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I read Martin Noth's The Deuteronomistic History. The reason I read it was that I wasn't completely sold on Richard Elliott Friedman's narration of the history of biblical scholarship regarding the Deuteronomist, in Who Wrote the Bible? The way Friedman tells it, Noth believed that the Deuteronomistic History was written in exile, after the monarchy had ended. And yet, this was problematic, for the History contained statements that the Davidic dynasty would be eternal---which the exile basically shot down. Therefore, for Friedman, there must have been a pre-exilic Deuteronomist, who wrote before the fall of Judah in 587 B.C.E. Then, an exilic Deuteronomist added some finishing touches. (And Friedman thinks that both of them were Jeremiah, or Jeremiah working with Baruch.)
This isn't Friedman's only argument for the existence of a pre-exilic Deuteronomist, for he also thinks that the exaltation of King Josiah in the work signals that the History was originally intended to culminate in Josiah, meaning that its first stage was put together when Josiah was king.
Moreover, on page 107, Friedman makes a big deal about the "to this day" passages in the Deuteronomistic History---which refer to things that existed when the kingdom was still standing. Citing Frank Moore Cross, Friedman challenges Noth: "Why would someone writing a history in, say, 560 B.C. refer to something as existing 'to this day,' when that something had ended back in 587? For example, 1 Kings 8:8 refers to poles that were placed inside the Temple of Solomon on the day it was dedicated and that 'they have been there unto this day.' Why would someone write these words after the Temple had burned down? Even if the words were not his own, but rather appeared already in one of his sources, why would he leave them in? Why not edit them out?" Friedman thinks that at least a stage of the Deuteronomistic History had to be pre-exilic, for it referred to things as still existing, which did not exist after 587 B.C.E.
I guess my problem with Friedman's argument was this: Noth knows his Bible! I'm sure that Noth realized that there were parts of the Deuteronomistic History that talked about an eternal Davidic dynasty. I seriously doubt that he totally missed that part in his study of the Bible, leaving it to be discovered by a more observant scholarly successor. The same goes for the "to this day" passages in the Deuteronomistic History. Does Friedman seriously believe that a serious biblical scholar like Martin Noth overlooked those passages?
And so I decided to read Noth's work to see if he actually interacted with those passages. And, for some of them, he did. But, first, I want to quote something that Noth says about the view that there were two stages of the Deuteronomistic History's redaction---the view that Friedman defends years later:
"Recently the notion that there were two phases of 'Deuteronomistic redaction' of the books Joshua-Kings has become popular. But the assumption that the material was first edited in Deuteronomistic style before the exile is based on a mistaken attribution, to this first editor, of all sorts of traditional materials, which in fact come from Dtr.'s sources." (Page 139)
Noth's point is that the exilic Deuteronomist used pre-exilic sources, which were not Deuteronomistic. That should take care of Friedman's argument: the "to this day" passages were from the exilic Deuteronomist's pre-exilic sources, as was the promise of an eternal Davidic dynasty. Friedman asks why an exilic Deuteronomist wouldn't have edited that embarrassing stuff out. Well, in the aftermath of having read Whybray, let me use Friedman's argument against the point that Friedman's trying to make: In Friedman's scenario, there were two Deuteronomists---a pre-exilic one, and a final exilic one. Why doesn't Friedman think that the exilic one edited that embarrassing pre-exilic stuff out? And, if his exilic Deuteronomist could leave that stuff in, why couldn't Noth's?
On a side note, I Chronicles 17:5; II Chronicles 5:9; and 10:19 also are "to this day" passages---and they refer to situations that existed only before Judah's exile. And I Chronicles 17 has God's promise through Nathan of an eternal Davidic dynasty. I think that the vast majority of scholars date the Chronicler to Judah's post-exilic period. So why didn't the Chronicler edit out this embarrassing material? Maybe he respected his sources too much. Or maybe, regarding the eternal Davidic dynasty, he eagerly anticipated its resurrection. Perhaps he felt that he couldn't edit out the promise of an eternal Davidic dynasty, since his audience was aware of it. And that could also be a reason that an exilic Deuteronomist wouldn't edit it out: his audience knew about it, and so he had to address it somehow. (His approach was to say that it was conditional on obedience to God---I Kings 8:25; 9:5.)
But back to Noth! For the "to this day" passages, Noth appears to argue that these came from the sources that the Deuteronomist was using. He says that I Kings 8:1-13 (Friedman refers to I Kings 8:8's "to this day" to make his argument) is one of the Deuteronomist's sources, for example.
Regarding II Samuel 7, Noth holds that v 13a and vv22-24 are the Deuteronomist's insertions into that chapter. That means that the promise of an eternal Davidic dynasty was not from the Deuteronomist, but from his source. According to Noth, the effect of the Deuteronomistic insertions is that the promise is applied to the Israel of the past, not the Israel of the future. After all, the verses mention Solomon, the Exodus, and the Conquest.
I think that Friedman should have actually argued that the "to this day" passages and the passages about an eternal Davidic dynasty were from the Deuteronomist, rather than just assuming it and making Noth come across like a Bible illiterate. That's just my opinion, and I intend no offense.
