The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction

Abstract

The So-Called History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction, by Thomas Romer. London: T&T Clark, 2006. Pp. x + 202. $100.00. (hardcover). ISBN 0567040224. For some time now there has been a need for an up-to-date, comprehensive treatment of the History that both deals with the confusion of recent views in the debate over this corpus of texts from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings and offers a clearly articulated and balanced presentation of its critical analysis as a whole. This introduction fulfills all of those expectations very well. Thomas Romer has been actively engaged in research and publication in this field for over two decades, and this particular work, which has been in the making for some time, has finally appeared. After a short introduction for the uninitiated reader or student, followed by a brief survey of the content of the biblical corpus under examination, Romer gives us a concise review of past scholarship on the History down to the present state of the discussion, with special focus on the seminal work of Martin Noth and the subsequent reactions and modifications to his work, and in some cases its outright rejection. Romer examines the key issues of what it means to label this corpus Deuteronomistic and whether or not it is appropriate to call it a history. With these preliminaries addressed, Romer sets forth his thesis of a school or guild whose work extended from the time of Josiah, through the Babylonian exile, to the restoration in the early Persian period, producing in stages the literary corpus that now makes up the texts of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings in three successive editions. While the ideology originated in the cultic reform of Josiah, each new historical set of circumstances led to modifications in viewpoint that are now reflected in the additional redactional layers. Romer finds these three successive editorial layers already evident within the centralization law in Deuteronomy 12 and sets out to apply this observation to the rest of the corpus in the following chapters. In ch. 4 Romer lays out the social and historical context of the Neo-Assyrian period, which scholars find so strongly reflected in cultural and imitation in parts of Deuteronomy and Joshua, but not in Judges, and in parts of the stories of David and Solomon, as well as the history of the monarchies down to the time of Josiah. From these dues Romer reconstructs a small library collection consisting of a first edition of Deuteronomy, a story of the conquest by Joshua found primarily in Joshua 6-12, and a first history of the monarchy from David to Josiah. The function of these works was primarily as propaganda to offer ideological support for the politics of centralization and for the claim that the kingdom of Judah was the 'real Israel' after the demise of the northern kingdom. Likewise, in ch. 5 Romer describes the social and historical conditions of the NeoBabylonian period and the exile as the context in which he sees the next edition of the History. This edition reflects a mandarin scribal group of former royal bureaucrats who created an ideology of exile (in contrast to the perspectives of priest and prophet) and who constructed a comprehensive history of Israel and Judah from Moses to the end of the monarchy with an attempt to account for the great disaster as divine punishment. This led not only to extensive supplementation of Deuteronomy and Joshua, making them part of the larger history, but also to the creation of the period of the judges out of old northern hero tales to bridge the gap to the time of the monarchy. Key passages were added at appropriate points of the history, but most extensively in Deuteronomy, and were made specially for the audience of the Golah. It is apparently only at this time that the royal edict of Josiah inaugurating cultic reform became the law of Moses against which the whole history of the people was judged. …