RBL 11/2007 Veijola, Timo Das fünfte Buch Mose (Deuteronomium): Kapitel 1,1 16,17 Das Alte Testament Deutsch 8.1 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. Pp. x + 366. Paper. 56.00. ISBN 3525511388. Christoph Levin Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen Munich, Germany Old Testament scholarship suffered a great loss with the death of Professor Timo Veijola of Helsinki, who succumbed to a severe psychiatric illness on 1 August 2005. His death has prematurely deprived us of one of the most important biblical scholars of recent decades, one whose contributions to the study of Deuteronomism are of pioneer importance and will always belong to the foundations of our scholarship. We must therefore be all the more grateful that during the year before his death Professor Veijola was able to complete the first volume of his commentary on Deuteronomy. This work has become his scholarly legacy. Although the commentary treats only the first half of the book, its lines are so clearly drawn that it is easy to deduce what he thought about Deuteronomy as a whole. The commentary will long set the standard for Deuteronomic research. According to the judgment of Lothar Perlitt (whose commentary deviates from Veijola s in many respects) it is the only modern Deuteronomy commentary with which a dialogue is absolutely required and profitable (Deuteronomium [BKAT 5.4; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2006], 297). The Finish exegete wrote his commentary in flawless German, and his work impressively documents the importance of German as an international language for biblical studies. The only blemish is due not to the author but to the publisher, who had
the book printed in the new German spelling, which is sometimes ungrammatical and nonsensical. An English translation would be rewarding. The volume consists almost entirely of the commentary proper, with the sole addition of a brief introduction of six pages and a bibliography. A summary is lacking, for this Veijola would have written only after completion of the commentary as a whole. The interpretation takes full account of the contemporary debate, although the commentary must have been prepared by many decades of other studies. The relevant literature that had appeared almost up to the publication of the commentary is taken into account. The text is based on the Masoretic Text, which is only in rare cases emended in 1:4, 25; 2:8, 37; 4:10, 33, 37; 5:14, 24; 10:13; 11:24, 30; 14:13; 15:7, 9; 16:6 on the basis of the transmitted text; and in 4:36; 6:3; 11:2; and 14:8 in the author s own emendation. The division follows the given arrangement of the text. Moses first address runs from 1:1 4:43, the second begins in 4:44 ( 28:68). Both discourses have an extensive heading (1:1 5; 4:44 49). The first is divided into a retrospective survey of salvation history (1:6 3:29), the great exhortation to obey the First Commandment (4:1 40), and a coda on the cities of refuge (4:41 43). The second address deals first with the divine covenant (5:1 11:30) and then with the conditions of the covenant (from 11:31 onwards). At 16:17 the commentary breaks off. Within the various sections Veijola discovers many significant correspondences. He offers instructive observations about the structure of the section 12:2 16:17, which deals in the narrower sense with the rights of divine privilege (328 29). In the individual pericopes too Veijola follows the structure of the text. Consequently, some sections of the commentary cover forty and more verses (4:1 40; 9:1 10:11; 10:12 11:30) while others deal with no more than three verses (on 1:6 8; 4:41 43; 11:31 12:1). Although the text is treated with equal intensity, there are sections where Veijola writes more succinctly, and there are points of particular emphasis. Both relatively and absolutely, the excellent interpretation of the Decalogue is the most detailed part (125 73) and forms the center of the volume. Veijola does not follow the fashion particularly prevalent in Deuteronomy exegesis of interpreting the text as a unit planned as such from its inception. Instead, he acknowledges the literary heterogeneity, which leaps to the eye of every attentive reader. This can only be emphatically welcomed. The nonanalytical exegesis, which goes on interpreting the text until it is possible to see it as a unity, is very much more forced than the analytical method! That does not mean that Veijola fails to give proper appreciation to the final form. As the final outcome of the text s development, this is regularly the point of departure for the interpretation.
