Deuteronomist

The Deuteronomist, or simply D, is one of the sources identified through source criticism as underlying much of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). Seen by most scholars more as a school or movement than a single author, Deuteronomistic material is found in the book of Deuteronomy, in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (the Deuteronomistic history, or DtrH), and also in the book of Jeremiah. (The adjectives Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic are sometimes used interchangeably: if they are distinguished, then the first refers to Deuteronomy and the second to the history.)

It is generally agreed that the Deuteronomistic history originated independently of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers (the first four books of the Torah, sometimes called the "Tetrateuch", whose sources are the Priestly source, the Jahwist and the Elohist), and the history of the books of Chronicles; most scholars trace all or most of it to the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), and associate it with editorial reworking of both the Tetrateuch and Jeremiah.

Since the mid-20th century, scholars have imagined the Deuteronomists as country Levites (a junior order of priests), or as prophets in the tradition of the northern Kingdom of Israel, or as sages and scribes at the royal court. Recent scholarship has interpreted the book as involving all these groups, and the origin and growth of Deuteronomism is usually described in the following terms:

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