Harris 112-113

• Harris states that Deuteronomy states the "central thesis" of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Summarize that thesis.
• What is one way in which Deuteronomy revises, rather than restates, the previous four books of the Torah?
• One fact that scholars use to support the idea that Josiah wrote, rather than discovered, Deuteronomy in 621 is that it focuses on Judah, which didn't exist as a separate territory during the Egyptian New Kingdom (when Exodus is set). What does the involvement of Josiah's sectary Shaphan suggest?

Harris 123-5 and Box 5.1

• Explain the symmetrical beginning and ending of the "first edition" of the Deuteronomistic history (DH), composed at the heigh of Josiah's military campaigns and religious reforms.
• Why did Deuteronomistic editors have to "revise their neatly symmetrical presentation of Israel's history"?
• Harris said that by "scattering brief references to the coming national defeat," revisers "foreshadowed" the national defeat and made it seem inevitable. By going to the biblical text, summarize one of the examples of these references listed in Harris.
• Summarize one of the three "motifs" or thematic patterns in the DH.
• [Box 5.1] The Hebrew noun and verb associated with holy war is "herem" or "charam." What does that mean? What three books, according to the concordance, use that word the most?

Judges

• Judge
• Deborah
• Barak
• Ehud
• Jael
• Gideon
• Abimelech
• Jepthah
• Samson
• Nazirite
• Philistine
• Dagon