Martin Noth argued that in the books of Joshua-Kings could be seen the work of a single, purposeful author or historian-a hypothesis which, although close to becoming one of those rare 'assured results of critical scholarship', has recently encountered criticism. Nelson observes that Noth's historian has a 'disturbing tendency to fall apart in the hands of those who work with him'. In this comprehensive study of the question, he attempts to put on a solid critical foundation the increasingly popular theory that the Deutoronomistic History is a product of a two-stage literary process.
