Title: The Deuteronomistic covenant and Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology : a study of the Deuteronomistic history in its historical context /
Authors: Thompson, Richard Jude.
Year: 2011
Subjects: Noth, Martin,; Deuteronomistic history (Biblical criticism); Covenants Religious aspects Judaism.; Judaism History; Law, Hittite.; Law Assyria; Covenants Middle East History.; Treaties History.
Abstract: "This study investigates Martin Noth's conclusion about the Deuteronomistic History (DH) that the people of Israel had committed apostasy (Abfall), ceased to obey the law code of YHWH, and thus lost their land. Scholars have challenged Noth's hypothesis and even the existence of such a history. The present study adopts a thematic reading of the DH as a coherent corpus of writing with a consistent message. A close reading reveals a god, YHWH, who declares war on other gods ... and commands his followers to conquer and to sanctify the mountain of the Emorites ... and the land of Canaan ... to YHWH. Throughout the DH YHWH and his spokespersons, the nebiim, reward obedience and punish disobedience. Because the disobedient people of Israel fail to enforce YHWH's command to remove the nations of Canaan and their elohim aherim, YHWH enforces imperial law and sentences them to national death and exile. This study hypothesizes that the DH depicts an imperial, military covenant. After a survey of the inscriptions of the second-millennium B.C.E. Levant, the Hittite empire, the Neo-Assyrian empire, and the first-millennium B.C.E. Levant, the study concludes with a hypothesis that the evidence points to the ideology of the Neo-Assyrian empire as the historical precedent for the Dtr covenant. The study challenges two presuppositions that underlie both the DH and its scholarship: that of the torah as law and that of YHWH as a unique god."--P. iii.
Contents: Problems with Noth's Deuteronomistic history -- The Deuteronomistic history : a close reading and hypotheses -- Did the Deuteronomistic covenant come from the Levant? -- Did the Deuteronomistic covenant derive from the Hittite treaties? -- Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology, policy, and law -- Did the Neo-Assyrian empire affect the Levantine Kingdoms? -- Did the Deuteronomistic covenant derive from Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology?