Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation.

• Author: SETERS, JOHN VAN
• Position: Review

Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation. By BERNARD M. LEVINSON. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS, 1997. Pp. 205. $39.95.

This book, E comprehensive revision of the author's Brandeis doctoral dissertation under Michael Fishhane, "is concerned with how the authors of Deuteronomy drew on and transformed earlier literary sources in order to mandate a major transformation of religion and society in ancient Israel" (p. vii). Levinson begins by accepting two scholarly postulates as beyond dispute, the dating of the Covenant Code (Exod. 20:22-23:33) before Deuteronomy and the close association of Deuteronomy with Josiah's centralization reform (2 Kings 22-23). To legitimate a radical religious and social reform, the authors of Deuteronomy made use of the authoritative legal text of the Covenant Code, reinterpreting and reworking it into a radically different code for a new world order. By identifying certain editorial devices, such as that of repetitive resumption, Levinson can observe the way in which the Deuteronomic authors constructed their texts from earlier literary sources.

The scope of the work does not consider all of Deuteronomy and all comparisons that could be made with the Covenant Code, but is restricted to three key areas. The first, in chapter two, is the transformation of sacrificial worship by its centralization, in which the older law of the altar in Exod. 20:24 is viewed as radically revised by the core stratum in Deut. 12:13--19, 20--28. The second area of discussion, in chapter three, is the transformation of Passover and Unleavened Bread in Deut. 16:1--8. The ancient family-oriented Passover, as reflected in the pre-D source of Exod. 12:21--27, is revised into a festival at a central sanctuary and its apotropaic character is turned into a celebration of the exodus. The festival of Unleavened Bread, as reflected in Exod. 13:3--10 and 23:14, 17, is removed from the festival calendar and made into a secular local observance. The resulting difficult text of Deut. 16:1--8 is thereby explained as the conflation of these two religious innovations.

The third concern, in chapter four, has to do with the transformation of the system of justice as reflected in Deut. 16:18--17:13. Here it is not a comparison with the text of the Covenant Code but a reconstruction of the pre-Deuteronomic system of local-clan justice by elders. A new system of secularized local professional judges is created along with a central court of...