Epilogue/Prologue (Deuteronomic History)

Deuteronomy 1-34

The more that I read about the history of these scriptures the more fascinating the Old Testament is as a whole. I will try not to be redundant or wordy, but I want to get this information down so I have a place to refence it in one spot in the future. These are the most widely accepted theories for the origin of these early books of the Bible. Most of the stuff that leads up to the early kings of Israel can not be proven with archeology. Some of the timeing doesn't work or there just isn't enough archelogical evidence for it. However, the ideas that I'm about to present are the most likely to be very close to the actual truth.

The book of Deuteronomy is a compilation of histories mixed with theological overtones of the worship of a diety called Yahweh. Different editors and scribes of the northern and southern Kingdoms between the years of the 7th century B.C.E. (Assyrian Empire destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) and the 5th century B.C.E. (Babylonian Empire's occupation and exile of the Southern Kingdom of Judah) produced the final product that was translated into the Septuagint, the first greek translation of the original Hebrew Tanakh as a whole, during the reign of Alexander the Great in the early 300s B.C.E.

Deuteronomy is composed from one of the three main sources of the Tanakh; The Deuteronomist or simply refered to as D. The other two sources are known as the Priestly (P) source and the Yahwist/Jahwist (J). All three of these documents can be traced back to roughly the 7th century B.C.E which puts it during the Assyrian Empire's reign and their destruction of the nation of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Deuteronomist is the material that bridges a much older series of books known as the Tetrateuch (the first FOUR books of Moses), which was already a tradition of the southern Kingdom of Judah during this period, with the early history of the nation of Israel before the division into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms (Joshua - 2 Kings).

The core of the book is chapters 12-26, the code of the law of Yahweh. This is believed to be the 'book of the law' that is discovered in the Temple under the reign of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23. What seperates this book from the other four books of Moses is the fact that it contains so much information about the Law that none of the other books did. It was believed that an introduction was added to these papers under the rule of King Josiah (chapters 4-11) and the final historical prolouge was added even later to give warning to the exiles as to why they had been destroyed by these other empires and also a hope that they could recover their kingdom again if they stayed true to their god Yahweh. This becomes the major theme for the later prophets to come.










This is a good lay out of the many possible ways the Old Testament developed and the most accepted theories.


http://www.crivoice.org/hexateuch.html