Loyalty Oaths and the Making of Deuteronomy

Loyalty Oaths and the Making of Deuteronomy reexamines the relationship between Assyrian adê texts and Deuteronomy, arguing that key legal reforms in Deuteronomy are grounded in these Assyrian loyalty-oath traditions. Centering on cult centralization, hòērem warfare, and the elevation of the Levites, this book offers an innovative historical exegesis of Deuteronomy’s legal vision with implications for longstanding debates in the field.In this book, H. Clay Smith brings together two interpretive trajectories that have often developed separately: readings of Deuteronomy’s stipulations in relation to local legal texts, such as the Covenant Code of Exodus, and the recognition of parallels between Assyrian adê texts and portions of Deuteronomy. Drawing on adê rituals, adê outcomes, and adê enforcement, Smith brings new comparative evidence to bear on Deuteronomic legal reasoning, arguing that Deuteronomy’s authors adapted adê traditions to supply both an authoritative and conceptual basis for reform.By advancing new conclusions about the meaning and purpose of these legal innovations, Loyalty Oaths and the Making of Deuteronomy offers an important contribution to Deuteronomy scholarship, biblical law, and ancient Near Eastern studies. It will interest scholars and students of the Hebrew Bible, Assyriology, comparative law, and related fields.