How does performing affect those who perform? Starting from the observation that Deuteronomy commands an intergenerational tradition of performing the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32.1–43), in Singing Moses’s Song Keith …
How does performing affect those who perform? Starting from the observation that Deuteronomy commands an intergenerational tradition of performing the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32.1–43), in Singing Moses’s Song Keith DeStone explores ways in which the Song contributes to Deuteronomy’s educational program through the dynamics of re-enactment that operate in traditions of performance: performers of the Song are to be transformed as they re-enact not only characters within the Song but also those who came before them in the history of the Song’s performance, particularly YHWH and Moses, whom Deuteronomy depicts as that tradition’s founders. In support of this thesis, Stone provides a close reading of the text of the Song (as preserved in Deuteronomy and as informed by Deuteronomy’s account of its origins and subsequent history) that examines how the persona of the performer interacts with these re-enacted personas in the moment of performance. He also argues that the various composers of Deuteronomy themselves...
Models of the formation of the book of Deuteronomy abound, and in these conceptions, the Song of Moses (32:1–43) is usually considered to be a late addition, tacked on as if by chance to the end of the book. However, several of this poem’s distinctive themes and locutions are strikingly and organically reflected among what are usually considered to be the earliest parts of Deuteronomy. For example—the morally pivotal moment of satiety (32:15; see 6:11–12, 8:10, 12–14), the use of hypothetical speech (often to be avoided; 32:27; see 9:4, 28), or the phrase “[whom] they knew not,” which is riffed on in various syntactical ways (32:17; see 8:3, 11:2, 28, 13:3). There are others. Through an analysis of these reflections (which also count among the relatively unique features of the book of Deuteronomy), I argue that, even if the text of the Song was formally added to Deuteronomy only at a late time, the book as a whole was influenced by the Song from the beginnings of its development.- - - Keith DeStone