Most scholars trace all or most of Deuteronomistic history to the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), and associate it with editorial reworking of both the Tetrateuch and Jeremiah.
[6] Since the mid-20th century, scholars have imagined the Deuteronomists as country Levites, a junior order of priests, or as prophets in the tradition of the northern Kingdom of Israel, or as sages and scribes at the royal court.
[7] Recent scholarship has interpreted the book as involving all these groups, and the origin and growth of Deuteronomism is usually described in the following terms:[8][9] Deuteronomy was formed by a complex process that reached probably from the 7th century BCE to the early 5th.
[14] According to the story in 2 Kings, reading the book caused Josiah to embark on a series of religious reforms, and it has been suggested that it was written to validate this program.
[17] The term was coined in 1943 by the German biblical scholar Martin Noth to explain the origin and purpose of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
These, he argued, were the work of a single 6th-century BCE author/compiler seeking to explain recent events (the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile) using the theology and language of the Book of Deuteronomy.
[18] The author used his sources with a heavy hand, depicting Joshua as a grand, divinely guided conquest, Judges as a cycle of rebellion and salvation, and the story of the kings as recurring disaster due to disobedience to God.
[26] However, writing in 2000, Gary N. Knoppers noted that "in the last five years an increasing number of commentators have expressed grave doubts about fundamental tenets of Noth's classic study.