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The Book Within the Book: Writing in Deuteronomy, by Jean-Pierre Sonnet. Biblical Interpretation Series 14. Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1997. Pp. xvi + 299. $93.75.
As questions of the history of composition continue to generate heated discussion within Pentateuchal studies, slowly and more quietly scholars have turned their attention to literary questions. Jean-Pierre Sonnet's study of the book of Deuteronomy, a revised dissertation completed at Indiana University under the direction of James Ackerman, and revised under the guidance of Meir Sternberg, contributes to these burgeoning literary discussions. Interacting consistently with the work of Robert Polzin and Norbert Lohfink, Sonnet attempts to define the process of written communication as depicted in the narrative world of Deuteronomy, as well as the book's communication to the reader. He does this by unfolding the relationship between speech and writing that occurs within Deuteronomy.
The book's seven chapters unfold in three movements. Following a preface and an introduction, chapter 1 examines the depiction of oral communication in the represented world of Deuteronomy. According to Sonnet, this oral setting grants Moses prophetic authority and establishes a "subtle dialectic" between Moses' voice on the plain of Moab and YHWH's voice at Horeb. Moses' oral communication at Moab therefore becomes closely related to the written Torah given to the reader of Deuteronomy. Yet the written communication of "this Torah" also occurs within the represented world of Deuteronomy. Chapters 2 through 6 examine the development of this written communication through a narratological reading of...