Message Of Love In Deuteronomy Essay

The Book of Deuteronomy sustains an integral position amongst the books of the Bible. It is the final book of the Pentateuch and befittingly links these opening books to the latter historical and prophetic books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Not only is Deuteronomy key in its literary placement, but it is also pivotal if one is to understand the theology in the New Testament; especially thoughts regarding the ideology of love. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to contemporize the message of love in Deuteronomy so as to determine what actions the Bible calls of man, and to subsequently show whether hate is, or is not, a virtue. Firstly, I would like to better specify my proposition of “contemporizing the message of love in …show more content…
Deuteronomy is foremost a book of law. As previously mentioned this book has an authoritative lineament which legitimizes the ordinances from the P source. An example of another P source composition is the book of Leviticus. But Deuteronomy is not strictly a book of law. The prophetic message the book conveys always revolves around covenant. This influences much of Deuteronomy and is unique to the D source. In addition the J and E sources are more poetical and use anthropomorphic imagery, dreams, and visions to illustrate poetic wisdom. Deuteronomy is also both a “record of the past” (Miller 9) and “instruction for the future”which gives the audience “an important example of the way law and teaching develop theologically” over time to meet requirements of contemporary problems “while [still] preserving continuity with the old [traditions]” (Miller 2). As a whole, Deuteronomy possesses traits of prophetical, historical, law, and wisdom pieces that categorize books of the Old Testament. Furthermore, because of these characteristics “there is no book of more importance in the Old Testament...[in regards to] understanding the New Testament than Deuteronomy” (Miller