Deuteronomy

Christensen offers one of the most technically distinctive treatments of Deuteronomy available and frequently provides observations that will not be found in other major commentaries. His particular strengths include attention to Masoretic accentuation, prosody, rhetorical structure, Numeruswechsel, traditional reading divisions, concentric patterns, and the possibility that Deuteronomy was composed for oral and liturgical performance. He often uses these observations to illuminate the argument of individual passages rather than merely catalogue formal features, and his extensive philological, textual and historical discussion makes the volumes valuable even for readers unconvinced by his larger structural theories. The principal reservation is that some claims about numerical composition and symbolic word counts can appear ingenious beyond what the evidence warrants and should not carry substantial exegetical weight. Even with that caveat, Christensen supplies so much genuinely distinctive material alongside conventional scholarship that he remains one of the most valuable technical companions to Deuteronomy available.

Comprehensive commentary by an accomplished scholar.

Evangelical who studies the structure of the book as a poem with five concentric units. [Full Review]