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In his recent monograph, David Dijang traces the history of Deuteronomy's concept of a profit-like Moses from the 7th century BCE to the 1st century CE, demonstrating the ways in which Jewish and Christian texts were influenced by and responded to Deuteronomy's mosaic norm for prophetic claims. Join us as we speak with David Dijang about a profit-like Moses. You're listening to new books and biblical studies, a channel of the new books network, and I'm your host, Michael Morales. David Dijang, PhD from Notre Dame, is Assistant Professor of Religion at Hope College, his research and teaching focus on the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation in ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
David, welcome to new books and biblical studies. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So, David, tell us about yourself and your journey into studying Deuteronomy and a profit like Moses.
Yeah, thanks, Michael. Well, thanks for your interest in my book. My journey into studying Deuteronomy was a bit of a roundabout one. I completed my master's degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in New Testament and Christian origins, and wrote on the Apostle Paul.
When I later began PhD studies at the University of Notre Dame, I thought of myself as a New Testament scholar. Notre Dame, however, does not have traditional Hebrew Bible Old Testament and New Testament divisions. Their program is called Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, or CJA. And the CJA field really encourages students to think in interdisciplinary and boundary blurring ways about the Hebrew Bible, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity.
My interests progressively moved back in time as I became fascinated by the field of reception history for the study of how the Hebrew Bible was interpreted in ancient Judaism and Christianity. After a couple of years of coursework at Notre Dame, I was casting about looking for a topic to focus these interests. I remember a meeting in which I proposed a few topics to my supervisor, James Vandercam. He said, do the Moses one.
That sounds interesting. Now my worry at that time was that there was not going to be enough to say about the profit like Moses in terms of reception history. In the New Testament, the passage is only quoted twice in Acts 3 and Acts 7. And there are some references to the profit like Moses in the Qumran literature.
But other than that, the evidence seems sparse. So I was wondering if there was enough for a project here. But he suggested that I start with Deuteronomy and work forward. And very quickly I realized that not only was there enough for a project here, but that in fact there was a lot of material that I would not be able to include.
Early in the project, I would have these odd experiences where I would go to academic conferences and tell people I was working on the profit like Moses, and some would ask me, oh, are you going to include Jeremiah? And somebody else would say, oh, are you going to include Matthew? And as I was just embarking on the project, my only answer was, I don't know. I'm not sure.
And then sure enough, I would become aware of a whole other scholarly conversation and literature about the profit like Moses. As it turns out, as it turned out, I did end up including a chapter on Jeremiah in the book, but not on Matthew. What I realized was that scholars of Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, and New Testament were all having conversations about the profit like Moses and its influence in their respective fields. But these conversations were siloed.
They were happening in various subfields in our discipline, but no one was tracing threads from these conversations across the field of biblical studies as a whole. My book is the first attempt to do just that. It traces the influence of Deuteronomy's concept of the profit like Moses from its origin in the seventh century BCE to the end of the first century CE. So my journey into Deuteronomy was really one of becoming aware of how important this concept was for discourse around prophecy in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, and then tracing the influence of this concept across the centuries.
Would you explain for us the idea of mosaic discourse and what the aims of your book are? Secondly, mosaic discourse is a concept that was particularly developed by a scholar named Hindi Naimen in her book, Second Exigni. Mosaic discourse essentially refers to the way that texts and authors in the Second Temple period would draw upon the voice of Moses as a part of a bid for legitimacy and authority. Mosaic discourse actually begins with the book of Deuteronomy itself, which was written many centuries after Moses and uses the voice or preaching of Moses to reinterpret Mosaic law for a later generation.
The authors of Deuteronomy are essentially saying, following this law is what it means to be faithful to Moses today. In her work, Second Exigni, Naimen explored the influence of Mosaic discourse in a variety of non-canonical texts, such as the books of Jubilees, the temples' role from Kumran, and the writings of Thiloh of Alexandria. My book complements Naimen's work by arguing that Mosaic discourse is a key feature of texts that would later be regarded as canonical as well. I explore the influence of Mosaic discourse in the books of Kings, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Malachi, and then its influence in Second Temple writings, such as Ben-Sira, First Maccavies, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo and Josephus, and in early Christian literature, Luke Acts and the Gospel of John.
My book aims to demonstrate the importance of Mosaic discourse as the development of a normative framework for revelatory claims in ancient Judaism. It's important to remember that all of these texts are written before there is a concept of a closed canon or Bible. Recent scholarship has rightly emphasized the diversity of Second Temple Judaism, but sometimes portrays this time period as a theological free-for-all. My book emphasizes that Mosaic discourse, that is, the creation of a mosaic norm or touch tone, provided a unifying framework within this diversity.
In short, before there was a canon, Moses was the canon, and bids to authority and legitimacy were developed in dialogue with Mosaic discourse. Indeed, I show how appeals to Mosaic discourse in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity were used to both authenticate and validate heirs of the Mosaic tradition, but also were used in some cases to exclude prophetic claimants as being outside the bounds of the Mosaic tradition. Part one of your book covers foundations, the genealogical model of Mosaic prophecy. Would you tell us about this section?
Sure. Most readers of the Bible do not realize that the word profit does not always mean the same thing. In fact, prophecy was a very diverse phenomenon in ancient Israel. Profits could be healers, doctors, miracle workers, teachers of ethics, and diviners who predicted the future, among other things.
