A few recent studies, however, have gone against the mainstream. Some have attempted to demonstrate that the book of Deuteronomy is not a literary mishmash of various laws haphazardly thrown together. On the contrary, Deuteronomy is a highly structured, well-formulated and symmetrical piece of work. In this regard, two works deserve to be mentioned: S. A. Kaufman’s ‘The Structure of the Deuteronomic Law’10 and J. H. Walton’s ‘Deuteronomy: An Exposition of the Spirit of the Law’.11 The basic view