuteronomy was the book found in Josiah’s eighteenth year (622 BCE), which provoked Josiah’s reforms (2) the book was new at that time. de Wette, in the very beginning of the nineteenth century. The view that Deuteronomy dates to the seventh century has been the prevalent one since at least Wilhelm M. If other sources are judged to be earlier than Deuteronomy, they are perforce earlier than the seventh century if they are later than Deuteronomy, they are no earlier than the sixth century – namely, the period of the Babylonian Exile. What they have usually agreed on is the linchpin: the book of Deuteronomy is regularly dated to the seventh century BCE. They have often disagreed about sequencing those sources on a timeline, however. ![]() Scholars have often argued that the Torah is comprised of originally disparate sources. With that in place, all the relative information can be used to situate everything else in an absolute scheme. Theoretically, only one data point is needed for this. We need some other way of pinning this all on a time line, some data point that will enable absolute dating: we need something to enable us to say that Amenemhat came to the throne in 1991 BCE. This gives us only a relative dating, however: we may know that there was a king Amenemhat who ruled for 30 years, followed by Senwosret who ruled for 45, and so on, but we would have no way of situating these kings on a time line with actual dates. Based on internal Egyptian sources, we can reconstruct the list of pharaohs from the various dynasties. Let us take an example from a different realm. In order to arrive at any real historical scheme, both types of datings are needed. There are two types of dating: relative dating, meaning sequencing the sources in order from earliest to latest, and absolute dating, meaning given a specific date – for example, the thirteenth century – for one or more of the sources. Biblical scholars have long been very interested in dating the alleged sources found within the Torah. What makes this exchange especially interesting is that the dating of Deuteronomy has long been the linchpin on which much of the rest of the dates assigned to biblical literature hangs.Ī word of background is important for understanding the significance of Berman’s claim and the responses. This elicited a response from Professor Bernard Levinson and Professor Jeffrey Stackert, to which Berman responded Levinson and Stackert have now written a detailed response to the response. Professor Joshua Berman has argued, in two papers in the Journal of Biblical Literature as well as in other writings, that comparative evidence supports a date for Deuteronomy in the second millennium BCE rather than in Neo-Assyrian times. That Deuteronomy relies on the form of a treaty is another well-established consensus position in biblical scholarship.Ī recent exchange of essays in the Journal of Ancient Judaism has highlighted an issue that has long festered in biblical studies, and which has recently been the subject of articles in the most prestigious journals in the field. There has long been one very good reason to consider dating Deuteronomy far earlier than the seventh century, and to the second millennium BCE: certain core elements of the book seem to be based on treaty forms most similar to the Hittite treaties known from the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE. ![]()
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