It is necessary to present the structure of Torah as a whole in order to decide the position and role of every literary unit in Torah. Torah shows the tripartite structure: A. Genesis, X. Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers, A´. Deuteronomy. The centre of Genes...
It is necessary to present the structure of Torah as a whole in order to decide the position and role of every literary unit in Torah. Torah shows the tripartite structure: A. Genesis, X. Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers, A´. Deuteronomy. The centre of Genesis is Gen. 25:19-36:43, Isaac’s toledoth; the centre of Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers is Exod. 31:18-34:35, covenant renewal due to the apostasy of golden calf; the centre of Deuteronomy is Deut. 9:7-10:11, the reminiscence of the wilderness rebellions. These three centres are tightly networked, centred about a theological theme of human rebellion and divine grace.
The final form of Deuteronomy can be judged to be a complexity of two genres, sermon and narrative. Deut. 1:6-11:28 belongs to the genre of sermon, which contains Moses’ reminiscence of Israelite past. It is remarkable that the deuteronomic reminiscence betrays lots of differences from tetrateuchal reports of past events. It is not reasonable to argue that the differences were created due to the deuteronomic characteristics as the genre of sermon. The overall comparison of Moses’ reminiscence with tetrateuchal reports including the episode of golden calf compels the study to argue for pre-existence of a penultimate version, which came to be adopted as Vorlage for the final text of Torah. The assumed penultimate one can be called as deuteronomistic version. It cannot be denied that the final edition of Torah has been completed on the basis of a certain dtr version.