Legislating loyalty : adê agreements as a basis for Deuteronomic legal innovation.

A basic deficiency in current Deuteronomy scholarship is a lack of consideration for the purpose and significance of the work’s integration of legal and adê traditions. The objective of the present study is to address this deficiency by reconsidering the relationship between adê material and legal material in the Deuteronomic composition. Three specific considerations set parameters for the analysis: adê rituals, adê outcomes, and adê enforcement. These considerations form the basis for an innovative historical exegesis of Deuteronomy’s stipulations because they bring a new collection of evidence to bear upon longstanding issues in Deuteronomy scholarship. This analysis produces results that facilitate a reassessment of three of Deuteronomy’s often-debated legal innovations considering new comparative data: cult centralization, the application of ḥērem warfare upon political insiders, and the elevation of the Levites. This study, therefore, advances new conclusions regarding the meaning and purpose of these specific Deuteronomic legal innovations, but the overarching thesis of this analysis is that by adapting and integrating adê traditions into their own “legal” project, Deuteronomy’s tradents employ a form that provides both an authoritative and conceptual basis for their innovative reforms.