Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-29T07:22:44.855Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A look within the Deuteronomic history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

The over-arching unity which characterises that section of the OT from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings has long been recognised as the work of a mind (or minds) permeated by the Dc outlook. The result of this from the historiographical point of view has been that ancient records and traditions of Israel's past are controlled and presented theologically to produce a specific historical scheme, a Heilsgeschichte. Two main procedures are selection and evaluation, both subordinated to the leitmotif of the Dc ideal. Here I want to suggest that within the overall selective process which has produced the Dc History we can discern another principle of selectivity, an inner line within the broad band of narrative.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 338 note 1 Momigliano, A., Time in Ancient Historiography, quoted by Plumb, J. H., Death of the Past, 1969, pp. 69f.Google Scholar

page 338 note 2 Not counting Isa. 37.4 and 17, which simply reproduce 2 Kings 9.4 and 16.

page 338 note 3 Adopting the LXX and Samaritan versions of Deut. 4.33, which may well be correct in view of the close dependence of chapter 4 upon chapter 5, cf. 5.26.

page 339 note 1 The extended form ‘Yahweh God of Hosts’ occurs 3 times in the History.

page 339 note 2 Ps. 18.46. See Arthur Weiser, Psalms, in the OT Library, 1962. Weiser suggests that the psalm was used in a service whose focal point was ‘the representation of the mighty acts wrought by God to save the king’, op. cit., p. 187.

page 340 note 1 Comm. in OT Library Series, 1969, pp. 31ff.

page 340 note 2 S.J.Th., vol. 14, 1963, and vol. 16, 1965.

page 340 note 3 op. cit., vol. 16, p. 9.

page 340 note 4 So rendered by E. G. Briggs, I.C.C. Comm. ad loc.

page 341 note 1 This, or a later, editor has given us in the Song of Moses one of the most savage expressions of the living God concept in the entire OT—32.40ff.

page 342 note 1 Gray, John, ‘Joshua’, in the new Century Bible, 1967, p. 59.Google Scholar

page 342 note 2 cf. von Rad's remark, that David is ‘the prototype of the perfectly obedient anointed’, in Studies in Deut., p. 88.

page 342 note 3 Vriezen, , An Outline of OT Theology, p. 53.Google Scholar

page 343 note 1 cf. also the use of qahal in 17.47.

page 343 note 2 Furthermore, most occurences of the title seem to point to the north. Thus Hosea; Ps. 42 certainly and Ps. 84 probably; Jeremiah's home, Anathoth, lay in Benjamin; northern amphyctionic traditions would appear to underlie Josh. 3 and 1 Sam. 17; even the name Daniel, with which the last occurrences of the title in the OT are associated, appears in Ugaritic literature; the name El is northern. (I am grateful to the Rev. R. Bailey for bringing this to my attention.) It would seem that the concept of Yahweh as the living God was most fully worked out in the great northern shrines, where it was sharpened on the whetstone of Canaanite fertility religion. This is not to say that the concept derived from the meeting of Baalism and Yahwism—see Jacob, E., Theol. of the OT, 1958, p. 38Google Scholar, where he rejects Baudissin's suggestion that the title is a late weapon of polemic against the vegetation gods.

page 344 note 1 Daniel, S.C.M., 1965, p. 21.

page 344 note 2 Rad, von, Studies in Deut., 1953, p. 77Google Scholar.

page 345 note 1 Barbour, Ian, Issues in Science and Religion, 1968, p. 230.Google Scholar