Talk:Deuteronomy

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[edit] 90% of scholars...

Where did this number come from? Does this dicount evangelical scholars? If you want to say "many secular and liberal Biblical scholars..." that is fine, but 90% is just a made-up numberBenjaminmarsh 16:02, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Book of Deuteronomy

Is there a reason why the name of this article does not start with "Book of"? All the other articles in the Old Testament category start that way, except for four of the five books of the Torah. If there are no objections, I'll have it changed.

The reason the other articles start that way is because Kings, Chronicles, Samuel, Judges, Joshua, Isiah, Amos, etc. all mean other things more than they do the books in the bible. That is unlike Genesis, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, which fairly uniquely refer to the bible. Note that Numbers is Book of Numbers. --francis 20:58, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Death of moses should that be an article, along with death of Aaron?

[edit] Is there a reason the shema` is neglected?

Deuteronomy 6.4|9 is hugely important in both Jewish and Christian theology (the source of Jesus' 'Greatest Commandment'). Is the focus of this article such that the inclusion of information on the shema` would be inappropriate? If not, I think that it's sorely missed. Tmargheim 03:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The other side of the Jordan??

Someone has written in the modern critical analysis section: "Similarly the language within the discourse refers to the land east of the Jordan as being on the other side of the Jordan, implying the author is on the west of the Jordan, a location that Moses supposedly never entered as punishment for smashing the first set of tablets to hold the Ethical Decalogue." I can see no proof of this in reading the book itself and indeed the phase "other side of the Jordan" can I find nowhere and any time "east of the jordan" is used it refers to where they where at the time not in referece to where they were not. Eleutherius 23:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The phrase is "beyond the Jordan": specifically, Deuteronomy begins with words to the effect: "These are the words spoken by Moses to Israel beyond the Jordon." (That's a quote from memory, but the general sense is thus). This implies that the writer is currently on the opposite side from where Moses did his speaking (or else that the children of Israel were on one side and Moses on the other, speaking across the river - which is hardly likely to be what the writer had in mind). Personally, I abhore language like "discourse" and feel that the whole sentence is barely literate, not to mention horribly wrong about the reason for Moses being forbidden to enter the Promised Land; nevertheless, the point it makes is a very old one, identified several centuries ago when the tradition of Mosaic authorship was first being questioned. The usual explanation given by those who wish to preserve the tradition is that these words were written by Joshua, who acted as secretary to Moses on his deathbed. The Joshua-secretary argument isn't accepted by modern biblical scholars - and hasn't been since the time of Spinoza - but it brings comfort to those who find textual criticism confronting, and I wouldn't like to take that comnfort away from them. The problem was well-known to our grandfathers, and in consequence many English-language bibles use phrases such as "on this side of the Jordan" instead of "across the Jordan": but "across" is what the Hebrew says. PiCo 11:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

thank you for clarifying. Im still a bit confused though. why is "beyond the jordon" imply the writer is not? i guess i understand why , but i dont see the certainty..Eleutherius 11:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] removing Apologetics section

I removed the section headed Aplogetics. I'm pasting it in here, with an explanation of why I removed it. The section is:

Most Orthodox Judaism scholars and Jews and many evangelical Christians believe, despite the ideas raised by the Talmudic rabbis, that the original author of the book was Moses, and that the book really was lost and recovered (e.g. [1]). Their apologetics argues that:

*The frequent references to it in the later books of the canon (Joshua 8:31; Kings&verse=2:3&src=! 1 Kings 2:3; Chronicles&verse=23:18&src=! 2 Chronicles 23:18; Chronicles&verse=25:4&src=! 2 Chronicles 25:4; Chronicles&verse=34:14&src=! 2 Chronicles 34:14; Ezra 3:2; Ezra 7:6; Nehemiah 8:1; Daniel 9:11-13) prove its antiquity. *Orthodox Jews point to testimony, within the Mishnah and Talmud, that Moses authored nearly all of Deuteronomy. *Christians identify further testimony of Mosaic authorship from the New Testament. Matthew 19:7-8, Mark 10:3-4, John 5:46-47, Acts 3:22 and Acts 7:37, and Romans 10:19, all establish the same conclusion.

