Understanding Deuteronomy

One of the hardest modules of my undergraduate theology studies was Old Testament studies.  I did not like the lecturer (professor for US readers!) and had frequent clashes.  He was, it seemed to me, weak on Christian ethics (joking about death for adulterers, “most of his friends would be dead” ) and assigning some of the most boring, liberal reading about the Old Testament.  Melchizedek was a fictional figure and the Bible window-dressed genocide of the original inhabitants of Palestine.  He gave me the lowest mark I had ever received for an essay!  It was a matter of considerable irony that we later became good friends and he supervised my eventual Masters dissertation though that was not because he had any expertise but because recent redundancies at the University meant there was no one else.

This was an essay that may  have received that terrible mark but on reading it, it might have been a different essay that I deleted from my archive in embarrassment!  This seems to have done a reasonable job at discussing one of the most important books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Torah,  The Mosaic canon, the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures) that was a statement and exposition of the Law of God for the Israelites as they were about to pass into the promised land but also contains a call to inner spirituality that demonstrates why it is the most quoted book in the Christian scriptures.

A PDF is found here.

 

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