Book-Seams in the Hexateuch II

The Book of Deuteronomy and its Literary Transitions

edited by Christoph Berner, Stephen Germany and Harald Samuel

Book cover: Book-Seams in the Hexateuch II

Extent: 375 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Biblical Studies, Classical Studies, Literary Studies

Series: Forschungen zum Alten Testament

Series volume number: 168

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(September 2023)

ISBN: 9783161609022

Price: $174.00

In stock

This volume offers the first systematic investigation of the literary transitions between the books of Numbers/Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy/Joshua. Placing a special focus on the material aspects of ancient Jewish scribal practices, it retraces the development of these literary transitions.


Biblical books, which were transmitted on separate scrolls in antiquity, are not necessarily identical with books in the modern sense of a coherent and self-contained compositional unit. Especially the books of the Primary History constitute a larger master narrative. This raises the question of how the distribution of the text over different scrolls relates to its compositional history. Were the respective books conceived as physically separate parts of a multivolume composition (whether Pentateuch, Hexateuch, Deuteronomistic History or Enneateuch) from the outset, or are we dealing with a more complex development of originally independent compositional units that were only connected or separated by later redaction? The present volume addresses these issues with respect to the book transitions of Deuteronomy, whose relatively freestanding literary shape sets it apart among the books of the Hexateuch.

  • Edited by Christoph Berner
  • Edited by Stephen Germany
  • Edited by Harald Samuel