Deuteronomic Code - Comparison To Other Torah Law Codes

Comparison To Other Torah Law Codes

With the Priestly Code, Deuteronomy is only remotely related, according to textual criticism, and there are certainly no verbal parallels. Some of the institutions and observances codified in the Priestly Code are indeed mentioned, mainly burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, heave-offerings, the distinction between clean and unclean, and rules about leprosy. However, they are destitute of the central significance with which they are placed in the Priestly Code.

Conversely, the distinction between priests and other Levites, the Levite cities, the jubilee year, the offering of cereal crops, sin-offerings, and Yom Kippur, which are fundamental institutions in the Priestly code, are not mentioned at all in the Deuteronomic Code. In the laws which do touch common ground, there are frequently large discrepancies, which in some cases are regarded irreconcilable by critical scholarship. In the documentary hypothesis, this large variation is explained, by the Code being identified as the work of a group of priests, centred at Shiloh, whom were rival to the Aaronid group to whom the Priestly Code is assigned.

Unlike the Priestly Code, with the laws contained in the Holiness Code, the Deuteronomic Code has some parallels, chiefly moral injunctions. Nevertheless, although in such cases the substance is often similar, the expression is nearly always different, for example the commandment concerning mourning at Deuteronomy 14:1 reflects Leviticus 19:28, and likewise the commandments of mixing kinds, at Leviticus 19:15 is reflected at Deuteronomy 16:19-20, but both occur in quite different phrasing. Thus it can not be said that the legislation of Deuteronomy is in any sense an expansion or development of the Holiness Code itself, although the underlying laws appear to have a greater affinity.

As far as critical scholarship is concerned, the Covenant Code, and the Ritual Decalogue which partially repeats it, can be seen to form the foundation of the Deuteronomic legislation. This is evident partly from the numerous verbal coincidences, whole clauses, and sometimes even an entire law, being repeated verbatim, and partly from the fact that frequently a law in Deuteronomy consists of an expansion, or application to particular cases, of a principle laid down more briefly in the Covenant Code or Ritual Decalogue. This can, for example, be seen in Deuteronomy 16:1-17, concerning the three annual feasts, which are described very basically in the Covenant Code, at Exodus 23:14-17. The civil and social enactments which are new to Deuteronomy make provision chiefly for cases likely to arise in a more highly organised community than is contemplated in the legislation of the Covenant Code, and therefore critical scholarship regards the Deuteronomic Code as a development of the Covenant Code reflecting the increased organisation of society in the time between the two.

Repeatedly and pointedly the older laws of the Covenant Code are restated in Deuteronomy in terms which inescapably suggest the influence of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah. The difference between the two codes may be summarised as further tempering law on behalf of the offender, and providing a still more merciful view with respect to the weak, and powerless. It is a matter of dispute whether the author knew the Covenant Code and Ritual Decalogue as separate works, or after they had been united into JE, as rather than copying, the laws of the Deuteronomic Code are variously free modification or enlargement of them. Consequently, amongst critical scholarship, some think it to be simply an enlarged edition of the old code, whereas others feel it to have been intended as a replacement.

In the Deuteronomic Code, it is strictly laid down that sacrifice is to be offered at a single central sanctuary. However, in the Tanakh, from the Book of Joshua to the Books of Kings (I Kings 6), sacrifices are frequently described as offered in various parts of the land, without any suggestion, by either the characters present in the narrative, or the narrator themselves, that any law, such as that of Deuteronomy, is being broken. Other laws appear to more specifically point to a terminus post quem, after which the code must have been composed. The law concerning the king, and the prohibitions against multiplying horses, multiplying wives, and multiplying silver and gold, at Deuteronomy 17:14-20, appears to be coloured by reminiscences of Solomon (c. 950 bce), and the forms of idolatry referred to, especially worship of the host of heaven, as described at Deuteronomy 17:3, appear to refer to behaviour during the reign of Ahaz (c. 730 bce).