JPS Torah Commentary: by Jeffrey H. Tigay. Philadelphia/Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. Pp. 1 + 548. $60.00. goal of Tigay's extensive critical commentary on Deuteronomy is determined by the program of the JPS Torah Commentary Series: to build on the venerable tradition of classical Jewish commentary by adding the insights and fruits of modern Jewish critical scholarship. comprises an introduction (pp. xi-xxxi: themes in issues of historical-critical scholarship, Deuteronomy in Jewish tradition), glossary and abbreviations (pp. xxxiii-xliii), maps (pp. xlv-1), text, commentary, and critical notes (pp. -413), and an extensive set of 33 excursuses with notes on wide-ranging topics from historical geography and vassal treaties to child sacrifice and cultic prostitution (pp. 41748). volume is more than a handful, physically, and left-to-right readers must adjust their habits of handling. English-language translation, commentary, and notes are all subordinated to the right-to-left Hebrew original supplied, complete, throughout the commentary. Biblical scholars will find that the commentary is conservative in historical orientation (e.g., excursus 6, p. 433, puts monotheism's origins at Moses' feet [in the train of Kaufmann and Albright]) and in historical-critical methodology (e.g., excursus 29, a lengthy explanation and defense of source criticism as a tool to understand literary repetition and disjunction in Deuteronomy 31). Deuteronomy is identified as the book of the torah, catalyst of Josiah's reform, composed, at least in part, shortly before the reform of 622 BCE. literary connections between 2 Kings 22-23 show a real historical link, not literary jury-rigging. Both early (Moses) and late (Ezra-Nehemiah) datings are ruled out by a combination of ideological and geographical hints in Deuteronomy that point to authorship in a latter-seventh-century refugee community, whose reform movement was transplanted to Judah from the northern kingdom in the wake of Assyrian expansion (pp. xxiii-xxiv). Tigay does take some pluralistic pains to show that the traditional Jewish hermeneutic of harmonistic interpretation has its own validity (p. 428). At the same time, he tries to coax traditionalist readers toward the historicalcritical model of biblical literary production and history (p. 429; cf. excursus 18, pp. 470-72). Tigay places that same Jewish audience in historical-critical debt as he describes the history and deuteronomic origins of contemporary liturgy (shema, excursus 10) and religious appurtenances (tellin and mezuzot, excursus 11). commentary offers a wealth of exegetical detail on every page, supplemented by lengthy excursuses. Modern readers puzzled or put off by the legal material in the Pentateuchal books will find illuminating explanations of the logical organization of Deuteronomy's laws (pp. 446-59), of the extensive list of curses in Deuteronomy 28 (pp. 489-93) and their background in the genre of ancient Near Eastern treaty formulation (pp. 494-97). Excursus 1, The Historical Geography of Deuteronomy, sets a fine antiquarian mood for the remaining thirty-two excursuses, with a complete inventory of deuteronomic place-names prefaced by an instructive introduction to the perils and potential rewards of geographical exegesis: References to secondary literature on Deuteronomy are wide-ranging, though not exhaustive. …