In part one of my book, I argue that there are two broad conceptual models for what prophecy is and how it functions in the Hebrew Bible. The first model is what I call the charismatic model of prophecy, and this model focuses on the vertical axis of the prophets relation to God. The language of spirit is prevalent in this model. The prophet is the one upon whom the spirit comes in power, and signs of the spirit's presence often include things such as ecstatic behavior.
We see this, for example, with a figure of Saul in verse Samuel, but it is also the main model for the portrayal of such important figures as Elijah and Elijah. Part one of my book argues that Deuteronomy introduces a new model for understanding prophecy, a genealogical model. The focus in this model is not the prophets' reception of the spirit, but the prophets' alignment to Moses. This genealogical model is the one that focuses on the horizontal axis more than the vertical one.
To be a prophet is to be the heir, successor, and interpreter of Moses. I argue that Deuteronomy introduces this model as a way of providing a norm or touch known for prophetic claims. One of the potential drawbacks with the vertical or charismatic model of prophecy is that there is no real way of comparing prophets. They are all individually authenticated by the reception of the spirit.
Deuteronomy creates the concept of the prophet like Moses in order to create a normative discourse around prophecy, one that allows prophets to be compared to a prophetic standard, and also one that liberates the people from the influence of false prophets and charlatans. Something Deuteronomy is quite worried about. It does this by creating tests for the people to discern whether any given prophetic claim is a prophet like Moses or not. An ethical test does the prophet follow Mosaic Torah and an empirical test.
Will the prophet's word stands the test of time? After Deuteronomy has created this model, we do see later prophets, particularly Jeremiah, but also others, characterized as successors and heirs of Moses. One thing that has always been quite interesting to careful readers of Deuteronomy is that in chapter 18 verse 15 and 18, God and Moses affirm that God will raise up future prophet like Moses. But in chapter 34 verse 10, the narrator concludes that no prophet like Moses has arisen.
There is a clear tension between these passages. Is there going to be a prophet like Moses or not? In my book, I argue that Deuteronomy 18 essentially creates the genealogical or horizontal model of prophecy in which prophets are understood as successors to Moses. But Deuteronomy 34 verse 10 represents a later refinement or clarification of the model, stipulating that Moses later successors were not Moses equals, perhaps unintended and highly interesting consonants of Deuteronomy 34 verse 10.
However, is that it opens the door for an eschatological interpretation of Deuteronomy 1815. If no prophet like Moses has arisen, then perhaps we are still waiting for one. And I do think we see that interpretation emerge among the Samaritans as well as in various movements in second temple Judaism, including early Christianity. Talk to us about how the Lord's servants, the prophets, relates to Deuteronomy 18.
Yeah, the title, Servant of the Lord or Servant of God is predominantly and preeminently Moses title in Hebrew Bible. It is applied to very select few other individuals. However, it is used for the prophets considered collectively, particularly in the book of Second Kings. In my book, I show how the creation of this title was an early way for the Deuteronomistic editors of Kings to link the prophets to Moses and create the concept of an authorized succession of Mosaic prophets.
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You also get a chance to receive a Tim Hortons scholarship award. Ready for what's next? Apply today at careers.tingorons.ca I also identify new links between the passages containing the description of the prophets as the servants of the Lord and Deuteronomy 18, such as a focus on prohibited division and the theme of expulsion from the land. It's important to note that prior to promising that God will raise other prophets like Moses, Deuteronomy prohibits all other forms of divination.
In Deuteronomy's understanding, prophecy is the only valid or illicit form of divination for ancient Israel. Later, in the book of 2 Kings, the concept of the Lord's servants of the prophets is used to build justify the exiles of Israel and Judah by claiming that people had not listened to Moses' true heirs and successors but had instead turned to foreign divinatory practices. The exiles of Israel and Judah are thus presented as particularly due to their disobedience to the law of the prophet in Deuteronomy 18. The other feature of Deuteronomy 18, the focus on empirical confirmation of prophetic oracles, is also picked up in the references to the Lord's servants of the prophets and kings.
In the looming exiles, the words of Moses' true heirs and successors, essentially the company of prophets from Moses to Jeremiah, are about to be vindicated for the Deuterne mystic historians. This is also a way of underlining that these are the prophets who are true successors of Moses and whose words do indeed stand the test of time. What else are you working on these days? Yes, the project has been very fruitful in suggesting further areas of research that could not be fully investigated within its scope.
I'm currently working on a number of articles on the reception and interpretation of other prophets like Moses, such as Elijah and Jeremiah. I will have an article on Elijah's role at the end of Malachi appearing in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 2025. I also have some projects from the reception history side of the book, such as a new consideration of the way Josephus, the Jewish historian, the way his understanding of prophecy is shaped by the Deuterne-Nomic norms. Finally, long term, I plan to write a book that reflects my interests and background in both Hebrew Bible and New Testament by introducing a general audience to critical scholarship and arguing that critical scholarship is not adverse to but in fact deeply compatible with faith-based perspectives on scripture.
David, it's been great having you on the show. Thank you for joining us. Thanks very much for having me on and thanks for your interest in my work. Friends, thank you for tuning in to New Books and Biblical Studies, a channel of the New Books Network.
Goodbye.