Veijola dates the Ur-Deuteronomy to the period of King Josiah. He sees it as a reforming law that pushes forward the centralization in Jerusalem of the sacrificial cult. The Book of the Covenant, Exod 20:24 23:19, constitutes the most important Vorlage. It was reworked to serve the cult s centralization. This revision also aimed at a social reform. Consequently, Deuteronomy s characteristic ethic already goes back to the first version. Veijola presumes that it was sponsored by a broadly based national religious reform movement (3). In its original form the book had 4:45* as heading, and the Shema and its exhortation to memorization in 6:4 9* as introduction. Otherwise the text of Ur-Deuteronomy as far as the interpretation goes comprises only the commandment to present burnt offerings solely at the central sanctuary (12:13 14), the commandment to eat there the tithe as well as the firstling and votive offering (12:17 18; 14:22 29*; 15:19 22a), and the concession with regard to the profane slaughtering (12:21*). In addition, the earliest law contains social regulations, such as the forgiveness of debts (15:1 2, 7, 8-9*) and the manumission of slaves (15:12 14a, 16 18a). The last section dealt with in this volume are the regulations about the feast-day calendar (16:1 6a, 9 11, 13 17). The earliest stratum consists of forty-five Masoretic verses or part-verses and hence does not extend beyond the first chapter of today s book (forty-six verses). Measured against 1:1 16:17, Ur- Deuteronomy comprises no more than a tenth of the existing text. This conclusion is probably realistic. Like Martin Noth, Veijola ascribes the integration into the course of the narrative to the Deuteronomistic Historian (DtrH), who, he believes, wrote round about 560 B.C.E. Veijola adheres to the caesura between Genesis to Numbers, on the one hand, and Deuteronomy to Kings, on the other. In his view, the earliest expansion of the command for centralization in 12:8 12 already looks forward to the books of Kings, which means that the heart of Deut 1 4 must already be ascribed to DtrH (60 verses or part-verses, out of 112 verses). Here the redactor has picked up earlier traditions and has retold a selection of events from Num 10 onwards. For the Vorlage in the book of Numbers, Veijola adheres to the Documentary Hypothesis, basing this on Ludwig Schmidt, Die Kundschaftererzählung in Num 13 14 und Dtn 1,19 46, ZAW 114 (2002): 40 58. Veijola interprets the literary development within Deuteronomy on the basis of the scheme of the so-called Göttingen school, according to which the first redactor, DtrH, is followed by a Deuteronomist DtrP, who is orientated toward prophecy, and a nomistic Deuteronomist DtrN, whose concern is obedience to the law. DtrP is the one who included the Decalogue in 5:1 6:1. The supposition of DtrP as redactor is born out by the fact that in Deut 5 Moses is presented as a prophetic mediator of revelation. Veijola is also able to show that the commandments in the primary version of the Decalogue have their origin in the prophetic proclamation, above all in Jer 7:9. The distinguishing feature of DtrN is its stress on the role of Moses as the teacher and interpreter of the Torah. Veijola
finds traces of this revision in chapters 1; 4 7; 9 11 (forty-three verses or part-verses in all), although not in the body of the laws. Over and above the Göttingen scheme, Veijola assumes the existence of a DtrB, whom he assumes to have been a pupil of DtrP and DtrN, writing in the early postexilic period, that is to say, toward the end of the sixth century (in all, 127 verses or part-verses in Deut 4 16, which is rather more than a third of the text). According to his own words, Veijola took over the hypothesis of this covenant-theology Deuteronomist from Christoph Levin, who put it forward in 1985. I am pleased and honored that my discovery should have proved its worth as a key to the literary history of Deuteronomy. At the same time, Veijola has somewhat modified the hypothesis. In my dissertation Die Verheißung des neuen Bundes (FRLANT 137; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 84 110, I showed that the covenant theology that determines the structure and thrust of the present book was still unknown to the preexilic Ur-Deuteronomy, and I tried to show in contrast how the covenant-theology form developed step by step through the mediation of literary additions. The conclusion that there was a coherent covenant-theology revision was first drawn by Veijola. I do not use sigla such as DtrP and DtrN, let alone would I have augmented them on my own account by a DtrB. Admittedly, Veijola assumes that DtrB was not an individual, any more than was DtrP and DtrN, but rather represents a small group of like-minded redactors (5). This DtrB gave Deuteronomy its consistent thrust toward the First Commandment. The cultic unity that was the aim was complemented by cultic purity, as we can see especially clearly from 12:2 7 (DtrB) if it is compared with 12:13 14 (Ur-Deut.). The most significant text in this revision is 12:28 13:19, an easily recognizable interpolation that describes three cases of enticement to idolatry with threatened sanctions, on the (political) pattern of vassal treaties. It is also easy to see