Shoftim (parsha) - in Critical Analysis

In Critical Analysis

Some secular scholars who follow the Documentary Hypothesis consider all of the parshah to have been part of the original Deuteronomic Code (sometimes abbreviated Dtn) that the first Deuteronomistic historian (sometimes abbreviated Dtr 1) included in the edition of Deuteronomy that existed during Josiah’s time. One exponent of the Documentary Hypothesis, Richard Elliott Friedman, argues that the laws of war in Deuteronomy 20 and 21 appear to be directed to the entire Israelite people, rather than a professional army, and thus appear to derive from a period before the monarchy and thus may come from sources much earlier than the balance of the Deuteronomic Code.

In these laws of war, the Masoretic Text of Deuteronomy 20:8 (as well as the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch there) refers to “officers” (שֹּׁטְרִים, shotrim), but one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDeutk2) refers to these leaders as “judges” (שֹּׁפְטִים, shoftim).