Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation

by Bernard M. Levinson

Positioned at the boundary of traditional biblical studies, legal history, and literary theory, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation shows how the legislation of Deuteronomy reflects the struggle of its authors to renew late seventh- century Judean society. Seeking to defend their revolutionary vision during the neo-Assyrian crisis, the reformers turned to earlier laws, even when they disagreed with them, and revised them in such a way as to lend authority to their new understanding of God's will. Passages that other scholars have long viewed as redundant, contradictory, or displaced actually reflect the attempt by Deuteronomy's authors to sanction their new religious aims before the legacy of the past.
Drawing on ancient Near Eastern law and informed by the rich insights of classical and medieval Jewish commentary, Levinson provides an extended study of three key passages in the legal the unprecedented requirement for the centralization of worship, the law transforming the old Passover into a pilgrimage festival, and the unit replacing traditional village justice with a professionalized judiciary. He demonstrates the profound impact of centralization upon the structure and arrangement of the legal corpus, while providing a theoretical analysis of religious change and cultural renewal in ancient Israel. The book's conclusion shows how the techniques of authorship developed in Deuteronomy provided a model for later Israelite and post- biblical literature.
Integrating the most recent European research on the redaction of Deuteronomy with current American and Israeli scholarship, Levinson argues that biblical interpretation must attend to both the diachronic and the synchronic dimensions of the text. His study, which provides a new perspective on intertextuality, the history of authorship, and techniques of legal innovation in the ancient world, will engage pentateuchal critics and historians of Israelite religion, while reaching out toward current issues in literary theory and Critical Legal Studies.

Genres: Old Testament, Biblical Studies

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Bernard M. Levinson is a professor of Classical and Near Eastern studies and of Law at the University of Minnesota and holds the Berman Family Chair of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible. He is a specialist in biblical and cuneiform law; Deuteronomy and the history of interpretation; and literary approaches to biblical studies. He is the author of Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel and "The Right Chorale": Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation. In 1999 Bernard was the co-recipient of the Salo W. Baron Award for Best First Book in Literature and Thought by the American Academy for Jewish Research for his book Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation.

The interdisciplinary significance of Bernard Levinson's work has been recognized with appointments to the Institute for Advanced Study (1997); the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin/Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (2007); and the National Humanities Center, where he served as the Henry Luce Senior Fellow in Religious Studies during the 2010-2011 academic year. He was also recently elected to be a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR), the oldest professional organization of Judaica scholars in North America.

Bernard Levinson seeks to bring the academic biblical scholarship to the attention of a broader, non-specialist readership. In this vein, he has recently written on the impact of the King James Version of the Bible upon the American Founding; drawn attention in the national press to the role of early feminist Bible scholars like Elizabeth Cady Stanton in helping win the vote for women; and, in his attention to language, has been cited in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book but would not recommend it to a general audience. I will probably write up a more detailed review later.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thesis of this book is that the book of Deuteronomy was a radical recasting of the earlier Covenant Code from Exodus in order to support the centralization of the Israelite cult in Jerusalem in the reign of Josiah. Then, because the sacrificial cult had been centralized, it meant that a whole new legal structure needed to be created. The local sacrificial cults were the seat of courts responsible for deciding legal disputes when the clan or town judge could not render a judgment due to lack of evidence. Since Deuteronomy banned the local sacrificial cults and centralized sacrificial worship of God in Jerusalem alone, the authors of Deuteronomy created new law by creatively interpreting the old law that allowed for the election of local appellate courts.