from this chapter that DtrB links prophecy with the Torah. The references to the Deuteronomistic edition of the book of Jeremiah are particularly clear (288). For Veijola a further observation has moved into the center in recent years: that the Deuteronomists were the precursors of the scribes. There is a line of tradition that runs from the interpretation that can already be found in the Bible itself, down to later rabbinic exegesis. The growth of Deuteronomy was a continuous, century-long literary process. It was stimulated by a multitude of associations, theological insights, and religious concerns. Consequently, many of the additions cannot be traced back to overriding revisions but must be understood as commentaries on the passage. Veijola mentions as motifs the anathematizing of the country s indigenous population (7:25 26; 13:16 18*), the unconditioned love of God and Israel s lack of righteousness (4:36 40*; 7:7 11; 9:1, 3 6), the central position given to the Sabbath in the Decalogue and the social ethic associated
with it (5:12 15; 15:15; 16:3*, 12), as well as the Levites claim to the priesthood (10:8 9; 12:12*, 19; 14:27, 29*). The priestly concern with regulations about sacrifice and dietary injunctions might also be mentioned (e.g., 12:22 27; 14:12 20; 16:3*, 4*, 8 9a, 16*). The latest of these revisions already presuppose the existence of the Priestly Source, and 11:29 30 even implies the Samaritan schism. The sequence of expansions reaches almost as far as the canonization of the Pentateuch round about 300 B.C.E. (5). Thus the development of the text extends over about three centuries, from the first redactional shaping until the final form. Anyone who really engages with the wording of the Hebrew text will soon be forced to conclude, without any alternative, that the existing version developed through a process of textual self-interpretation. Veijola shows the reader how it grew by way of indentations and not infrequently also through the use of brackets. These greatly help the reader to trace the literary historical development of the text. There is, in fact, not a single pericope that is not marked in this way. The earliest stratum always begins at the left-hand margin. Which stratum it is can vary. DtrN and DtrB can also provide the foundation on which the respective pericope developed. Readers must therefore take their bearings afresh in every pericope. At the beginning of each pericope, readers are given the necessary information about the growth of the text. The interpretation follows the literary stages, not the course of the text. In this way it traces the process of theological reflection that stimulated the literary growth. The commentary offers an excellent reading text that is able to fascinate not only the expert but also the theological laity as well as those engaged in practical work. Veijola draws on the whole gamut of the exegetical apparatus, but the exegesis never becomes an end in itself, and scholarship never departs from its ancillary role. In an often surprising and illuminating way the reader learns to listen for the changing kerygmata and to develop a sense for the way Deuteronomy s Sitz im Leben shifts, step by step, in the course of the postexilic centuries. Insight into the text s changing relation to its situation is also the most direct path that leads from the biblical text to preaching today. It is this preaching that the commentary wishes to serve. It is written with great theological commitment. Notwithstanding his respect for the historical conditions of the text s development, Veijola is convinced of its binding religious character. This conviction is not always easy to maintain, for many injunctions must already have been unrealistic even when they were promulgated. The social and historical relation of Deuteronomy is a problem that can as little be solved through the ecclesiological interpretation of contemporary Catholics as it can through the Word-of-God theology of Lutherans (among whom Veijola is to be numbered). In so far as a relation to reality is conceivable, many regulations are so tied to their own time and situation that they do not fit the
conditions of life today. Others again, and not a few, maintain a policy of rigorous religious separation that is in contradiction to ethical principles. The sanctions in the case of idolatry are cruel, and there is also a religiously justified double moral standard that distinguishes between the obligations toward the brother belonging to God s people and the stranger. One can only come to terms with precepts of this kind if they are viewed as the reverse side of the commandment to worship Yahweh alone and if this exclusiveness is the response to Yahweh s loving commitment to his people. The First Commandment makes of Israel a contrast society which is not permitted to avoid conflict with others if it is to preserve its existence as God s people (195, following Georg Braulik). Veijola continually compares Martin Luther s interpretation, for whom Deuteronomy teaches faith best and who there finds again his theology of the Word. Luther, for example, interprets Deut 13 as the conflict between trust in the Word of God and trust in worldly ties and authorities (293 n. 1004). Luther interprets