H.B. Lit: Deuteronomy

Prof. Mark K. George
Office: I-112 (but under construction as of 2017-09-11)
Office hours: by appointment; please contact me by e-mail to make arrangements
mgeorge@iliff.edu

Course Description
The book of Deuteronomy for centuries has been viewed as laying out a political view of Israel’s life together. Josephus, for example, described Deuteronomy as Israel’s politeia or “form of government.” Government certainly is an issue in the book, particularly as it involves the conduct of self and others. More recently, Deuteronomy is understood to play a foundational role in the books of the Former Prophets within the theory of the Deuteronomistic History. This course examines these and other critical issues in the study of Deuteronomy. Prerequisite: TX-Breadth .

About this Course

Deuteronomy receives a great deal of scholarly attention, and not without reason. A variety of scholarly issues confront those who study this book. There are various canonical issues associated with the book. Deuteronomy is a boundary book, in the sense that Israel is poised at the Jordan, waiting to cross into the land promised to Abraham. It is the fifth book of the Pentateuch, and the Former Prophets begin after Deuteronomy ends. The homiletical nature of the book also marks it as different from other books, because its style is quite different from the books preceding and following it. Thematic concerns, such as centralizing where YHWH is worshipped, link it with what follows, even as Moses’ presence in the book ties it with what precedes it. These issues and others raise canonical questions of various sorts, most clearly in terms of the Tetrateuch, Pentateuch, Hexateuch issue. The literary form of Deuteronomy is another issue. Scholars widely accept Moshe Weinfeld’s arguments about Deuteronomy being structured in the form of an ancient Near Eastern vassal treaty. Debate continues as to whether Hittite or Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties are the basis of this formal comparison. In light of this formal argument, how does it influence interpretation of the book and its contents? Is the medium the message, as Marshall McLuhan once argued? If so, what is that message? Another issue involves the various compositional issues in Deuteronomy (that is, when its various parts were written and then brought together into one scroll), whether it was the first written text to link the ancestors with the Exodus or whether it drew upon earlier sources for this linkage, and other such matters. Related issues take up the relative dating of Deuteronomy and other legal codes in the Pentateuch, as well as connections between legal materials in the book and other ancient Near Eastern legal codes, practices, traditions, and ideas. There also are numerous interpretive issues involving the content of the laws, of the social world they portray (or not), and so on. These are but a few of the issues swirling around Deuteronomy, offering us many ways to encounter and engage this book as a way to think about issues of the present.

One way to focus these scholarly issues for our work is with a different sort of question. How is it that readers come to find themselves in the book of Deuteronomy? This question may be interpreted and answered in several different ways. For example, we find ourselves in Deuteronomy because we enrolled in this course. Jews, Christians, and Muslims might answer this question by saying they find themselves in Deuteronomy as part of their collection of canonical books. I want us to explore this question in a different manner, namely with respect to how readers become subjects of, and subject to, Deuteronomy. In other words, I want us to pursue the how of finding oneself in the text and what it means to be subjected to it.

Course Objectives

• To develop and improve exegetical and interpretive skills in reading the Hebrew Bible, through weekly readings of biblical and secondary literature.
• To increase students’ knowledge of the Book of Deuteronomy and the various interpretive issues it presents, through readings, discussions, and written work.
• To improve critical thinking, communication, and writing skills by means of discussions and postings, exegetical papers, and responses.
  
• To advance our ability to interpret biblical materials in light of contemporary issues, using postings and other written work.

Books

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979). The version now available is the 1995 2 ^nd edition, ISBN 9780679752554 (p).

Levinson, Bernard M. Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation . New York: Oxford, 1997. ISBN 9780195152883 (p).

Tigay, Jeffrey. Deuteronomy . JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. ISBN 9780827603301 (c). PLEASE NOTE: it is important for our work that you purchase the printed book or check one out from a library. What I ask you to have is a printed copy so you experience the book as a material object.

New Revised Standard Version (I recommend the HarperCollins Study Bible if you do not own a print copy of the NRSV). The Student edition is ISBN 9780060786847 (p).

