Utnapishtim

I have been reading the excellent book The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. In it, Sagan claims that the book of Deuteronomy may be a hoax.

"There is no difficulty in understanding the motivation of the hoaxers. A more or less typical example is the book of Deuteronomy-discovered hidden in the Temple in Jerusalem by King Josiah, who, miraculously, in the midst of a major reformation struggle, found in Deuteronomy confirmation of all his views"

I have never heard of this before. Does anyone here know anything about this? Is this idea generally accepted among scholars, or is it the subject of skepticism?

CX

The bible itself says that a "second book of torah" was "discovered" by the High Priest Hilkiah during the reign of Josiah. Many scholars conclude that Deuteronomy is that book (Deuteronomy is from the Greek DEUTERO "Second" and NOMOS "law). Interestingly Deuteronomy is concerned mostly with Josiah and the reforms he made. Friedman suggests (as does Israel Finkelstein) that in fact the temple hierarchy wrote Deuteronomy during the reign of Josiah and then passed it off as an undiscovered book of moses for theopolitical reasons.

Evangelion

Utnapishtim - I guess the starting point here is the question of whether or not you accept the story of Josiah as a historical fact, and the person of Josiah as a historical person.

So... do you?

Love the Sumerian name, BTW.

Evangelion

Correct.

On what basis do they conclude that it must be Deuteronomy? The Biblical account refers to "the book of the Law", without stating any particular book by name.

Since "the book of the Law" was the common Hebraism for the entire Pentateuch (being used consistently in this way throughout the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, II Kings, II Chronicles & Nehemiah, not to mention Galatians 3) it is more logical to conclude that Hilkiah had discovered the entire thing, and not just one fifth of it.

Is it? I must have overlooked all those references to Josiah and his reforms, the last time I read Deuteronomy.

But I'm sure you have a wealth of quotes from the book itself, which prove this claim beyond all reasonable doubt...?

MortalWombat

Why is that relevant to his question of whether or not Sagan's claim is generally accepted by biblical scholars?

Evangelion

I never even suggested that this had anything to do with the question of whether or not his claim is generally accepted by Biblical scholars. That was your invention, not mine.

I am simply pointing out that, in order to be true, Sagan's claim requires (at the very least) the literal existence of Josiah and his contemporaries.

Remember, his claim is that the book originated in the time of Josiah, being fabricated by the priests. Very well. So far, so good.

But this only has legs if we accept that the alleged fraudsters were literal, historical people. Because if they weren't, then Sagan is asking us to accept that a bunch of non-existent people were responsible for the production of an obviously existing piece of early Jewish religious literature.

CX

I'm really not inclined to do your homework for you, but as far back as the early church fathers (including St. Jerome) it has been suggested that the book of law that Josiah heard was Deuteronomy.


Obviously I misspoke and you are either being contentious or ignorant. The deuteronomistic history is concerned greatly with Josiah and themes related to his reign and reforms. In the book of Deuteronomy itself, centralization of worship factors heavily and it was just this centralization that was a central plank of Josiah's platform. I'm sure none of this is news to you. And if it is I'd suggest doing some reading.

As I already stated I misspoke the point is the idea that Hilkiah found Deuteronomy is not a new one and was first advanced by orthodox Xians not modern secular scholars.

Utnapishtim

Honestly I have no idea as I am no expert on biblical archeology. My modestly educated guess would be that King Josiah likely was a real person, or at least based on a real person. That however is only my guess, and it is irrelevant what I think or don't think. I just want to know what is generally thought by scholars who are much more educated about such matters than I

Apikorus

Utnapishtim is not a Sumerian name; it is Assyro-Babylonian (i.e. Semitic). The Sumerian Utnapishtim was known as Ziusudra.

The identification of Deuteronomy (most likely "core Deuteronomy" = Deut 12-26) with the book "found" by Hilkiah (Josiah's high priest) has been around since de Wette in the early 18th century, and it is overwhelmingly accepted by biblical scholars today. Evangelion is of course being naive in the extreme (or willfully obtuse) in implying that one should, in this case, expect Josiah to be mentioned in Deuteronomy itself. The case for associating Deuteronomy with Josiah is quite clear. Josiah's reforms (see 1 Kgs 22-23) focussed on centralization of worship, destruction of aberrant/syncretistic shrines, worship of YHWH alone (monolatry), all of which are themes present in Deuteronomy.

