Deuteronomy

The most radical speech in the Hebrew Bible Deuteronomy is not a book of events. It is a book of a speech — Moses, standing on the eastern bank of the Jordan, knowing he will not cross it, delivering his final address to a generation that was not there for the Exodus. Everything they know about what happened, they know because he tells them. Everything they know about who they are supposed to be, they know because he tells them that, too. This companion moves through Deuteronomy in five reading sprints, organized around the book's actual rhetorical structure rather than its reputation as a list of rules. Each sprint applies one interdisciplinary framework drawn from rhetoric, political theory, psychology, and philosophy to illuminate what Moses is doing as a speaker — and what the text is doing as literature. Deuteronomy invented things we still live inside: covenant theology, collective memory, the idea that a community's identity is constituted by its shared story of what it has survived. This companion is built to help you understand how. Includes five reading sprints, five interdisciplinary frameworks, active reading questions, journal prompts, and a final homework assignment. Physical copy of the Bible (the translation you use matters — see the companion introduction) and a journal required.