Evil-Merodach and the Deuteronomist 183 four verses of the Former Prophets would thus buttress a major plank of the Deuteronomistic agenda before August 560 BCE and undermine this plank at any point thereafter, especially subsequent to the Persian takeover in 539 BCE. This conclusion has two important corollaries that I will discuss in the concluding part of the article. III. Who was the Deuteronomist? With the preceding considerations in mind, it appears that if 2 Kgs 25,27-30 is a Deuteronomistic contribution it must have been composed in 562-560 BCE (26). Within this narrow time frame, the most probable social setting for the fragment would be Jehoiachin’s retinue. Since no king could possibly conduct the internal and external affairs of his realm without at least a few scribes, it is safe to assume that these professionals were among Jehoiachin’s courtiers who according to 2 Kgs 24,15 were exiled together with him. At their master ’s behest, or even out of sheer elation over the recent improvement of his (and, by implication, their own) status, they were certainly capable of producing a text that celebrates the event — and implicitly demonstrates that Jehoiachin’s surrender to Nebuchadnezzar back in 597 BCE was, after all, a smart move (27). The statements of 2 Kgs 25,29-30 about Jehoiachin dining in Evil- Merodach’s presence and receiving his daily rations wyj ymy lk ‘all his life’ would seem to militate against the dating suggested above. If the (26) In principle, it is possible that 2 Kgs 25,27-30 was composed by a post- and anti-Deuteronomistic hand with a view to reminding a post-560 BCE audience that the hopes for a Davidic restoration under Evil-Merodach had come to naught and thus exposing them as futile. In such a case, the fragment would have no bearing on the dating of Dtr; however, two related considerations make this possibility remote. First, Dtr was unlikely to conclude his or her composition with the catastrophe of 586 BCE that left David’s dynasty in shambles, at least not without explaining how such an outcome fits in with the promises of 2 Samuel 7, which even the doomsday prophecy of 2 Kgs 21,11-15 does not seem to revoke. Second, this ending would be perfectly consistent with the anti-monarchic perspective generated by such putatively anti-Deuteronomistic texts as 1 Samuel 8 and 2 Samuel 10-12; if so, it would be redundant, if not counterproductive, for post-Dtr to engage in a highly sophisticated ruse, pretending to celebrate release and exaltation of a Davidide, in other words, assuming the opponent’s identity. The rule of parsimony thus clearly favors the attribution of 2 Kgs 25,27-30 to Dtr working before Evil-Merodach’s deposition. (27) W. SCHNIEDEWIND, How the Bible Became a Book. The Textualization of Ancient Israel (New York – Oxford 2004) 152-153.