Studies in Deuteronomy.

The eighteen essays collected here honour a scholar who has made a considerable contribution to Deuteronomy studies. Labuschagne's publications, as noted here, span the period 1959 to 1992. Many of them are in Dutch, including an excellent commentary on Deuteronomy, of which two volumes have so far appeared (1987, 1990), and one of the services of this volume is to highlight the extent of his opus for the benefit of a broad scholarly community. Thirteen of the essays are in English, two are in French, and three in German, the Dutch and South African contributors having largely chosen to write in English.

No particular theme appears to have been selected for the volume, beyond an association with Deuteronomy, which is elastic enough to include F. Langlamet's 'Analyse formelle et numerique de 2 Samuel 7: 1-17', and two essays which are essentially exercises in pentateuchal analysis (Lopez, Vervenne). There are specimens of textual criticism (van der Kooij, Wevers, de Moor, Martinez, the last an important contribution on the Qumran fragments of Deuteronomy); historical criticism (Deurloo, Lohfink, Lust, Noort, van der Woude); interpretation (Loader on the Levirate …