Mark's comments on the required books and on the assigned papers may be found here

1. Regular participation and discussion. Class discussion is our primary means of learning together and therefore an integral and important part of class. Each student is expected to post by the stated deadlines and to do so having read the required materials for the week. As you read, engage them critically: what is the central argument being made, how is it being made, what evidence is cited to support the argument, and what is at stake in making this argument. When you finish reading one of the assigned pieces, ask yourself if you can state that central idea and outline of the argument using your own words. For the commentary in particular, ask what is the critical approach being taken, why the particular verse or section is being addressed from that perspective, what theological assumptions and claims are being made, and why any of it matters – and to whom? Please note that attendance at the Gathering Days sessions (12-13 October) is expected and required of all students.
2. Online discussions. There are four discussions each week. The first discussion, on Tuesday, is the graded discussion, while those on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are more like social media (Twitter or Facebook) discussions: quick, not too detailed but developed through give-and-take of conversations that are substantive and developing our thinking about Deuteronomy.
   1. Your Tuesday contribution is the “big” engagement online for the week. I expect students to do all the assigned reading and listen to the lecture for the week before making this discussion entry. Lectures will be relatively short, 20–30 minutes or so, and are intended to raise particular ideas and issues for your consideration as you read and reflect on the week’s materials. I may add, as needed, additional audio comments for the week to explain topics and ways of interpreting the material (such as on the Michel Foucault reading, on government and conduct, and the like; your feedback and requests in our discussions may lead to other topics being addressed). In the readings, please work for a critical understanding of what the scholar is arguing—as discussed in the Requirements page on “Regular participation and discussion.” Critical reading and engagement with other scholars and their perspectives is a skill, one we are trying to improve during this course. When you finish reading an article, book chapter, commentary section, or the biblical materials, try to be sympathetic to the author and state the central thesis in your own words. If you can do this and summarize the argument in your own words, then you probably understand it. Once you do, then consider what sort of conversation you would have with that scholar, why, and on what grounds. Scholarship is, at its best, a conversation, so try to have one with these scholars and others in this class. For your online contribution on Tuesday, share with the rest of the class your conversation for the week with the scholars and materials encountered through the assignments. What are the 2-3 primary issues, questions, topics, or ideas you have for the week as part of that conversation? Please don’t write a paper for us, but share, in maybe 2-3 paragraphs (short to medium length) your voice in the conversation (please do not write more than one page; remember, we have more opportunities to engage one another and the materials through the course of the week).
   2. Your Wednesday contribution is a response to 1–2 other students (minimally; more is good because it expands our class conversation!) on their Tuesday contribution. These should be short, maybe two sentences, as if you are posting to a social media site (or making a Twitter post). In other words, don’t type a long statement, but make a few pertinent comments to help advance an idea someone else noted, answer a question that was raised, note how something helped you advance your own thinking, raise a new question, tie together comments made by 2 or more students in the course, and so on. Use this day to help draw out insights, challenging ideas, themes, and so on from the secondary readings. Be creative and noodle around with the rest of us how something another person contributed helps you think anew about a comment or idea you noted for the week—or from a previous week. We can move backwards across the weeks of the course. You also may draw in ideas, theologies, critical perspectives, and other things you learn from other courses, but be clear and succinct, since we want to keep each contribution for the day short (even if you make several such contributions to our class conversation).
   3. Your Thursday contribution is exegetical. I created pericopes (a technical word for biblical passages) for our shared use on the website Hypothes.is so we can improve our critical reading skills (exegetical skills) with biblical texts. In order to participate you must have your own Hypothes.is account. If you do not have one, please read and follow the directions for how to set up and use Hypothes.is in the tutorial by Michael Hemenway. Designed as a way to engage Deuteronomy directly, I ask that you read through the pericope (all are fairly short; I think the longest is 10 verses) and then highlight and comment on specific elements of it. What questions do you have? What strikes you for the first time? Do you need words or phrases to be defined? What connects to other claims in other biblical books in the Torah or Hebrew Bible? What do you think is going on in the pericope, that is, why it is included in the book, and what evidence in the pericope supports your claim(s)? And so on. The way we learn to become stronger, more confident readers and interpreters of the Bible is through practice, which is what this weekly assignment helps us do. Minimally I expect to see 2–3 annotations each week we have an exegesis assignment (we won’t have one in weeks 5 [Gathering Days] or 9 [second exegesis papers and peer reviews]).
