Misquoting Moses with Joel Baden
Oct 23, 2026 · 53 min · 10 segments
You've seen the multi-season television drama where every single episode follows the exact same formula. The main characters abandon their core values, face a massive crisis, get invaded by a foreign…
Joel BadenGuest
Megan CraigHost
When we talk about Deuteronomistic history, that's the books we're talking about.
So, you know, the books really come right after the Pentateuch or the Torah, with the exception, if you are reading Christian Bibles, of the book of Ruth, which gets popped in there, but wasn't there originally.
The content is from the death of Moses to the conquest and destruction of the Judean kingdom by the Babylonians and the exile.
And the word that nobody knows is actually the in a sense, most important one, or at least the one that's worth talking about most, which is the word Deuteronomistic.
And we keep saying it very fast, so it might be, you know, not transparent what it means.
And the you know, Megan, now you ask me, well, what does it mean for something to be like Deuteronomy?
What does it mean for something to be like Deuteronomy? I mean, I haven't described a lot of things in my daily life as being Deuteronomistic.
So if you remember the very basics of Pentateuch stuff that we talked about some time ago, you'll remember that one of the Pentateuchal sources is the source D, which is to say the one that is mostly contained in the book of Deuteronomy, which is distinctive, as they all are in terms of the way it tells the story and its literary style, but also, and in a sense primarily, because it has a very clear theological understanding of how history works.
So Deuteronomy, which is just Moses' deathbed speech, basically, has a bunch of laws in it.
And what Moses does in Deuteronomy, in the D source, is essentially tells the Israelites, you guys do nothing but screw up, and you get punished for it, but God is very nice.
When we talk about Deuteronomistic history, that's the books we're talking about.
So, you know, the books really come right after the Pentateuch or the Torah, with the exception, if you are reading Christian Bibles, of the book of Ruth, which gets popped in there, but wasn't there originally.
The content is from the death of Moses to the conquest and destruction of the Judean kingdom by the Babylonians and the exile.
And the word that nobody knows is actually the in a sense, most important one, or at least the one that's worth talking about most, which is the word Deuteronomistic.
And we keep saying it very fast, so it might be, you know, not transparent what it means.
And the you know, Megan, now you ask me, well, what does it mean for something to be like Deuteronomy?
What does it mean for something to be like Deuteronomy? I mean, I haven't described a lot of things in my daily life as being Deuteronomistic.
So if you remember the very basics of Pentateuch stuff that we talked about some time ago, you'll remember that one of the Pentateuchal sources is the source D, which is to say the one that is mostly contained in the book of Deuteronomy, which is distinctive, as they all are in terms of the way it tells the story and its literary style, but also, and in a sense primarily, because it has a very clear theological understanding of how history works.
So Deuteronomy, which is just Moses' deathbed speech, basically, has a bunch of laws in it.
And what Moses does in Deuteronomy, in the D source, is essentially tells the Israelites, you guys do nothing but screw up, and you get punished for it, but God is very nice.
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