Feet in the Wilderness, Eyes on the Promised Land

Abstract

ABSTRACT The book of Deuteronomy addresses Israel in the wilderness, poised to enter the promised land. The people have not yet arrived in the promised land, since they are still “on the other side of the Jordan” (Deut 1:1). But they have already wandered for forty years, and they now stand ready to enter the land, in what David M. Allen has described as a “Deuteronomic posture” of hopeful expectation. I examine how Deuteronomy itself captures and communicates something essential about the experience of the people of God, something that it makes available to future generations of faithful readers. After supplementing a synchronic reading of Deuteronomy with later targumic interpretations of the work, I look at instances of the same dynamic in late Second Temple literature, including 1 Maccabees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1 Corinthians, and Hebrews. Given the wide range of texts that adopt a Deuteronomic posture, I close with a treatment of the role a “Deuteronomic posture” might play in twenty-first-century conversations about Christian life in a post-Christendom world.