the regulation in 15:17 about piercing the slave s ear as follows: The ear means the obedience with which he bows to the commandment (320 n. 1147). In his notes Veijola points to many interpretations of this kind. He also always has an eye for the rabbinic interpretation. The rabbis had a fine feeling for the practability of the commandments, for example in the case of the year of release (15:1 11; see p. 312). The commentary shows its extraordinary quality in its firm ties with the text. But it could be written only because Veijola had a concept about the literary development. Anyone who lacks an overall picture of this kind will offer no more than detailed explanations, which may well be learned and interesting but do not open up an understanding of the whole. A concept of this kind is not to be had without some simplifications. Veijola has tried to consolidate the ongoing growth of the text that he so clearly perceived into a few main revisions. This has the advantage that the caesuras in the history of the theology can be clearly perceived, and it is these caesuras that are important that is to say, an understanding of the changing theological motivations that stimulated the growth of the text. But the consolidation into more extensive strata also calls for many decisions of judgment that lay it open to dispute. To give some examples: Veijola distinguishes the prohibition of images in 5:8 from its later interpretation in Deut 4, an interpretation that is in itself divided into several layers. Yet he attributes both to DtrB. Even though he admits that DtrB was rather a small group (5), he still talks about it as if a single, individual editor or author were at work. In order to make this possible, he even relativizes the change of number in the forms of address, which is one of the most important criteria in literary analysis. DtrB, he claims, writes both you plural and you singular (98). To say this can only be correct insofar as even the crassest disturbance of the coherence is not permitted to become the analytical principle.
If the entities DtrB and DtrN are not literary units in the strict sense, their mutual demarcation is also relativized. The distinction appears artificial in some respects, for Torah and covenant belong together. But if one nevertheless wishes to make the distinction, the sequence that Veijola assumes is stood on its head, for the nomism follows from the idea of the divine covenant, not the divine covenant from the nomism. DtrB should be the teacher of DtrN, not the pupil. With this premise, the placing of the Decalogue particularly becomes a difficulty. Like most exegetes, Veijola adheres firmly to the view that the Decalogue originally belonged to Exod 20 and was then taken over to Deut 5, and for this he gives numerous reasons (130 31, 149 50). However, in his view the prohibition of images and the Sabbath commandment were not yet in existence when Exod 20 was taken over to Deut 5. The prohibition of images was added for the first time in Deut 5:8 and was taken into Exod 20:4 from there. Veijola ascribes it to DtrB (156 58), from which the comment on it in Deut 4 also derives. Even later, in the fifth century, the Sabbath commandment was expanded in Exod 20:8 10. It derives from a revision characterized by the later linguistic usage of the Priestly Source (161). When it was subsequently inserted into Deut 5:12 14, it was expanded by the explanation given in verse 15. The deviating explanation given in Exod 20:11 is a later reaction to Deut 5:15. For this view Veijola refers to his well-founded theory that the Sabbath in the form of the weekly Sabbath came into being because of the Sabbath commandment in the Decalogue, when after the exile the Sabbath as well as circumcision advanced to become the nota ecclesiae in Israel (161). The reason for the complicated relationship between the two versions of the Decalogue is that, while Veijola perceives that the development of the weekly Sabbath must be dated to the fifth century B.C.E., he wishes to assign the Decalogue itself to the late period of the monarchy. The date he gives for the First Commandment is about 600 B.C.E. (150). It would be simpler, and therefore more probable, if the Decalogue except of course for the reason for the Sabbath commandment given in Exod 20:11 (and Deut 5:15) was fully developed before the doublet in Deut 5 came into existence. Once this is presupposed, the Decalogue cannot have been taken over into Deuteronomy before the fifth century. The sequence of the literary strata in Deut 4 11 must differ from the one Veijola proposes. This is also suggested by other considerations. Veijola judges that [in the Decalogue] the Prologue and the First Commandment, which hold the whole series together, show features characteristic of Dtn/Dtr throughout (150). In addition, the prologue to the Decalogue corresponds to the previous history that emerges in vassal treaties with the following fundamental declaration, where the overlord puts forward the good things he has done in the past as foundation for the special relationship between him and the vassal (152). The religious relationship is thought of in political categories. These
