The spectral nature of YHWH (Dtr): perspectives from Derridean hauntology

Abstract

This article brings postmodern Continental philosophy of history to bear on the theologies of the Book of Deuteronomy. It looks at the “hauntological” effects of the character of YHWH (Dtr) as a “spectre” in the reception history of the book’s god-talk. The character of YHWH (Dtr) seems to have attained the status of a literary ghost already within the book of Deuteronomy, the theology of which continues to haunt even in the atheological rhetoric of the New Atheism, long after the collapse of realism in Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic philosophies of history