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Barrick, The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34
ETS Annual Meeting, November 14-16, 2001
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34."
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Indeed, Deuteronomy 34 is the expected conclusion of the Pentateuch when the
Mosaic corpus is viewed in the light of the major transitional pericopes.
Conclusion
The current tendency among evangelical scholars is to read Deuteronomy 34 in a
typical twenty-first century non-supernaturalistic mindset (which does not mean that they
deny supernaturalism, miracles, or divine inspiration of Scripture--just that the non-
supernaturalistic mindset is too easily adopted unless we are forced to abandon a more
natural explanation). Consistent with the norms of a post-biblical and modern frame of
reference, the two statements in verses 6 and 10 appear to require that someone other than
Moses wrote them.
The account of Moses' death appears to have been added to the end of the
Pentateuch long after the event. By the time this chapter was written, the
burial of Moses was so far in the past that the location of his grave was
uncertain to the writer: "To this day no one knows where his grave is" (v. 6).
Furthermore, a long succession of prophets has come and gone so that the
writer can say, "Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses" (v. 10).
Though added later, this chapter plays a major role in the interpretation of the
Pentateuch in its final form.
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For some biblical scholars, like Römer and Brettler, the final form of the Pentateuch
(specifically, the composition of Deuteronomy 34 as its conclusion) "reflects a conscious
effort by the redactors to create a Hexateuch."
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In other words, the chapter is the work of
a late editor attempting to provide a hinge for tying the Torah to subsequent sacred
history.
Perhaps evangelicals have allowed themselves to adopt aspects of critical
scholarship that are inherently inimical to divine revelation and to a supernaturalist frame
of reference. Rather than seeking a solution that preserves the integrity, unity, and early
date of a biblical book like Deuteronomy or a corpus like the Torah, we too readily adopt
a more naturalistic interpretation that would appear equally obvious to the unbelieving
mind. As Cleon Rogers so aptly demonstrated in regard to the problem of Numbers 12:3,
there is no need to start back pedaling when the text appears to challenge the concept of
Mosaic authorship. Sometimes that back pedaling ignores the obvious: Moses already
knew that which the reader at first thinks would be impossible for him to know. The
standards by which Moses is denied authorship sometimes reflects either an outright
rejection of Mosaic authorship for large portions of the Torah (e.g., Gen 48-49 and Deut
32-33) or at least an ignorance that would deny Moses knowledge of the future that even
Jacob had possessed, verbalized, and passed on to subsequent generations long before
Moses recorded it. It is as though Moses had become senile in his last days, forgetting
those things which he had already written, the experiences of his own lifetime, and the
special revelation which God had repeatedly granted him. Indeed, as the last factor would
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James W. Watts, "The Legal Characterization of Moses in the Rhetoric of the Pentateuch," Journal of
Biblical Literature 117/ (Fall 1998): 421.
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John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 478.
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Römer and Brettler, "Deuteronomy 34," 416.