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The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34: Moses or a Redactor?

William D. Barrick

Professor of OT

The Master's Seminary, Sun Valley, CA

ETS Annual Meeting

November 14-16, 2001

Introduction

When I announced one year ago that I had chosen the authorship of Deuteronomy

34 as the topic for my 2001 National ETS paper, one concerned soul asked, "Why choose
a subject that no one will be interested in? Non-Mosaic authorship is irrefutable." Since
that time, three articles have been published on Deuteronomy in JBL,

Biblische

Zeitschrift,

and JETS.

In JBL and JETS the article was even the lead article for those

issues. Although the last was a study of more than Deuteronomy 34, the first two articles
were focused on that chapter. It looks as though, as usual, I am just behind the crest of the
wave. It is encouraging, however, to have independent confirmation that interest in
Deuteronomy 34 is not passé.

How does this topic fit into the theme of this year's theme ("Defining

Evangelicalism's Boundaries")? It is my contention that Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch should be preserved as one of the boundary markers of evangelicalism.
Deuteronomy 34 is the one portion of the Pentateuch that appears to have the strongest
argument against Mosaic authorship. As Herbert Wolf declared,

Any objective treatment of the authorship of the Pentateuch must take into
account those statements that call into question the likelihood that Moses
wrote them. The most obvious problem of course is the description of Moses'
death in Deuteronomy 34:1-12. Even the rabbis taught that these verses were
added by Joshua to complete the law, and conservative scholars have
generally agreed with this conclusion.

Thomas C. Römer and Marc Z. Brettler, "Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,"

Journal of Biblical Literature 119/3 (Fall 2000): 401-19.

Christian Frevel, "Ein vielsagender Abschied: Exegetische Blicke auf den Tod des Mose in Dtn 34,1-12,"

Biblische Zeitschrift 45/2 (2001): 209-34.

Daniel I. Block, "Recovering the Voice of Moses: The Genesis of Deuteronomy," Journal of the

Evangelical Theological Society 44/3 (Sept 2001): 385-408.

There are a number of articles and essays dealing with Deuteronomy 34 throughout the past decade. The

following are but a brief sampling: Philipp Stoellger, "Deuteronomium 34 ohne Priesterschrift," Zeitschrift
für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 105/1 (1993): 26-51; Félix García López, "Deut 34, Dtr History and
the Pentateuch," in Studies in Deuteronomy in Honour of C. J. Labuschagne on the Occasion of His 65th
Birthday, ed. by F. García Martínez, et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 47-61; Jeffrey H. Tigay, "The
Significance of the End of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 34:10-12)," in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A
Tribute to Menahem Haran, ed. by Michael V. Fox, et al. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 137-43;
and Jean-Pierre Sonnet, The Book within the Book: Writing in Deuteronomy, Biblical Interpretation Series,
14 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 183-98 ("`Before His Death' (Deut 32:48-34:12)").

Herbert Wolf, An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1991), 58-

59. The rabbinic reference to which he referred is Baba Bathra 14b.