   4. Your Friday contribution is to read and respond to some current event that I offer for our consideration for the week. It may tie to some aspect of our reading, or be a more general issue in the news and on social media recently that is the type of thing I think we face every day as people with advanced education in the study of religion and theology. As masters students, what does your education in Deuteronomy enable you to offer a public discussion of such issues? How do you think about such issues, and why? What resources from your Iliff education do you draw upon to begin thinking about the issue? As people with degrees in a theological discipline, how does our education help us consider these issues theologically (however we define "theological")? Please read through (or view) the current event (they come from newspapers, websites, and other sources; I will try to estimate length or time to get through the report on the event, or it will be noted at or near the top of the source). Then make a short contribution (2 or 3 sentences?) to the discussion. I also encourage you to engage one another and advance the conversation in thoughtful, substantive ways as the discussion develops. Please note that I reserve the right to change current events up to one week before they are due if I think something locally or nationally or internationally might make for a more interesting or pressing current event.
3. Exegesis Papers. Two short exegesis papers are required for this course. Each is to be 1400–1700 words, approximately 5–6 pages double-spaced in 12 point font. This word count includes text and footnotes but not your bibliography. Please indicate the word count at the end of your paper.
   1. The first paper, on a passage of the student's choice from Deut 1–15, is due no later than Tuesday, 10 October at 6:00 p.m. MDT (Wk 5; Please note: This is the Tuesday of the week we meet for Gathering Days).
   2. The second paper, on a passage of the student's choice from Deut 16–34, is due no later than Tuesday, 7 November at 6:00 p.m. MST (Wk 9).
   3. All papers are to offer a critical engagement with the pericope (passage) you select for the assignment. As such they are to be written for a scholarly audience and have a clear thesis and argument that engages the biblical text in a sustained manner. They also are to demonstrate engagement with scholarship on the selected topic or passage. Normally this means citing and engaging with at least two recent journal articles and one recent monograph (recent being defined here as published within the last 10–15 years; if you do not understand what is a monograph, please contact Iliff’s reference librarian or the Writing Center staff for help and to locate such a book). Commentaries, bible dictionaries, and encyclopedias may be consulted and used (please cite them properly), but they do not count as journal articles or monographs.
   4. Because the development of writing skills is one of the objectives of this class (and graduate school study), please take extra care to proof-read your papers before submitting them, to ensure proper spelling, correct grammar, proper footnoting and annotation style, and that your papers are of the highest quality writing you can achieve right now. The Writing Center at Iliff is available for your use and consultation and all students are encouraged to avail themselves of this resource. You might be encourage to know that, as your professor, I am continually seeking to improve my writing skills in a variety of different ways!
   5. Papers are to be uploaded to the Canvas site. Please note that papers will be graded down one full letter grade for each 24 hour period it is late, up to a maximum of 48 hours. After that time, your paper will receive a grade of zero (0). This is because your paper no longer can be assigned to another student who is dependent upon it to fulfill the paper response assignment by the due date (sufficient time must be allowed that student to read the paper and formulate a written response).
   6. All papers are to conform to the standards of graduate school research, writing, and formatting and to follow the style guidelines detailed in The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (CMS) and/or The SBL Handbook of Style, 2^nd (SBLHS), which is based upon the CMS and provides a number of useful abbreviations for journals and other standard reference works in biblical studies.
   7. Failure to submit your paper also will result in a grade of zero (0) for the paper response assignment because Canvas only is capable of assigning papers to students who submit them. If you do not submit, you will not be assigned a paper to review, and thus you will receive a zero (0) for the response.
4. Response to exegesis papers. Every student will be assigned another student’s exegesis paper to which they will a written response. Twenty-four (24) hours after papers are submitted to Canvas, the system will assign papers for responses. To access the paper assigned to you, log into Canvas, click on the exegesis paper assignment (the same link you used to upload your paper). Once on that page, click on the “Peer Review” link in the right-hand column of the screen. Responses are to be no longer than one page, typed, single-spaced, although they may be shorter as long as they address each area specified in the Guidelines (the "Guidelines for Responses to Papers" are available here). Responses are to be posted on Canvas no later than 6 p.m. MDT/MST on the Friday after papers are submitted (that is, 13 October and 10 November).

