Deuteronomy and the Material Transmission of Tradition

? Winner of the 2025 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award for Best Book on the Hebrew Bible
? Winner of the 2025 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise
? Honorable Mention at the 2025 SHARP Book History Book Prize

Deuteronomy and the inscribed texts depicted within it are often called “books.” Moreover, its treatment of writing has earned it a prominent place in historical accounts of the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. Neither Deuteronomy nor its text-artifacts, however, are books in any conventional sense of the term. This interdisciplinary study reorients the analysis of Deuteronomic textuality around the materiality, visuality, and rhetoric of ancient rather than modern media. It argues that the Deuteronomic composition adapts the media aesthetics of ancient treaty tablets and monumental inscriptions to a story that is itself transformed into an artifact of the past.