Abstract
Cognitive anthropology describes ‘cognitive models’; discourse analysis focuses on the structure (and structuring elements) of a text, and its relationship to the presumed audience. These two recent areas of anthropology contribute to a study of the Exodus-Deuteronomy text; such a study, in turn, tests these approaches. The Exodus-Deuteronomy text (not just the narrative sections) is to be read as a whole. The narrative structure (plot) models and creates a universe, as do other models, such as the tent. Themes of mediation and displacement are discourse devices, bringing the story from mythic past to present assembly. One discourse function of the rebellion stories is to provoke the assembly into placing themselves in the story, and paraenesis in Deuteronomy does this explicitly.
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