Participation and discussions........................................................................................ 40%
Paper responses............................................................................................................... 10% (5% each)
Exegesis papers (Masters students)............................................................................. 50% (25% each)

Pass/Fail requests must be submitted to the instructor in writing by e-mail no later than Friday, 15 September 2017. Incomplete grades will be granted only in the rarest of cases and follow the policy in the 2017–18 Masters Student Handbook, which is online.

Late work is unacceptable. It adversely affects our collective work by depriving us all of your voice and ideas. The same holds for the assigned papers because of student responses. For this reason, late contributions to the Tuesday discussion will be graded down one full letter grade if made up within 24 hours. Contributions made later than 24 hours will receive no credit and a grade of zero (0). The Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday discussions are not graded individually but are part of the overall participation grade, so failure to participate or consistently late participation will adversely affect your participation grade. Each paper will be graded down one full letter grade for each 24 hour period it is late, up to a maximum of 48 hours. After that time, a late paper will receive a grade of zero (0). Additionally, because another student’s paper response grade depends on having a paper to read, the student who does not submit a paper will receive a grade of 0 (zero) for the paper response because it prevented the other student from completing that assignment. The upshot is please, please, please submit your papers on time! Everyone is depending on you.

Please review Iliff’s academic integrity policy. Every student is expected to abide by this policy and demonstrate the highest level of academic integrity, which is central to the educational enterprise and thus the social privilege we earn because of being graduate students.

Iliff engages in a collaborative effort with students with disabilities to reasonably accommodate student needs. Students are encouraged to contact their assigned advisor to initiate the process of requesting accommodations. The advising center may be contacted at advising@iliff.edu or by telephone at 303-765-1146. Accommodations also will be made according to DU’s policies and procedures.

A...................94–100
A-..................91–93
B+.................88–90 (NB: a 90 is a B+)
B...................83–87
B-..................80–82
C+.................78–79
C...................73–77
C-..................70–72
D+..................68–69
D....................60–67
F.....................59 or below

Please note that an average grade in my courses is a C, as you might expect given the standard grading scale. A B+ extends to 90, making the “B” range a bit wider than usual.

If a student turns in all materials on time and satisfies the basic requirements of the assignment, this is a “C” or pass. With more insight and engagement in the assignment comes a higher score and grade. Exceptional performance on assignments merits a score and grade that is exceptional. This schema holds for all graded assignments.

Grading for participation and discussions (T-F): the Tuesday contribution receives a letter grade while the W-F contributions receive a simple “Complete/Incomplete.” For Tuesday, making your contribution on time with a brief engagement of the week’s materials is average. The more you demonstrate your critical understanding and engagement with all the materials, the higher your grade. “A” work does all this and begins to synthesize and integrate readings for the week and from prior readings into a critical, thoughtful articulation of an insight, argument, thesis, or other understanding of the book of Deuteronomy. This also is the point in the week to raise questions or to acknowledge you didn’t understand a particular reading and then try to explain why (and where in the reading) you lose track of the argument or line of reasoning. Being honest and asking for help also is a critical reasoning skill. If you simply note you don’t understand a (or more than one) reading without trying to understand and explain what you don’t understand is, at best, a “C,” since there is no way to try to help you understand better that material. For the W–F discussions, I am looking to see if you participate (and do so by the deadline), make comments that advance our conversation, and do so in a substantive way. I am being intentional about not assigning letter grades to these discussions (as noted above, they are graded “Complete/Incomplete”) because I want to eliminate that pressure so our conversation can be more spontaneous and engaging.

Grading for papers: a “C” means you have a weak or muddied thesis that you argue with 1–2 arguments that may or may not thoughtfully engage the biblical text you have chosen as your exegetical focus. You have met the minimum requirements for outside sources (two recent journal articles and one recent monograph), formatted your paper more-or-less appropriately, correctly cited sources, spell-checked your paper, and other such basic matters (I assume all graduate students know these aspects of writing a paper; if not, please contact the Writing Center staff and seek their help). A “B” has a clear thesis suitable to the length of the paper and provides several arguments that demonstrate engagement with the biblical text and secondary materials, but has several weaknesses in logic and argument, while formatting, documentation, spelling, and other formal features of the paper are correct. An “A” demonstrates outstanding creativity in its thesis and argument, engages with the biblical and secondary literature in insightful ways that offer insight to the biblical passage that is thought provoking, and has no or only 1–2 formatting, spelling, documentation, or other formal errors.

Grading paper responses: a “C” means you provided a response that didn’t quite identify or rephrase the paper’s thesis and addressed a couple of aspects of the other students’ paper without offering much in the way of suggestions for improvement. A “B means you identified the thesis and generally understood it when you rephrased it in your own words, noted a strength and weakness with a suggestion for how to improve the paper. An “A” means your rephrasing of the paper’s thesis demonstrates you identified it, understand it well, and you provide useful and helpful comments about the paper’s strengths and weaknesses. Please see the “Guidelines for Respondents to Papers” for how to provide a substantive, helpful response.