Dating the Song of Moses
Robert Claypool asks:
Thom,
You say on page 70 that “The Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 – alongside the Song of Miriam in Exodus 15 – is considered by scholars to be some of the oldest material in the Hebrew Bible, dating back roughly to the mid-thirteenth century BCE.”
Can you provide sources for this information? I have looked for it online, but the only dates I found are much later.
Also, if these passages were to be dated much later – say 600 BCE – would that weaken the argument you have made? Would critics be justified in saying that you favor an early date to support the thesis of Yahweh’s ascendancy?
Thank you! Robert Claypool
Robert, this is a great question.
Very few if any scholars would date the Song of Moses to the exilic period, and if they did, it would certainly not be a very tenable position. Most scholars nowadays date these large poetry blocks to the pre-monarchic period. I note on p. 129 fn.42 that the Song of the Sea in Exod 15 is dated by Frank Moore Cross earlier than the prose account in Exod 14. On page 124 of his Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, he dates the Song of the Sea to the late twelfth or early eleventh century BCE. The Song of Deborah is similarly dated within that pre-monarchic range, as is the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman date the song no later than the 10th century. Freedman writes:
I am as firmly convinced today as I was forty-five years ago that early [Hebrew] poems really are early. While it is true that many, perhaps most, serious scholars date this poetry across the whole spectrum of Israelite history . . . I believe that the whole corpus belongs to the earliest period of Israel’s national existence, and that the poems were composed between the twelfth and tenth—ninth centuries B.C.E. I have encountered neither compelling evidence nor convincing argument to the contrary, or to make me think otherwise.1
Admittedly, a mid-thirteenth century date (i.e., ca. 1250) is the earliest of possible estimates. But whether it’s mid-thirteenth or early-eleventh, the best evidence suggests that it predates the monarchic period or comes right at its inception and thus predates the rise of Yahweh to head of pantheon coinciding with the monarchy. Even after the transition to a monarchy, it would have taken some time for Yahweh to move up the ranks. Cross thinks that Deut 32 could be as late as the ninth century, but even then it would reflect traditions that were much earlier, and would have been written at a time when all of these ideas were still very much in flux. But to date it as late as the sixth century is to avoid the strong stylistic similarities between the Song of Moses and the other early hymns; moreover, Cross’s work with the DSS exposing the polytheistic Vorlage to the LXX undermines the reading of those who would date it late because it seems to them to reflect a monotheistic perspective.
Thanks again for your good question.
- Frank Moore Cross, Jr. and David Noel Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), x. [↩]
