182 JOEL S. BADEN the question is whether D is also familiar with elements of the pa- triarchal narrative. In D’s description of the Israelites’ journey to the border of Canaan, the Israelites come to the land of Seir, which D identifies as “the territory of your kinsmen, the descendants of Esau” (Deut 2,4). Later in the same chapter, the Israelites are for- bidden from engaging in battle with the Moabites and Ammonites, because those lands have been assigned to the descendants of Lot (2,9.19). These identifications of territory with Esau and Lot di- rectly reflect the patriarchal narratives, in which the relationships between Israel and these neighboring nations are defined as famil- ial along precisely these lines. More pressing are the regular references to the promise to the pa- triarchs. Recent scholarship has proposed that the references in D to God’s promise of the land to the “fathers” are not in fact references to the promise to the patriarchs, but rather to the generation of the exo- dus. This claim requires, of course, that in those passages in which the “fathers” are set in apposition with “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” the names of the patriarchs be considered secondary additions. Yet there are a number of passages in D that clearly presume the patriar- chal narrative in general and the promises to the patriarchs — and ex- plicitly not to the generation of the exodus — in particular. Despite the belief that the “fathers” in D represent the genera- tion of the exodus, in fact the very notion that the generation of ad- dressees is the second generation to come out of Egypt is a minority one in D. Only in the opening section of D, Deuteronomy 1–3, is the view expressed that the generation of the exodus perished in the wilderness (Deut 1,35; 2,14-15) 19. Elsewhere the text is very clear that the generation that stood at Horeb is the same generation that is being addressed by Moses. In Deut 4,10–15 this is stated unequi- vocally: “The day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb [...] you came forward and stood at the foot of the mountain [...] the Lord The notion of the forty years of wandering is mentioned outside of these 19 chapters, in Deut 8,2.4 and 29,4, but without any connection to punishment or death of a generation (in fact, Deuteronomy 29 is very clear that it is the same generation that came out of Egypt, wandered for forty years, and stands before Moses now). Rather, in these texts the forty years were a period in which God tested the Israelites who came out of Egypt to determine whether they were faithful or not, and in which God in turn demonstrated his capacity for preserving the Israelites in the face of danger. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati