'When Moses had finished writing' (Deut 31:24): Communication in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy as communication

The question of Moses' authorship has been a foundational issue, and one of the major chapters, in the history of biblical interpretation. The problem derives from two verses in Deuteronomy 31: "And Moses wrote this Torah" (Deut 31:9); "When Moses had finished writing the words of this Torah in a book" (Deut 31:24). Traditional interpretation, both Jewish and Christian, identified the "book" written by Moses with the Book of Deuteronomy, and even the Pentateuch itself. Critical historical exegesis dismantled the traditional equation and endeavored to identify Deuteronomy's successive redactors. Yet the literary claim of Deuteronomy is still in want of a critical assessment. Using a narrative approach, and comparative data from the ancient Near East, this study characterizes the process of communication throughout Deuteronomy in a twofold way. It describes the process of communication in Deuteronomy's represented world (by Moses to the sons of Israel); it describes the Book of Deuteronomy as communication (by the narrator to the reader). The two processes are shown to cooperate like "a wheel within a wheel," to take up Ezekiel's image. Deuteronomy's way of combining inner and outer communication is best illustrated in the theme of the "book within the book," on which the study eventually focuses. Like none of the preceding books in the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy is imbued with "scribal thinking." The protagonists in the story all appear at some point in the role of scribes. The written record of the Torah progressively becomes a key "protagonist" in the story. While Moses dies outside of the land, his "book" is launched to accompany the people into the land. In the reader's world, the function of Moses' "book" is subsumed by the framing Book of Deuteronomy. A document on the historical stage, made accessible to the protagonists of the story, Moses' Torah "book" is also open before the reader's eyes. The description of the poetic architectonics that enables such a dual disclosure is the formal object of the study. The Hebrew Bible's policy of communicational overtness has in Deuteronomy, in the phenomenon of "the book within the book," a forceful illustration.