Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 90:359 (Jul 1933)
Article: Who Wrote Deuteronomy?
Author: George Jeshurun

BSac 90:359 (July 1933) p. 303

Who Wrote Deuteronomy?

George Jeshurun

Introduction

The present writer assumes that Moses was the author of Deuteronomy, and that the bulk of the book is the farewell message, or messages, of Moses to the people he led out of Egypt into the land of Canaan.

But to assume that is to oppose an opinion upheld by an imposing array of scholars, followers of what came to be known as the School of High-Criticism of the Bible. According to the dogma of that School of Criticism it was not Moses who wrote Deuteronomy, but those who “discovered” it in the Temple-archives in the reign of Josiah, King of Judea (639–609). That is, some prophets and priests “concocted”, or “forged” the book in order to have some reforms introduced in Judea.

So, in fact, we have here two assumptions to deal with:

(1) It was the Book of Deuteronomy which was discovered in the Temple.

(2) As Moses could not have written the book, the book had been written with a purpose previous to its discovery.

Let us take up the first postulate.

In 2 Kings, Chapters 22 and 23, where the story is told, the book is variously referred to. Thus, the High Priest, Hilkiah, calls it “the Book of the Torah” (Sefer-Ha-Torah). Evidently, he knew that the find was one of the books of the Torah. The prophetess calls it simply “the book”. So does the King; but once he calls the book “The Book of the Covenant” (23:21). But it is possible that it was the historian who put the words into the mouth of the king. In 23:24, the historian speaks of the “words of the Torah written in the book which Hilkiah has found”, and further, in v. 25, the same historian speaks of the Torah of Moses, in the sense that “Josiah followed the Torah of Moses with all his soul”. This, and probably

BSac 90:359 (July 1933) p. 304

the whole story of the find had been written after the destruction of the Commonwealth by the Babylonians, as seen from v. 27 of the same chapter. So we really do not know what the contemporaries called the book. The book was Torah of Moses, and, of course, the Torah was the Covenant. But if we do take in consideration the great fright of the king, and his energetic campaign against Baalism, we may just as well postulate that it was Lev. 25–26 that was “discovered”. In that “Torah” dire disaster is foretold, that ...