The connections between the Book of Deuteronomy and the following narrative books in the Hebrew Scriptures - and especially Joshua and Kings, the first and last of these - are clear to any attentive reader. It has become a commonplace amongst specialists to term Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings 'the Deuteronomistic books'. The year 1943 saw the publication of Martin Noth's famous argument: Joshua-Kings did not just have close links with Deuteronomy; they comprised a history brought to unity out of quite disparate source-materials by an exilic scholar who had drawn his key ideas and most prominent language from the Book of Deuteronomy, or at least from the largest part of it which had been shaped towards the end of Judah's monarchy. That same 1943 publication included Noth's no less influential account of the Chronicler's History: that comprised Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and its main source was the books of Samuel and Kings as we know them. A brief appendix suggested how Noth saw his work bearing on the vexed question of Pentateuchal origins: the sources used in Numbers had not continued into (Deuteronomy and) Joshua; it was Deuteronomy and Joshua that had influenced the composition of the final chapters of Numbers. The development of biblical thought, as Noth charted it 50 years ago, was outwards from Deuteronomy: through the Deuteronomistic History to the Chronicler's History; and through Joshua to Numbers and the final shape of the Pentateuch. Most scholarship in the last half- century has worked within Noth's conceptual structure, even where there has been vigorous debate over the details of his presentation. This study, published in the jubilee year of Noth's Deuteronomist and Chronicler, starts by questioning Noth's assumption - and the assumption of most scholars before and Kings Without Privilege since in the last two centuries - about the relationship between these two narratives. It reads them side by side and probes their common origins; and finds that it is then freed to pose new questions about the inter-connectedness of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic books. Kings and Chronicles emerge from this fresh scrutiny not as history and revised history, nor as text and commentary, but as alternative or competing appropriations of an earlier story of Judah's kings. And Deuteronomy, the date of its completion pushed inexorably later, emerges as influenced by the story that follows, and not simply the source of its ideas and language.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:635947 |
| Date | January 1976 |
| Creators | Auld, A. Graeme |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/R?func=search-advanced-go&find_code1=WSN&request1=AAIU602380 |
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