observations contravene the conclusion that the First Commandment already came into being about 600 B.C.E., for under preexilic conditions, the relationship to God conceived in political categories would naturally have drawn in the king, who acted as mediator between the Deity and the people. This still shows itself inasmuch as the Decalogue addresses a singular you : I am Yahweh, your [sing.] God. But the Decalogue is directed from the outset to everyone in Israel, without any intermediary authority. A transformation of the relationship to God of this kind one that ignores the king is conceivable only after the end of the Judean monarchy. If this premise is correct, then the importance of the covenant-theology revision for the development of Deuteronomy is still greater than Veijola assumes. In my view, it is not merely the framework as we have it today that goes back to this revision; with this step law became a component part of the relationship to God which was hitherto the case neither in the Book of the Covenant nor in Josiah s Ur-Deuteronomy. Through covenant theology the theological law came into being. But the quintessence of this theological law is the Decalogue, with the First Commandment at its heart. It is hardly conceivable that the Decalogue, as the Magna Carta of the Old Testament s divine covenant, is earlier than the genesis of covenant theology. Consequently, the Decalogue cannot have been carried over into Deuteronomy before Deuteronomy underwent the covenant-theology revision. Otherwise the covenant-theology revision of Deuteronomy must have originated in the Decalogue. But Veijola does not draw this conclusion, and rightly so, for the position of the Decalogue in the structure of Deuteronomy speaks against this assumption. In my own hypothesis I have therefore interpreted the origin of the Ur-Decalogue in Exod 20 as a parallel phenomenon to the covenant-theology framework of Deuteronomy (Die Verheißung des neuen Bundes, 89 110). If this assumption is correct, the Decalogue was not inserted into Deuteronomy before DtrB but only afterwards. Since the interpretation of the Decalogue in Deut 4 is later still, the old assumption that the paraenetic prologue has its starting point in Deut 6 retains its probability. For Veijola, this prologue belongs from the outset to the Ur-Deuteronomy, which therefore does not begin in Deut 12 but (after the heading 4:45*) in 6:4. He interprets the Shema to mean Yahweh is one alone, that is to say, Yahweh is the only God for us. In this way the First Commandment and the Sh e ma Israel interpret each other mutually (178). This fits in with the early date for the Decalogue that Veijola maintains. However, for this he has first to exclude the commandment of love in 6:5, which belongs to the covenant-theology context, as being an interpolation by DtrB. Formally speaking this is entirely possible. Veijola thinks that another interpretation of the Shema is certainly possible but less probable: the reading Yahweh is one, which contrasts the oneness of
Yahweh with the multiplicity of his forms of appearance in the local sanctuaries. Although this view cannot fundamentally be rejected, it is none the less improbable in view of the fact that in Deuteronomy the reason given for the centralization of the cult is never the nature of the one Yahweh (178). However, in the earliest Deuteronomy as Veijola reconstructs it, the Shema directly precedes the commandment about the uniqueness of the cultic site. One serious question has to do with the redaction history of Deut 1 3. Veijola assigns the center of the historical prologue to the Deuteronomistic Historian, DtrH, who wrote round about 560 B.C.E., but this judgment is incompatible with the recent development of Pentateuch criticism. Even if we presuppose that the Documentary Hypothesis still provides the best foundation, there are exegetical reasons for the questions that have recently been raised about the compass and date of the Yahwist and the Priestly sources that Ludwig Schmidt cannot eliminate. Judging by the Yahwist s selection of narrative sources and measured against his kerygma, which is related to the Jewish Diaspora, this source must be immediately preexilic or exilic. With this premise, the Yahwist material would have had to be taken almost at its inception from the book of Numbers into Deut 1 3. This is unrealistic. It has become very improbable for many reasons to see Deut 1 3 as going back to DtrH and as having with these chapters begun the Deuteronomistic History. Consequently, how to fit Deuteronomy into the sequence of historical events is a problem still unsolved. It is not by chance that Veijola does not attribute to DtrH but to later editors the sentences scattered throughout the Deuteronomic corpus Deut 12 26 that relate the obedience demanded to the impending occupation of the land. A good commentary does not put an end to the exegetical debate but rather stimulates it. Veijola s commentary will long prove fruitful for Deuteronomic research. For both external and internal reasons, it is improbable that anyone will be in a position to complete the interpretation of Deut 16:18 34:12 along Veijola s lines. Thus the torso will be an abiding reminder of the untimely death of this great exegete, whom we shall remember with respect and gratitude.