the succeeding reformation are not touched in that book at all. It
is clear from the narrative in 2 Kings xxii. ff. that the book must
have been a law book; no other meets the facts of the case but
Deuteronomy, and this meets them completely. Point for point, the
details of the reformation are paralleled by injunctions in
Deuteronomy--notably the abolition of idolatry, the concentration of
the worship at a single sanctuary (xii.), the abolition of
witchcraft and star-worship, and the celebration of the passover.
Some of these enactments are found in other parts of the Pentateuch,
but Deuteronomy is the only code in which they are all combined. 621
B.C. then is the latest possible date for the composition of
Deuteronomy.

It is possible, however, to fix the date more precisely. The most
remarkable element in the legislation is its repeated and emphatic
demand for the centralization of worship in "the place which Jehovah
your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there,"
xii. 5. Only by such a centralization could the Jehovah worship be
controlled which, at the numerous shrines scattered over the
country, was being stained and confused by the idolatrous practices
which Israel had learned from the Canaanites. This demand is
recognized as something new, xii. 8. In the ninth and eighth
centuries, when the prophetic narratives of Genesis were written,[1]
these shrines, which were the scenes of an enthusiastic worship, are
lovingly traced back to an origin in patriarchal times. As late as
750-735 B.C., Amos and Hosea, though they deplore the excesses which
characterized those sanctuaries, and regard their worship as largely
immoral, do not regard the sanctuaries themselves as actually
illegal; consequently Deuteronomy must be later than 735. But the
situation was even then so serious that it must soon have occurred