Even in medieval times, several Jewish exegetes recognized problems with the traditional ascription of Deuteronomy to Moses. (E.g. the entire address is said to take place b'ever hayarden = "across the Jordan," hence is written from the viewpoint of someone West of the Jordan, Moses is sometimes referred to in the third person, Moses dies before the end of the book, etc. - trivial stuff.)

There is ample evidence for redaction within Deuteronomy itself. And Deuteronomy's relationship with other parts of the Pentateuch, most notably the covenant code in Exodus 21-23, is complex and quite interesting. One of the most nuanced treatments I've read is Bernard Levinson's Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation. For starters, though, Weinfeld's article "Deuteronomy" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary is a good source on how mainstream bible scholarship approaches the text. Maybe DrJim could provide some references to minimalist approaches.

Hypercredulous bibliophiles still insist that the Pentateuch was written by Moses. But this pre-critical view of Mosaic authorship has been dropped from mainstream biblical scholarship for over a century now.

DrJim

Utnapishtim,

There is no problem accepting Josiah as a real person. Whether or not he did anything said of him in the Hebrew Bible is the real issue.
The great majority of scholars would accept at least the general outlines of the 'Book and Reform' narrative in II Kings, although a lot of conventional thinking in Biblical scholarship is now under increasingly vocal attack from a lot of different directions (that combine to make the so-called 'minimalist' camp). They say it is uncritical to the point of gullibility to accept the story as a cornerstone of research into the history of the period without unambiguous external evidence (for which there is none).



The origins of Deut. is sometimes linked to a movement of people from the north (Israel) to Judah after the collapse of Samaria some time before Josiah. As time when on, according to this reconstruction, these 'deuteronomists' grew in influence in Judah. The story of the discovery of their foundational book has often been seen as a little too convenient to be taken at face value. Many have speculated that it was 'planted' to be found by the young king's men, but there is hardly a consensus on this point! Some say it was deposited there a long time earlier, and was realy discovered and accepted as the 'lost book' which explained Judah's troubles.

The modern connection between Kings and Deuteronomy is based on important phrases and ideological points shared between them (and other books, too), which has for decades lead many to talk of a 'Deueteronomistic History', (DtrH) spanning Joshua, Judg. Samuel and Kings'. That is, a history whose point is to show how Israel's fate depended on their obedience to God as defined by Deuteronomy. We have no idea what Deuteronomy was called in the time period in question (so too, Nubmers etc), but the most common view is that both Josiah and his biographers were motivated by a document that was at least an early version of Deut.

The situation is complicated by conflicting theories on the date of the DtrH: some say the original deuteronomistic historian was Josianic (Dtr1) in date and was writing to legitimize a pro-Deuteronomy (or pro-proto-deut) reform, while the death of the king and the exile of Judah were the additions of 'Dtr2' during the exile. THis is probably the majority view. Another is that the whole DtrH is due to one deuteronimist (or a series of them) during the exile, who incormporated a diversity of older documents. Most of this camp would still recognize some connection between the real Josiah and (proto-) Deuteronomy, again with a range of view on whether anything schemes 'behind the scenes' was going on. A number of scholars (not all of them 'minimalists'), have raised questions about the DtrH theory of late, although that age old connection between Kings and Deuteronomy is not likely to go away. It just needs a different kind of explanation.


More radically, some speculate that the Josiah narrative is a complete fiction from the Persian period, intended to give a new book, Deuteronomy, legitimacy. They would see in Kings the same sort of fabrication that they see in Joseph Smith's apparent discovery of the Book of Mormon, except that in the ancient case, the 'discovery' is itself accorded the legitimacy of antiquity (remember, it is the scribes etc. who control texts and therefore 'history'). Thus, for these schoalrs it is the account of Josiah's and the subsequent reform (sometimes labelled as his 'purge') that also qualifies as a 'hoax' (to use Sagan's term)! To them, it was not Josiah's advisers that tricked him, but the writer of Kings who made stuff up about Josiah, centuries later who is the hoaxster! Needless to say, the academic fur has hit the fan, and the debates will rage for ages to come...