Deuteronomy 1:1-21:9

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2003 by Merrill, Eugene H

Deuteronomy 1:1-21:9. By Duane L. Christensen. WBC 6A. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001, cxii 458 pp., $34.99; Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12. By Duane L. Christensen. WBC 6B. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002, Ii 456 pp., $39.99.

The initial issuance of this work appeared in 1991 with the publication of just Deuteronomy 1-11 as Volume 6A. Subsequently the publisher elected to undertake a greatly expanded section edition that brought the first up to date and added to it the remaining text of Deuteronomy up to 21:9. In the following year Volume 6B appeared, completing the whole book of Deuteronomy.

Readers familiar with the 1991 edition are well aware of Christensen's approach, one that features-indeed, is dominated by-exhaustive prosodic analysis of the Hebrew text at both a macro- and micro-analytical level. The result is a prodigious interaction with Deuteronomy as literature that is unequaled in the history of Deuteronomy scholarship. Having said that, it remains to be seen (1) whether or not the scrutiny of the text offered here conforms to Deuteronomy's intended reality; (2) if the exegetical process is furthered by this kind of approach; and (3) what kind of theological insight and justification are apparent as a result of the literary-analytical method that everywhere informs the work.

Before these matters and others are addressed it is important to draw attention to the lengthy introductions to both volumes (112 and 51 pages respectively). Here Christensen, in line with the practice of the Word Biblical Commentary in general, provides exhaustive bibliographies of commentaries on Deuteronomy as well as related studies; an introduction to the biblical book that includes attention to text criticism, a review of critical research, and a detailed outline of the book; and several excursuses that should not be overlooked if one hopes to understand Christensen's overall approach. These address (1) law, poetry, and music in ancient Israel; (2) Deuteronomy in the canonical process; (3) the triennial cycle of Torah readings in Palestinian Judaism; (4) the Numeruswechsel (alternation of second person singular and plural forms) in Deuteronomy; (5) Deuteronomy as a numerical composition; (6) travel notices in Deuteronomy 1-3 and 31-34; and (7) Holy War as celebrated event in ancient Israel. Most pertinent to Christensen's unique slant are points (1) and (3) above. Since (1) is especially crucial to his whole enterprise it deserves some attention at the outset.

As to the matter of poetry and music, Christensen goes so far as to suggest that the entire book of Deuteronomy is poetic in form and was sung on the occasion of the Feast of Booths (Deut 31:9). His major support for this contention is the antiquity of the Masoretic accentual system, which, he maintains, antedated the period of the Masoretes by a millennium or more (p. lxxxi). He adds to this his observations about the length of individual lines (mora count) and the distribution of accentual stress units as marked by disjunctive accents. He concludes that "the Hebrew text in its present form . . . is a musical composition" (p. lxxxv), "poetry in the broadest sense" (p. lxxxvi). Beyond this, Christensen proposes that the concentric structural features of the book also abet its poetic character since, as an epic, such structure lends itself to the liturgical use for which the book had been composed.

While it is refreshing to engage a work that takes seriously the unity of the composition of Deuteronomy in its earliest stages and that also makes a case for even such details as phonetically short or long syllables (i.e. morae) being original to the text, the historical evidence for the latter is wholly lacking. Appeal to the work of Suzanne Hait-Vantoura (The Music of the Bible Revealed [Berkeley: BIBAL, 1990]) counts for little since she makes only the case for the Masoretic accents as indicators of musical notation. This has little or nothing to do with length of tonality. In the end Christensen must depend on the Masoretic tradition of long and short vowels, a tradition that cannot be shown to antedate the Christian era. In fact, the only scholar he cites is J. Kurylowicz (Studies in Semitic Grammar, 1973) whose contribution was limited to a study of the distribution of accentual stress units. By setting his own system of morae count alongside Kurylowicz's syntactic accentual method Christensen has found they complement each other. The question is whether it is a natural, self-evident complementation or one contrived to make a case.

Lest it appear that this critique of Christensen's method seem overly lengthy and disproportionate to other aspects of his work, one should note his own assessment of its significance: "The system of counting morae is foundational to the present analysis of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy. It is by this means that the prosodie units were determined as well as the boundaries between them. [Morae counting and the accentual analysis of Kurylowicz] constitute a system that is the basis of a structural analysis of the entire book of Deuteronomy" (p. lxxxiii). One can see how the shape of Christensen's exegesis and even his theology are determined by the structure-no matter how convincing it might be-that he imposes on the text.