512 Mark Leuchter c) The Josianic redaction of the Hezekiah narrative (2 Kgs 18–19) presents Sennacherib’s murder not as the result of his devastation of sacred Babylon but as the result of his campaign against sacred Jerusalem (30). d) The Deuteronomic text generated by Josiah’s scribes relies heavily upon the forms in the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (VTE), and the role of local Levites divested of autonomous cultic authority in the Deuteronomic reconceptualization of jurisprudence (Deut 16,18–18,22) appears to be pattered on neo-Assyrian administrative policies (31). e) The Josianic embrace of northern Mosaic-prophetic tradition in the attempt to regain control of the former northern kingdom of Israel (found throughout the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic literature) (30) On the murder of Sennacherib as a theological response to his devastation of Babylon (and its relationship to the Biblical account of his death and the succession of Esarhaddon in 2 Kgs 19,37, which follows the form in which the death and succession of Israelite kings is typically reported) see W.W. HALLO, “The Death of Kings: Traditional Historiography in Contextual Perspective”, Ah, Assyria… Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor (eds. M. COGAN – I. EPH’AL) (Jerusalem 1991) 148-165, esp. 162-163; COGAN – TADMOR, II Kings, 244. The fragmentary text known as “The Sin of Sargon” further implies that Sennacherib’s devastation of Babylon led to his violent demise; see H. TADMOR, “The Sin of Sargon”, Eretz Israel 5 (1958) 93, 150-163 (I am indebted to Grant Frame at the University of Toronto Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia project for bringing this text to my attention). (31) On the formal similarities between VTE and the Deuteronomic texts, see WEINFELD, Deuteronomy, 82-138. For a Neo-Assyrian model for the Deutero- nomic passage, see J. PEC ÍRKOVÁ, “The Administrative Methods of Assyrian ˇ Imperialism”, Archív Orientální 55 (1987) 162-175. That the magistrate in the city gate (˚y[rç lkb in Deut 16,18) is to be identified with a local Levite is suggested by the note in Deut 18,6 that the Levite en route to central sanctuary [in Jerusalem] comes from “one of your gates” (˚y[rç djam). The common phraseology within the same rhetorical unit (Deut 16,18–18,22) points to a semantic equivalency between the passages under consideration. That the Josianic scribes envisioned the local Levites – now divested of cultic autonomy – as agents of the Jerusalem administration is suggested by the dialectic juridical process of 17,8-13, which not only provides the local Levites with empowerment after divesting them of cultic autonomy, but also occupies a literary position mediating between 16,18 and 18,6. The sequence of these passages suggests that the position of the local Levite is central to understanding the surrounding material. For the significance of literary sequencing in the pericope of Deut 16,18–18,22, see B.M. LEVINSON, Deuteronomy and the Heremeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York/Oxford 1997) 109-137.