CTH 133 and the Hittite Provenance of Deuteronomy 13

For over forty years the dominant view in scholarship has been that Deuteronomy 13 is a composition of the seventh century B.C.E. Remarkable similarities of language and norms exist between the apostasy laws of Deuteronomy 13 and the disloyalty provisions set out in section 10 of the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon of 672 B.C.E. The claim has proven especially attractive in light of the wealth of historical data in our possession for that period that would seem to support the claim. Assyrian cultic practices were present in the temple (2 Kgs 23:11); the kingdom of Judah was subjugated by Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:13-18); and the name of Manasseh, king of Judah, appears on the list of Levantine kings subjugated by Esarhaddon. Assyrian domination, it is suggested, engendered a gradual socioreligious acculturation in which Judean scribes assimilated and modified the structures of Assyrian ideology within the framework of their own tradition. In