Konrad Schmid: “The Late Persian Formation of the Torah: Observations on Deuteronomy 34,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. Edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007, 236–245. The Late Persian Formation of the Torah: Observations on Deuteronomy 34 ∗ Konrad Schmid (Zürich) 1. Introduction One of the most important literary developments in the formation of the Hebrew Bible that probably has taken place in the 4 th century is the formation of the Torah 1 ∗ I have to thank Bernard M. Levinson and Gary Knoppers for helpful comments and improvement of my English. . This dating is based 1 Its basic completion during the late Persian era is indicated by several elements. For one, Chr and Ezr- Neh assume the written fixation of the Torah. However, the traditional date for these texts in Chr and Ezr-Neh in the Persian era is increasingly questioned and substituted with a longer history of literary growth that extends in remarkably later times (see most recently Juha Pakkala, Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemia 8 [BZAW 347; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2004]; Reinhard G. Kratz, The Composi- tion of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament [transl. by John Bowden; London: T & T Clark, 2005]). Still, already the older sections in the book of Ezra in Ezra 10 seem to refer back to fully developed literary Torah texts, such as Deut 7:1–6; this would support the traditional argument. Further, the LXX translation of the Torah marks a terminus ante quem, which can be dated to the middle of the third century B.C.E. (see, e.g.,