Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 309 Reviews DEUTERONOMY AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF LEGAL IN· NOVATION. By Bernard M. Levinson. pp. xiv + 205. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Cloth, $39.95. In this revision of his Brandeis dissertation (1991) Bernard Levinson casts new light on the compositional processes involved in establishing innovative legislation on the basis of prior authoritative texts. Levinson's interpretation of legal formulations in Deuteronomy as literary and ideological transformations of earlier texts reveals the influence of his Brandeis mentor, Michael Fishbane, and his studies of "iIUler-biblical exegesis :' Levinson, however, displays an acute awareness of the distinction between the explication of an older text, and its transformation; although transformation may involve both author and reader in a hermeneutic relation with the source text, only explication is properly exegetical. Deuteronomic law, for Levinson, is not exegesis but transformation: "The older texts are silenced, and there is only the voice of the authors of Deuteronomy" (p. 94). Levinson's study presents in-depth analysis of the textual transformations involved in Deuteronomic cult centralization (Deut 12), the festival calendar combining Pesa~ with Mazzot (Deut 16:1-17), and the function of the judiciary (Deut 16:18-17:13). In the opening chapter the author briefly states his presuppositions, method, and purpose. This section is critical for the rest of the study, for the thesis that Deuteronomy is the product of literary as well as ideological transformation rests on the presupposition of the priority of the Covenant Code to the Deuteronomic literature. Despite recent challenges to this assumption by some contemporary scholars, the author asserts its validity by appealing to long-standing consensus, and refers the reader to his dissertation for a detailed refutation of the dissenting views (pp. 6-8). It is regrettable that the author did not treat the reader of his book to the methodological discussion of his dissertation because the matters debated are crucial not only to pentateuchal studies, but to our understanding of the historical milieu in which the biblical texts were composed. In the following three chapters Levinson shows how Deuteronomy transformed prior tradition in the formulation of its legislation. Although the Deuteronomic program called for radical departure from custom and tradition, the authors chose to present their innovations in the guise of continuation with the past by taking up lemmas from prior authoritative texts and transforming them through techniques like semantic inversion, interpolation and rewording. Levinson demonstrates the literary transformation of the altar law in Exod 20:24 by the authors of Deut 12:13-19,20-28. While Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 310 Reviews reusing the language of the Covenant Code, the Deuteronomic authors inverted the principles of the old altar law, thereby restricting the sacral sphere to the single chosen sanctuary and secularizing the local sphere through the desacralization of slaughter. The Deuteronomic authors similarly used strategic refonnulation of previous texts along with interpolation in fonnulating the innovative legislation calling for the combined observance of Pesah and Mazzot in Deut 16:1-17. The Deuteronomic transformation of Exod 13:2-10,21-27; 23:16.18 creates a dialectic which moves the Pesa/J. sacrifice from the local family sphere to the precincts of the central sanctuary. while at the same time localizing the observance of Mazzot and thus obliterating its original pilgrimage character. The radical dialectic carried on by the Deuteronomic authors between the sacral and the profane, the local and central spheres is particularly well delineated in Levinson's analysis of the literary transfonnation of prior judicial procedure in Deut 16:18-17:13. He shows that Deut 17:2-7, far from being a displacement from Deut 13, was composed as a deliberate refonnulation of the apostasy law in Deut 13 in order to introduce the rules for evidence into a paradigmatic capital case. The choice of the apostasy law as a vehicle for the rules of evidence is deliberate, and serves to demonstrate that even such an extreme sacral transgression is relegated to the local sphere. as long as there is adequate evidence for the crime. Conversely . even civil offenses must be tried in the central sanctuary when minimum material evidence is wanting. Levinson emphasizes that this...