The problem with this is that it's unscholarly, and spoils what is essentially quite a good and informative article. But to explain what I mean by unscholarly: Leaving aside the question of Orthodox Jewish scholars, the beliefs of "most Jews and many evangelical Christians" are immaterial when it comes to deciding whether or not Moses wrote Deuteronomy. If they haven't studied the scholarly debate, their opinions are uninformed. The problems of uninformed opinion are apparent from this section. It says, for example, that the book "claims to have ben written by Moses": it doesn't, in fact. What it does say is that Moses wrote a "scroll of torah" which was kept beside the Ark of the Covenant. This scroll is presumably the law-code contained in Deuteronomy, not the whole collection of 5 scrolls making up the modern Torah. And what weight are we toi give thios statement in Deuteronomy? This is where the whole scholarly debate begins: is Deuteronomy telling the truth or not? Maybe yes, maybe no, but to say that Deuternomomy must be telling the truth because it's in the bibler is a religious argument, not a scholarly one. Similarly, it says there are frequent references to the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy in "later books", and then cites Joshua - quite unaware that the scholarly view is that Joshua is by the same author as Deuteronomy. That view may be right or wrong, but the person who wrote this section was obviously unaware that it existed. Worse, it cites the views of New Testament writers as authoritative - but this is a religious argument, not a scholarly one. (Matthew may be authoritative on early Christian theology, but not on matters of OT scholarship). So for all these reasons and more, I'm deleting the section. PiCo 10:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

PiCo -

Deleting this is somewhat presumptive - it does need to be cleaned up, agreed, but that does not necessarily mean that the beliefs of Jews and evangelicals are immaterial when deciding whether or not Moses wrote Deuteronomy for it is exactly those people that claim to be inheritents of that religious tradition. This is a broader question of the value of traditional interpretations versus later scholarship and is not one to be addressed here by deleting the section. Why is it that when we look at the validity of early manuscripts (ie Homer, Roman religious manuscripts), scholars will look down the road at later translations and interpretations within the tradition to decide how an earlier manuscript might have been read or used but the same sense of the value of the internal traditional understanding is completely rejected when it comes to Christianity and Judaism. If Christ, himself a Jew, ascribes the words he cites as belonging to Moses, is that not a form of internal validation that should be accounted for in scholarship?

This section should be retained in some form - even if it is listed as "religious arguments for Mosaic authorship" or something similar.

Also, you say that "the scholarly view is that Joshua is by the same author as Deuteronomy" which is funny seeing as there is a great deal of scholarly contention about this. You have to be careful in your presentation as well, as the scholarly disagreement about the authorship of the pentateuch is as widely divided as are religious views about the pentateuch. Benjaminmarsh 04:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I've added an admittedly rough section on Evangelical scholarly views. It bears noticing these arguments given the great deal of writing done on the issue by evangelical and jewish authors. Simply removing the arguments is not warranted. Benjaminmarsh 23:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Benjaminmarsh, I must apologise for not answering your post - I don't have this page on my watchlist and simply didn't look at it agin after my visit back in February. Anyway, to come to business: My feeling is that there's no need to put Evangelical views in a separate section - they belong logically with traditional Jewish views. I'd be inclined to put all this discussion on authorship into a single section, titled Composition (or whatever you might prefer), with two sub-sections, one titled "Mosaic authorship", the other "Modern views" (taking 'modern' to mean anything after Spinoza, more specifically the development of the DH through Wellenhausen to contemporary times). It also needs to be shortened considerably. The Evangelical position can be mentioned within the first subsection - their arguments are not new, and the sentence can simply say that the Mosiac tradition is still held in Orthodox Jewish and conservative (Evangelical if you like) Christian circles. I do see a need to mention the Deuteronomistic history idea, but no more then a sentence or two. Cheers. PiCo 11:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
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