Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (review)

This book, originally a Ph.D. dissertation, seeks to account for the differences between the topically similar legal texts among the Pentateuchal law codes. The author, Jeffrey Stackert, focuses on laws related to asylum, seventh year, manumission, and tithe as they appear in the Covenant Collection (CC), Deuteronomy (D), and the Holiness Code (H). Going against the conservative harmonizing explanations and past socio-critical explanations, Stackert attempts to explain them with a theory of literary revision. His goal is to draw conclusions based on the correspondences between each of the three law codes' treatment of these four common topics. From these, he ultimately makes conclusions about the direction of literary dependences, as well as the methods and motivations for the changes. In the end, he concludes that, while borrowing the prestige of their sources, the legislators of H intended to subvert and ultimately replace the earlier codes.

Overall, the book is a well-written and helpful addition to the ongoing and complex study of the Pentateuch's legal material. In the first chapter, Stackert provides an excellent history of past studies that he is continuing, taking his place in the Levinson stream of research on legal revision among the Pentateuchal codes. In addition, since relative dating of the codes is essential to his program, throughout the book he provides reviews of past research on the chronological order of the codes. Furthermore, in the final chapter, Stackert provides a helpful presentation of the pre-canonical history of the legal codes that are implied by his study. He essentially contends that the source of the conflicts between the Pentateuchal laws arose from the process of canonization. When these codes were incorporated into the Pentateuch, they were given equal authoritative weight, despite the fact that one may have been intended to replace the others. The clarity with which Stackert lays out the aim of his study within the history of past scholarship, his analyses of the chronological order of the codes, and his treatment of the canonical issues implied by his study are all much appreciated and make the book worth reading.

Although much of the book is commendable, it raises a couple of issues for further discussion. First, although Stackert attempts to avoid historical issues (favoring issues of literary development), his entire study appears to rely heavily on a historical assumption, that the Pentateuchal laws form a single (though developing) literary tradition. Furthermore, he seems to assume throughout that the later codes must have developed out of the earlier ones since they form a single tradition. In other words, there must be a direct literary relationship between topically similar laws since one code developed out of the other. Thus at one point Stackert criticizes the fact that Pamela Barmash argues for literary independence "in spite of obvious thematic parallels" (p. 58). This comment reveals his assumption: thematically similar laws must reveal literary development since the Pentateuchal laws form a single developing literary tradition. The result of this assumption is that some of his explanations for the methods and logic of textual reuse employed by the revising legislators are questionable and the evidence he provides for direct literary dependence appears at times to be circular or weak. For example, Stackert contends that the presence of מָקם in CC and its absence in D is "the most compelling piece of evidence recommending a direct literary relationship" (p. 49). From this fact he posits that the D legislator avoided using the word מָקם as a means of reinterpreting CCs law from altar asylum to city asylum, thus making it consistent with his program of cult centralization (pp. 49–53). This, however, is only convincing if it is first assumed that D was dependent on CC. Otherwise the absence of a word hardly qualifies as evidence. The weakness of this assumption is especially evident in his comparison of the manumission laws of D and H, which, as he...