The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32

Book excerpt: This study offers an extensive survey of previous literature dealing with the provenance of the song in Deuteronomy 32, a renewed discussion of its text and language as well as an analysis of its poetic structure with the help of a new method. The author tests the tenability of older theories and proposes a new theory based on systematic research into the intertextual links with other parts of the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical literature of the Ancient Near East. Separate sections are dedicated to the song's descriptions of the relationship between YHWH and the gods and to the identity of the hostile people to which the song refers. The author concludes that a pre-exilic date is extremely likely for the song in its entirety.