The writing of Deuteronomy

Today, most contemporary biblical scholars date this book between 700 and 400 BCE, which would mean that it was written about 800 to 1,000 years after the death of Moses.  Virtually all modern secular scholars now reject the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy.  Its authors were probably the Levite caste, collectively referred to as the Deuteronomist, whose economic needs and social status the book reflects.  In the late eighth century BCE, both Judah and Israel were vassals of Assyria.  Israel rebelled and was destroyed around 722 BCE.  Refugees fleeing from Israel to Judah brought with them some traditions that were new to Judah.  One of these was that Yahweh, already known and worshiped in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but the only god who should be served.  This outlook influenced the Judahite landowning ruling class, which became extremely powerful in court circles, after placing the eight-year-old Josiah on the throne following the murder of his father, Amon of Judah.  By the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, Assyrian power was in rapid decline, and a pro-independence movement was gathering strength in the Kingdom of Judah.  One manifestation of this movement was a state theology of loyalty to Yahweh as the sole God of the Kingdom of Judah.  According to 2 Kings 22:1–23:30, at this time Hilkiah, the High Priest and father of the prophet Jeremiah, discovered the “Book of the Law” in the temple.  Many scholars believe this book to be the Deuteronomic Code of Laws in chapters 12–26 of this book.  Josiah subsequently launched a full-scale reform of worship based on this “Book of the Law.”  Thus, there was a covenant between Judah and Yahweh that replaced the decades-old vassal treaty between King Esarhaddon of Assyria and King Manasseh of Judah.  The next stage in the development of the Torah took place during the Babylonian captivity.  The destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 586 BCE and the end of kingship was the occasion of much reflection and theological speculation among the Deuteronomistic elite, now in exile in the city of Babylon.  The disaster was supposedly Yahweh’s punishment for their failure to follow the law, and so they created a history of Israel that became the books of Joshua and Kings to illustrate this failure of the Israelites.  At the end of the Exile, when the Persians agreed that the Jews could return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, chapters 1–4 and 29–30 were added to Deuteronomy, as it was made into the introductory book to this Israelite history.  Thus, a story about a people about to enter the Promised Land became the story about a people about to return to their land.  The legal sections of chapters 19–25 was expanded to meet new situations that had arisen, and chapters 31–34 were added as a new conclusion.  Chapters 12–26, contained the Deuteronomic Code.  Thus, they were the earliest section.  Since 1805, most scholars have accepted that this portion of the book was composed in Jerusalem in the seventh century BCE in the context of religious reforms advanced by King Hezekiah (716–687 BCE).  Others have argued for other dates, such as during the reign of his successor Manasseh (687–643 BCE) or even during the exilic or postexilic periods (597–332 BCE).  The second prologue of chapters 5–11 was the next section to be composed, and then the first prologue of chapters 1-4.  The chapters following chapter 26 were similarly layered in.  How historical are the books of the Bible?